All products change and evolve in either their look, their functionality, or both. People always like to point to the toothbrush as something that has not changed in hundreds of years but the fact is that the electric toothbrush market is changing all the time with new products and product changes. So if something as simple as the toothbrush can change dramatically over the years then can the same be said for the most basic of hand tools category?
The hand tools category I am speaking of is the hammer. If you find pictures of hammers from thousands of years ago they look a lot like the hammers we use today. But it wasn’t until some inventive people in the last 50 years started to add to this hand tools category that we started to see the changes and advances in this very basic hand tools category. From completely crazy inventions like a hammer with a motorized head that is supposed to hammer automatically to simple upgrades like the sledgehammer we get to see changes in this hand tools category that we may take for granted.
A sledgehammer is designed to do the heavy work and for a very long time it is how people did demolition on large projects. But there was an advancement that replaced the sledgehammer and made everyone’s lives so much easier and that advancement was the jackhammer. Most people take a jackhammer for granted but ask a construction worker mow much more difficult their job would be if they did not have this hand tools category advancement available to them. Something tells me they would say that the jackhammer is a great advancement in hammers and many could not do their jobs without it.
Getting The Air To Do The Hammering
Several years ago hand tool manufacturers started to experiment with air powered tools. What came out of all of this was probably the greatest advancement for the hand tools category of the hammer since the invention of the claw hammer head. The air driven nail gun has replaced the hammer as the tool of choice for home builders and other construction people alike and it has made the process of framing a room, or a house, so much easier. Anything you used to do with a hammer is now made easier by the invention of the air driven nail gun and many a contractor, and their thumbs, are probably very happy with this advancement in technology.