Hey Youtube, Jim here!
Welcome to Top 10 Archive!
You know how French fries aren’t really french?
And French toast isn’t really french… and tacos from Taco Bell are kind of an abomination
to the Mexican culture?
Sometimes, we have things in our everyday lives whose origins we have no idea about!
And, today, we have a whole list of things we see every day with surprising origins!
From vending machines to corkscrews, chainsaws and more, find out just where these things
were invented in this list of the top 10 shocking origins of everyday products!
But before we get started, why not become an archivist today by clicking that subscribe
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section, tell us an invention that you can't live without!
10.
Vending Machines Vending machines are so common nowadays that,
while your high school is still selling Pepsi, Japan even sells puppies in them.
Though, it’s likely that you don’t know where these machines even come from.
The idea actually comes from the Ancient Greeks, from Hero of Alexandria, to be exact.
He was a mathematician and engineer in the 1st Century AD.
His machine was designed to dispense, of all things, holy water!
A coin would be inserted, a lever would be triggered, and a valve would let out some
holy water.
Something tells me this was an easy machine to hack, though.
Still, I guess you’ve got the honor system, I suppose, because stealing holy water cannot
be good karma.
9.
High Heels Okay, this one you might have a slight clue
about.
High heels are a staple shoe statement in women’s fashion.
I mean, you have your kitten heels, high heeled boots, your wedges, your red bottoms, how
do I know all this stuff?
Well, because our lovely writer, Ximena, put these words in my mouth, of course.
Vote Ximena for a Nobel Peace Prize!
Alright Ximena, that's enough!
Anyways, back in the day, people were wearing them for very different reasons.
They were protective overshoes in the Middle Ages!
Usually made of wood and worn over normal shoes, they’d be worn to elevate the person
above the disgusting things that you’d find on the street.
I mean, with no plumbing or disposal of trash, things were just… out there, thrown out
of windows and front doors.
Why do you think the plague spread during this time?
Heels would also be worn for gripping stirrups on horses to prevent the foot from moving
around or slipping off.
In fact, cowboy boots still have them today!
8.
Brandy If you order Brandy at a bar, people generally
think “ah, a person of good taste!”.
It’s not your average bottom-shelf liquor.
In fact, it can go for a pretty penny!
It’s crazy to think about how that doesn’t quite match its origins.
See, the inventor of Brandy, a Dutch sea captain, wasn’t trying to make something for people
to drink at all..
He wanted to concentrate wine in order to transport it easier and lower the import tax.
He distilled it to remove the water and leave a more concentrated liquor to which he could
later dilute and drink.
Turns out, the resulting liquid didn’t taste half bad!
7.
Nike Shoes Co-founder of Nike, Bill Bowerman, is behind
this particular story.
He was running coach in Oregon and was looking to invent a shoe sole that could achieve both
the grip the runner needed and avoid the spikes.
So, how did he think of it in the end?
His answer came to him during breakfast, I mean, in his breakfast.
What?
During a regular morning in 1971, he was observing his waffle iron and the grooves and patterns
it made.
So, why not make shoe soles with it?
That’s exactly what he did and the shoe became a hit!
In fact, you can buy a similar type of the original shoe, the Nike Waffle, to this day.
6.
Croissant Are you going to be heartbroken when I tell
you the one food we all pronounce in French, isn’t actually French?
Well, grab a Kleenex, because that’s the case.
A similarly-shaped dessert named a Kipferl (doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, does
it?) is probably the origin of the croissant.
It’s mentioned in Austria all the way back in the 13th Century and was created by a man
named August Zang.
This guy owned a Viennese bakery in Paris, so… that kind of counts as French origins,
right?
He made and sold the Kipferl and the French went nuts for it, so soon other bakeries started
offering it as well.
Eventually, people found Kipferl so hard to pronounce that they just called it a croissant,
thanks to its crescent shape.
I, for one, would have gone with “moon bread”, but sure, that works too.
5.
The Chainsaw There was a very regular use to chainsaws
before Scarface and Texas murderers came around.
Just kidding, it was totally morbid.
Bernhard Heine, its creator, was a German Orthopaedist who would use the item for, well,
cutting up the human body.
The original device was much like the one we know today.
It had sharp teeth attached to a chain that rotated, but it wasn’t electric, it was
manual.
So you would have to, with the strength of your arm, cut up a leg.
It became a very popular surgical instrument in the 19th century.
4.
The Corkscrew Ah, one of our household favorites.
Next to the Oreo, this is probably one of the best inventions in my kitchen.
It was invented a long time ago, which makes sense, because wine is old, right?
Surprisingly, it actually wasn’t made to be a wine opener.
It was a “gun worm” used for removing unused gun cartridges from musket barrels.
It wasn’t even thought to be useful for wine until 50 years later when someone didn’t
know how to open a wine bottle.
Nowadays, you see all kinds of contraptions on Youtube, from shoes to nails.
The first patented corkscrew wasn’t created until 1795, when Samuell Henshall, an Englishman,
incorporated a disk at the top of the screw to keep it from going into the cork too deeply.
3.
Gum Gum isn’t just something we have for no
apparent reason, or rather, to spend that last .75 cents at the register.
In fact, gum, unlike money, naturally comes from trees.
Of course, that’s not the kind we chew, we have a man-made kind.
It was created in 1848 by a man named Thomas Adams, who wanted to make a synthetic rubber
out of natural chicle gum.
The synthetic rubber could be used for tires, boots, and toys.
Everything failed, though, and he was left with a limp, and useless product.
Now, in a way that we can only wonder about, and trust me, I often do, the product ended
up in Adams’s mouth.
He realized that maybe he couldn’t use the gum for manufacturing products, but it could
be the product he sold!
It was yummy, the consistency was nice, what could go wrong?
Originally, the gum he made was as cheap as one penny per strip, and he made lots at his
very first gum factory.
2.
Chips What would dip be without chips?
An abomination, that's what!.
The chip invention goes back to New York in 1853 when a man named George Crum, a cook
at a Moon’s Lake House in Saratoga, clapped back at a customer who kept sending back his
french fries, saying they were too thick.
Although Crum made a thinner batch, the customer was still unsatisfied.
Crum, who became agitated with the customer, made the fries as thin as he could, hoping
to piss off the patron.
Crum stood by, waiting to see a disgusted look on the customers face, but instead, was
praised for making such a tasty treat.
And thus, potato chips were born!
Crum went on to produce the product, which he named "Saratoga Chips", and "potato crunches",
and sold them in New England and at his own restaurant that he eventually opened.
1.
Play-Doh When you have a product like Play-Doh, you
pretty much assume nobody created that on purpose.
It’s been around since 1955 as a children’s toy, but before that, about 20 years before
actually, it was sold as, wait for it… wallpaper cleaner.
Who doesn’t need to clean their wallpapers?
The parent company also manufactured soap and was trying to find a new way to make money
because they were struggling to turn a profit.
Since homes were often heated with coal fires, wallpaper was vulnerable to the black soot.
Once gas heaters took over, sales plummeted, so they were forced to find another alternative
use for the putty.
And that's when the inventor’s sister-in-law, Kay Zufall, found a brand new use for it in
her nursery school!
The rest is history; sticky, messy, history.