Who Invented Underpants?: The Weird Trivia of Human Invention from Fire to Fast Food (and Everything In Between)

INTRODUCTION

To research the first instances of literally everything (even the first book of firsts!) would be an infinite task. Inevitably, therefore, this book is selective. The criteria for inclusion are twofold. One, the very first of a type—for example, I have written about the first washing machines, including the first electric ones, but not about the vast subspecies of electric washing machines, such as fully automatic, twin tub, etc. This should make plain the second criterion: I have included only such firsts as would, in my judgment, interest the general reader—whom I hope is not a washing machine aficionado.

What makes this book different from other books of firsts? As well as being extremely broad-ranging and comprehensive, it is, as far as I am aware, the only one to put historical achievements in their rightful place. In other words, instead of concentrating on modern and largely Western gadgetry, I have attempted to give due weight to the inventiveness of our distant ancestors in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, China, and the Middle East. In doing so, I have been surprised by how many supposed inventions of the industrial world (e.g., air conditioning) are in fact reinventions of, or improvements on, creations and behaviors of many thousands of years ago. By attempting to redress the imbalance of esteeming modern technology over traditional ingenuity, we find the USA and the ancient world share the gold medal position on the podium of firsts, with the UK and France one step down.

I suspect few readers will be steadfast enough to read through the entire book, cover to cover, and most will dip into it for entertainment or use it as a work of reference for trivia quizzes or to settle family arguments. To make these tasks easier, the contents have been arranged under three types of headings: the seven sections (In the Beginning; At Home; Health and Medicine; Getting Around; Science and Engineering; Peace and War; and Culture and Sports) are each divided into topics, which in turn are subdivided into subjects.

Finally, readers may wonder about this book’s accuracy. Sources often differ widely, and precise dates are frequently controversial: is the date for the first of a certain type of machine, for instance, when it was dreamed up, when it was patented, when the prototype was built, or when it went into production? With this in mind, I have done my best to be clear and accurate; even so, in places I am sure I have fallen short. I apologize unreservedly for any confusion and frustration (even anger!) these inadvertent slips may cause.

STEWART ROSS

NOTE: COUNTRY OF ORIGIN

Where relevant or known, the place where something was first used, discovered, or invented is identified by the name of the present-day country occupying that region. This was not necessarily the name current at the time, nor did ancient boundaries coincide with modern ones. Thus, firsts from Persia are generally labeled as Iran, Anatolia as Turkey, Mesopotamia as Iraq, etc.

PART I

IN THE BEGINNING

Big Bang

The first first, more or less by definition, was the Big Bang of some 13.8 billion years ago that created time, the universe… and everything. Everything? Even whatever it was that went bang? Let’s not go there…

Life

The first life on Earth—a much easier concept—is thought to have emerged 4.28 billion years ago, when our young planet was celebrating its 26 millionth birthday. Scientists refer to this first life thing (the simplest of microorganisms) as LUCA—the Last Universal Common Ancestor. Apparently, we’re all descended from LUCA.

Handy Man

LUCA’s descendants took a very long time to evolve into the genus Homo, which appeared only about 2.1 million years ago. Its identifying features were an ape-like physiognomy, a bulging brain, and an ability to use primitive tools (another first)—hence its name, Homo habilis or handy man.

Upright, Fire, Tools, and Speech

About 200,000 years later, Homo erectus (upright man) had developed. This creature’s even larger brain may have enabled it to speak (if so, we have the first language). The species had possibly learned to handle fire (one more first, see page 11

) and certainly made tools of greater sophistication; it was also spreading out from Africa to populate the globe.

Homo Sapiens

We’re not quite sure what happened next. However, from among the variety of Homo types, by c. 50,000 BC Homo sapiens (intelligent man) was hunting and gathering in the inclement conditions of the last glacial period. These were the first modern human beings, forebears of the extraordinarily inquisitive and inventive men and women responsible for the astonishing catalog of firsts that follows.

The skulls of Homo sapiens (left) and of his unsuccessful relative, Homo neanderthalensis

PART II

AT HOME

Civilization

Evolution

Human development is evolutionary and cumulative; or, in the words of Sir Isaac Newton (repeating a well-known idea of classical origin), new ideas and objects came from people standing on the shoulders of giants. We have already met some of those giants, the primitive, anonymous people who made three vital early breakthroughs: fire, tools, and speech.

Agriculture

The baton now passes to Homo sapiens for perhaps the most significant of all firsts: agriculture. The change from hunting animals and gathering food to considered husbandry took place independently in some dozen different parts of the world, beginning with the domestication of pigs in Mesopotamia (Iraq) in about 13,000 BC. Within a few thousand years—again in the Middle East—fields of wheat, barley, and other crops were flourishing beside pigsties, all tended by the first farmers.

Settlements and Cities

Once human beings ceased being nomadic, caves, tents, and temporary shelters were abandoned in favor of permanent dwellings. It is not known if Jericho, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and Çatalhöyük in Turkey (both c. 9000 BC) were the first towns—with populations of several hundred they were more like modern villages—but they are certainly the oldest to have survived to the present day.

Homes

Doors and Hinges

A house requires an entrance. The earliest depiction of doors is in ancient Egyptian tomb paintings, and the first hinges, reserved for temples, tombs, and palaces, were simple pivots set into the lintel and sill (doorstep). The working of bronze (from c. 3300 BC and later iron, see page 15

) allowed sturdier hinges to be made, and by Roman times the device was considered sufficiently important to merit its own deity: Cardea, the goddess of the hinge! The modern butt hinge, set flat into the door and frame, did not appear until about 1850.

Windows

The first window was just a hole in the wall to let in light and fresh air, and give smoke and smells a way out. When necessary, windows could be covered by a piece of wood, cloth, or hide—the first curtains. By the first century AD the Chinese were manufacturing paper (see page 8

), a material they used as a window covering as well as for writing. The first glass was made in the Levant about 5,500 years ago, and by AD 100 the Romans were using glass fashioned in Alexandria as windowpanes. Though crude and relatively opaque, it was better than the sheets of thin translucent stone and flattened animal horn that remained in use for centuries. Stained glass dates back to ancient Egypt and Rome; its extensive use in windows began in the Christian era, when it was employed to stunning effect in the monastic buildings of northern Europe. Plate glass production had to wait another millennium, beginning in London, UK, during the reign of James I (1603–25), and becoming more widespread (e.g., King Louis XIV’s palace at Versailles, France) after the pioneering work of Louis Lucas de Nehou and Abraham Thevart in 1688.

A window in the ruins of Pompeii

THE PAPER PROCESS

While the ancient Egyptians wrote on mashed reeds (papyrus), the Greeks and Romans on the skins of dead animals (parchment), and the Meso-Americans on prepared bark (amate), it was the Chinese who first made paper. The court official Cai Lun documented the process in AD 105, possibly because he reckoned his papermaking process was better than anyone else’s. Paper was essentially different from (and superior to) the other three writing surfaces as the properties of the constituent fibers changed fundamentally during the manufacturing process.

Papermaking in ancient China

Locks and Keys

Once people had houses with doors and windows, and accumulated precious possessions within them, they needed locks to keep everything safe. Again, the Middle East led the way with locks made of wood. The first with metal components appeared in ancient Rome and China. The first key is attributed to Theodorus of Samos (sixth century BC), about the same time as the first padlock was made. All-metal locks are attributed to an unknown Englishman during the reign of Alfred the Great (AD 871–99)—possibly to safeguard against Viking pillage.

Chubb and Yale

The modern lock was made feasible by the precision engineering of the Industrial Revolution. Robert Barron (UK) manufactured the lever tumbler lock in 1778, and Jeremiah Chubb (UK) went one better in 1818 with a version that could be opened only with its own key. Then, in 1848, the American Linus Yale invented the modern double-acting pin tumbler lock, opened with the familiar Yale key.

LEGENDS OF A LOCKSMITH

Jeremiah Chubb’s unpickable lock of 1818 gave rise to two stories, both dubious! The first is that the device was adopted by Portsmouth Royal Dockyard (UK), where Chubb may have worked, after the Prince Regent accidentally sat on it. The second tells of a convicted burglar—a locksmith by trade—being offered a free pardon if he could unpick Chubb’s device. After two months, he admitted defeat—and was returned to the prison hulk in Portsmouth harbor from whence he had been taken.

Electronic Security

Security remained largely mechanical until the twentieth century. In 1909, in a sign of things to come, Walter Schlage (USA) devised a door lock that would also turn lights on and off. Five years later, the luxury Scripps-Booth automobile boasted the first central locking system. It was not until the 1970s, however, that the electronic security revolution really took off, beginning with Tor Sørnes’s programmable electronic key card in 1975 (Norway). Thereafter, it was chips with everything, including car keys (1980, Ford, USA) and passports (1998, Malaysia).

Fire and Cooking

The Hearth

Using fire is very different from making it. Hominoids appear to have discovered the secret of fire-raising, probably by friction between hard and soft wood, between 300,000 and 100,000 years ago. To date, the earliest hearth we know of is a 300,000-year-old example in the Qesem Cave near Tel Aviv.

Ovens

Cooking was widespread by 100,000 BC. The process did not just cheer up the taste buds. One school of thought (the Cooking Hypothesis) believes cooking food enabled our brains to develop into the current million gigabytes version by providing more brain food and cutting required feeding time. Simple roasting over an open fire expanded into pit ovens (29,000 BC), front-loading bread ovens (c. 800 BC, ancient Greece), hand-turned iron spits (medieval), purpose-built brick and tile ovens (fifteenth century, France), iron stoves (c. 1720, Germany), iron ranges (burning wood and coal, c. 1800, UK), gas ovens (1826, James Sharp, UK), and finally, electric ovens (c. 1890, Canada). The Scotsman Alan MacMasters invented an electric toaster in 1893, and General Electric (USA) put a model on sale in 1909; we had to wait another ten years before our breakfast slice popped up. Kleen Maid Sliced Bread (USA) for use in toasters went on sale in 1928. Microwave ovens became available in 1946, and the first electric cooktops were sold in 1973 (both USA).

CONTROL OF FIRE—A MAJOR FIRST

Fire was present from the beginning of the Earth; one can say it was the beginning of the Earth. Early Homo species first learned to control it and use it for their benefit between about 600,000 and 300,000 years ago. This slow process—part deliberate, part opportunistic—was one of their greatest achievements, arguably as significant as their development of agriculture. Fire provided warmth, encouraging them to move into inhospitable regions; a fire in the mouth of a cave or on the edge of an encampment provided protection against wild beasts; fire extended the range of activities available on cold, dark evenings (for example whittling, chipping, and storytelling); fire broadened culture (enter the charcoal artist and sculptor of fired clay figures); and, above all, fire produced cooking: the first (and possibly brain-enhancing—see Ovens on page 10

) step on the long and tasty road from mammoth steak to Michelin star.

Fires and Smoke

With an open fire virtually the only form of non-solar heating for thousands of years, it’s surprising no one thought of the chimney before the twelfth century; Fontevraud Abbey, France, boasts the earliest extant examples. The Chinese manufactured the first smokeless fuel—coke—in the fourth century BC. The iron fire back dates from the fifteenth century, in Europe, the cast-iron stove from 1642 (Massachusetts, USA), and the raised grate (supposedly the brainwave of Prince Rupert, the dashing nephew of Britain’s Charles I) from c. 1678. Stoves burning anthracite or coke (a by-product in the manufacture of coal gas) date from the 1830s, with the first gas fires available some twenty years after this.

Central Heating

Some say central heating dates back seven thousand years to the Korean ondol, meaning hot stone. However, most give credit to the Greeks and Romans for their hypocaust underfloor system of circulating hot air. Much later, in the sixteenth century, Hugh Plat (UK) dreamed of a piped steam greenhouse heating system, but the concept did not become a (short-lived) reality until the end of the eighteenth century. It was superseded by piped hot water, a method pioneered by Russia’s Peter the Great for his St. Petersburg Summer Palace (c. 1710). Russia also gave us the radiator (c. 1855). Since then, the main developments have been in ways of heating the water: the idea of a heat pump (1855–7) is said to have been the brainchild of the Austrian Peter von Rittinger. In 1896, US resident Clarence Kemp was supposedly the first to deliberately heat water by using solar power (he painted a large tank black); in 1948, Robert Webber (USA) invented the ground source heat pump.

… and Cooling

The first record of an icehouse for the preservation of food was in the time of King Zimri-Lim (c. 1780 BC, Syria). Three thousand five hundred years later, the Scotsman William Cullen built the first machine to produce ice (1756). Practical continuous refrigeration capable of cooling beer in the outback did not arrive until the Scottish Australian James Harrison’s machines came into operation in 1857. Domestic fridges went on sale in 1913 and freezers—made by General Electric (USA)—in 1927. Twin compartment fridge-freezers appeared in 1939 (USA).

Cool Buildings

Evaporative cooling was the first method of deliberately lowering the temperature in a room. The ancient Egyptians built windcatchers (c. 3000 BC) that cooled the breeze by passing it across water; they also trickled water over wind-ruffled reeds hanging over a window. The Cool Hall in the palace of Emperor Xuanzong of China (c. AD 712–56) was apparently cooled by water-powered fans. The first electric desert cooler was patented in 1906 (USA). Four years earlier, Willis Carrier of Buffalo (USA) had installed the world’s first electric air conditioner.

Preserving

Freezing is not the only way to preserve food. Farmers were drying crops in the sun at least 14,000 years ago. Not long afterward, it was discovered that adding salt enhanced the process (something similar was used to mummify human bodies: 5500 BC in Chile, 3000 BC in Egypt). Alcohol’s preservative qualities were noted when early alcoholic drinks were made in China and the Middle East, about 7000 BC. The first known pickling (cucumbers from the Tigris Valley) was in 2030 BC. Canned foods were eaten by the Dutch navy from at least 1772, and the canning process was patented in 1810 (UK). The previous year, Frenchman Nicolas Appert had discovered how to feed Napoleon’s armies while on the march by preserving cooked food in a jar. Mass-produced frozen food was introduced by Birds Eye in 1930; the first complete "TV Brand Frozen Dinner" went on sale in America in 1953.

In the Kitchen

Pots, Pans, and Kitchenware

Clay storage pots have been around for some 20,000 years, the earliest examples being Chinese. The ancient Egyptians came up with glaze about 10,000 years ago, and their Mesopotamian neighbors the potter’s wheel some 4,000 years after this (see page 136

). The Chinese created porcelain (hence china) around 1600 BC, although—surprisingly—the invention of bone china is credited to the Londoner Thomas Frye in 1748. Because it was rare and rustless, naturally occurring gold may well have been the first metal used by humans for jewelry, but weight and rarity left the gold cooking pot in the realm of fairy tale. Copper, first smelted in the region of Serbia c. 5250 BC, was