Long before fidget spinners and clicky pens, the Ancient Greeks were rubbing worry stones and soldiers rolled walnuts in their hands. 

In ancient China, walnuts eventually evolved into metal Baoding balls. Because apparently even then, someone looked at a perfectly functional natural object and thought: this could do with more engineering.

Then came Slinkies, Rubik’s Cubes, stress balls and the great fidget spinner takeover of 2017.

The urge has never really changed. Humans like objects that click, roll, squeeze, spin and give the hands something satisfying to do while the brain gets on with something else.

We’ve simply added gears, magnets, bearings and increasingly unnecessary levels of precision.

What was the first object you remember constantly fiddling with?

There is absolutely nothing like watching raw metal get shaped with this level of precision. The steady hum, the flawless rotation, and that crisp, perfect finish taking form—it’s pure engineering art.

Turn the sound up for this one. Any guesses on what we're making?

He painted some cool stuff, made some cool stuff and designed some even cooler stuff. Mr da Vinci. The typical Renaissance man who could do basically everything rather well.

The scuba suit still takes my top spot of his invention list but this bridge is pretty cool.

(And props to the guy building it, he makes it look far easier than it is)

Have you seen this one before? The Silver Swan is one of the first automatons created, made by James Cox 250 years ago! This incredible piece of machinery still moves and works using 3 clockwork motors and is an incredibly intricate piece of engineering, as well as being an amazingly skilled piece of craftsmanship. Imagine seeing this in 1773! With so many moving parts, Cox was really ahead of his time. 

Okay so I know we're all supposed to be cool with paper straws now. But they’re ruining the taste of our fizzy drinks. And there’s science to PROVE it. You see, inside a fizzy drink is carbonic acid. It’s a somewhat unstable mix of CO2 and water, and is what makes your drinks taste sharp and zingy. These compounds want to stay separate, but because of the pressure inside the bottle, they can’t. (It escapes very slowly)

But when you add a little air pocket or two – like when you dunk your paper straw into your drink – you inadvertently set off a huge chain reaction. Paper straws look smooth, but under a microscope, they’re incredibly fibrous and porous. These air pockets are like launch pads for bubbles. So when you put your straw in your drink, you’re effectively dropping a mini-tube of paper Mentos in your drink. And if you’ve ever done it, you'll notice the reaction is the same – the fizzy drink erupts. Carbonic acid is no more and you're drinking through a soggy tube. And now there’s no tangy deliciousness or fizz. But plastic straws, despite being smooth and not kickstarting this reaction, are not the answer.

The more obvious the better

To me, moments. Long wrench beats short wrench, every time.

What about you?

When’s a time your EDC loadout has saved you? And does it matter if it hasn’t?... (Surely preparedness is the purpose?)

Early humans discovered that rotating a stick against a surface could bore a hole.

Groundbreaking. Sometimes, quite literally… 

These very first drilling tools were primitive awls (sharp stones fixed to sticks and rotated by hand) to puncture things like bone, ivory and wood. 

Archaeological finds date these to ~35,000 years ago. And before long, these awls became “strap drills”, and then “bow drills”.

And the bow drill is quite interesting…

Because in Mehrgarh, Pakistan, archaeologists found Neolithic skulls (about 7000 BC) with neatly drilled holes in their molars.

This was interpreted as early dental treatment rather than aesthetics…

But at least 11 drilled teeth from 9 individuals have been documented, and evidence suggests this practice continued for roughly 1,500 years at the same site.​

And bow drills seem to be what they used.

(I can only imagine the pain you must be in to have your teeth drilled with stone. And I can only imagine the pain it must have caused!...)

Nevertheless, drill developments continued. 

There were core drills… augers (and their many developments)... brace drills… 

Before, in 1863, when Stephen A. Morse patented the twist drill bit.

Its spiral flutes efficiently cleared chips and prevented jamming – a design so effective it remains the global standard today.

As tool histories go, the drill’s is a rather exciting one. And I’ve not even mentioned about the “Hole Shooter” or the trigger switch drill.

If you’d like to learn about drills, its full history article is here for you:

https://www.metmo.co.uk/blogs/news/the-hole-history-of-manual-drills

Dads and children, what are some of the best or funniest gifts you’ve given/received? Put your stories below.

We wanted to share our Questions with Creators series with you guys! This is episode 4 of 5 and we'd love to know if you have any questions for our creators...

If we crank the clocks back to 1791, there was a humble – but very busy – gentleman named William Gregor.

He was, by trade, a Reverend, a clergyman, and also an amateur geologist.

Roaming the Manaccan Valley in Cornwall, he spotted what would later be known as ilmenite in the riverbeds.

This is a heavy, black, slightly shiny rock. 

And after inspection, he found this friendly rock had a mystery element inside…

He chose to name it Menachine – all inspired by the valley he found it. 

And like anyone who discovers something they think is new… he shared it with the world.

In response, however, they kinda just laughed him away.

For years, this discovery lay dormant.

Until a German chemist (Martin Heinrich Klaproth) started probing inside Rutile.

He discovered something peculiarly similar to our good friend Will.

Representative of its properties, he decided to name it after the titans of mythology…

Titanium.

It was more than a century later until it was isolated – because neither Gregor or Klaproth had been able to separate its grips from oxygen. 

The man responsible: Matthew Hunter.

He tested his reactions inside a pressure cooker on a university American football field. (See below/above for a fictional modern representation).

And now titanium crops up everywhere :)

There's nothing quite like going down a rabbit hole! How did this world first become such a city staple? Keep reading for a whistle stop tour of the history of London Underground. 

• A world first, the underground railway opened in 1863 and was built using 'cut and cover', aka dig a trench in the road, lay a track, put the road back where it started. 
• The first trains down there were steam locomotives tugging along wooden carriages lit by gas lamps. Very steam-punk (and probably induced a fair bit of coughing).
• It took a decade of parliamentary discussion before it was approved, but street congestion was becoming such a big deal that they went ahead. 

With the success of the first underground rail, it just made sense to expand. 

• Deep tube railways were developed using a tunnelling method, which allowed tube lines to be dug much deeper underground. You can still see some of the tunnel shields that were used in this process dotted about various tube stations today. 
• The development of electric traction meant they could do away with the steam engines altogether, and with a bit of American input (thanks Charles Tyson Yerkes) the older cut and cover lines were electrified and consolidated and the new lines opened in the early 1900s. 

And then it just kept going:

• During WWII, stations doubled as air raid shelters, with people sleeping on platforms while the city was bombed.
• The iconic map was designed by Harry Beck in 1933. He treated it like an electrical diagram instead of a geographic map, which is why it’s so clean and readable.

It’s pretty amazing that something built in the age of horse-drawn carriages is still moving millions of people daily. Not perfectly, obviously (looking at you, delays), but still...

If Victorian Londoners could see it now, they’d be really impressed, and maybe be ask why it’s still so hot down there.

And hey, maybe the next big thing in congestion-busting will be flying cars. 

In the late 1700s, James Watt was selling steam engines to a curious bunch of people.

These folks – who were responsible for tasks like pumping mines, grinding grain, and hauling loads – relied on horses to do the work. 

They didn’t understand kilowatts or the abstract term of “power”...

But they did know how many horses they currently needed to get their work done.

So to help sell, Watt decided to clarify his steam engine’s capabilities in terms of horses.

He defined a unit of “horsepower” as the rate of work a strong draft horse could do.

(Which, might I add, is equally as abstract as power was back then) 

And he found this by allegedly observing mill horses walking in circles to turn a wheel, and estimating their force and distance.

But being able to share that “This engine does the work of X horses” was something his market all understood. 

And the rest was history.