This week in history I learned about the pencil, stethoscope, the tunneling shield, and paved roads.
First, I learned about the pencil. Before the pencil people would use clay tablets to carve symbols in the clay, then they would bake the clay in the fire to harden. Later they used beeswax which could then be erased. One day someone found a graphite mine and then people started to use it to write with. Later, a wood casing was added. To make a pencil all you do is put a piece of graphite in between two pieces of wood.
Second, I learned about the stethoscope. Hospitals were built by the church for the sick and the needy. A young man (who was a Christian) went to a hospital to learn how to care for people. One day an overweight woman walked in his office and he couldn’t feel her pulse, and putting his ear on her chest would be very embarrassing, so he rolled up a piece of paper and put it on her chest. He was pleasantly surprised that it worked very well. The young man saw children with a tube, one child put one end of the tube to their ear, the other tapped a pin at the end of the tube.
Third, I learned about the tunneling shield. There was a desperate need to tunnel under the Thams River. Lots of people tried and failed. Marc Isambard Brunell studied the Ship Worm which had a head that was shield like. Marc invented the shield which would have men dig in little rooms on the shield, then when the men were done the shield would move forward leaving bricks behind.
Fourth, I learned about the paved road. Roads were not smooth back in the day. The Romans used big stones to make their roads while John McAdam crushed the stones then laid them down.
The most interesting thing I learned about this week was the pencil. The pencil is very useful because I would not be able to write this essay without it!
The four inventions I learned about this week helped the people back in the day as well as in the modern world make their lives easier.
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