De Maitre’s list of 10 important inventions across time

Just a little post about many inventions that we take for granted today. =) I hope you will enjoy them!

1. The Ball Point Pen
This is the most important invention to avid writers like me. Imagine using the old fashion quail pens during exams. They get blunt easily, so you need to sharpen them every 20 minutes or so. They break easily, so people like me will need a pen full of live quails nearby for the sake of easy supply. Spillages occur easily and the ink takes a long time to dry up. So clumsy people like me will probably submit illegible answers by the end of the exams, half the paper will be covered in ink blotches and the other half would be covered with barely legible words where the wet ink has been smeared by a stray hand or arm.

2. The Toilet Bowl (aka, flushing system)
I have a sensitive nose, it hates foul smells. I will just die if we have to go back to the chamberpot days... For those who don't know what it is, you do your business in a "golden" pot and stuff it under your bed. The next morning, the stool collector will make his rounds along the street. You bring your chamberpot out and empty its contents into the gigantic vats in his cart. The smell would have been awful. Alternatively, there was the pre-sewage European practice of emptying one's chamberpot out of the window literally. If you get hit by a "shower of blessings", too bad, luck isn't on your side today.

3. Light Bulb
I’m night blind. Seriously. A candle is just too dim, so I will love Thomas Edison to the day I die. He created light that won’t extinguish just because I sneeze on it and a light that doesn’t flicker when I’m trying to read something. Thanks to him, I can run with a torch lighting the way instead of having to move slowly with a hand cupped around a candle flame.

4. Bricks
Good old solid bricks make up a strong house that doesn’t get torn down by the elements easily. Remember the story of the 3 little pigs and the big bad wolf? Similar concept brick houses are much more secure than those made up of straw or wood. There are many methods of creating brinks-using red clay or straw and mud, baking them in ovens or drying them under the sun, etc.

5. The Spear
The spear was important throughout the course of human evolution. It was the best weapon for hunting game by our ancestors. It had a longer reach that a common dagger, putting some distance between the hunter and the cornered prey. It can also be thrown effectively and accurately, allowing the hunter to bring his prey down from a safe distance.

6. The Wig
A woman’s crowning glory is her hair. Come to think of it, it’s the clowning glory for most men too. I’m going to be evil and say the men are more prone towards baldness. Unfortunately, baldness is normally correlated with ageing. So wigs are the perfect cover up as long as they are made of human hair (horse tail hairs are so much coarser, don’t try it).

7. Soap
Given my obsession for clean smells, hygiene is an important factor. To our ancestors, bath was a luxury rather than a necessity. Showers were normally limited to quick splashes of river/well water. Naturally, you won’t smell very good, nor will most of the dirt and grime be removed. In ancient Rome, bathing was considered the activity that all civilized men should engage in. As they didn’t have soap, you had to sweat it out in the Caldarium (hot room) and scrape off the dirt and grime using a strigil (a type a scrapper). It’s quite painful, so yes, soaps are very important.

8. The Comb
I think the difference between a civilized person and a barbarian lies between grooming. The comb certainly did a good job with de-matting messy hair that most barbarians braid up as a control measure.

9. Paper
In History, before the discovery of paper or papyrus, people wrote on clay slates, wax tablets or animal skins. Clay tablets were fragile and heavy, wax was easily damaged and animal skins tend to rot and absorb the ink. They aren’t friendly for when it comes to portability and storage. Paper was a much better alternative. It was light, easy to make and can be easily bound into books. Most importantly, paper had another function, as toilet paper. =) I can’t live without my toilet paper (one of the reasons why I hate China).

10. The bra
Love them or hate them, they are important in history if you are going to compare them to the torture device called the corset.