The Evolution of Tools and Implements

Abstract

Man's happiness today is dependent upon the comforts with which he is surrounded. His home, his clothes, his city, and the great complexity of present day society are the things that make life desirable. The society of which he is a part is dependent for its existence upon a great multiplicity of mechanical devices. Thousands of men go to the steel mills each mrtorning to care for the great furnaces where millions of tons of ore are converted into iron. Thousands of men go to the factories to make machinery and tools from the iron. Again, men use the tools to make machines-great mechanical devices-huge lathes capable of turning an engine wheel; dry docks to float the longest ship; valves through which an automobile can pass-it is upon these things we depend today. They did not come suddenly, but through long, continual inventive effort to use the materials at hand to the greatest -Advantage. Before the invention of metals, man's supply of materials with which to work was the flint quarry, the gravel bank, and the chert ledge. His weapons and tools were made of stone; at first in the pieces just as they were picked up; later they were roughly chipped, and in the time just preceding the invention of bronze they were elaborately chipped, polished and often carved. When man discovered that copper and copper and tin alloys would lend themselves to shaping quickly by pounding, and that the weapons so made could be ground to an edge much sharper than that obtainable in stone, he did not hesitate to discard the quarry for the mine. His stone implements were reproduced in bronze and improved as the toughness and malleability of the metal suggested. His daggers were longer, his axe shorter and less unwieldly, and his arrows had sharper points. The supplies of bronze were limited, and hence its use was not greatly extended. It was only with the invention of iron smelting processes that man entered into the era of invention and manufacture whose comforts today we enjoy. With such supplies of metal at hand there was no limit to the advancement of mechanical invention. Steel followed as a logical re-