Start hereThomas Coryat wrote that Italians ate with little forks, and he copied the habit. He was describing a custom already in use, not its start. So where did the things we use every day begin?
Many of the things we use every day have no inventor we can name. For a few, a patent gives us a name and a date. For the rest, we have the earliest example found so far, and a new dig or document could push that date back. Here are 12, with where the earliest one found came from, what the sources say, and how sure each answer is.
A quick guide to the evidence: a patent or a first-hand account is a primary source, and it usually tells us the most. An object found in the ground tells us the thing existed, but rarely who made the first one.
At the table
The tools and foods on a dinner table come from several parts of the world, and some of their stories are still argued over.
1. The fork
An English traveller described table forks as an Italian custom in a book printed in 1611.
Thomas Coryat’s account of his travels was first printed in 1611. He wrote that he saw a custom in the Italian towns he passed through that was not used in any other country he visited. He said Italians “doe alwaies at their meales use a little forke when they cut their meat.” He added that most were iron or steel, and the silver ones were used only by gentlemen.
Coryat decided to copy the habit. He kept using a fork in Germany and in England after he came home.
There is an older story too. A history of the fork tells of an 11th-century Byzantine princess who scandalized Venice by eating with a fork at her wedding feast. We did not find a first-hand record of that wedding, so we treat it as a story. The same blog post traces the fork’s origins back to ancient Egypt. Coryat shows forks were already common in Italy, not that they began there.
How sure: Moderate Coryat is a first-hand witness, but he describes a custom that was already in place.
2. Chopsticks
Chopsticks grew from ancient China, but nobody knows exactly when people first ate with them.
Bone sticks from Neolithic ruins at Longqiuzhuang, in Jiangsu, date from between 6600 and 5500 BCE. The historian Q. Edward Wang writes that they look like chopsticks, but scholars generally regarded such sticks as hairpins.
Later finds are clearer. Chopsticks have been found in tombs more than 3,000 years old, a review of Wang’s book notes. The same review says they did not become the main Chinese eating tool until the 12th or 13th century. Spoons were found in those early tombs too, and they are still used alongside chopsticks.
How sure: Strong that they began in China; Limited on the first date, because early sticks may have been hairpins.
3. Noodles
The oldest noodles reported so far come from Lajia, in north-western China, about 4,000 years ago.
In 2005, a team writing in Nature described noodles found in a sealed earthenware bowl at the Late Neolithic site of Lajia. They identified millet as the source of the plant traces in the bowl, and dated the noodle-making to 4,000 years ago. The same team noted that it is debatable whether the Chinese, the Italians or the Arabs invented noodles first.
A later study questioned what the Lajia noodles were made of. Its authors found it impossible to stretch pure millet dough into noodles. They concluded that the plant traces said to come from the noodles may not have been part of the noodles at all.
How sure: Unsettled the bowl is real, but researchers disagree about what was in it.
4. Coffee
The first reliable date for coffee drinking that one historian found points to Aden, around 1454.
William Ukers published his history of coffee in 1922. He put “The First Reliable Coffee Date” at about 1454, when a mufti of Aden came to know coffee on a journey into Abyssinia. On his return, the mufti allowed the dervishes to drink it. Ukers added that coffee was probably known in Aden before that.
You may have heard of a goatherd whose goats found coffee. Ukers reports that the French scholar Antoine Galland called the tales of Omar and the Abyssinian goatherd unworthy of belief as facts of history, while adding that there is some truth in the story of the goats. Galland criticised Antoine Faustus Nairon for accepting those tales. Nairon wrote the first authoritative treatise devoted to coffee only, in 1671. The goatherd is best enjoyed as a legend, not as a date.
How sure: Moderate this rests on one historian’s 1922 reading of older manuscripts.
Keeping clean
Soap and the flushing toilet both have written records, though neither record names the very first maker.
5. Soap
The earliest written mention of soap found so far is on a clay tablet from Mesopotamia.
The tablet is written in cuneiform, the wedge-shaped script of ancient Mesopotamia. A Time article describes the first documented use of soap on a cuneiform tablet found in Girsu. It reports, citing the chemical archaeologist Martin Levey (spelled “Levy” there), that the tablet was written 4,500 years ago and concerns washing and dyeing wool. Levey published a study of early detergents in Babylonian chemistry in the Journal of Chemical Education in 1954, which we could not open.
Much later, a Roman writer gave soap a different home. Pliny the Elder called soap “an invention of the Gauls” for giving a reddish tint to the hair. He said it was prepared from tallow and ashes. Pliny shows how soap was used in his day; the tablet is far older.
How sure: Limited we read the tablet’s date only in a magazine article that credits Levey; we could not open his 1954 study to check it.
6. The flush toilet
Sir John Harington described a water closet he had built at his house near Bath in a book of 1596.
An 1814 editor of The Metamorphosis of Ajax says its stated purpose is to describe a water closet that Harington had invented and set up at Kelston, near Bath. The same editor worked out that the book must have come out before 3 August 1596. He adds that Harington used it as a vehicle for much diverting matter.
So the book is part plan and part joke. It records one early flushing design, not the first toilet ever made. It cannot tell us who first used water to carry waste away.
How sure: Moderate the book is a primary source for Harington’s design, but not for anything older.
What we wear
Shoes and trousers are older than writing, so the evidence comes from finds in the ground.
7. Shoes
A leather shoe from a cave in Armenia is more than 5,000 years old, and plant-fibre sandals from Spain are older still.
In 2008, a leather shoe was found at Areni-1 Cave, in the Vayots Dzor province of Armenia. When they published it in 2010, its finders wrote that it was, to date, the oldest shoe discovered in Eurasia. Radiocarbon tests on the leather give a date range of 3627–3377 BC. It was made from a single piece of leather that wrapped around the foot.
Older footwear is known from southern Spain. A 2023 study of Cueva de los Murciélagos, in southern Spain, reports that radiocarbon tests published in 1996 on two of its esparto-grass sandals and three other objects gave dates between 5200 and 4850 BC. Its own new dates for two more sandals agree that they come from the Neolithic. The 2023 team calls them the earliest and most diverse set of plant-based footwear documented in the prehistory of Europe.
Footwear has been found on other continents too. The 2010 paper notes that sandals from Arnold Research Cave, in Missouri, are older than any footwear found in the Old World up to then. The authors add that the earliest footwear is likely much older than the Areni-1 shoe. Shoes rot, so the oldest ones found are only the ones that survived.
How sure: Strong for the dates of these finds; Unsettled for when people first wore shoes, since older footwear than the Armenian shoe is known and most shoes rot away.
8. Trousers
The oldest trousers found so far were made by horse riders in the Tarim Basin about 3,000 years ago.
Science News reports that herders and horse riders buried at Yanghai, in the Tarim Basin, made trousers between roughly 3,200 and 3,000 years ago. It calls them the oldest such garment known in the world. The site lies about 43 kilometres south-east of the Chinese city of Turfan.
The man who wore them was a rider. A leather bridle, a wooden horse bit and a battle-axe in his grave show he was a horse-riding warrior. Within a few hundred years, other finds show, mobile groups across Eurasia were wearing trousers like these. The article adds that leg covers joined by a flexible crotch piece eased the strain of riding horses over long distances. So the oldest trousers we know of were worn by a rider.
How sure: Moderate this is the oldest pair found, and an older one could still turn up.
9. Eyeglasses
Eyeglasses appeared in Italy, probably in Tuscany, in the late 1200s, but nobody recorded who made the first pair.
In 1305, the friar Giordano da Pisa told a congregation in Florence that the art of making eyeglasses had been found less than twenty years before. One encyclopedia gives the sermon’s date as 1305 or 1306. He said he had seen and spoken to the person who first made them, but the record gives no name.
A Pisa chronicle adds another name. It says the friar Alessandro della Spina made eyeglasses that someone else had first devised, and that the first maker would not share the secret. Historians differ over whether Florence or Pisa was where they were invented. Even the person who met the inventor did not write down a name.
Lenses for seeing far away came later. Concave lenses for short-sighted people are first mentioned in a letter of 25 August 1451.
How sure: Strong for Italy and the period; the town is argued over and the inventor’s name is unknown.
Small things that hold things together
These three have patents, which give names and dates, but each story is a little more tangled than one name.
10. The safety pin
Walter Hunt of New York patented a dress pin with a spring and a clasp on 10 April 1849.
His patent, No. 6,281, is dated 10 April 1849. It describes “a pin made of one piece of wire or metal combining a spring, and clasp or catch”. The History channel’s account calls Hunt’s invention the safety pin, and says he sold the rights for $400.
The idea of a fastening pin is far older than Hunt. An MIT invention programme notes that fastenings such as the safety pin have existed in some form in various cultures for thousands of years. The History channel’s account says ancient Romans used something similar for jewellery, and calls Hunt’s pin an improvement. Hunt’s patent gives one improved pin a name and a date, not the first pin with a catch.
How sure: Strong for the patent and date; the older pins are described only in broad terms by the sources we read.
11. The zip
The zip took two inventors and more than twenty years to work well.
Whitcomb L. Judson of Chicago filed a patent for a “clasp locker or unlocker for shoes” on 7 November 1891. It was published on 29 August 1893. An MIT invention programme says his clasp-locker was somewhat clumsy and frequently jammed, though it did work.
Gideon Sundback, a subject of the King of Sweden living in Meadville, Pennsylvania, patented his “separable fasteners”, filed on 27 August 1914. The patent was granted on 20 March 1917. The MIT programme says that in 1913, after Sundback remodelled Judson’s design, the fastener became a success. The name came later still, from a company selling boots. The same source says the word “zipper” was coined by B.F. Goodrich, whose company began selling galoshes with the fastener in 1923.
How sure: Strong for the patents and dates; Moderate for the naming story, which rests on one source.
12. The paper clip
The familiar double-loop paper clip has no inventor we can name.
In 1899, William Middlebrook patented a machine for making wire paper clips, filed on 27 April and granted on 7 November. The writer Joe Moran notes that one corner of its drawing shows today’s common clip, called the Gem. Moran says the clip is called the Gem because Middlebrook developed his machine for the Gem company in England. Middlebrook did not patent the clip itself, which suggests the clip may be older than the machine. Moran notes that in 1867 the American Samuel B. Fay patented a bent-wire ticket fastener whose patent mentioned it could also hold papers together.
Norway’s claim is famous. Johan Vaaler of Christiania, Norway, patented “Paper Clips or Holders” in the United States, dated 4 June 1901. Moran writes that Vaaler’s design lacked the inner loop that the Gem has. He adds that Norway’s 1999 stamp honouring Vaaler shows the Gem, not Vaaler’s design. The clip in your drawer is the Gem shape, whoever bent it first.
Did a Norwegian invent the paper clip? Vaaler did patent a paper clip, but Moran’s account says it is not the double-loop shape most of us use.
How sure: Moderate the patents are clear, but the first maker of the Gem shape is not recorded in what we read.
Where to learn more
- How printing spread, and what came before Gutenberg: our page on the printing press.
- Clay tablets and the long road to reading for most: our page on writing and literacy.
- Everyday advice and how old it really is: our page Older Than You Think.
- William Ukers’s All About Coffee is free to read on Project Gutenberg, and Coryat’s travels are free on the Internet Archive (links below).
Quick answers
Who invented the fork?
The sources we read name no inventor. Thomas Coryat's account, first printed in 1611, describes Italians already using forks, and he copied the habit.
Where were eyeglasses invented?
In Italy, probably in Tuscany, in the late 1200s. Historians differ over whether Florence or Pisa came first, and nobody recorded who made the first pair.
Who invented the zip?
Whitcomb Judson filed a patent for a clasp locker in 1891. Gideon Sundback remodelled the design, and his fastener, patented in 1917, became the success.
Did a Norwegian invent the paper clip?
Vaaler did patent a paper clip, but Moran's account says it is not the double-loop shape most of us use.
How old is soap?
The earliest written mention found so far is on a clay tablet from Mesopotamia, dated to about 4,500 years ago.
Use this
Our suggestion: three questions to ask the next time you read that something was invented in a certain year.
What is this date based on?
Quick quiz
Nothing is scored or saved. Recalling it once now is what makes it last.
1. Where was the more than 5,000-year-old leather shoe found?
Answer: Areni-1 Cave, Armenia.Read it again ↑
2. Who patented a dress pin with a spring and a clasp in 1849?
Answer: Walter Hunt.Read it again ↑
3. As Ukers reports, how did the scholar Antoine Galland describe the tales of the goatherd who found coffee?
Answer: As unworthy of belief as history, with some truth in them.Read it again ↑
How we checked this · Last checked November 2026
- We read the patents on Google Patents, Coryat's and Harington's own words in scanned reprints, Ukers's 1922 history of coffee and Pliny in translation.
- For the noodles we read the abstracts of the two papers. For the soap tablet we relied on a Time article that credits Martin Levey, and we could not open his 1954 study.
- The story of a Byzantine princess eating with a fork in Venice is told without a first-hand source in what we read, so the page calls it a story.
Checked November 2026.