Scissors

Let's cut to the chase: scissors are an excellent and ancient invention that impacts our lives in a number of ways. In this episode, Robert and Joe discuss their origins, use and examples from past and present -- along with a little scissor myth and folklore.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm
Joe McCormick and Robert. I'm going to start off with
a question that may seem totally unrelated to today's topic,
but we'll get there. How often do you encounter a
belief in fate in the modern world, in this technological

(00:25):
society that we live in. Oh, that's a good question, um.
I mean, it certainly shows up in narratives that we
encounter and even put a great deal of thought into,
you know, and in our modern society. But in terms
of like personally believing in fate, I don't know. I mean,
they're they're certainly various. Particularly I'm thinking of various sort

(00:47):
of New Age belief systems that put a lot of
emphasis on sort of setting your own fate and manifesting
something in the future and therefore like creating this this
line of fate that you're going to follow. But so
many other like religious world views are going to depend upon,
like the the importance of free will. You're making a
choice to do, you know, to go this way or

(01:08):
go that way, and perhaps things are more or less
on the rails once you have made that choice. But
then I feel like in the secular world there's more
of an understanding of um of chaos and and chance,
and maybe we you know, we exaggerate our chances regarding
various things, but for the most part we realize that

(01:28):
where it's we're kind of at the whim of the universe.
I feel like it shows up some in UH, in
some context more than others. Like you still very often
get the feeling of people falling in love and believing
they were meant for each other. That's true if you
do encounter it there. That's like a certain kind of
belief in faith. And I would say that belief in

(01:49):
faith is not exactly the same thing as the sort
of personality trade of fatalism, which you do encounter sometimes. Yeah,
I mean, when you get into the whole, you know,
question free will, which we certainly have quite a bit
on our other show stuff to all your mind. You know,
there's always that, you know, that view of looking at
things is just completely you know, everything is predetermined by

(02:11):
your environment and UH and the brain, and that we're
you know, we're not that the argument that we're not
even necessarily making any choices. We're just on this trajectory,
and I guess you could you could very much align
that worldview with an idea of fate. You know, what
else could we be? What else could we do being
what we are? Yeah, But then again you have the
idea that I mean, it's very common belief among say

(02:32):
philosophers and uh and and physicists and stuff, that there's
this this principle of compatible is m, which says that, well,
maybe we do live in a physically deterministic universe. And
yet nevertheless, because of some features of the way we
conceive of free will, the idea of determinism and physics
and free will in our lives are not really actually
in conflict. And of course, I mean they're gonna be

(02:53):
cultural differences here as well. I mean, certainly in the
United States there's still the you know, this idea of
you know, America and exceptionalism, and combine that with celebrity
worship and celebrity culture, and you have, like you have
some kind of weird warped takes on what fate is
and how it works, you know, like is the is
there's just sort of this idea in society that you

(03:14):
were you know, your destined for greatness or are you
defying the fates by uh, you know, grasping after your
own greatness. Well this all came to mind because we're
talking about scissors today. So what's the connection here. Well,
I was thinking about how the ancient Greeks were, in
many ways really into fate and destiny. I think you'd

(03:35):
probably find some some counter strains of thought running in
through ancient Greece, But it was a It was a
common folk belief among the ancient Greeks that a person's
life was already a sort of pre written text, decided
in total for them at the moment of their birth.
And then a more limited version of this was that
even if all the exact details of your life weren't predetermined,

(03:57):
the length of one's life, the time in the nature
of one's death were all decided in advance, and even
the gods couldn't intervene. But if even the gods couldn't
intervene to change your fate, who's deciding your fate in
the first place? If it's not Zeus, then who? And
here is where a trio of excellent creepy characters from

(04:18):
mythology comes in. According to one popular form of Greek
religion and folk belief. The deciders of each person's individual
destiny are the more ray or the three fates. These
are depicted as three divine women spinning out our lives
as strands of thread or twine, and that they've got

(04:38):
they've each got their own name and personality. So there
is clothes though, the spinner, who creates the thread of
life upon her spindle, and then there's Lacess, the allotter,
who measures out a certain length of the thread of
your life. And then there is Atropos, the inflexible or
the inevitable, who makes the decision final and secures the

(05:01):
circumstances of each person's death by snipping off the threat
of life with a pair of scissors or shears. Yeah,
there's it's they get worse as they proceed, you know
they do. Yeah, there's a great line of the poet
John Milton wrote about them in the poem Lycidas, in
this section where he I think he's sort of talking
about the cruel ironies of fate, and he writes that,

(05:24):
you know, just when we think we're about to come
to some great reward quote and think to burst out
into sudden blaze comes the blind fury with the abhorred
shears and slits the thin spun life. Now that one
of the interesting things about this, to bring everything back
to invention for a second, is that is that we're
we're looking at just to yet another example of technology,

(05:46):
and in this case essentially manufacturing, like linear manufacturing, being
used as a metaphor for something about life or understanding
the mysteries of the universe. Yeah, coming to see the
most fundamental attributes of human life, it's elf through our
ancient technological innovations like the wheel. How many metaphors about
life and death involved the wheel and now spinning an

(06:08):
ancient textile technology. But I love the idea of Atropos,
the the inevitable, because it's it's so it's so spooky
and empowering. The next time you're scrap booking, the next
time you're wrapping Christmas presents and you've got that pair
of scissors in your hand, you think of yourself as Atropos,
the inflexible, the blind fury with the abhorred shears, who

(06:29):
cannot be reasoned with, cannot be bargained with, who doesn't
feel pity, who will not stop until the snip. You know,
Stephen King wrote an excellent novel years back titled Insomnia
about a man who's having increasing trouble getting to sleep,
experiencing insomnia, but he begins to sort of waken up
to all these the sort of supernatural goings on in

(06:49):
the town and in the world, uh, you know, just
outside of the uh you know, the vision of the
waking people, and three three fates that actually show up
in that story as well, with their authentic Greek names.
But instead of being uh, you know, these three women,
they're displayed as is three little bald doctors with scissors. Well,

(07:12):
I think that's appropriate. Little bald doctors are about creepy
enough to match this myth and it's actually rather I
don't know to what extent King was thinking about this,
but one of the things we end up we're gonna
end up discussing in this episode is that you is
this that of course, shears and scissors are used not
only for domestic purposes but also for surgical purposes. So
it makes sense that both you know, these these sort

(07:34):
of archetypical um uh you know, you know, homemakers from
Greek mythology would have the scissors at their disposal, but
also some sort of an imagined doctor as well. So
I was looking around at, you know, for other examples
of scissor related mythology, and you know that this is
not an exhaustive list, but a few different examples came
up from different points in time. Um, some certainly more

(07:57):
modern than others. One of my favorite it has always
been the English nursery bogie, the red legged scissor man.
There's a whole rhyme about the red legged scissor man,
and basically this is just like a vile goblin creature
that will come and cut off your thumbs if you
keep sucking your thumb. Oh okay, So we talked about
English nursery bogies back in our stuff to Blow your

(08:19):
Mind episode about Jenny Green Teeth, where I think generally
the idea is that many of these UH stories are
about monsters that were made up in order to teach
children a lesson, in order to discourage a prohibited activity,
has to scare them into obedience, where you're like, look,
I'm tired of arguing with you. Just look at it

(08:39):
this way. If you don't stop sucking your thumb, a
monster is going to come and cut those thumbs off. Yeah,
if you don't stop playing by the filled in marl pits,
then Jenny Green Teeth is gonna pull you under. Now.
Another example that came up is an entity known as
Kuchasaki on a. This is the Japanese slit mouth woman,

(08:59):
uh spirit that's said to brandish a pair of scissors
and also has like a gaping slit mouth like her
cheek you know, has been cheeks have been cut up
on either side, which I think is also called what
a Glasgow grin, you know the Joker has in what
the Dark Knight returned before the second Batman the Dark Knight. Yeah,
and uh, Basically the idea is like she appears to

(09:22):
you and if she and then she'll ask you if
she is beautiful, and you just have to say yes
because if you say no, she'll slash you with her scissors.
Oh my god. And I was reading a little about this.
I read that the the idea has caused a public
panic as recently as nineteen seventy nine, and the idea
itself dates back possibly to the Edo period. But it's

(09:44):
very much an example of the overall Japanese vengeful vengeful
ghost motif and that motif, of course, goes a long
ways back, and it's a staple in Chinese mythology and
other East Asian myth cycles as well, just you know,
often without the scissors. Now, I can't remember where the
are any scissors or shears among the possessed demon tools

(10:04):
that we talked about in an episode of Seschal in
Your Mind not too long ago. I don't recall specifically,
but I you know, I would almost assume they would
be on the list. Now. Another example I came to
was I was reading spindle, shuttle and scissors ambiguous power
in the Grim Brothers Tales by Celia Catlet Anderson, and
the author points out the quote the Teutonic tradition domesticates

(10:26):
the Greek mythology in which spindle and scissors are personified,
and so these implements factor into numerous of the Grim
Grim Brothers tales, aiding heroines and villains alike with varying
magical properties, and so they're they're frequently instruments we see
here in some of these other examples of feminine power
and a counterpoint to to the weaponry of male characters

(10:50):
that you you see and say the Grim Brothers work.
I often noticed this in Uh, in fiction where when
scissors are wielded in a threatening way, you know, not
just on you know, thread or whatever, but when they're
wielded as a weapon, it's very often by women against
men in movies and stuff. I think about the Hitchcock
movie dial In for Murder. Oh yeah, that, but that

(11:12):
was a class. I was looking up some some famous
scissor kills and that one definitely made the list. More recently,
Jordan's peels Us have feature scissors. Oh yeah, and then
there's a wonderful scene, like the most memorable scene in
the movie The Exorcist Part three? Do you remember this sequence? Horrifying? Yeah,
there's where it's not especially it's not even gory. It's

(11:34):
just a wonderful jump scare involving like a gigantic pair.
I think they're supposed to be like autopsy or necropsy
scissors those shearing bones, though, I think they're ultimately an
exaggerated prop Uh. Certainly listeners can write in and and
correct me on this, but I believe that the shears
that are displayed in that movie are are way larger

(11:55):
than anything you would actually use. The Exorcist three is
actually pretty scary. Yeah it is. It has some has
some great parts and some some wonderful actors in it
as well, Brad Dorrif isn't it, Yeah, he is. And
of course would be remiss if we didn't mention Edward
Scissor Hands the the Unfinished lower case F. Frankenstein with
scissors for hands from Tim Burton's film Classic. I think

(12:18):
they're deploy I haven't seen Edward Scissor Hands in a
long time, but I remember it's basically like an ironic
thing that he's got scissors for hands, because he is
a gentle soul, right, and it's and it's it's part
of the metaphor like, oh, he doesn't have he doesn't
have hands. He can't he can't touch and uh and
and have this this very human part of his sensory
experience because instead he has these awful scissors. But then

(12:39):
he still manages to do beautiful things with those scissors.
And I believe you had had a favorite example from
a cinematic history as well well, just because I can't
get the Big Lebowski out of my hand, watched it
a hundred times or whatever. Of course, there's the dream
sequence with the big horrible you know the German nihilists
from the band Auto Bond with their giant scissors. Yes,
I actually think the other big Lebowski examples quite interesting

(13:01):
because they're ultimately they show up as a manifestation, a
dream manifestation of castration fear. And again, scissors and shears
are often a part of castration fear. And here we've
seen all these examples of them being attributed to malevolent
female entities brandishing them as a result of male myth
making throughout history. Yeah. Well, maybe now that we have

(13:23):
suitably over dramatized and read a lot of like myth
and horror into this common household item, let's come back
to the common household item and think about scissors and
shears as an invention. Oh yeah, I have to say,
a big fantacissors where a big scissor household. My son
has always been obsessed with crafting. He's seven now, and
I actually cannot remember the last time he used safety

(13:44):
scissors or children scissors, because he's just used just straight
up kitchen scissors for the longest Um, it's like he
prefers them. Maybe we try, Like years ago, we tried
to get him to use other scissors like, no, I
gotta use some real scissors, mom, he demanded the unsafe ones. Well,
I mean he uses them safely, so I guess they
are the safe scissors. But we also, you know, we

(14:05):
tried to you know, get him like chopping vegetables pretty
early too, and like treating him, you know, teaching him
to be careful with these tools and to not take
their sharpness for granted. So, oh that's great. Actually, yeah,
I think it's good to get kids accustomed to using
blades early on in their lives. I know, I encounter
a lot of adults who I think are still afraid
of knives in the kitchen, like it hampers their ability

(14:26):
to cook because they kind of it looks like they're
trying not to get too close to it they're using it. Yeah,
it's kind of kind of like trying to light a
match when you're afraid of the fire that's going to
spark on the end, you know, and you end up
like just you know, destroying match after match to strike it. Yeah. Okay,
so when you look at a pair of scissors, what's
actually going on here? I guess we don't need to

(14:48):
explain too much about what scissors are and how they work,
because you've all encountered them. But we'll do the short
version and mentioned a couple of mechanical features of scissors
that you might not realize. So the basic mechanics are
a simple scissors or shears could also be referred to
as a kind of double lever. The two arms are
usually sharpened into blades, and those blades slide directly against

(15:10):
one another at a kind of moving point of contact
as they open and close. And I guess a variation
on this would be the kind of scissors that or
the kinds of shears that are not sliding scissors that
go back and forth across each other, but like clippers,
you know, you might see where there's like a flat
surface and a blade that comes flush against it, which
is somewhat different but also has has basically the same

(15:32):
mechanism of action. Now, the purpose, especially with the crossing blades,
is to apply sheer force in order to cut a
target object that might be paper, might be fabric, might
be the thread of life. But a slightly less intuitive
mechanical feature of scissors that I did start thinking about.
I thought this was kind of interesting when you describe
the scariest scissors from Monster Folk Tails and Horror. What

(15:54):
do they look like? Oh, they tend to be those big,
big what I think of his big grandma fabric scissors. Yeah,
long pointy blades, right, But the cutting power of a
pair of scissors operates like a lever, which means to
have stronger cutting power, a pair of scissors should actually
have long handles and short blades. And this is why

(16:14):
when you see scissors made for cutting weak targets like paper,
they can have relatively short handles and long blades. Uh.
The tip for using scissors is that they've got the
most cutting power at a point of contact really close
to the fulcrum, so down closest to your fingers um.
On the other hand, when you see scissors or shears
made for really powerful cutting of tough materials like metal

(16:35):
or leather or thick plant matter, they tend to have
longer handles and shorter blades. The longer handles function like
a longer lever for more mechanical power at the cutting point.
So really, the scariest scissors from our scissor Nightmares and
Scissor Horror should have short blades and long handles. That's
what could really hurt you. Yeah, and I think that's
that's why those scissors in the Exorcist three are ultimately

(16:58):
I think, ridiculous and why you also see you see
various forums online where people were like, what are those scissors?
What do you call those scissors? And I think the
answers you call those big scary prop scissors because in reality,
the scissors you would use to you know, to to
cut a part of a cadaver during an autopsy would
be powerful, but they would not be like visibly gigantic. Well,

(17:19):
I don't remember the ones I remember did seem to
have long handles from the movie. I think they did,
like they did, well, they did have long handles, but
I think they also had kind of like large blades. Yeah. Yeah,
they looked a bit like like like trimming shears, like
you would trim on a used to trim a hedge. Okay, yeah,
I can't wait to hear from all the medical professionals

(17:39):
out there who are writing in like, no, I actually
use those Exorcist three shears. Here's what I use them for.
If that's the case, please tell us. Yeah, yeah, we
would love to hear from you. But so a question
we always like to ask when we're looking at an invention,
is what came before? So how could we ask that
about scissors? I don't know, but we'll try. Maybe we
should take a break and then we'll come back and
address that. Let's do it. Alright, we're back. So what

(18:09):
came before scissors? Well, I think the obvious answer here
is that, you know, ultimately scissors are an evolutionary step
beyond a single cutting instrument, beyond like a single blade.
And I think we should stop and think again about
the challenges of cutting something, say a strand of hair.
So to use a common blade, what are you gonna do.
You're gonna need to to some way hold the hair

(18:31):
in place for the blade to cut via that that
pushing force and that sheer stress that we've talked about already.
And if you have a sharp razor, which is of
course a specialized knife, nothing more, um, you know, And
if you're going to cut close to the skin, you know,
if you're shaving, that's easy enough. The hair is basically
in held in place due to the you know, the

(18:52):
the close proximity to the skin, right, Uh, you know,
that's just shaving in a nutshell. But if you're gonna
cut up further up the strand, you need to hold
it in place. Somehow. Scissors do that. They hold the
strand in place long enough for the pushing force and
the sheer stress to act on it via a small
area the edge of the blade. And you know, in

(19:12):
a way, I think that forces us to stop and
rethink what it is to cut anything. You know that
it all comes down to, uh, you know, applying that pressure,
of finding that force, and then it's all coming down
to a very thin portion of the instrument. It's also
important to note that scissors allow us to make very
precise cuts. And for this I want to read just
an excellent summary of this from a paper title Modeling

(19:35):
the Forces of Cutting with Scissors by ma vosh at
All and uh and ultimately, like this paper gets into,
you know, a lot more technical areas, but I just
found this particular summary just you know, you know, very
very effective. Quote. Scissors are possibly the most effective and
precise tools for cutting of thin tissues in open and

(19:57):
laparoscopic surgery and thin objects in daily tasks. To see this,
compare cutting of a sheet of paper using a pair
of scissors with that of using a sharp blade. When
cutting with a blade the paper should be firmly held,
and it is difficult to make precise cuts. However, when
cutting with a pair of scissors, the scissor blades themselves

(20:17):
locally hold the paper, making it easy to have precise cuts.
An interaction between scissors and an object involves two main
physical phenomena, local deformation and fracture. As soon as the
scissor blades contact the object, the object is locally deformed.
When the deformation reaches a certain level, fraction occurs and
the object is separated. Yeah, I think about the difference.

(20:40):
But because I have tried to cut paper with a
knife before, it's it's not easy. I mean, the paper tears.
You kind of end up pushing on it, especially if
the blade is dull. Even if the blade is sharp,
it's hard to make straight or precise cuts with a knife.
The knife kind of wants to go all over the place,
so wants to curve off course and stuff. I also
often think about this with another another invention that I

(21:03):
often find irritating, and that is the big industrial paper
cutter with the big like machette blade guillotine on the side,
because like that is essentially generally what's happening is you're
being forced to cut with the entire length of the blade,
with the entire length of the scissors. So of course
it cuts really well down there towards the the axis,

(21:23):
but the further up you go, the like the just
gonna go off to the side. It's gonna rip. Maybe
I'm using it wrong or trying to put too much
paper in there, but I always find it a frustrating experience. Now,
I was wondering about a question having to do with
with cutting in the ancient world, in the prehistoric world,
and that question is did prehistoric commonids cut their hair?

(21:44):
And if so, how did they do it? Because obviously
you can cut hair with a knife, it just doesn't
seem like the best way. I mean, if you had
scissors would be a lot easier. Yeah, this is this
is something I was thinking about a little while is
back while back as well. I think it was at
the zoo, and I was thinking about, you know, all
the wonderful different varieties of hair and feathers and and

(22:08):
and so forth you see on animals, but but humans,
like we're the ones who can you have left to
our own devices, grow enormous and ridiculous beards and grow
enormously ridiculous long hair. You know, you know, you don't
see that on say a gorilla or a chimpanzee. So
it would make sense that as we, you know, it
became more and more human, as we developed this ability

(22:31):
to grow out ridiculous lengths of hair, we would start
developing means of cutting it back just to keep from
like strangling ourselves in the night with our own matted braids.
You know, yeah, I mean hair doesn't grow forever. I mean,
at some point most hair will reach a certain length
where it stops growing there, and hair grows from different
follicles and stuff where it will fall out eventually. Um.

(22:53):
And so we we don't know exactly what fashion and
grooming trends were like in the ancient world. We have
some evidence from like ancient artistic depictions of other humans. Uh,
prehistoric people might not have had all the hair care
practices of modern people, but there is some archaeological and
artistic evidence that they did some stuff to their hair.
Sometimes they took care of their hair, including a lot

(23:16):
of indications of braiding, especially braiding of long hair and women,
but sometimes cutting hair or shaving the head like. There
are a lot of depictions of prehistoric peoples that appear
to have no hair on their head, So why would
that be. Well, again, it's really hard to know for
sure why fashion and grooming trends arise, especially in the
ancient world where there no written records. One possibility is

(23:38):
that cutting hair short or shaving it would help prevent
infestation of parasites like lice, it would make hygiene easier,
and it might possibly have been involved in sexual selection
or attractiveness. This is related to the hypothesis that are
are hominid ancestors, Like why did they lose the thick
covering of body hair that they had a few million
years ago. One high pothesis is while they lost most

(24:02):
of their body hair as a way of repelling parasites,
and that would turn into a kind of honest advertising
of hygiene and health to mates. You could say, like,
look at my relatively hairless skin, no parasites hiding anywhere
and there, and yet the ability to grow ridiculous beard.
Right yeah. Um, So again, we don't know, but it's
possible that something like that helped push hair grooming priorities

(24:25):
such as cutting hair short or shaving the head or
trimming the beard. But we don't know for sure, but yeah,
so ancient people's did some things to their hair. We
have some evidence of that, and it, uh, it seems
likely that before we had good metal tools like bronze tools,
they probably just use sharp knives or sharp like stone
knives may be made from flint or obsidian or whatever.

(24:47):
Doesn't sound very pleasant, well, you know, but but it
does show you want that they would develop, you know,
increasingly better means of doing it. You know, you'd want
you'd want it to be a more pleasant experience, and
you'd want to have more, uh, you know, a athetically
pleasing results, especially if it was something that was involved
in mate selection, which I think is not a stretch
to imatic because they essentially that's the case today. Right,

(25:09):
we're just very fortunate today to have scissors for haircutting. Now,
so the scissors were familiar with today are are usually
based on what you might call the pivot model of design,
and that that's where the two blades are actually two
separate pieces of metal and they're connected that each one
blade is connected to one handle for the fingers, and
then they're joined together by a pin and then that

(25:31):
becomes the fulcrum of the two lovers moving open and clothes.
But an interesting design feature of the scissors of the
ancient world is that they often did not have a pivot.
They did not have multiple pieces. Even they're built out
of a single piece of metal with no pivoting parts. Now,
how would that work? Well, it's actually pretty simple if

(25:52):
you think about it for a second. They worked on
the principle of a spring. And I said, and by
the way, I certainly want to come back and do
an episode on springs to fully invoke coyly uh, the
spirit of springs to the grimlin of springs, so that
we can consider what what a world would be like
with no springs. That is one of the best MST

(26:13):
shorts of all time. I'm so excited. I got to
show it to my son over the weekend because he
was a ask in the car. He found a little
spring and he asked, He said, what would happen if
there were no springs? What? Yeah? And I was like,
he asked, and I was like, well, I have a
short to show you. And so he started watching it
and and he was like, I think he's evil. I
think Corey is evil. And I'm like, no, you gotta wait.

(26:34):
Watch the whole thing. He's teaching a lesson. Everything's going
to turn out okay. He's like Clarence the Angel and
it's a wonderful life, except instead of for instead of
George Bailey at springs exactly see what the world would
be like. But yeah, anyway, so you can you can
make a pair of scissors without any pivoting or moving
parts out of a single piece of metal, just on

(26:55):
the principle of a spring. And this is how most
ancient scissors were made. For example, I just picked one
random example I found in a museum collection online. It's
part of the Metropolitan Museum of Arts collection, and this
is a pair of scissors from the Tang Dynasty period
of China. It's dated to sometime between the seventh and
ninth century. It's an ornate pair of silver scissors with

(27:17):
partial gilding showing birds in flight and vines and branches,
and it has no pivot. Instead, try to picture this.
The shears are they're they're all one piece of metal,
and the handle is a rod of silver that's curved
into an infinity sign or like a sideways figure eight shape,
except that one of the halves of that infinity sign

(27:38):
does not close. It's not another closed curve, but rather
it turns into two straight blades shooting out that sort
of cross each other, and then the handle functions as
a spring. It's elastic and it stores the mechanical energy
there in in the tension of the metal, and so
you would sort of squeeze the infinity sign to close
the blades upon each other. Bay sickly think of a

(28:00):
pair of tweezers and you have the basic like mechanics
of it in mind, except instead of pinching, it brings
two blades together to cut. Uh. You can also compare
this to the difference between like salad tongs that are
scissor like and have the pivot, to like simple tongs
that are one piece of metal uh lena with a
little claw bits on each end. Exactly right. Yeah, And

(28:21):
so not all ancient spring based shears or scissors had
an infinity shaped handle. You could also create them with
just a simple you shaped bend as long as it
had the right elastic properties to bring the shears together.
And that's what a lot of the simpler ones I've
seen look like. But so this was seventh to ninth century.
That would be seventh ninth century CE. Scissors and shears

(28:42):
go back a lot farther than this. You can find
them even in the very ancient world. Yeah, we know
of surgical shears and scissors used in ancient Mesopotamia. Um.
I was looking in a paper by Adamson titled A
Surgery and Ancient Mesopotamia, and the author points out that
there there was a little or no difference between domestic
tools and surgical tools. And this included, for instance, tweezers,

(29:06):
which would have been used for hair removal, for you know,
remove unwanted hair from the body, which, as we've kind
of already discussed, has always been an issue. But but
then also there were the shears of the scissors um uh,
which I believe is sea or irpoo based on this text.
And these would have been quote course metal instruments mainly

(29:27):
used for shearing animals, but also good enough for surgery. Yeah,
and they were The ancient Mespotamians were carrying out a
variety of procedures, including um the surgical creation of unus.
But also they were using trepidation at times, so I mean,
it's not like they were tapping about getting in there
with their household and livestock tools to you know, address

(29:51):
issues or I guess create issues in the human body. Yeah.
Now the ancient Egyptians used shears as well. Yeah. I
was looking at Encyclopedia of Hair, a cultural history by
Victoria Scherow, and she points out that the ancient Egyptians
had scissors as far back as fifteen hundred BC. And
you know, they would just they would use these tools
and other tools to cut hair and uh and and

(30:13):
address hair, along with combs, hair pins, and various hair
removal devices that uh and I'm assuming those are we're
talking about tweezers as well. I was reading a similar
thing about shears from Iron Age Europe in the collection
of the British Museum. A few of the items I
found there that were like versions of shears or scissors
seemed to also have been used to cut hair, or

(30:35):
at least that's the current interpretation by the curators there.
And they were commonly found among the grave goods of people,
especially it seems like relatively high status people. So you're
a guy who got buried in first century Roman Britain
or something, you might have a pair of iron shears
in your grave goods. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you want
to look good for your funeral and then uh, I

(30:57):
also have found a cool example from the ancient Roman
times the ffects they were called, and this consisted of
two blades on a common metal loop, essentially the spring
loaded shears or scissors who were discussing earlier. And by
the way, there was also a Roman gladiator class known
as a scissor, meaning to cut, but apparently very little

(31:17):
is ultimately known about it, and none of the theories
involved a gladiator with like a big pair of dump scissors. Um.
In fact, the depictions I saw, or the interpretations, are
that it had something something like a pendulum shaped blade
on the end of like a tube that was fitted
over one of the gladiator's arms. Yeah, I mean pretty
I mean if you're into gladiatorial combat, it still sounds

(31:40):
pretty cool. Uh and I and I the thing was,
I if I wouldn't put it above the Romans to
have sent somebody out with a pair of livestock shears
to try and battle somebody with a net and a trident.
But as far as I can tell, there's no evidence
that they ever did that. Okay, time for a little
exploration of the word scissors. Good word, because is there

(32:00):
a singular scissor? Is that a word? Isn't that what
happens when you take a pair of kitchen scissors and
you snap them in half? You know, the kind of
that where the pivot unlocks. I have one scissor and
another scissor, and I must put both scissors into the
dishwasher for the evening. No, it is not like that.
There is a word scissor, but it's a verb, right, Okay,
you can scissor something. You can cut up a piece

(32:22):
of paper that seems to be a new coinage just
comes from the word scissors. For instance, if I if
I sleep with a body pillow, I might scissor the
body pillow with my legs. Okay, you could do that too. Uh.
There was an interesting little article on the word scissors
by the editors and Miriam Webster a while back, and
they they point out that scissors is an example of
a of what's known as a plural e tontum, you know,

(32:44):
an all plural, a word in which a singular object
is represented by a plural form word and it's grammatically
treated as a plural form word. Right, like you say,
the scissors are on the table, even though it's just
one pair of scissors are as for the plural verse. Uh,
and this isn't always the case, but it happens with
a lot of objects that I noticed or of, like

(33:05):
bilaterally symmetrical and so like pants or trousers, that's plural
e tantum. Right, there's no pant. But to see that
really puts you in a bind, because what if you
come in into a room and on the table there's
a half a pair of kitchen scissors and there is
a half a pair of pants, Like it would be
easier to say somebody left a scissor in a pant

(33:27):
on this table, but instead you have to, you know,
go the extra distance to describe what you're you're actually seeing. Yeah.
Another example glasses or spectacles. There are such thing as
a singular spectacle, but that means something different mm hmm.
But with glass, I mean you do it is a glass,
it is it's not a looking it's a piece of Yeah,
it's true. Yeah, a singular spectacle. Now, there is such

(33:49):
a thing as a singular lens for one eye, but
that's not a spectacles monticle. Yeah. Other examples of plurali tantums.
These are not ones that are bilaterally cement iCal. But
how about feces in trails, riches, alms. There's no singular
of any of these words. So the word in English

(34:09):
scissors is derived from the old French sires, I think,
which means scissors or shears, which comes from the vulgar
Latin sissorium, which means a cutting instrument. And this would
have been the key to the Roman gladiatorial class. Yeah,
I think that's right. Now. The English spelling of scissors
was changed at one point to include a C so

(34:30):
s c I and scissors. Now why would that be Well,
that's probably because English linguists incorrectly assumed that the word
was derived from the Latin terms starting with s c
I that have to do with splitting or cutting, the
words that ultimately probably give us the sci route in
the words science from the Latin skier a, meaning to know,

(34:52):
related to the idea of cutting, because you when you
know something, you make distinctions, you separate, you dissect. Yes,
you must take could apart and figure out how it works. Right,
So the moral of the story is that knowledge will
cut you. One more weird fact that came across apparently,
according to some dictionaries of usage. In the nineteenth century,
a common exclamation of frustration in English was oh scissors.

(35:14):
I've never come across this in the wild, like, oh scissors, right?
Or or could you adapt and be like what the scissors? Alright?
On that note, we're going to take one more break,
and when we come back we will discuss the legacy
of scissors. Alright, we're back, all right, So we've been

(35:39):
talking about scissors. Scissors, of course, became a very common
household implement, used in you know, they're used in professional
settings and household settings. They're sort of general scissors, and
then they're very specialized scissors. Of course we've mentioned that,
like scissors that need that need to be you know,
powerful for cutting through heavy duty stuff like metals, will
often be designed with like long handles and short blades.

(36:02):
But there are also other special designs for scissors that
have arisen in the modern world. Right, Oh yeah, I
mean certainly, if you look at medical scissors, there are
there are many different varieties to aid in a plethora
of specific surgical tasks. So you have stitch scissors, you
have suture scissors, you have umbilical scissors, you have operating scissors,
cuticle scissors, nail scissors, etcetera. And that's not even getting

(36:24):
into scissor like instruments that you know are that are
more about pinching or clamping, such as hemostats. And then
of course we have the world of crafting where you
have so many different varieties of scissors as well. Robert,
do you know what pinking shears are? I know that word,
but I don't know what it does. These are like,
these are little tiny ones, right, I think so they're

(36:47):
or maybe I'm confusing them, but aren't these the ones
that you use on Aren't these for like plants? Oh?
I don't think so. I think they've got some kind
of spec Maybe we shouldn't talk about it if we
don't know what they are, and they're a thing. We
do not pretend to have all knowledge of all scissors.
We're not scissor masters. Here. The people out there in
crafts that might use pinking shears that they've got like

(37:07):
like ripple e blades or something. Oh well, you know,
like the alligator type scissors for because that's the thing
you have. You have varying, you know, sizes of crafting scissors,
just as you have varying sizes of of medical scissors
determining on what you're cutting, and you know how you
know with the length of the cut, the precision of
the cut, and then also you have the various designs

(37:28):
they may cut, like, you know, the sort of alligator
tooth to serrated blades scissors that you know allow you
to leave behind a pattern ultimately useless for anything else,
but but cutting making a cool pattern when you cut.
I'm sure somebody's come up with a good use for them.
Uh now, another one is trauma shears. I think this
is pretty interesting. Shears that are specially designed to be

(37:51):
able to cut through heavy duty stuff while at the
same time not stabbing or poking people, like cutting clothing
from an injured individual exactly. They might be used by,
say a paramedic responding to, you know, a medical incident
where you need to get somebody's clothes off real quick
to you know, a treat a wound or something, even
just see what's wrong with them, to get under there

(38:12):
and see the problem. But maybe they're wearing heavy duty
jeans or something like that, or you know, you can't
move them, so you just cut through the clothes so
they're in an angle that makes it easier to cut
through clothes without your hand getting in the way. But
then also they've got like just a little barrier at
the bottom so that they're not stabbing or cutting your
skin while you're going along trying to cut them off,

(38:32):
even if the clothes are tight. But another great example
of of life saving scissors. I guess this would be
the exact opposite of the the the abhorred shears of Atroposse.
These would be the jaws of life. Now, this is
this is interesting because, of course I prior to this episode,
I had heard of the jaws of life, of course,
and you know, it's just kind of like a common
refrain of like, oh, you're gonna get the jaws of life.

(38:54):
Sometimes even use as a joke, uh, weirdly enough, where
someone's going to need to be removed from some sort
of like a vehicle or something, get the jaws of life.
And the thing is, I always imagined the jaws of
life as being an instrument for prying something open, but
they are ultimately more like scissors than I gave them credit. Well,
it's actually both. I mean, it depends on what you

(39:16):
call the jaws of life. But there are hydraulic tools
for for doing both of those things. Um So I
would consider the Jaws of Life not only a great invention,
but a great example of branding, because how can you
not remember that name. Whoever, whenever the company decided to
start calling them jaws of Life, that was a smart move.
But what are they so? Technically, the jaws of Life
is a term referring to a set of hydraulic cutting

(39:38):
tools that are used to help extract people who are
trapped in hard enclosures, usually metal enclosures. Most often this
is gonna be people who are trapped inside cars after
auto accidents. So you picture the scene to understand the problem.
A car has been in a high velocity freeway collision
or maybe you know, wrecked on a racetrack or anything
like that, and it's partially crushed and there are passengers

(40:01):
inside the car who are injured but still alive. First
responders need to be able to get the passengers out
so they can get medical treatment, so they can stop
bleeding and all that. But because of the way the
car was deformed in the accident, the doors won't open,
so how do you get them out? Well, there was
an inventor and auto company founder named George Hurst who
thought about this problem. It was in the nineteen sixties.

(40:23):
Supposedly the idea came to him after he was watching
an auto race event where there was a crash and
it took the emergency team a long time to get
the driver out of the damaged car. And when you're
injured in a car crash, that time waiting can be
the difference between life and death. There's something first responders
talk about this like sort of like the Magic hour

(40:43):
or the Golden hour, like people need to get to
the hospital within an hour if possible. That's different than
the Golden Hour and photography, right, I mean, it just means,
I mean, everybody's case is different, obviously, but like chances
are better the sooner you get people there, basically, And
so George Hurst and his company developed to this tool
that would later come to be known as the jaws
of Life and patented it in the early nineteen sixties.

(41:06):
And the common name, of course, comes from the expression
of being snatched from the jaws of death. The jaws
of life that snatch you first. I guess hopefully they
don't snatch you because that wouldn't be good. They're they're
actually multiple hydraulic power tools used in extractions like this today.
So you've got a hydraulic spreader. This is kind of
like reverse scissors. It spreads apart a gap in the metal.

(41:27):
Imagine like prying open a crushed but partially open door.
And this is basically what I assumed the jaws of
life were. Uh. There's also a hydraulic ram that can
be thought of as doing a similar kind of job
like spreading things apart, but maybe at more distance or
more powerfully. It can be used to, say, unfold partially

(41:47):
collapsed auto body frames. For example, if the passengers legs
are trapped under the dash of the car and the
car is sort of folded in on you, the ram
can be used to spread the car body apart so
that they can get you out. And then the hydraulic cutter,
which is what would be most analogous to shears. This
would be like giant hydraulic scissors. This is used for

(42:08):
cutting things off, so cutting off doors, but then also
cutting through roofs and parts of body frames so that
they can peel the roof off. These are often a
safer solution than the old solution, which was circular saws,
which took longer. They could throw sparks and debris at you,
and they could injure the person trapped inside. If you've
never seen Joseph Life in action, it's actually it's kind

(42:30):
of all inspiring. There are lots of videos of it
online where they just go in and they're just slicing
up the car body to get the people out. I
wonder if they're ever like just live demos of this
technology where they just like come out to the local
fair and uh, because there's various affairs. You know, people
want to see a car destroyed, either by a big
foot truck or as part of some sort of a competition,

(42:53):
or you like pay you know, a few dollars and
like you beat the car with a you know, the
baseball bat or something or sledgehammer. Yeah. Yeah, donated an
old junk car and then they cut it up with
the with the hydraulic cutters, and then it would be
a demonstration of the technology. Surely that is done somewhere.
I'm sure we'll hear from a listener with an example
of just such a demo. So if the shears that
snipped the thread of life are the abhorred shears, of

(43:15):
atroposse what are what are the life saving shears called it?
What's the Greeks their Greek goddess of like life or
birth or something. I mean you could go with Persephone.
I guess okay, you know, I also can't help but
think about natural inspiration for for scissors and shears, you know,
because obviously even ancient people's would have seen the crab

(43:39):
or the scorpion, and granted what we're talking about, there
are generally instruments for pinching, uh, not for the sort
of sheer cutting technique that we're talking about here. But
I wonder if if still these biological adaptations might have
served as some level of inspiration for you know, early
attempts at scissors. Yeah. Well, and another thing you could

(43:59):
look at just be like teeth, like cutting teeth coming
together to chop at things. Yeah. Yeah, I mean our
our jaws are essentially scissors. I mean it comes back
to the jaws of life, the jaws of death. Right. Huh,
all right, well I guess that's our scissors adventure. Yeah,
this was This was a fun one. This was, you know,
ultimately an example of a very simple invention and yet

(44:19):
another one of these inventions that we we cannot tie
to a specific even a specific time period necessarily, and
certainly not to a specific inventor. But it's still just
a fascinating chance to take a bit of just ubiquitous
technology and uh and and stop and look at it
in a new light and try to appreciate the glory

(44:40):
of this particular invention and how it has changed, you know,
the way that we live as humans. Would scissors be
among your grave goods? I'm thinking probably not. I don't
really have any need for scissors in the afterlife, but
maybe you should pack some just in case. I don't know,
you're going to be one of those shaggy haired ghosts.
All right. If you want to check out more episodes

(45:01):
of Invention, head on over to invention pod dot com.
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(45:21):
producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
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(45:43):
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