The dawn of discovery
A long slow sequence of invention and discovery has made possible the familiar details of our everyday lives. Mankind's programme of improvements has been erratic and unpredictable. But good ideas are rarely forgotten. They are borrowed and copied and spread more widely, in an accelerating process which makes the luxuries of one age the necessities of the next.
The story is a disjointed one, since inventions and discoveries occur in a random fashion. They are described here in an approximately chronological sequence.
Two million years of stone technology represent the first long era of discovery at the start of human history. The use of fire, more than 500,000 years ago, is also a discovery. And some Stone Age artefacts (such as winged arrow-heads to stick in the flesh of the prey, or hooks carved in bone) have almost the quality of inventions. But these are developments of such an extended nature that they seem different in kind from the discoveries and inventions of more recent history.
Perhaps the first two ideas worthy of the name of 'invention', even though invented many times in many different places, are the eye of a needle and the string of a bow.
Needle and thread: from 15,000 years ago
In districts where warm clothing is necessary, Stone Age people stitch skins together with threads of tendon or leather thongs. For each stitch they bore a hole and then hook the thread through it.
The development of a bone or ivory needle, with an eye, speeds up the process immeasurably. The hole is now created by the same implement which then pulls the thread through, in an almost continuous movement. Needles of this kind have been found in caves in Europe from the late palaeolithic period, about 15,000 years ago. Several are so thin as to imply the use of materials such as horsehair for the thread.
A long slow sequence of invention and discovery has made possible the familiar details of our everyday lives. Mankind's programme of improvements has been erratic and unpredictable. But good ideas are rarely forgotten. They are borrowed and copied and spread more widely, in an accelerating process which makes the luxuries of one age the necessities of the next.
The story is a disjointed one, since inventions and discoveries occur in a random fashion. They are described here in an approximately chronological sequence.
Two million years of stone technology represent the first long era of discovery at the start of human history. The use of fire, more than 500,000 years ago, is also a discovery. And some Stone Age artefacts (such as winged arrow-heads to stick in the flesh of the prey, or hooks carved in bone) have almost the quality of inventions. But these are developments of such an extended nature that they seem different in kind from the discoveries and inventions of more recent history.
Perhaps the first two ideas worthy of the name of 'invention', even though invented many times in many different places, are the eye of a needle and the string of a bow.
Needle and thread: from 15,000 years ago
In districts where warm clothing is necessary, Stone Age people stitch skins together with threads of tendon or leather thongs. For each stitch they bore a hole and then hook the thread through it.
The development of a bone or ivory needle, with an eye, speeds up the process immeasurably. The hole is now created by the same implement which then pulls the thread through, in an almost continuous movement. Needles of this kind have been found in caves in Europe from the late palaeolithic period, about 15,000 years ago. Several are so thin as to imply the use of materials such as horsehair for the thread.
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