2.2 Inventions

English home language

Grade 7

Module 6

Inventions

Listen to an imaginary start to your day long, long ago….

PICTURE THIS

You wake up in the morning when it gets light. No electricity yet. There are also no alarm clocks to jolt you awake - they weren’t invented until 1847. Instead of struggling out of bed (no beds for a few thousand years), you crawl out of a pile of skins. Your clothes are skins too; people didn’t figure out how to spin wool or weave cloth for another thousand years or so. You don’t need to worry about brushing your teeth. The Chinese invented toothbrushes only about the time Columbus sailed to America (1492). Electric toothbrushes didn’t come along until 1961.

You are in for some surprises for breakfast too. Forget about cornflakes swimming in delicious cold milk. John and Will Kellogg didn’t invent Kellogg’s Corn Flakes until 1898, and there were no electric refrigerators to keep milk cold until the early 1900s. Breakfast 10 000 years ago is a bone left over from yesterday’s kill. If you feel the need to go to the bathroom, head for the bushes. There were no flush toilets until an English poet named Sir John Harrington designed and built one for himself in about 1596.

And so we could go on and on….

Inventions were often as a result of people wanting to make things more comfortable or as labour-saving devices. Take the wheel for example. The wheel made carrying heavy loads much easier.

Proverbs inspired by inventions?

1. _______________is the mother of invention.
2. Where there is a______________there is a way.
3. If at first you don’t___________, try, try and try again.

INVENTING

Every moment of your day you are surrounded by INVENTIONS. Just think of all the inventions in your morning from the time you get up till first break: a shower; hair-dryer; toothbrush; flush toilet; toaster; kettle; television; car; calculator; plastic lunchbox…Needless to say, the list could go on and on.

What to do

• Make a list of household and school appliances which you use daily.
• Now compare your list within your group.
• Pick out the TOP TEN according to your group and list them in order of importance in YOUR life. (This is easy if you think about being dropped off in some remote place without any of the inventions you have listed. Which ten would you miss most?)

What to do next

• Write a piece of no more than 150 words entitled IMAGINE LIFE WITHOUT…
• Write 4 paragraphs - 1. Introduction.

- 2. What you COULD live without if you absolutely HAD to, but with great difficulty.

- 3. What you absolutely could NOT survive without at all and why.

- 4. Ending.

• Be original and try a touch of humour.

FOR THE EDUCATOR : Encourage use of mind maps. Remember drafts, editing, and peer checking.

OLD AND NEW

In each list, THREE of the items are modern inventions and humans have used ONE of them for hundreds of years. Spot the odd one out and highlight it.

1. polythene, leather, elastic, fibreglass
2. margarine, cornflakes, honey, potato crisps
3. radio, television, refrigerator, clock
4. polystyrene, plastic, glass, nylon
5. button, zip fastener, stud, Velcro