The History of Innovation was a particularly interesting study unit for me in one of my junior high school science classes. Our final project was a presentation on our favorite invention.
Most students chose the television, the telephone, or the car. One classmate, Axel, picked fire. Cue our seventh-grade eye rolls. Every classroom has an Axel.
I was the only student who selected the invention that I chose. And sixty years later, it still remains my favorite invention. Imagine my shock, while doing my library research, in discovering that my invention could be traced to Ancient Egypt as far back as at least 2600 BC.
When one student, Steve, awkwardly made his presentation, praising the telephone which went “all the way back” to 1876, I remember smirking to myself and thinking that my invention beat Steve’s boring, unoriginal choice by 4,500 years. And I also noted that he was one of three unoriginally-named Steves in the class.
There was one other startling discovery about my brilliant choice (well, it WAS brilliant, and this now 77-year-old teacher’s pet received an A+ on it). The discovery was that it utilized dead donkeys in two incredible ways. Yep, you read that right. Who knew that the Egyptians even had domesticated donkeys in 2600 BC? Horses wouldn’t be introduced until a thousand years later.
Once the donkey was dead, they cremated it in a cave fire (otherwise known as Axel’s favorite invention). From the ashes they extracted two of the three ingredients for their invention. The first was soot, which the faithful donkey had left in plentiful supply. The second was a particular part of the dead donkey that they had removed before cremating the animal.
Now they could assemble my favorite invention. They first simply stirred a bit of water in with the soot. This gave them —ta da!—sooty water. My guess is this mixture had been around since the first time a primitive man doused a fire. Nothing inventive here.
But once the extract from the severed donkey part was added, the magic happened and civilization took a giant leap forward. The severed part was the hoof. The Egyptians boiled it until its connective tissues were melted—or rendered—and became an amazing protein collagen glue! This is why, centuries later, when old horses had to be put down, they were sent “to the glue factory.”
And so my favorite invention, as all you clever readers have no doubt figured out, was INK. The sooty fluid had a distinctive, easy-to-read black color, and the glue was necessary to bind the black liquid to the object it was printed upon.
When I first thought about my favorite invention, I’d considered paper but discovered it wasn’t invented until 2500 years later in China. Yes, the Egyptians wrote on papyrus, and the cave dwellers created a similar paint–like liquid for their cave drawings, but black ink, as we know it today, only truly wedded and amalgamated perfectly with white paper starting in 100 AD.
I was last to do my presentation. When I concluded (to a resounding standing ovation—in my head), I mentioned that no one else had brought in a visual aid, since their cars, TVs, and even phones were a bit of a nuisance to transport. With a flourish, I politely asked the teacher if I might pass my presentation notes around the class so my fellow students could see what dead donkeys, soot, and water had wrought 4500 years ago. He,of course, enthusiastically encouraged it, with a big smile on his face for me. I could sense all the other students deciding that I was the biggest suck-up in the history of Westlane Junior High School.
Yes, every classroom has an Elliot.
Email Elliot at huffam@me.com or click here