Top Twenty Tools of All Time

1. Top Twenty Tools of All Time Martha Howell Article: http://www.forbes.com/2005/08/09/cx_de_05toolslide.html?thisSpeed=35000 Credits: Clipart @ Dave Klug NC Teacher Academy 2009

2. Think… Think about important tools you use today. Create a word splash of tools that you think are important. As you learn about different tools in this lesson be able to answer the essential question… Why are tools considered a form of technology?

3. #20: The Chisel Throughout history, humans have relied on wood and stone to shelter and protect themselves, and the chisel is one of the best tools to work those materials. Without it, we'd still be banging rocks together to get anything done. Typically consisting of a long, narrow, sharpened edge attached to a handle, chisels are distinguished from knives and axes in that they're driven by a sharp blow from a hammer or mallet. Early chisels made out of flint that date back 10,000 years have been discovered, while more modern incarnations are made out of tempered steel. Egyptians used them to carve stone for the pyramids. Michelangelo used one to sculpt "David." And countless fishermen throughout history used a chisel to hollow out a log to make a boat.

4. #19:The Fish Hook It's one of the simplest items on our list-just a piece of bent wire, sometimes sporting a barb on the end. But throughout modern human history, the fish hook has proven to be one of our most dependable tools. Fishing allows us to eat, without the danger of hunting or the hard work of farming. The earliest fish hooks were probably carved out of wood more than 30,000 years ago by Cro-Magnon man. Other cultures throughout history have used animal bone, horns, shells, steel and even the thorns of hawthorn bushes. On Easter Island, fish hooks were fashioned from the thigh bones of deceased fishermen. In modern times, the hook is becoming less important as commercial fishing ventures rely more and more upon massive nets, although certain industrial fishing techniques--such as longline fishing--still depend on the humble hook.

5. #18: The Level If not for the level, you'd have to walk uphill to cross your bedroom, pencils would roll right off your desk and the Empire State Building might look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Levels are devices that tell us whether a surface is totally flat or resting at an angle. When used in construction, they help keep walls vertical, countertops horizontal and generally make the whole world square. Surveyors also use them to measure height differences over large distances. Ancient engineers used various methods, including weighted strings, to measure surface angles. Later versions of the tool filled small tubes with ethanol alcohol (earning them the name "spirit level") and encased several tubes inside a long, wide body, which could rest on different surfaces. More modern versions of the tool add in a laser beam projector, which allows builders to level out the device and "draw" a long line of light across a wall, indicating an exactly level surface. Without the level, we couldn't engage in precision construction, build things like high-rises or accurately map our world.

6. #17: The Telescope Telescopes were invented in the 17th century to help explore our solar system. The reflector telescope uses a mirror to gather and focus light. All celestial objects are so far away that all of the light rays coming from them reach the Earth as parallel rays. Because the light rays are parallel to each other, the reflector telescope's mirror has a parabolic shape.

7. #16: The Pot Clay pots were some of the first hand made crafts. Both beautiful and usable pots served primarily as a tool in the kitchen.

8. #15: The Scale A weighing scale is a measuring instrument for determining the weight or mass of an object.

9. #14: The Candle For millennia, the candle has cast light on man's progress as it also helped drive it, allowing us to extend our productive hours beyond sundown. The first candles probably date back more than 3,000 years. It's likely that people noticed that that when they cooked meat, fat dripping onto the fire caused it to burn brighter. Soon they were soaking reeds into liquid fat and burning them for light. The Romans improved the process, inventing the fiber wick, and during the Middle Ages, beeswax candles were introduced. Candles became important parts of religious ceremony, their lighting used to mark holy days and accompany prayer. And since a candle's burn rate is fairly consistent, they were often used to tell time--some candles even had hour measurements marked into the wax. Despite their utility, candles were expensive, inefficient and often smelled, so few were sorry to abandon them in favor of oil lamps and electrical lights. But we still turn to the little waxy rods for light in a pinch, or to set the mood on a romantic night. Most of today's modern candles are made by machines that pour paraffin and acid into molds, although handmade candles are still popular. Other important lighting tools include the lamp, the torch and the flashlight.

10. #13: The Needle Tools don't get much more simple than the needle, a long slender object with a pointed tip. Needles pierce fabric and carry thread through it, allowing the user to stitch together materials. Humans have been making needles for more than 20,000 years, first out of bone and more recently out of metal. The needle allowed humans to clothe themselves, protecting themselves against cold weather and opening regions outside of the tropics to human settlement. It allowed us to stitch sails and rigging, leading to the exploration and colonization of the globe. The needle made it possible for women to craft slings for carrying infants, allowing them to remain active in early economies. They're used in medicine to inject liquids, patch skin and to stimulate acupuncture points. And needles were even sometimes used as weapons, usually thrown at their victims, although two inch-long needles called fukibari were carried in the mouths of ninjas and spat into enemies' faces. Other important textile tools include the safety pin, the button, the zipper.

11. #12: The Lathe The lathe is a tool unlike the others on our list. It's a machine, made of several different parts, and it uses a power source other than direct human movement. Yet its importance in the evolution of human civilization can't be denied. The lathe is a tool for making tools--it makes manual crafting tasks easier, allowing for increased production and lower costs. Lathes are used to fabricate things by the selective removal of material. In their simplest form, a piece of wood is spun around a fixed axis, and pieces of the material are chipped off with a blade. The earliest lathes date back about 2300 years and were powered by a handheld bow. The bow string was wrapped around the lathe's central axis and a craftsman’s assistant would work the bow back and forth to spin the lathe.

12. #11: The Watch A watch is a small timepiece, typically worn either on the wrist or attached on a chain and carried in a pocket; wristwatches, however, are the most common type of watch used today. Watches evolved in the 17th century from spring powered clocks, which appeared in the 15th century. The first watches were strictly mechanical. As technology progressed, the mechanisms used to measure time have, in some cases, been replaced by use of quartz vibrations or electromagnetic pulses and are called quartz movements. The first digital electronic watch was developed in 1970. Before wristwatches became popular in the 1920s, most watches were pocket watches.

13. #10: The Saw Egyptians used copper saw blades more than 5,000 years ago to cut both wood and stone. The basic design--a long piece of metal, with a serrated blade, attached to a handle--didn't change much for several millennia. In 1777, the first patent for a circular saw was granted in England to Samuel Miller, and in 1808, a Londoner named William Newberry patented the first band saw. Sometime in the early 1900s, the history of the tool took an odd turn when some unknown resident of the Appalachian Mountains took a fiddle to his saw blade and made music. Musical saws were particularly popular in the U.S. during the 1920s and '30s, and even though "mountain music" has dwindled in popularity, devotees still use the tool to produce haunting melodies.

14. #9: Eyeglasses Glasses, also known as eyeglasses are frames with lenses worn in front of the eyes. They are normally used for vision correction Safety glasses are a kind of eye protection against flying debris or against visible and near visible light. Sunglasses allow better vision in bright daylight, and may protect your eyes from ultraviolet light.

15. #8: The Sword They say if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. It's also fair to wager that if humans had lived without swords, we'd be living in a very different world. For thousands of years, the sword was one of the most important weapons in a warrior's arsenal. It won battles and toppled empires, carving out the course of history. The sword is really just an adaptation of another tool, the knife, ergonomically adapted for combat. In early human history, the dagger was a more common weapon, but about 5,000 years ago, people learned to produce longer copper and bronze blades, and the sword became more common. Eventually, sword makers started using iron, and when they discovered they could hammer carbon into the smelt, they'd make swords out of steel. A sword is really any long blade attached to a hilt, but different cultures and empires adapted the design widely to their taste. The Romans used a short, flat blade. Medieval knights used a heavier sword, often meant to be held in both hands. And in the 16th century, Spanish craftsmen invented the short, slender rapier.

16. #7: The Rifle For as long as humans have created tools, they've made projectile weapons. Our ancestors made spears, slings and bows and mastered their use in hunting and warfare. But the rifle put all those tools to shame, boasting unprecedented accuracy, power, reliability, and range. Rifles have won wars, tamed continents and overturned empires. The history of firearms stretches back more than a millennium. Gunpowder may date back as far as the 4th century, when it was invented in China--perhaps by someone trying to mix sulfur, charcoal and saltpeter into medicine. The Chinese first used the stuff in weapons--including rockets and cannon--about 600 years later. In 1267, legendary English scientist Roger Bacon published a recipe for gunpowder, and by the late 1300s, handheld, muzzle-loading pistols were common in Europe. Long-barreled muskets started appearing in the 1400s. Users of these early firearms had to deal with soot clogging their barrels, and may have eventually discovered that if they cut curved grooves in the gunk while cleaning, it would impart a spin on the projectile, making it more accurate. By 1498, craftsmen were cutting grooves directly into the metal of a weapon's barrel. But it wasn't until 1747, when an English physicist named Benjamin Robins proved that "rifled" barrels performed better, that the practice really took off. By the mid 19th-century, rifled barrels were common. Other important firearms include the musket, the shotgun, the revolver, the repeating carbine and the machine gun.

17. #6: The Scythe The scythe is an agricultural hand tool scythe for mowing grass or reaping crops. It was mostly replaced with tractors and machinery.

18. #5: The Harness If you were plowing a field in the era before the internal combustion engine, the harness was the only way to get the job done right. An arrangement of straps and fasteners, the harness is most commonly used for attaching animals to a cart or any other load. It made draft-animal agriculture possible, and in doing so, radically increased the efficiency of farming, allowing humans to produce a wider variety and greater quantity of crops. The harness may date back nearly as far as the domestication of the horse, which occurred approximately 6,000 years ago. What is clear, is that around 4,000 years ago, horses were being harnessed in the Near East. Man developed the yoke first, which was held around the neck of animals like oxen, allowing them to pull loads. But those devices tended to choke horses, so a more sophisticated device was developed. Early versions would have amounted to little more than a few ropes and perhaps a bit, held between the horses' teeth. In ancient Greece, more sophisticated harnesses were developed, and used to attach horses to chariots for use in warfare and for entertainment. In the Middle Ages, European craftsmen refined the design, improving the efficiency and allowing pack animals to do more work with less strain. Humans don't use animal power for agriculture much more, but oxen and horses are still harnessed for work in less-developed countries, particularly as poor farmers have to deal with increasing fuel prices. And harness racing remains a popular spectator sport at tracks around the world.

19. #4: The Pencil Writing may be one of the most important discoveries in human history. But it was easy-to-use writing implements--including the pencil, pen and brush--that made mass education and literacy possible. Cheap, reliable and convenient, the pencil represents these tools at their best. And because the sword came in at No. 8 on our list (more about the sword), we can now say for sure that the pen is mightier than the sword. The origins of the pencil date to the ancient Romans, who used to write with a device known as a stylus--a metal stick, usually lead, which was used to scratch words onto papyrus. For hundreds of years to come, pens and brushes dominated the writing world. But in 1564, a huge cache of graphite was discovered in Borrowdale, England. Local residents used it to mark sheep, and soon discovered that they could cut it into sticks and carry it with them. Scientists of the day thought graphite was a form of lead--that's why we still call the stuff in pencils "lead," even though it's graphite. Graphite is generally soft and crumbly, so soon after, Italian craftsmen came up with the idea of hollowing out a stick of juniper wood and filling it with graphite. Later versions would sandwich the lead between two pencil halves and glue them together. Today, 75% of the pencils sold in the U.S. are still painted yellow.

20. #3: The Compass The compass was invented by Chinese geomancers about 2200 years ago. They'd balance a spoon-shaped piece of magnetic rock on any flat surface, and since it was magnetic, the handle would swivel to align itself with the Earth's magnetic poles. The device was initially used to tell fortunes--one Chinese emperor even used a compass to "prove" his right to the throne. But eventually, people realized the spoon’s handle would always point north, and before long, the devices were being used to determine directions.

21. #2: The Abacus The abacus is one of the first mechanical counting devices, an ancient ancestor of today's computers. Its invention reduced the amount of time necessary to perform complex mathematical operations, making it an invaluable tool for commerce, science and engineering. Before the abacus, the best counting tool available was your own fingers. A modern abacus usually consists of a frame containing beads threaded on wires, which are slid up and down to represent numbers. It's a simple tool--but early versions were even simpler. In ancient Greece, merchants would draw lines on the ground and place pebbles between them. More sophisticated traders carried small wooden boxes filled will sand--the portable calculator of the day. Later versions used wooden boards with grooves cut into them where beads could rest.

22. #1: The Knife The knife is one of the most ancient tools in our arsenal, in use for more than 2 million years, longer than modern humans have walked the Earth. It's evolved alongside us, changing form to meet our needs and demands. Knives help feed us, shelter us, defend us and assure our survival. It's the most reliable, useful and important tool in human history.

23. Classifying Activity Classifying is the process of grouping things that are alike into categories based on their characteristics. In a small group as assigned by your teacher. Determine four classifications to group at least 16 of the 20 cards into.

24. Resources • Article: http://www.forbes.com/2005/08/09/cx_de_05toolslide.html?thisSpeed=35000 • Credits: Clipart @ Dave Klug • NC Teacher Academy 2009 This presentation is for educational purposes only.