Unchanged Design
There are things we use every day which have been changing consistently.
For those of you who saw the phone evolve through the 90s and 2000s; how many different designs have you seen? In 2008, the iPhone was launched and phone design just stopped in its tracks. It has not evolved since.
There is an optimum design for every product and once that design is found, it does not change much. Take a laptop for example. There was an optimum design that was discovered in the 90s. It may have become thinner, lost ports, etc but the overall design of the laptop has not moved at all since.
Lindy Effect described the longevity of designs, technologies and ideas.
Lindy Effect ~ The future life expectancy of some non-perishable things, like a technology or an idea, is proportional to their current age.
The corporation as we know it was created sometime in the 1600s. You can rest assured that it will exist in some form for another 400 years. Provided we survive that long.
I want to look at some of the common things that we take for granted today and look at their staying power
The Knife was perhaps one of the first tools developed by humankind. It is so versatile and so useful for so many things. The first knives were made out of stone, mostly flint and obsidian, and date back almost 2.5 million years. The knives that follow modern design date back to 5000 B.C. when copper, tin and bronze were used to make them. The knife has not changed much in design since.
Copper, tin and bronze are soft and hence the knives would blunt quickly. All the innovation has been focused on maintaining the edge longer but the design itself remains solid. You can anticipate this design to hold for many millennia to come.
Spoon — The earliest signs from archaeology that exist date the spoon back to 1000 BC in Egypt where it was made out of wood, ivory, flint and stone. By spoon, we are referring to utensils meant for eating your food rather than stirring the pot. I am sure those would go back a few thousand years more. These seem to have been only created for the Pharaoh.
Similar utensils have also been found in the Shang Dynasty (1600 BC) which ruled during the same period of history. The idea then seems to have found its way to the Greeks and the Romans. It was not until the 13th century that it found its way to England.
Fork — Forks while strongly associated with Western food habits seem to come from China as well. Archaeologists found the first forks made of bones in Gansu, north-central China. These two-pronged forks were used during the Bronze Age (2400–1900 BC) and for several hundred years after. They are not certain if the instruments were used for cooking, eating, serving or simply for poking!
The earliest reference to a two-pronged fork being used as cutlery is from Greece in 1000 CE in the stories of the story of Maria Argyropoulina, a Greek niece of Byzantine Emperor Basil II.
Every cutlery that we use has been around for thousands of years and will be around for thousands more. Their designs have barely changed during this time!
A horse’s foot is like your nail, it is dead protein, which is why it is possible to nail horseshoes into them. Horses required shoes because they were not meant to run hundreds of kilometres. Domestication by humans meant they got used as transport. The human foot is rather fragile and needs protection against rocks, stones, thorns and shrubs.
Shoe — The oldest sandals date back to 7000 to 8000 BC, found in the Fort Rock Cave in what is Oregon today, it was made with sagebrush bark. The leather shoe as we know it today was first found in Armenia and dated back to 3500 BC. Made with a single cowhide and laced up with leather it resembles what a shoe would look like today.
The basic structure of the shoe has not evolved much in the past 5000 years. Discovery of new materials has made it possible to make the shoes more robust and possess a varied look but the fundamentals have remained the same.
Slipper — In the West slippers first appeared in 1478 in written records. In China, slippers were used in courts as early as 4700 BC made out of Cotton and Woven Rush. It was also found in Native American culture in the form of moccasins.
Chair — Chairs were a bit of a privilege in ancient times. They used to be called Thrones. While many of the thrones were cut in rocks the first standalone chairs made of wood came from ancient Egypt and date back to 2750 BC.
It is amazing how much they resemble what we use today. After Egypt, chairs have been found in Greece and Rome dating back to the first century BC and further
Table — Similarly, some of the oldest tables that we have come from ancient Egypt and date back to 2500 BC. While the earliest examples are just stone platforms, wooden tables have been found in tombs. The structure of a table as well as the varieties have not changed much since those days.
It is amazing how many things that we take for granted in our lives and surroundings have been designed several millennia ago and have not changed in form quite that much.
