…nail polish

Imagine dipping your hands into a home made concoction for two to four hours in the hope that your nails might resemble a different shade. That’s what the Ancient Chinese did in 3000 BC. They made a mixture of egg whites, bee’s wax, gelatin and gum arabic, with roses or other flower petals added to give the desired colour.

At the same time, in Egypt, women were dying their nails using strawberries or henna among other things. The richness of nail colour signified social status, and the lower classes were only permitted to colour their nails in pale shades. The wealthy and higher classes had more choice. Cleopatra usually painted her nails in a dark red shade.

In 600AD, the tradition of colour selection for class continued. In China during this century people of the highest classes and royalty painted their nails silver and gold, which were the royal colours. The lower classes were not allowed to paint their nails at all, and if an individual was discovered with painted nails, this violation would result in punishment in the form of death.

At the beginning of the 19^th century, nails were buffed with a chamois cloth and tinted with scented red oils. The idea of smooth, shiny nails became more favourable than simply painted nails during this century and people would additionally rub scented and tinted powders into their nails after polishing them.

The first modern nail polish was developed to coincide with the progress of paint used for cars. This relationship was important as it accounted for factors previously not considered such as the moving and changing of the nail shape as it grows. The paint for cars was also being designed not to crack or flake under extreme circumstances, and if you think about what you put your nails through every day, well, you can see the logic.

Psychiatrists once considered nail polish to be unhealthy and a form of self-mutilation. This theory was disproved in the end – it would be very concerning if it wasn’t as there would be a lot of people out their getting their nails ‘mutilated’ with friends each day.

…the pearl

Pearls are the oldest of all gems found on earth and are a cultural representative femininity, beauty and power which has made them ideal wedding gifts over thousands of years. Unlike all other gems, an animal – the oyster, makes pearls and no two pears are the same as the Latin word describes them to be ‘unique’.

If you were to travel to the Louvre in Paris, you would find the oldest fragment of a pear known to mankind. It was found in the sarcophagus of a Persian princess who lived died in 520 BC.

Pearls were thought to harbour special magical powers capable of curing illness and warding off evil spirits. They were also selected as a special gem that could only be worn by the rich, decorated and powerful. In classical Rome, only people of a certain rank were permitted to wear pearls.

As early as 3500 BC pearls were thought to have been worn by civilised Asian and Middle Eastern societies.

A society’s love of all things pearly reached its height during the Roman era. While a single pearl could fund a General’s entire political campaign at the time, women were adorned will pearls woven into their clothing and constructed into jewellery.

It is said that Cleopatra dissolved a single pearl in a glass of wine before drinking it to prove in a wager that with Mark Antony that she could consume the wealth of an entire nation in a single meal.

During the dark ages, European knights reportedly wore pearls into battle for their spiritual properties and their resemblance to the powerful moon.

During the expansion into the New World of the Americas, the pearl industry flourished. This was relatively short lived however, as by the late 17^th century pearls in American waters became so scarce that the industry failed. The introduction of fake pearls to the market aided the decline of the industry as well as the discovery of diamonds in Brazil.

Pearl diving was a very dangerous exercise with the depths of the ocean causing divers to develop a decompression sickness called the bends. This involves gas bubbles rising in the body and can lead to paralysis or even death.

For this reason, as well as poor air supply technology, diving was a very dangerous occupation. In Western Australia, the pearl companies originally used slave labour in the form of local Aboriginal people, to dive into the depths and retrieve the oysters containing precious pearls.

As the natural pearl industry became unstable, people began developing and creating ‘cultured pearls’ which were farmed in a more sustainable manner. It took a few years for cultured pearls to be accepted in the pearl industry, but now they have replaced the natural pearling industry.

Pearls can be created by placing an irritant, such as a grain of sand, within an oyster which over time grows into a pearl.

…coffee

Coffee discovery originated from the legend of Kaldi, a goatherd in the highlands of Ethiopia. One day Kaldi was herding his goats when they started nibbling on some strange berry plants. Soon after, the goats became extremely energetic, jumping about like Kaldi had never seen. He believed the berries they had eaten to be magical, and collected, boiled and ate some along with members from the local monastery. After receiving a burst of energy he shared his discovery and from that moment coffee began to take over the world. For many of us, coffee still provides this ‘magical’ burst of stimulation.

This 9^th century discovery was transferred from town to town and soon reached the Arabs who did not wish to share the ability to grow plants with others. They traded the beans, which had been boiled to prevent them from growing in another country’s soil. One reason as to why coffee became so popular in a number of countries was due to the Muslim population who, forbidden by the Koran to drink alcohol, instead turned to coffee for its energizing effects.

The Dutch, however, got their hands on some of the unboiled berries in the 1600s and planted them in Java in Indonesia. From there they were exported to most parts of the world and plantations were created in other countries. There are 10 steps to coffee from the seed to the cup.

The first coffee houses were opened in England, Austria and Italy and became very popular; although at first there was some uncertainty about the dark coloured drink and it was often labelled the ‘bitter invention of Satan’. In 1615 as coffee houses arrived in Venice, the local clergy condemned it. The Pope was asked to intervene, and after tasting the devil’s drink for himself he found it to be quite delicious and proclaimed that it was not the work of the devil after all.

Coffee arrived in Brazil after a difficult journey and mission undertaken by Francisco de Mello Palheta. He went to French Guiana where he tried to obtain coffee seedlings. However the French, like the Arabs, were unwilling to simply give away this precious commodity. The French governors wife was not so unwilling, and after Palheta charmed her socks of she sneakily gave him some flowers upon his departure, with coffee seeds hidden amongst the petals. Todays billion dollar coffee industry in Brazil may not have become what it is today if it weren’t for the charming Palheta.

Today coffee is one of the most important export crops to be traded on the market and is grown on five continents and indulged in by the world. Thanks to Kaldi and his curious goats you can enjoy your morning soy decaf long macchiato with hot milk on the side (jerk).

I wonder if this little goat, ‘Buttermilk’, has been nibbling on some coffee plants?

…the tram

In 1807 in Wales, the first tram was created to run on the Swansea and Mumbles railway, and was, like most forms of transport at the time, pulled by a number of horses. Usually two horses would pull the odd looking tram along the tracks controlled in a similar way to a horse and cart. Actually, trams looked rather like a float. Eventually, they decided to add a roof to tram design.

It took about fifty years after the invention of the tram for them to appear in British cities and be put into proper use. Some of the pitfalls of this however were the number of horses that had to be cared for in order to run trams throughout the day as each horse could only handle so much pulling. The rails made moving larger hauls easier. Also some councils were not happy with the introduction of trams to their streets and voiced their opposition, successfully removing some routes.

Another problem surrounding horse pulled trams was the amount of excrement being left by horses on city streets. The streets began to smell just as lovely as taking a big breath of manure. As the conditions worsened, new technologies to replace horses were highly sought after.

The steam tram was invented but had just as many issues as horse power. The soot produced by the tram covered its occupants so much so that people did not want to travel by tram. Another reason people were deterred was because of the extremely loud noise erupting from the tram. People feared for their lives while aboard due to this monstrous noise!

In 1881 in Germany the first electric tram was put to work in Berlin. Interestingly just twenty one years earlier a major tram accident occurred in Amsterdam and many German soldiers died. Their tram was travelling over a bridge that ran over a large canal. The tram driver was obviously unaware that the bridge had been altered to allow a ship to pass through, and the tram ran over the edge and into the canal, where a majority of the 188 soldiers, who mostly could not swim, drowned.

Another tragedy occurred in Britain in 1907, but this time with an electric tram. The open topped tramcar was travelling up Pye hill when the electricity failed and the tram slowed, stopped and began to roll backwards. As it gained speed travelling out of control down the hill despite its conductor’s attempts to break, it derailed and smashed into a nearby building killing 5 people and injuring 35 others.

Today, trams are designed so that they don’t lose control if the power supply fails. However they do still crash into cars and occasionally, one another. As the signs in Melbourne suggest, a rhino on a skateboard is still difficult to control.

For more pictures of trams through history click here.

…reading glasses

“Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses” – thanks Dorothy Parker. This stigma actually originated from English society where wearing glasses was deemed unfashionable because it revealed imperfection. Sadly today kids are still calling each other “four eyes in the playground” but its not as malicious as back in the Middle Ages.

The first eyeglasses appeared in the 1260s in Italy to help the elderly with failing vision to read, and looked a little something like this:

Annoyingly, these glasses were designed in a fashion that was not very practical. They had no frames held by the ears like modern glasses, and frequently fell down the nose of the person wearing them.

In 1604 the first written explanation about glasses for short sightedness opposed to long sightedness was published. It wasn’t until the 1780s that Benjamin Franklin invented bifocal lenses because he was sick of swapping glasses every time he wanted to read a book.

During the middle ages, while the English and French wore glasses only in private, the Spanish believed that glasses should be worn always as they added an air of dignity and made their wearer seem more important. Their paintings of prominent figures during this time depicted the person wearing glasses – including their paintings of Jesus. The old stereotype about people wearing glasses as seeming smarter or more professional it seems has stuck thanks to the Spanish.

In 1730, five hundred years after the first reading glasses were invented, a London optometrist by the name of Edward Scarlett invented the sidepieces still used in eyeglass design today to hold glasses in place and prevent them falling down.

Leonardo da Vinci was the first to consider the idea and consequently paint contact lens technology back in 1508, but it wasn’t until 1929 that this idea was perfected and actually put into practice with the masses. This was around the same time as sunglasses began to be used which is interesting in itself. As unpopular visible glasses were done away with sunglasses became popular as celebrities in Hollywood sported them about town.

Today, there are a number of options for those needing a little assistance with reading or seeing in general – no one likes running into walls.

Some try to predict the future of reading glasses, but who really knows the future of correcting vision impairment.

…the sheep

Before you drop that foam tray of lamb chops into your shopping trolley, ask yourself: where did this come from? (Don’t worry I’m not a vegetarian)

The obvious answer is of course, sheep. Like humans, sheep have a long history of evolution, involving conflicts, murder and of course the unfortunate fate of the jolly swagman who would most likely not have drowned himself in the billabong if the sheep hadn’t been so tempting.

About 10,000 years ago in central Asia people began the process of domesticating sheep, making them one of the first animals to be domesticated by humans. Their value was found during this time in their meat, milk and skins. It wasn’t for another six and a half thousand years that we realised their wool could be of use to us as well, and we began spinning in.

Wool became a highly prized commodity, and was valued far above linen, from which clothes were mostly made from in the early centuries. By the early 1400s, wool had reached such a value that money from its sale funded exploratory parties sailing around the world, especially in Spain.

In Scotland, thousands of people were forced to leave their homes and lands in the Highlands due to wealthy land owners taking the land for sheep grazing. This was known as the Highland clearances.

Years later Scotland would face another struggle as the sheep took over. 1792 became “the year of the sheep” as small hold farmers were forced off their lands to reside on the coast, where farming was unsustainable and they were expected to take up fishing. In the extremely windy and rough terrain, women could be seen tying their sheep and even their children to rocks to prevent them blowing away or over cliff edges. To this day there are more sheep in the highlands of Scotland than people.

Between 1870 and 1920, the Western states of the USA engaged in over 120 battles known as “the sheep wars”. As sheepherders moved in on the land of the cattle graziers, fights begin to break out which erupted into full on battles between small numbers of farmers. At the ends of “the sheep wars” fifty-six men lay dead and up to one hundred thousand sheep lay slaughtered.

Sheep farming boomed in the 1820s and increased dramatically over the next few decades as wool was highly prized back in England. The wool industry was so successful in Australia because wool was a commodity that could not spoil on the long sail back to England. Currently, sheep farming is still a massive industry in Australia. In New Zealand however, sheep outnumber their citizens twelve to one.

The most recent scandal involving sheep in Australia and New Zealand was the issue of mulesing sheep, which was deemed cruel and unnecessary by many animal rights groups and is now being phased out. Live export is another controversial issue. So I guess my pet lamb Jason didn’t really go on a ‘holiday’ to Saudi Arabia like dad said after all. 

…the clock

Don’t know what time it is? Hang on, I’ll just whip my sundial out and check. Imagine if you had to use stars or the sun’s position in the sky to tell the time.

Around 4300 BC sun clocks along with water clocks determined the time. Obelisks were built in particular locations, with the monument casting a shadow underneath the sun’s rays and lining up with marked out sections.

These clocks came into their second phase of evolution in 1500 BC with the invention of the sundial/shadow clock. Sundials allowed people to operate on an hourly basis rather than along just a morning/afternoon time frame.

In 600 BC the Egyptians developed a device for measuring night time hours as well, as sundials were of no use at night. This device was called a Merkhet which was lined up with the stars, in particular the pole star, and hours recorded by the lines movements in correspondence with the stars in the night sky.

In 325 BC the Greeks began using water clocks as a method of recording time. This involved water flowing from one container to another with measurements to record the water level in relation to time. Obviously these were not the most reliable method of keeping track of time.

Also in ancient times hourglasses appeared. Time was measured by sand running from the top down to the bottom. “Like sands through the hourglass, so are the”… I won’t go on, for everyone’s sake. Unfortunately in my browsing for more information on the hourglass, the first link that came up was for the days of our lives website, so naturally I aborted mission.

It wasn’t until the 1300s that mechanical clocks were created. These clocks had no faces, no numbers and no hands and instead rang a bell every hour, which would have been kind of annoying if you missed one of the bells and were an hour late for work. Also I wonder how they counted them in their sleep. Hmm…

The pendulum clock was invented in 1656 by Christiaan Huygens and was the most accurate of the time. Unfortunately these clocks did not work on ships and many sailors died during this era because their ships crashed into unexpected things such as reefs and cliffs, as there was no truly accurate way of measuring time on board. Every single minute unaccounted for resulted in about fifteen miles of miscalculated location. The government even offered a reward for the person who could create a clock that was accurate enough to prevent this from happening. Just over a hundred years later a clock was invented which was pretty much accurate losing only a second or so a month and was suitable for use at sea.

The 1800s was the century for big transformations in the ability to keep track of time. Machines were developed and there was constant innovation, so that the same principles could be applied to clocks. They were soon being mass produced and were far more accurate than any of their predecessors.

It wasn’t until the First World War that men started wearing wrist watches to check the time. This was because during battle it was way too difficult and distracting to look at a pocket watch. Before this time only women wore wrist watches and no macho man would ever consider it! As with all time keeping devices convenience won out.

In 1967 digital clocks were developed. Apparently it would take almost one and a half million years for one of these bad boys to become a incorrect by one second, but I’m sure none of us will be around to test the theory.

…the internet

If it weren’t for the Cold War, you wouldn’t be reading this.

Facebook, Tumblr and Google would be unheard of and twitter would still be the sound a bird makes.

In the 1950s the first program representing the internet was developed as a Cold War military technology, and was strictly for military use in order to communicate over large distances. The Americans vs. the Russians in relation to nuclear war threat might have had something to do with it. This network was closed and very different to the modern Internet Web 2.0. It was developed by a government organisation called ARPA, and this network would later be expanded for use by elite institutions, going on to become ARPANET.

In 1969 ARPANET came to elite institutions such as hospitals and a few top universities including Cambridge, the University of California, and the Stanford Research Institute among others.

The World Wide Web arrived at the fingertips of consumers and commercial businesses in the late 1980s, but it wasn’t until the first appearance of browsers in the 1990s that consumers really began to engage and connect with Web 1.0. The new World Wide Web rendered poor little ARPANET obsolete by 1984. Disturbingly this new Internet form was also developed by a nuclear research organisation.

The early Internet was completely black and white without pictures… how exciting. Obviously there were no problems with people posting too many ‘selfies’ on Facebook in the 1980s.

Australia was first connected to the Internet in 1983, where Darwin communicated with the University of California. Australia’s first Internet search engine was Web Wombat.

The first emoticon was invented in 1982 by Scot Fahlman and was of course a smiley face. The first webcam was used at Cambridge University computer lab, not to communicate with close friends travelling overseas or say happy birthday to a sibling from another city, but to monitor a particular coffee maker to make sure it was actually filled with coffee before making the disappointing trek to an empty coffee pot. Yes, laziness was associated with the Internet and computer technology from early on.

We now live in an age where the Internet is accessible in seconds with just a touch on our phones or a click on the computer. We use it to check the weather, find updates, stalk people we just met, download music, upload and watch weird videos about cats, and much, much more.

In 2010 you would need over 200 million Blu-Ray discs just to store the entire Internet. This has undoubtedly increased massively since then though, as Youtube users upload 20 hours of video every minute.

In 1995 at a Montana elementary school, some grade five kids made a few predictions on the future of the Internet after being asked the question: ‘why should I be on the internet?’

Also click here to see some fairly realistic predictions made in 2012 on the future of the Internet.

…the toothbrush

“Necessary? Is it necessary for me to drink my own urine? No, but it’s sterile and I like the taste” once said Patches O’Houlihan, and this might not have been so unusual back in 23 AD.

How far would you go to have sparkling clean teeth? Would you wash your teeth with tortoise blood? Scrub your teeth with burnt bread? Or wash your mouth out with old urine you’ve been savouring up especially for the occasion? Dental hygiene has come a long way in the past two thousand years.

In the 1800s charcoal was a popular method of cleaning one’s teeth, before powder toothpaste became all the rage as it also gave its user fresh breath (and lets face it nobody likes charcoal). 

The first object which even slightly resembled a toothbrush was invented by the ancient Chinese. They used sticks to which they attached the bristles – made from the neck hairs of cold climate pigs!

The first modern toothbrush was invented by William Addis….while he was in prison. Sick of putting soot and salt on a cloth and rubbing it along his teeth in order to keep them remotely shiny (yummy), Addis kept a bone from his undoubtedly delicious prison dinner and asked for some bristles from a guard to attach to it. Voila! Today’s toothbrush was born. When he was eventually released from prison Addis opened up a toothbrush factory, and was the first to mass-produce cow bone toothbrushes with cow hair drilled and tied into them.

During the first world war soup bones became scarce as people held onto every scrap of food they could, so celluloid handles were developed.

Just before the second world war toothbrush manufacturers decided that nobody needed animal hairs stuck in their teeth, so they used nylon bristles instead. People with all religious beliefs could now feel comfortable about this method of dental hygiene as animal products were no longer necessary. Pigs and cows also breathed a sigh of relief as now they were only needed predominantly for barbequing, frying, roasting etc. etc.

During the second world war brushing ones teeth with a toothbrush became a daily ritual for soldiers (it wasn’t before) and they brought this habit home with them. In turn, brushing your teeth every day became the norm for society.

The first electronic toothbrush was invented in 1939 in Switzerland, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that the world was able to share in this life changing technological advance.

Now there are thousands of types of toothbrushes. The newest designs even tell you what areas of your mouth need brushing the most, and signals you to stop when your mouth is fully clean and your teeth sparkling! 

…the writing tool

You’re a caveman.

You’ve just killed the biggest mammoth you’ve ever seen, but nobody is around to see it. How will you brag to your neighbors and show your children your amazing achievement?

Easy, it’s 4000BC so you can take a bone from that mammoth and communicate this on a piece of clay nearby by scratching the surface with the bone! Now everybody will know of your achievement, perhaps even years later you will become legend as later generations read that clay surface. Rocks used for slicing and dicing food were also used for writing on rock walls during this time. 

1000 years after that caveman picked up a bone, ancient Egyptians used pieces of reed from the river and sculpted them into brushes for writing on scrolls. 

Almost 2000 years later the Romans started writing on wax with metal stylus’ and the Chinese did the same but with bronze. Greece was the first place to develop handwriting by good old Cadmus, the Grecian scholar. What would we have done without Cadmus?

600AD was when the first quill came into use in Europe AND DURING THIS TIME PEOPLE ONLY WROTE IN CAPITAL LETTERS. Eventually people got sick of WRITING LIKE THIS and found faster lower-case ways of writing with the development of quill pens. 

In the 1790s the beloved pencil was invented and is still going strong today. Australia and France both independently invented the pencil at roughly the same time. 

Just decades later the pen was invented and it was patented. Unfortunately the man who patented the pen decided not to enforce his patent, so pens became extremely accessible.

The fountain and ball point pens were both invented at the end of the 19th century. In the 1940s pens really came into their own (people were writing a lot of letters). 

Today, there are even pens that you don’t need to grip onto! 

One day we can all hope that pens will write all by themselves, but we’re not quite there yet.