The History of Power Tools

Power tools have been colse to in one form or an additional one since the days of the early Egyptians. They devised special tools made from Copper to help them to excavate and cut the stones that they required for building the wonderfully iconic pyramids.

Power Tools

Some time passes before we are made aware of the next progression or invention of a power tool, this being circa 1Bc when "Screws" or Presses were invented for pressing wine and oil from grapes and olives respectively.

It seemed rather strange that nothing more is recorded in the development of power tools until the early twentieth century. But then again, when I sat down to rethink my quest criteria I realized that it of course depends on your definition of "Power Tools". Whenever I used the words "power tools" in my quest stream, I kept on advent back to the same two old boring facts....Egyptians and wine.

Then I tried a bit of lateral reasoning about what other sorts of power tools there might be. Obviously the word "power" it a bit of a give away. What sorts of power were colse to before the advent of the market revolution? My first plan was steam which lead me right on to steam engines and steam driven machines. Well, after all, what is a tool, if not a machine? So, that would qualify lots of earlier inventions, of course colse to the time of the market revolution, as being power tools.

I was of course brain storming then. What about water power? What about wind power? Using the same criterion that a machine is a tool, of course these other sources of power that were used to propel machines into life must be allowed too?

Ok, now we were cooking! My mind started hedge-hopping all over the place..........

Water power must then qualify the water wheel. Now water wheels have been colse to for a long, long time. The aged Romans used water wheels, and we know from the writings of a roman engineer of the time, one Vitruvius, that this dates back to colse to 31Bc. China got in on the act too, colse to about the same time, 2Bc. Both roman and Chinese water wheels were used for grinding corn etc.

Mills!! Word association came storming in and suddenly I was reasoning about windmills! Goodness gracious, when will it all end? A quick dabble into the history of windmills reveals that they were quite late developers; circa 11th century and mostly developed throughout continental Europe.

So having ultimately and successfully filled in those missing years in power tool evolution since the times of the aged Egyptians, via a tiny lateral thinking, it's time to bring myself back up to date, but still pursuing the plan of power tools being machines too; not just tiny conveyable hand held implements.

The particular biggest leap send in power tool development was the appearance of the first electric motor back in 1831, courtesy of Mr. Michael Faraday. This wasn't an electric motor as we know it today but it proved the phenomenon of inducing electricity, which was the basis for the development that was about to take place.

And now, here we are today with new sources such as the atom (or rather the splitting of), and the sun, solar power.

Well, its been a long and appealing journey, but one which now enables us to trace the history of power tools back, approximately uninterruptedly, to those clever aged Egyptians.

I enjoyed the ride, Hope you did too.

The History of Power Tools