Invention

Where does Bristle toothbrush come from?

Brushes with stiff hog bristles set in bone or bamboo handles were being used in China centuries before William Addis began mass-producing toothbrushes in England around 1780.

Source: en.wikipedia.org ↗

More Inventions

Invention

Cat's eye (road reflector)

📍 Halifax, England

Cat's eyes were invented by Percy Shaw of Halifax, England, who patented them in 1934 and named them after a cat's eyeshine. Wartime blackouts showed their value and helped spread them across British roads.

Invention

Ski chairlift

📍 Sun Valley, Idaho, USA

The world's first ski chairlifts opened in 1936 at Sun Valley, Idaho. A railroad engineer, Jim Curran, designed them by swapping the hooks of a banana-loading conveyor for chairs.

Invention

Stethoscope

📍 Paris, France

French doctor René Laennec invented it in 1816 at a Paris hospital, after noticing that a rolled-up sheet of paper carried heart sounds to his ear. His first version was a simple wooden tube.

More from Asia

Food

Cloves

📍 North Moluccas, Indonesia

Until colonial times, cloves grew only on a few small islands in Indonesia's Moluccas, the original “Spice Islands”, such as Ternate and Tidore. Chinese merchants sailed there to trade for them.

Nature

Chrysanthemum (garden mum)

📍 China

Garden chrysanthemums were bred in China for many centuries before they reached Japan. There the flower became the emperor's emblem, which is why the Japanese monarchy is called the Chrysanthemum Throne.

Word

Curry (the word)

📍 Southern India

Curry comes from kari, a word for spiced sauce in Tamil and neighbouring South Indian languages. Portuguese traders made it caril, and English picked it up from them in the 1590s.