Scissors

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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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. 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 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, 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?

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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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,

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 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 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 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. 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 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 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

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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 of Invention, head on over to invention pod dot com. That's the website. And if you want to support the show, the best thing you can do is tell your friends

about us. Make sure you have subscribed to the show, and if you have the power to do so, give us some a nice star rating, leave us a nice review. That sort of thing helps out the show in the long run. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other suggest topic for the future, just to say hello, You can email us at contact at invention bob dot com.

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