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Fewer machines have made more of an impact on the world than the humble typewriter. For over a hundred years, this little machine was responsible for everything from newspaper-stories, film-scripts, some of the world’s greatest novels and stories, letters to loved ones and friends, and some of the most famous speeches of the past century.

The Birth of the Typewriter

Well…where did the car come from? Where did the lightbulb come from? Where did the electric telegraph come from?

We think the answer is simple and can be traced to the genius of one man. But as is often the case, the typewriter, just like with all the other things mentioned above, it was the contributions and discoveries and inventions made by lots of people that eventually culminated in one great, mutually-beneficial machine.

The idea of having a machine that could be operated by one man, and which could print out anything that the user wanted using movable type (hence the name ‘type-writer’), is an old one, and dates back at least to the 1700s. While people had been trying for hundreds of years to create a workable typing-machine, it wasn’t until the mid-1800s that real progress started to be made.

The Hansen Ball

This curious machine is the Hansen Writing Ball, so named for its spherical shape. It was invented in 1865 by a priest, Rasmus Malling-Hansen. Put into production in 1870, this was the world’s first commercially-available typewriter.

The Hansen Ball was typing genesis. It was the first real typewriter. But like anything that’s the ‘first real’ of anything, the Hansen was still very much a prototype of things to come, and came with a number of annoying shortcomings. The most obvious one is that, due to the arrangement of the keys, it’s damn near impossible to read the text of what you’re typing while the paper is in the machine. It was pretty clear that something better had to be invented.

The World’s First Typewriter

Behold the first-ever commercially successful typewriter:

What you are looking at is the Sholes & Glidden typewriter. The world’s first really successful typing machine, developed in 1867. It has the familiar type-bars up the top with the roller, and the keys and the spacebar down the bottom in front of the typist. Laid out in this now-familiar manner, this typewriter became wildly popular because it was easy to use, had everything designed in an easy-to-see layout, and was the first typing machine with the now-standard “QWERTY” keyboard (where does ‘Qwerty’ come from? Take a look at the first six letters at the top left of your keyboard in front of you).

The QWERTY keyboard was designed to stop typewriter typebars jamming together by spacing out the keys and typebars of the most frequently-used letters in the English language.

Sholes and Glidden were the men who invented this machine – Christopher Latham Sholes and his friend, mechanic Carlos Glidden. With assistance from printer Samuel Soules, the three men put together their new machine in a workshop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.A.

In time, their prototype was ready and was unveiled in 1873. Try as they might, the men couldn’t mass-produce their typewriters, and so they sold it to
a firearms manufacturer.

This firearms manufacturer was looking to make more things than just guns. They were already making mechanical sewing-machines, and they saw this new ‘typing-machine’ as the next big thing, and snatched it up.

The name of this company?

E. Remington & Sons.

To this day, Remington typewriters are still considered among the best in the world, along with Ollivetti, Royal and Smith-Corona.

The Sholes & Glidden typewriter was renamed the Remginton No. 1. Although it was fairly practical, it still had a few shortcomings – you were still unable to see what you were typing on the paper. And the typebars only had capital letters on them. But it was at least better than the Hansen Writing Ball.

Improving the Typewriter

The Remington No. 1. was successful, but only moderately so. The shortcomings mentioned above slowed its acceptance by society, and the relative complexity of its operation meant that special people (typists!) had to be trained in using this new machine.

By the the 1880s and 90s, typewriters had improved markedly in design. Now, you could see what you were typing as you typed, due to a rearrangement of the typebars and the manner in which they struck the paper. You could type in both upper and lowercase letters and typebars didn’t tangle up and jam as much as they uesd to. By the turn of the century, the modern mechanical typewriter as we know it, was developed.

The Impact of the Typewriter

The impact of the typewriter was amazing. For the first time in history, a person could write faster than what he could with a pen. He didn’t need to keep dipping his dip-pen into an inkwell. His writing remained neat, constant and level throughout the entire word…sentence…line…page…document!

The typewriter made everything faster, neater, easier and more standardised and uniform. The typewriter also saw the entrance of women into the business workforce for the first time. Secretaries hammered away at their machines, typing out copy and speeches, reports, essays and memoranda. The typewriter was changing everything.

Once, writers had to handwrite everything. Now, they could type it up. Some of the greatest stories in the world were typed up on typewriters, and some typewriter-brands became famously associated with various authors.

Typewriter Lingo

Ever since the 1980s, the typewriter has become less and less of a business machine or desktop staple, and more and more a historical curiosity. But to this day, we still use a lot of typewriter jargon in our everyday lives.

Don’t believe me?

C.C.

You see this on your email textboxes all the time. “C.C.”, stands for “CARBON COPY”. In the days of typewriters, to make a carbon-copy meant to sandwich two pieces of paper around a sheet of carbon-paper. All three pieces of paper were then cranked into the typewriter. When a typebar struck the ribbon, the ink would imprint itself onto the first sheet. The force of the typebar hitting the page would press some of the dye out of the sheet of carbon-paper and imprint the same letter onto the second sheet of paper behind it. This second sheet of paper would be called the ‘carbon-copy’.

Return/Enter

The most important key on a keyboard. It opens windows, closes folders, starts new lines, begins movies and does so many things in computer-games.

But have you ever noticed that this oh-so-important key, locted on the right of your keyboard, isn’t always called ‘ENTER’?

On some keyboards, it’s called ‘RETURN’.

Why?

The ‘Return’ or ‘Enter’ key is descendant from the typewriter, back when you started a new line and returned the carriage to the extreme right by pulling on the carriage-release & return lever.

Shift

Aah, the shift-key. The bane of civilised internet-users.

But why is it called a shift-key?

The Shift Key, the one that transforms your lowercase letters into CAPITALS, is a holdover from typewriter days. It gets its name because pressing this key on the typewriter quite literally ‘shifted’ the keys. It moved the basket (the semicircular collection of typebars) up so that when a key was pressed, the capital of a letter would strike the ribbon and mark the paper, instead of its equivalent lowercase letter.

The hammerheads of all typewriter-bars actually have two letters (or other appropriate symbol on it) instead of one. The regular letters or symbols struck the ribbon and paper when the typewriter was in default mode, but pressing the shift-key shifted the basket so that capital letters (or symbols such as the $-sign or the &-sign), on a particular hammerhead would strike the ribbon and paper instead.

Back then, just as today, the Shift key was operated by the pinky-finger. Today, it’s pretty easy to hold down Shift and just TYPE LIKE THIS.

But try doing that with a mechanical typewriter and you’ll probably sprain something. So to combat this, you had…

CAPSLOCK

The Shift-Lock or Capitals-Lock (“CAPSLOCK”) key was introduced to hold the basket of typebars in the capitals-position while typing out headings or other parts of a document that had to stand out. This function allowed the typist to type out long sections of capitalised text without putting extra strain on the pinky-fingers which would otherwise have to have held the shift-key (and the entire basket of typebars) in-place while this operation was completed.

Backspace

Typewriters have the famous shortcoming of not allowing the typist to delete or remove previously typed text. And yet…they have a key called ‘Backspace’, a key that, if pressed on a modern computer keyboard, deletes previously-typed letters.

So what’s the point?

The backspace key shifted the carriage back one or more typespaces when it was necessary to type in more text on a particular line (such as when filling out forms and so-forth).

Typewriter Components

Typewriters are complex machines. What are the various elements of a typewriter called?

The bed of keys is obviously the keyboard. The long thing that slides back and forth along the top of the machine is the carriage. The semicircular row of typebars (that fly up when a key is pressed) is called the basket. The two rollers on either side that scroll in the paper are called the platen-knobs. The round drum on the top of the carriage which the paper curls around is called the platen. The tray behind the platen which the paper rests on is the paper-table.

On the left of the carriage are two levers. They are the carriage-release lever, and the carriage-return lever. The release-lever sends the carriage back to the starting position. The carriage-return lever starts a new line. More modern typewriters chucked out the return-lever and the carriage-release lever performed both functions simultaneously.

The two tabs that held the paper against the platen (to stop it wiggling around) were called the paper-fingers. To get the paper-fingers to release their grip on your hard work, you had the paper-release lever. To shift the carriage freely from left to right, you had the secondary carriage-lever, that allowed you to unlock the carriage and move it freely and then lock it back into place and resume typing (handy for creating centered headlines, lists, etc, without constantly pressing the spacebar and wasting valuable inches of ribbon).

When a key was pressed, a typebar would fly up and strike the ribbon and mark the paper. The middle of the typewriter, between the two round ribbon-spools had a small square or rectangular window set into it, which each key would aim for when it hit the paper. This was the type-guide. It did double-duty in ensuring that every key would hit the same spot and create a neat line of text, and it also held the typewriter ribbon in place, to stop it wiggling around and causing the typebars to miss it when they hit the paper.

For the typewriter to print the stuff that you wanted onto the paper, you had the typewriter ribbon, the ribbon that ran around the two ribbon-spools on either side of the typewriter, and which was impregnated with ink. Most ribbon-spools were two-toned. Black, and Red, depending on the colour of ink you wanted to use.

Last, but not least, you had every typewriter’s most famous component.

The warning-bell.

The point of the warning-bell was not to tell you to stop immediately and start a new line. The purpose of the bell was to tell you that you were reaching the end ofthe page. When the bell rang, you were obliged to finish typing your current word, then pull the carriage-release and push it back to the start to begin the new line.

The Evolution of the Typewriter

The typewriter lasted for over a hundred years. Well into the 1980s and 90s. It wasn’t until computers became really practical that typewriters stopped being used. But until then, you had everything from mechanical typewriters, electromechanical, totally electric typewriters…made from steel and then increasingly out of plastic, with all kinds of features that people invented and added to these machines to try and make them as practical and as efficient as possible.

I’m just old enough that when I was a child, I learnt to type, not on a computer, but actually on a typewriter. I used my parents’ old Canon electric typewriter to do my homework and type stories on. I still remember the electronic ‘Beep!’ of the warning buzzer and pressing the ‘Return’ key and watching the carriage slide back to the start-point. I even remember learning to change the typewriter ribbon by myself when the machine ran out of ink, and unravelling old ribbons and holding them up to the light to read all the words I’d typed on them!

Gosh, typewriters are fun to muck around with when you’re 10 years old…

Desktop and Portable Typewriters

The typewriter, just like the computer, came in two varieties. The desktop typewriter, and the portable typewriter. It’s pretty easy to tell which is which, purely based on size.

This is a desktop typewriter:

Made of solid steel, as you can see, this Remington 12 is quite a monster. These typewriters were so huge and heavy that in some cases, carpenters would build special typewriter desks just to support their massive weight, and to cope with the vibrations caused by thousands of keystrokes and hammer-strikes every single day.

It’s probably not surprising then, that typewriter manufacturers created portable typewriters.

This is the Remington Portable #7. As you can see, it’s MUCH smaller and more compact than the much chunkier and heavier desktop model up above. These typewriters were designed for journalists, teachers, office-workers and writers who did a lot of travelling. They were the laptop-computers of their day. And just like laptops, they came with their own carrying-cases.

The Typewriter Today

The typewriter finally ended in the 1990s when practical home-computers began to take over and the typewriter was consigned to history. But that doesn’t mean they’re forgotten. A lot of famous writers today still use them. Until he died a couple of years back, children’s author Brian Jacques (pronounced ‘Jakes’), creator of the fuzzy little Redwall series, would type up all his stories on a mechanical typewriter (because he found computers too complicated to use). Actor Tom Hanks is an avid typewriter collector.

Blind people still use a variation of the typewriter today. Perhaps you’ve seen one of these?

It’s called a Perkins Brailler. It’s a typewriter for the blind, and many blind people still use them today. Made of solid steel, these machines punch out the raised dots known as ‘braille’, which blind people read with their fingertips. The six keys, pressed in various combinations, punch out the six-dot braille code into special, extra-thick braille-paper (ordinary paper doesn’t work on a brailler because the force of the keys punching into the paper would rip it to pieces). The sliding toggle on the top is the carriage. Pressing on it slides it back to the left, or to any other point along the line, allowing a brailler to start typing on any point of the page.

I used to be acquainted with a number of blind students and although I never used one, I saw Perkins Braillers on a regular basis. They’re probably the closest thing to a typewriter still used on a daily basis today.

Last, but not least, let us never forget one of the most indelliable marks that the typewriter has left on modern society. A little piece of music written by composer Leroy Anderson in the middle of the last century, simply called…

‘The Typewriter’:

…A piece of music that can only be played successfully with a vintage mechanical typewriter (they’re the only ones which create enough noise, and which have the distinctive sounds to work with the music).

The rise of the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s caused untold horrors and hardships throughout Germany and afterwards, throughout Europe. They say that we should never forget our history lest we be doomed to repeat it. And it is all too easy to remember all the bad things that happened under Nazism from 1933 to 1945. But what of all the good things? How many of those could you name?

Do you, for example, know of the story of the Leica Freedom Train? It was one of the most famous anti-Nazi efforts in pre-war Nazi Germany which is probably largely forgotten today. This is the story…

Germany, 1933

The Reichstag Building in Berlin catches fire, the result of an arson-attack. Adolf Hitler takes the opportunity of public panic and confusion to seize the reins of power and rise up as the dictator of the new Third Reich of Nazi Germany. In the space of eleven years, the Nazi Party grew from insignificance to being the most powerful force to be reckoned with, within the boundaries of Germany.

With his authority secure and his power absolute, Hitler was able at last, to carry out widespread and public persecution of Germany’s Jewish population. Starting in 1935, the ‘Nuremberg Laws’, increasingly restricted Jewish freedoms and antisemitism swept across Germany. Fearful for their lives, German Jews packed their bags and fled to England, America, Australia and China to escape the rising tyranny. But international immigration-quotas and Nazi Germany’s own highly restrictive travel-regulations made escape for Jews very tricky. Each year, only a few thousand could hope to board ships to the Far East, or across the Channel, or to the New World. Increasingly ostricised from their communities, Jews were desperate to escape the growing persecution before everything reached its inevitable and unimagined climax when the Second World War started in 1939.

Enter…this man:

His name is Ernst Leitz. He ran the famous German manufactury of film-cameras known as Ernst Leitz GmbH, which today, is known as Leica. The efforts of Herr Leitz and his daughter, Elsie Keuhn-Leitz, are one of the forgotten stories of the Holocaust.

As antisemitism in Germany increased month after month after the rise of the Nazi Party, Germany’s Jews became more and more nervous. Fearing for their lives, they tried to flee this oppression, only to find the way barred, either by the German government, or by foreign powers who did not grasp the urgency of the situation in pre-war Germany. In desperation, Jewish employees of the Leica Camera Company approached the Big Cheese himself. Ernst Leitz. As the head of a prominent German aryan company, Leitz was a wealthy, powerful man, well above the suspicions of the Nazis, and as a Christian, was unaffected by the restrictions placed on German Jews.

Touched by their plight and moved by their panic, Leitz and his family set into motion what became known as the ‘Lecia Freedom Train’.

What Was the Leica Freedom Train?

Okay, first thing’s first. Just like the ‘Underground Railroad’ in the United States, the Lecia Freedom Train is not actually a locomotive. I apologise to everyone who’s read this far with mental images of smoke-belching steam-trains chugging out of stations to freedom and liberation in a far-off land. That’s not what this is.

The Lecia Freedom Train was a concerted effort by Ernst Leitz and his daughter to rescue and relocate as many Jews as was possible, before the German border slammed shut permanently (which it did with the start of the Second World War). Leitz wanted to try and get as many Jews out of Germany as fast as possible and as far away as possible. And again, being a prominent businessman, he had the resources to do so. Ernst Leitz GmbH was a big company. It had branches in London, New York City and Paris. It was here that Leitz would relocate his Jews.

Like Oskar Schindler, Leitz used his power, money, status and influence to do good deeds in a time of darkness, but unlike Schindler, Leitz’s story is nowhere near as famous.

To help his Jewish workers, Leitz conveniently made them “Lecia Company representatives”. Their work-profiles were changed and suddenly, all his Jews, Leitz told the German government, had to leave the country, because they had been ‘assigned’ as ‘sales representatives’ of his foreign offices in London, New York, Paris and even as far away as Hong Kong, where those filthy, grubby Nazis couldn’t get their hands on them.

But Leitz went one step further. He didn’t just move his Jewish employees out of Germany, he moved almost everyone else. If Leitz had a Jewish employee named Jacob, he would give him the necessary travel-permits and documentation to go and live in New York City. But if Jacob had a wife and three kids, suddenly, his papers were modified to say that he would be there for ‘long-term work’ and that his family HAD to go with him. But perhaps Jacob had some close friends who also happened to be Jewish? No problem. His friends suddenly changed jobs. Instead of being schoolteachers or librarians or authors, they suddenly worked for the Leitz Company. And all their papers and profiles and employment-histories were forged and written up. They too, were given employment and travel-papers by the Leitz family for them to go to London or Hong Kong as salespeople for this prominent, aryan, Made-In-Germany photographic-equipment company. As far as the Nazis were concerned, Leitz was just doing regular business. As far as the Jews were concerned, the Leitz Company was a saviour.

Boarding the ‘Lecia Freedom Train’

So how did this all work? Well, once all the papers, passports, Visas, permits, forms, applications and other synonyms for bureaucratic boodle had been worked out, the Jewish workers packed their bags, hugged their wives, gathered their kids from school and hopped on the first train going to the German coastline (yes, check a map. Germany has a coastline).

Once the Leitz Jews had reached the shipping-offices, they would purchase liner-tickets for London or New York or Hong Kong. Or if they weren’t going overseas, they would take the train to Paris in France. Either way, once the Jews had reached their destinations, the next stage of the plan went into action. They swarmed onto the ships that would eventually take them to freedom.

Once in New York or London or Paris or Hong Kong, the Jews were supported by the Lecia Company’s branches in those cities. The Jews who disembarked from the liners in Southampton or New York or in Hong Kong Harbour immediately sought out the Leitz Company headquarters in that particular city where company executives would help them settle down. They’d help them find jobs and homes in these new, probably unfamiliar countries. Money-troubles were eased by the payments of stipends until each family or person managed to settle in. Along with all the papers and passports and money and personal effects, the Jews on the Lecia Freedom Train also had something else with them. Just in case they couldn’t get any money for whatever reason (and during the 1930s, there were a lot of reasons!), every Lecia ‘employee’ left Germany with, not only his forged papers and a blessing and a word of good luck from Mr. Leitz, but also…a brand new Lecia camera. Just in case the Nazis wouldn’t allow Jews to own cameras, they were called “product-samples” by the Leitz Company, designed to be display-models of this fantastic, aryan company’s latest inventions. In fact, the cameras served as an asset. If the Jewish employee in his reassigned country (where-ever that was), was unable to find work or get financial support from the Leitz Company while abroad, he would at least, be able to sell a flashy, brand-new, top-quality, German-made camera to get at least some cash to help him survive.

At first, not many Jews took advantage of the open gates that the Leitz Company provided for them. Most people thought that the antisemitic measures were nothing more than the Nazis showing off their might, now that they’d come to power. Give it a few months, a couple of years…It would all be over and life would go back to normal. Nothing to worry about.

But then in November, 1938, Kristallnacht happened. Kristallnacht is translated from German into English as the Night of Broken Glass. Jewish shops had their front windows smashed and their interiors looted and torched. They had antisemitic graffitti painted on their walls and doors. Synagogues all over Germany were torched and burnt to the ground. Realising at last that Germany was no longer safe for them, Jews packed their bags and ran for the Lecia Freedom Train. Between November, 1938 and the end of August, 1939, hundreds of Jews fled Germany through the services provided by the Leitz Family. Every couple of weeks, ships docked in New York Harbor. And with every ship from Germany came more and more Jews who had fled from the Nazis with the aid of Ernst Leitz and his daughter, Elise. On the 1st of September, 1939, the Germans attacked Poland and the German borders were closed to all travel, but in those few brief years, the Leitz family managed to save hundreds of lives.

The Leitz Family During the War

Even after the start of the Second World War and the closing of the border, the Leitz family continued to help Jews by smuggling them over the border or by mirroring the example set by Oskar Schindler and employing Jews in their optical-equipment factories to protect them from the ghettos and the death-camps, all at immense risk to their own safety. Leitz. Co. executive Alfred Turk was arrested for helping Jews and thrown in jail. He was released early because the Leitzes forked up a fat bribe to get him out of jail. Elsie Leitz, Ernst’s daughter, was arrested for helping Jews escape over the German border. She refused to crack under questioning and was later released, but the Nazis kept a close eye on the Leitz family after that. They started keeping an even closer eye on them when they noticed the Leitzs being nice to the Jewish slave-labourers who were forced to work in their factories. Roughly 800 Jewish women were employed by the Leitzes to protect them from harm.

The Leitz Family’s Efforts

If the Leitz Family did all this…how come nobody knows about it? If they rescued so many hundreds, thousands of people, why is it almost nobody knows about them today? Even though they ran one of the most famous optics companies in the entire world?

The reason? Because the Leitz family didn’t WANT anyone to know. It was only after the death of the last member of the Leitz family that permission was given to publicise the efforts of the Leitz Freedom Train, something that the Leitzes had wanted to keep secret for as long as possible…Just in case.

Soft drinks are something we take for granted today. Everything from sparkling mineral-water, soda-water, tonic-water, lemonade, Sprite, 7-Up, Fanta, Solo, Irn Bru and the most famous soft-drink of all…Coca Cola.

But where did all this start? How did mankind one day discover that cold liquids would suddenly taste amazing and refreshing if they were merely carbonated? When were the first soft-drinks created and what did they originate as? How did they develop from curiosities and cures, to one of our most beloved and addictive beverages today?

This article tracks the development of the modern soft-drink from its birth as a medicine in the 18th century, to its mass consumption by its worldwide fizzy fandom in the 21st.

The Birth of Hydrotherapy

In the 18th and 19th centuries, medicine was crude. It was a mix of folklore, misguided science and age-old superstitions which on the whole…did nothing. Medical theory was advancing in this time, but cures for disease were few and far between and were of wildly varying effectiveness. People who suffered from anything from asthma to stomach-pains to muscle-pains would take a whole range of weird and scary potions, pills and concoctions to try and alleviate their discomfort and pain. However, the medicines prescribed by pharmacists and doctors were often unpleasant, either to look at, or to taste…in many cases, both!

It was in an effort to find cleaner, more comfortable ways to medicate the body that hydrotherapy was developed.

Hydrotherapy, or ‘water-therapy’, is the use of naturally mineralised waters, to cure various complaints. Mostly, it was used for muscle and joint pains. In cities such as Bath in England, it became fashionable to visit large public baths and springs which were filled with natural mineral-water to soothe joint-pains. This activity was known as ‘taking the waters’, from which the title of this article is derived.

The Rise of Medicinal Water

As hydrotherapy progressed, bathhouses and spa-retreats started popping up. Combined with a good diet and regular exercise, people began to recognise the benefits of water. Immersing oneself in a bath of cold water had the effect of increasing the heartrate, stimulating muscles and relieving joint-pain. Mineralised water was considered so beneficial that people began drinking it, as well as bathing in it. As early as 1661, the natural mineral-water available in the city of Bath was being bottled and sold for its ‘healthful benefits’.

However, there was some truth to mineralised and medicated water. And we should like to hope so. For without it, modern soft-drinks would not exist.

The first of these new waters was ‘soda water’.

Also called sparkling water or carbonated water, soda-water was created in the mid 18th century by a man named Joseph Priestly. In an experiment conducted in 1767, Priestly held a bowl of water above a vat of fermenting beer. The carbon dioxide released from the beer was impregnated into the water. Priestly called this vapour ‘fixed air’, and wrote about his experiements. He soon discovered that cold water impregnated with carbon dioxide had a pleasant, fizzy and sweet taste, and so experimented with finding a way to reproduce this effect. By dripping oil of vitriol (an old name for sulphuric acid) onto chalk, he could create carbon dioxide gas. By forcing this gas into water, he could create the world’s first soft-drink…

…soda water.

Although Priestly invented soda-water, the world’s first soft-drink, and recognised that it tasted wonderful, that was more or less all he did. It would take another man to put a marketing angle on Priestly’s invention and introduce it to the world. That man was an 18th century German watchmaker and scientist. A man named Johann…Jacob…Schweppe! And so…the world’s first soft-drink manufacturer, Schweppes, was founded in 1783.

The next step up from plain soda-water was a step away from commercial beverage-manufacturing, and a return to mankind’s original experiments with mineralised waters…to find cures for disease. Their first major breakthrough came in the mid 19th century with the invention of…

Tonic-water.

The word ‘tonic’, although rarely used today, still has medicinal connotations. And well it might, for that was precisely what it was meant to do. Tonic-water was invented when chemists put a small amount of quinine-powder into carbonated water. As quinine is very potent, only a small amount of it was added to a relatively large amount of water (only a few grains to each bottle), but the effect was amazing.

Apart from giving the water a distinct and slightly bitter taste…that tonic-water still has today…the water, thus treated with quinine, was now very effective in combating one of the most feared diseases that ravaged the African continent (and other tropical areas) during the 19th century – Malaria. It was for this reason that this quinine-infused water became known as ‘tonic-water’, because it was quite literally a ‘tonic’ (medicine) for malaria.

Tonic-water is relatively easy to make. You add quinine-powder, citric acid and baking-soda to a bottle of water. You seal the bottle tightly and invert it to mix the powders and dilute them in the water. The quinine is diluted with the water while the baking-soda reacts with the citric acid to let off carbon-dioxide gas. The gas, sealed inside the bottle, carbonates the water, thus creating carbonated tonic-water. Although a relatively easy process, the somewhat trial-and-error nature of making carbonated water this way was that the pressure of the gas could vary according to the quantities of baking-soda to water. If the pressure was too high, the bottle could explode in your hands!

One risk of bottling soda-water was that the corks used to seal the bottles could dry out and shrink, compromising the seal (and turning the cork into a dangerous missile if the pressure in the bottle managed to shoot it out). Some soda-water bottles were deliberately designed so that they couldn’t stand up straight. That way, the soda-water kept the cork damp and the swollen cork would keep the bottle tightly sealed.

Citrus Drinks

The next step up from creating cold, fizzy water was…creating cold fizzy water with flavour! With methods for safely and effectively manufacturing carbonated water now in place, the 18th and 19th century saw the rise of our first flavoured soft-drinks. The most famous of these was…lemonade!

Lemonade is created in several ways. Some use carbonated water, some use still water. In recipes calling for still water, baking soda was used to carbonate the water and lemon-juice and sugar was used to give it that sweet and sour lemony-taste that we all recognise today. Other fruits such as oranges and limes were also used to give plain carbonated water a different and more interesting taste.

The Most Famous of All: Coca Cola

Although famous today for being sickeningly sweet, conspicuously browny-red and for causing everything from pimples to dental problems to obesity and for being used for everything other than drinking, from cleaning toilets to removing blood…Coca Cola was actually invented as a medicine!

Coca-cola, or ‘Coke’ was invented in the state of Georgia in the United States in 1886. It was originally an alcoholic beverage called ‘Pemberton’s French Wine Cola’ and was created by a chemist named…John Pemberton.

Coca-Cola changed from its alcoholic form to its non-alcoholic form in the very year it was invented. In 1886, the temperance movement was beginning to gather steam and prohibition came to Georgia. Unable to sell alcoholic beverages, Pemberton instead marketed his new wonder-beverage as a medicine. Among other things, Coca-Cola was designed to cure headaches, impotence and drug-addictions!…An interesting claim when you consider that the drink famously gets is name ‘Coca-Cola’ because one of the main ingredients was…cocaine!

Mmmm…Healthy!

Originally sold over-the-counter by the glass, Coca-Cola was sold in bottles starting in 1894. Cocaine was removed from the drink’s recipe in 1903, but nevertheless, the name ‘Coca-Cola’ remained.

Drinks for a New Century

From their birth in the 18th century to their acceptance as a refreshing drink in the 20th century, soft-drinks underwent many changes. By the early 1900s, soft-drinks really began to rise in popularity. Temperence movements around the world meant that people, unable to buy alcohol, started drinking soft-drinks instead. Soda-fountains, manned by the ‘soda-jerk’ (so called because of the jerking-action used to operate the levers which carbonated the drinks with gas and which dispensed the aerated beverages) became increasingly popular. Soft-drinks were cheap, refreshing, delicious and easy to buy. A bottle of Coca-Cola cost about five cents in the early 20th century.

But why are soft-drinks called ‘soft’ drinks? This name was given to them to differentiate them from ‘hard’ drinks, meaning alcoholic beverages, as opposed to ‘soft drinks’, those which were non-alcoholic.

Soon, new flavours and brands of soft-drinks began to emerge, both on shelves and under soda-fountain counters all around the world. ‘Pepsi’ was first established in 1898, ’7Up’ was created in 1929. ‘Fanta’ was invented during the Second World War in 1941. ‘Sprite’ and ‘Sunkist’ showed up in the 1960s and 70s. In keeping with soft-drink’s ‘medicinal origins’, ‘Pepsi’ (named for the pepsin enzyme which it contained) was supposed to aid the digestion of those who drank it. Of course, like Coca-Cola it didn’t actually do this, but Caleb Bradman, the man who invented Pepsi, liked to think that it did.

In the 21st century, soft-drinks continue to be enjoyed by millions of people all over the world, every single day. From its beginnings as a health-drink and tonic through its evolution as a healthy and tasty beverage, to a refreshing and invigorating drink to everyone’s favourite fizzy thirst-quencher, soft-drinks have remained in the public eye for the best part of nearly three centuries.

The history of dynamite is one of construction, destruction, death, invention, innovation, trial, error and inspiration. A history worth reading about.

Who Invented Dynamite?

The inventor of dynamite was a man named Alfred Nobel. Nobel was born in Sweden in 1833. In 1851 at the age of 18, Nobel moved to the United States of America to study chemistry. As a child, his family had travelled extensively through Europe and he had learnt several languages. He spent four years in the United States and returned to Sweden in 1855. When his father’s family business collapsed, Alfred devoted his studies to the manufacture, use and safe detonation of explosives and through trial and horrendous error, came upon the single explosive that was used so extensively for the next century that, even though it’s considered outdated today, is still considered…dynamite!

19th Century Explosives

The 18th but increasingly the 19th century, saw the boom-years of the Industrial Revolution. Literally. A lot of things were going ‘Boom’ in the 1800s. The transcontinental railroad across the USA was being built, in Australia and California, gold-rushes were driving people crazy trying to get rich. In Seuz, a great canal was being dug through the earth. In England, London’s famous ‘Underground’ railroad system was being built.

But for all this to be possible…for all the tunnelling, blasting, mining, trenching, dredging and excavation to be made possible…people needed explosives. To chip away at rock for hours was ineffective when you could instead blast the rock apart and then just simply carry away the leftover pieces. Easy in theory, very difficult in practice.

There were two main explosives in the mid 19th century. Blackpowder and Nitroglycerine.

Blackpowder had been used since the 1600s for construction-work and mining. People drilled holes into rockfaces, filled them with blackpowder, trailed a fuse, lit it and let the explosion do its work. But blackpowder was relatively weak. It was designed for use firing rifles, cannons, pistols and muskets…not blasting holes in rock. This ancient recipe of charcoal, sulphur and potassium nitrate, had to be replaced with something more effective.

That more effective something was invented in 1847 by an Italian chemist named Ascanio Sobrero. Although he was actually trying to create a medicine at the time, Sobrero’s discovery nearly blew his hands off! He had unwittingly invented an oily, liquid explosive which he called…nitroglycerine.

Nitroglycerine has an explosive power eight times what blackpowder of a similar quantity could produce and people were quick to see that this could blast and tunnel and mine and build and quarry, a hell of a lot more effectively than old-fashioned gunpowder. However, there was a problem.

Nitroglycerine is notoriously and lethally unstable. Because it is a contact-explosive which detonates from sufficient agitation, the slightest shock, bump or jolt can cause it to blow up. Because of this, using, but even moreso, transporting, nitroglycerine was extremely dangerous. For nitroglycerine to be used in construction of major engineering projects, it was necessary to have a chemist on-site to mix the concoction for you, then and there, when you needed it. Transporting nitroglycerine to a construction-site by a bumpy, jolty, shaky and vibrating horse and cart was a sure recipe for disaster on a monumental scale.

The biggest problem, apart from this, was nitroglycerine’s unpredictable nature. People knew it was unstable and that a jolt could cause it to blow up, but the problem was…they didn’t know how much of a jolt. You could strike a bottle of nitroglycerine with a hammer and nothing could happen. Or you could jump up and down with a bottle in your hand and it would blow up in your face.

It was for all these reasons, it’s legendary instability and frustrating upredictable nature, that a safer explosive had to be found. Something that could be safely transported, safely carried, safely detonated without the risk of exploding unexpectedly.

Alfred Nobel’s Blasting Cap

Nitroglycerine was wonderful stuff. Used properly, it could speed up construction-work on major public-works projects, it could allow people to mine faster and more effectively or blast and split rocks apart for quarrying that much easier. But its unpredictable nature meant that it was very hard to use it properly. Anyone who handled nitroglycerine was in deadly danger of being blown to smithereens. It was to prevent this and to make nitroglycerine easier to use, that Alfred Nobel invented his blasting-cap.

Before Nobel came along, everything about nitroglycerine spelt doom and destruction. First you had to transport it. If your wagon hit a bump, the entire transport of explosives could go up like a nuclear-bomb. Then you had to carry it to where you needed it. One trip or careless jolt and you became a statistic. But then you had to actually detonate it.

People did this in various ways back in the 19th century. One way to detonate nitroglycerine, as many people knew…was just to give it a jiggle. Enough agitation and the quantity of nitroglycerine in question would explode! But nobody really knew just how much agitation it required. And to agitate the mixture, they needed to be near to it. And nobody wanted to be next to nitroglycerine when it exploded.

The other way for nitroglycerine to be detonated was to pour it onto a surface…lay a fuse…light it…and run like all hell. The problem with this is, one stray spark could set off the mixture prematurely and send you flying into the air (or worse). Clearly, there were a few occupational hazards to using nitroglycerine.

Alfred Nobel examined nitroglycerine and decided to try and combine these two methods of detonating nitroglycerine. He recognised that sufficient agitation would cause it to explode. And he also recognised the danger of an open flame or an unpredictable fuse. To try and make this safer, Nobel created his blasting-caps.

Nobel’s blasting-caps were simple, really. They used mercury fulminate (a shock-detonated explosive like nitroglycierine) to create a chain-reaction. Exploding a small amount of mercury fulminate in a metal precussion-cap produced enough of a shock to detonate any nearby nitroglycerine. Nobel’s invention made it easier and safer to detonate nitroglycerine without the need to be connected to the nitroglycerine (such as holding onto a rope and jiggling a bottle) and without the need for open flames from fuses or matches.

Transporting Nitroglycerine

Nobel’s blasting-caps, invented in 1862, were a success insofar as they allowed for safe detonation of nitroglycerine. They did not, however, solve the far more dangerous issue of how to transport nitroglycerine.

Because vibrations, jolts and shocks can cause devastation to anyone transporting nitroglycerine, elaborate measures were taken to try and package it so that it was transported in as shock-proof a state as possible. An article in the Titusville Morning Herald of the 15th of October, 1870, said that…

“…The use of nitroglycerin has become so common, and the casualties resulting from any accidental explosion of it have been so frightful, that any improvement which adds to the safety of its transportation and storage deserves any encouragement. Mr. Nobel, the most extensive manufacturer of it in the world, whose name is everywhere associated with the improved explosive agents of the day, adopts the practice of mixing it with alcohol. This is said to make it perfectly harmless, so that a rifle ball may be fired into it, or a percussion cap explode in it with perfect safety. The simplicity of this process, and of that which restores its explosive qualities, recommends it as much as does the safety of the prepared article.

If water be added to the solution, the nitroglycerin immediately sinks to the bottom, and is drawn off for use. In the prepared state, it is packed in hermetically sealed cans, thus preventing the evaporation of the alcohol, which would restore its dangerous qualities to the nitroglycerin, and it may be sent to any distance, and in any climate without the risk of explosion…”

Trying to find a safe way to transport nitroglycerine and to use it became something of an obsession with Alfred Nobel. In 1864, his younger brother Emil Nobel was killed in a nitroglycerine explosion that destroyed their factory. While he was having more and more success with his explosives, Alfred needed something that was much better, more effective and a lot safer. He was beginning to pay the price for his dangerous occupation as an explosives manufacturer.

Inventing Dynamite

Dynamite was finally invented in 1866 when Nobel discovered a substance that would, at the same time bind nitroglycerine together so that it didn’t have to be transported as a liquid in fragile glass bottles, and which would render the explosive harmless until it was ready to be used (or at least, harmless if handled with common sense). This substance was…earth!

Or to be precise, it was diatomaceous earth, also called diatomite, a special type of soft soil a bit like sand. Among its other properties, this earth was very absorbent and was therefore wonderful for mixing with nitroglycerine. Anyone reading this who has a pet cat might recognise this substance…that’s right: Alfred Nobel’s famous invention is a lethally unstable explosive…mixed with kitty-litter! And there is even a legend about how this discovery was made. It was an accident!

To transport nitroglycerine safely, bottles and jars of the stuff were packed into crates and the hollows between the jars were filled with diatomite sand, to cushion the jolting of transportation. When workers were unloading some nitroglycerine near Nobel’s factory one day, they accidently dropped one of the crates! Fearing for their lives, the men bolted! When the cate did not explode, they returned to inspect the damage, which was minimal. Some of the lower jars had broken from the impact, but the sand had done its job and prevented an explosion.

Nobel, searching for a substance to add to nitroglycerine to render it harmless until the time of planned detonation, examined the sand used in packing the nitroglycerine. He experimented with the nitro-infused sand and discovered that if the mixture had a fuse or blasting-cap applied to it, it would detonate, but was otherwise rendered inexplosive due to the sand mixed in with the liquid nitroglycerine.

After further experiments, Nobel had created what he initially called “Nobel’s Blasting Powder” in 1867. His ‘powder’ was created out of a ratio of 3:1 of nitroglycerine to diatomite sand. At last, people had a safe explosive that was as powerful as nitroglycerine but which had none of the instability. The liquid nitroglycerine was mixed in with the earth and the resulting paste was formed into sticks which were wrapped in waxed paper. Using dynamite was as easy as inserting a blasting-cap into the end of the stick of dynamite, trailing away a fuse and then lighting it. The fuse would eventually set off the blasting-cap which woud set off the dynamite.

Nobel’s new invention was a success! Nitroglycerine could now be used safely, although for added protection, sticks of dynamite were often frozen solid in transportation as an extra preventive against accidental explosions. The name ‘Dynamite’ comes from the greek word for ‘Power’, from which we also get words such as ‘Dynamo’ and ‘Dynamic’.

Using and Storing Dynamite

Dynamite was fantastically popular. Finally, construction-workers and builders and engineers had a powerful and safe explosive. You buried the sticks of dynamite, stuck in a blasting-cap and a fuse, lit the fuse and let the explosives take their course.

Of course, Dynamite wasn’t always used for peaceful purposes such as construction and public works. Dynamite, as an all-purpose explosive, was easy to buy. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the availability of dynamite meant that it was used for several murder and assassination-plots. One of the most famous was in 1880, when a carpenter planted dynamite under a dining-room in the Winter Palace in Russia, intent on killing Tsar Alexander II. The assassination was a failure, but it showed just how accessible high explosives could be, to the wrong kind of person.

It was because of publicity like this that Alfred Nobel decided to create the prizes that now bear his name.

The Nobel Prizes

First awarded in 1901, the Nobel Prizes are awarded each year, to those who have made outstanding achievements in the areas of Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Medicine and most famously of all, world peace; the famous Nobel Peace Prize.

The prizes were created as a direct result of the unforseen and disastrous consequences that Alfred Nobel had created with his invention: Dynamite. What had been created to help mankind build and construct and advance society, was also being used to destroy it! Horrified by this and troubled by the kind of legacy that he might leave on the world, Nobel instructed in his last will and testament that his fortune was to be used to create a series of prizes to be given to those people who conferred ‘the greatest benefit to mankind’ in the categories listed above – Physics, Chemistry, Physiology and Medicine, Literature and World Peace. Nobel died in December, 1896 at the age of 63, about a week before Christmas. Apart from a few years during the Second World War, Nobel Prizes have been awarded each year for the past 110 years.

Chopsticks. Long, slim, slender, beautiful. Simple in construction, skilled in use and versatile in application. An essential in the East, a mystery in the West. How do you use them? How do you not use them? And where did they come from, anyway?

Chopsticks are the essential Asian eating-utensil. They’re used to eat anything and everything apart from soup (I tried eating soup with chopsticks once…the results weren’t pretty!). Noodles, rice, dumplings, meat, vegetables and desserts. Everything from barbequed pork to peas can be scooped up by two seemingly useless sticks clenched in your fingers. This article will go over the history, use, misuse and culture of chopsticks

History of Chopsticks

Chopsticks have been around for over five thousand years. In their most basic form, they were invented by Chinese people who wanted to try and eat their food (which was cooked in boiling water) without burning their hands. By using two stiff reeds, two twigs or two sticks, early Chinese man discovered that he could pinch food out of a pot of hot water or soup without burning his hands. Necessity is the mother of invention, and in this instance, the necessity for food had resulted in the invention of a safer and easier way to access it.

The very nature of Chinese cooking lent itself well to chopsticks. Food was…and still is…finely chopped into cubes or small chunks. These bite-sized morsels of food were most suitably picked up by chopsticks. The famous Chinese thinker, Confucius, discouraged the use of sharp, pointed implements at the dinnertable, such as knives, and its Western counterpart, the fork (which hadn’t been invented yet, anyway!). It was believed that meals should be eaten when one was relaxed, happy and in a good mood. Knives had connotations of violence and warfare, neither of which had a place at the dinnertable. Since the food was often diced up into small, manageable, bite-sized pieces before serving anyway, knives were unnecessary. Because of this, and because of the popularity of Confucian teachings, use of chopsticks in China spread quickly. By 500AD, it is believed that chopsticks had already spread to neighbouring countries, such as Japan, Thailand, Korea and Vietnam.

In Chinese, chopsticks are called “kuai zi”, meaning ‘swift’ or ‘quick’. Previous to this, chopsticks were called “zhu”. ‘Zhu’ in Chinese was a synonym with the Chinese word for ‘Stop’. Superstitious Chinese sailors believed that this was bad luck, and therefore named their favoured eating utensils something more appropriate. Surely chopsticks that were ‘fast’ would speed their ships to a swift and safe journey, instead of robbing their sails of wind!

Chopsticks have been made of dozens of materials over the centuries. The most common material used to be bamboo. Bamboo is thin, abundant, easily split into thin sticks, carries no odour or taste that might affect the taste of the food and most importantly…did not conduct heat! But bamboo wasn’t the only material that the Chinese made their chopsticks out of. Various woods, metals and other materials were also used, from jade, to gold, silver and ivory! Some chopsticks were even made of bone. Bamboo and wood chopsticks were the most common ones for everyday use. Gold, jade, silver and ivory chopsticks were extremely expensive and could only be used by the wealthy or royalty. Silver chopsticks were favoured by the Chinese Imperial Family because it was believed that silver reacted with various poisons. This isn’t always the case, however and the myth that the Chinese royals ate with silver to prevent assassination has been debunked. Jade, silver and gold chopsticks were often so expensive that they were usually only ornamental and were placed on altars when praying to ancestors. Ivory chopsticks were the least expensive of the expensive chopsticks, but were still highly prized. Even today, owning a pair of ivory chopsticks is seen as a satus-symbol because of their expensive nature and rarity.

Two pairs of jade chopsticks. These are most likely for display-purposes only

What’s In a Name?

In Western society, Kuai zi are known as ‘chopsticks’. Why? Why not Chinese Eating Utensils? Or Food-sticks? Meal-pokers or Chinky Pincers?

Exactly how the name ‘chopsticks’ came about, or even who coined this term, has been lost to history. Most likely, it was invented by a Western visitor to China, who dreamt up the ‘Chinese-sounding’ name when trying to figure out a way to name the strange, thin, tapering sticks that were thrust into his hands. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first published use of the word ‘chopsticks’ to refer to a pair of tapered eating-utensils was in 1699. The adventurer William Dampier, in his book “Voyages and Descriptions” makes first mention of these curious Oriental oddities and that English sailors had coined the name ‘chopsticks’ when referring to them.

Eating with Chopsticks

For those who aren’t raised around chopsticks, learning how to use them effectively can be something of a challenge. Among the ‘gui lo’*, being the only one in your group of friends who has mastered the ancient art of eating balls of fish with a pair of sticks can sometimes be seen as a mark of respectability, skill, intelligence, breeding and cultural exploration! (Oooh, fancy!) But is it really such an elusive, difficult and frustrating skill to learn?

No.

It may take some time, but anyone with two hands and ten fingers can learn how to master the use of chopsticks.

I remember the first time I used chopsticks. It was…like…seeing the light. And believe me, it was a relief. Before I learned, I was the only member of my family other than my younger cousin, who couldn’t use chopsticks, something that I found incredibly embarrassing, coming from a Chinese family! After nearly ten years of watching everyone else do it, I finally managed to pick up the damn things and figure out how they worked. How to use this wonder-creation to eat food with was some time in coming, but I got there eventually.

So, how do you learn how to use chopsticks? When you have mastered the art, a dazzling white light shoots out of the end of them and brands you with…no it doesn’t, I kid. Anyway, down to business.

To begin with, chopsticks are traditionally held in the right hand. Don’t ask why, I’ve no idea. But they are. You can hold them in your left hand if you wish, as there’s no real hard-and-fast rule about this, but well, traditions should be upheld, shouldn’t they?

Chopsticks are actually a lot easier to hold and use than some people would have you think. With the ends of the chopsticks flush with each other, grasp the sticks around their middle as you would hold a pen for writing. Your index finger should be on top of the chopsticks, your middle finger behind the chopsticks and your ring and pinkie-fingers should be beneath the chopsticks, supporting them. Your thumb should be across the front of the chopsticks, next to your index finger.

This is the basic hold. To actually grasp food with your chopsticks, you need to make them open and shut, like a pair of tongs or pincers. To do this, you simply force your middle finger between the two sticks. Pushing your finger between the sticks opens them, while withdrawing your finger makes them spring shut again. This is the basic open-and-shut movement that allows you to grasp food with your chopsticks. With practice, you’ll get the hang of it. Some things are easy to grasp with chopsticks, other things are not. Round things such as fish-balls, pork-balls, beans and peas can be tricky to grasp with chopsticks. Don’t squeeze the sticks and the food too hard if what you’re trying to scoop up is round in shape – too much pressure can cause the food to be squeezed out from between your chopsticks, with the end result being that they go flying across the room.

Chopstick Etiquette

Chopstick etiquette is important to know, and knowledge of a few basic chopstick-rules are important before you go out to a Chinese restaurant with your Asian friends and start eating with them, no matter how well you have mastered the actual practicalities of chopstick-use.

Like in the West with silverware and cutlery, Asian chopsticks have their own rules and regulations that you’re expected to know. Unlike conventional Western table-manners, though, Asian chopstick etiquette is as varied as a bag of M&Ms. Rules and etiquette change from country to country to country all throughout Asia. Here’s some of the more common ‘universal’ rules that you should know…

- Never drum your chopsticks on your bowl, or use them as drumsticks in any way. In times gone by, this was the action done by beggars when trying to solicit food or money.

- Never wave your chopsticks around. Not only is it not polite, it doesn’t look cool.

- Never stick your chopsticks upright in a bowl of food. This resembles the positioning of incense-sticks which Taoist Chinese use to pray to deceased relatives.

NEVER do this. EVER. Not even if someone’s pointing a gun at your head

- If pausing while eating, it’s best to lay your chopsticks horizontally across the top of your bowl. Not only is it neat, it’s easier to pick them up afterwards. If a chopstick-rest has been provided, use that instead.

- Avoid trying to harpoon your food with your chopsticks. Chopsticks are used to grab food, not to spear it. Plus, Chinese chopsticks are often too blunt to try and do this anyway.

- Don’t use your chopsticks to grab food from a communal serving-dish if communal utensils have already been provided. Fishing food out of a steamboat (or chafing-dish) soup with your chopsticks is generally considered acceptable, though.

- In Chinese culture, spoons are only used to eat soup. It’s perfectly acceptable (and probably even expected of you) to hold your rice-bowl up to your mouth and push your rice in with your chopsticks. This varies in other cultures, though, so watch others before doing it yourself.

- Traditionalists will always insist that you grasp your chopsticks in the middle and that grasping them at either the bottom or top is bad luck. Supersitious people will maintain that it affects the kind of person you’re going to marry (my grandmother believed that, and used to tell me off about it!). It doesn’t really matter which end you hold your chopsticks by. If holding it nearer to the bottom provides better control, do it.

- Don’t nibble on your chopsticks. It’s considered rude. Plus, chopsticks generally don’t taste very nice.

- Always use your chopsticks as a pair of sticks, never on their own. And when using them, make sure that they’re even and that the ends are level with each other.

Hopefully this article has educated all of you a bit about the history and use of chopsticks. Happy dining!

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*’Gui lo‘ is a Cantonese word meaning people of Caucasian ethnicity, commonly used by Chinese people to refer to their white friends.