Bandage scissors, Have you ever needed a pair of scissors and couldn’t find one? No doubt you were extremely frustrated. Although scissors are one of mankind’s most low-tech inventions (two strips of metal joined at a pivot point), their uses are manifold and there seems to be no substitute. Imagine trying to cut a piece of paper without a pair of scissors, cutting out an article from a newspaper or magazine without scissors, opening a package tied up with string without scissors, etc.
On the other hand, this essential and simple piece of
mechanical equipment can be precisely engineered to carry out a whole host of specialized procedures, such as the butcher’s scissors for cutting meat, the chef’s scissors for preparing delectable meals, the barber’s scissors for cutting and trimming hair, the surgeon’s scissors for delicately cutting into vital bodily organs, etc.
Given their
basic simplicity and wide range of uses, I believe scissors unquestionably merit a premier place on the list of what I like to call “extraordinary ordinary things.”
You may have noticed I have been somewhat loose with the words I have been using to describe this amazingly simple instrument. This is because it is generally viewed from two perspectives, which are interchangeable.
First, the word “scissors” when used alone is always plural. Grammatically, you shouldn’t talk about
“a” scissors, but only scissors. Bandage scissors For example, the scissors are (plural) on the table. However, you can also say the pair of scissors is (singular) on the table. This is very similar to the way we talk about trousers, i.e. there is a pair of trousers on the hanger or there are trousers on the hanger. But this is a whole different discussion.
Since scissors are fundamentally so simple and useful, you might be tempted to guess that they were invented a very long time ago. And you would be right.
The earliest known scissors appeared in Mesopotamia (in the region of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers) 3,000-4,000 years ago. However, they weren’t like most versions of modern scissors. Instead of being fixed by a pivot, they consisted of bronze blades and handles held together by a thin, flexible curved bronze strip or spring. This spring served to hold the blades in alignment, allowing them to be squeezed together for cutting, and then pulled apart when released.
This basic design endured into the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The basic manufacturing procedure consisted of two stages.
