Source: Wikimedia Commons
In 1965 a car was assembled by several thousand people doing fixed tasks in the interval between one body arriving and the next, for pay negotiated job by…
Maya Linton
The paper clip is one of the few objects in daily use that is genuinely anonymous. The shape everybody pictures - the double oval of bent wire - is called…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
The tin can was patented in 1810. The first practical can opener appeared in the late 1850s. For most of fifty years, people bought food sealed in metal…
Anybody over a certain age remembers the ring pull coming away in their hand - a small aluminium ring with a sharp tongue attached, which had to be put somewhere,…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
In 1958 a tobacco farm ran on hand labour supplied largely by the family. Every leaf was pulled by hand, five or six times through the season as…
Everybody who has ever assembled furniture has had a cross-head screwdriver ride up and out of the screw, chewing the head on the way. It is one of the most…