Honouring the tool-makers
“FOG ALARM, an audible signal, warning vessels form shoals or other dangerous places. They consist of bells, whistles, and trumpets and they are sounded by the current, by the ebbing and flowing tide, by the swaying of the waves, by the wind, by bellows, by clockwork impelled by weight or spring.”
— From a 1912 American encyclopedia
Mankind is an ingenious animal. Conceived in a warm swamp some 12 million years ago (the date courtesy of “History’s Timeline”), he was launched with nothing but his ability to lift a stone and bash something with it (such as an obstinate nut) but by his doing so, that stone became a tool.
Although there are some wily animals who use tools, for instance the chimp which may use a twig in order to rout insects from their cover, it is said that tool-using separates humans from the animals. So, wouldn’t you agree we owe a measure of honour and respect to the tools designed by our ancestors, whether they walked upright or not?
Check the museums
There are plenty of places to bestow that honour. Go to a museum and you will see crude things such as ridiculously heavy hand irons fashioned with a bow like a boat. Once hot they were propelled by the human arm in order to render clothing smooth. Living in a more sophisticated age however, we tend to view such things with derision, “Oh my, imagine using that today! And look at that scrubbing board! My grandmother used one like that! Poor woman!”
We have no right to be condescending in the presence of the scrubbing board or (almost) any other old-fashioned tool or implement. Without the body-draining labour required to scrub clothes by hand, there would have been no incentive to develop the vacillating automatic washing machine. Or the tumble-drum, called “Bendix”.
Questionable inventions
The life-saving fog alarm of a century ago has been allowed to die unsung. Radar, with not a spark of poetry in its soul gets repeated tips of the hat; born during war, I guess that’s what did it.
The following description of a well-known human invention from the same 1912 encyclopedia, makes it seem impossibly harmless, even to the point of affording the target plenty of time to relocate: “GUN, a strongly constructed metal tube from which destructive projectiles are expelled by the gradually increasing pressure of gas evolved from fired gunpowder or other explosive.”
Some tools of mankind’s divining, do not deserve to be honoured. Again from 1912, viz.,
“DIVINING ROD, a forked rod or branch by means of which it is pretended to the foolish and superstitious that the presence of water, minerals, etc., underground can be detected. When used, the rod, which is carried slowly along in suspension, will, as is affirmed, dip and point toward the ground when brought over the spot where the concealed water or mineral is to be found.”
Once again, certain questions will arise in the mind of the perceptive:
(A) What happens if the person who employs the stickholder (the diviner, I believe) is seeking copper and lead, and the stick points down, the excavators move in, only to find water? What if said water is flowing through a copper, or indeed, a lead, pipe? What if the diviner were to be blindfolded and dropped in any random field on Bell Island? Would there then be a 50/50 chance that either the diviner or his employer comes away the fool?
Go, labour on!
An 1897 household book (used here in St. John’s) gives an unbelievably long description on how to make good butter. It talks about the quality of the milk, the requisite souring of it before butter is made, the degree of yellowness, the salt that is added, the speed of the churning job. Just an extract — here’s how it all starts:
“To make good butter requires good cows; those not necessarily giving a large flow of milk but a regular flow of rich milk, which will make butter of a waxy texture, and, to please the eye, of a deep yellow colour.”
Meditate on all the 120-yearold dictates and anyone would bless the day commercial buttermaking entered our lives. What odds if it costs $5 per pound!
Personal workouts
Perhaps it is the advent of body-sensitive machines that have made exercising so popular and effective today. Every heartbeat, breath, step, stretch of arm and flick of eyebrow is recorded and assessed. This was not always the case. People knew the value of exercise back in great-grandfather’s day, but they were very, very wary of it. Read this excerpt from 1897:
“Gymnastic exercises may be begun at eight years old, or earlier, but they must begin gently and proceed gradually and never immediately after meals. The pupil should be careful, after exercise, of draughts or cold and refrain from lying on the ground, or standing without coat or other garments. Rigidly guard against drinking cold water which, in many instances, has been known to produce immediate death.”
If that were true, more than half of today’s hydrating herd would be deceased. The last tool of our genius with which I shall enlighten you today is a musical instrument, operated with the mouth. Here is a 1912 description:
“HARMONICA, a musical instrument formed of a number of glasses which are tuned by filling them more or less with water, and are played by touching them with the dampened finger.” Clearly, this is not to be confused with the mouth-organ which is also a harmonica. I’d like to hear Handel’s Water Music on the first version!