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In strong contrast with the varied resources of modern toil are the simple tools and implements of prehistoric skill which, modified much or little, are at this hour still indispensable to the mechanic, the builder, the engineer. These simple aids early became admirable in form so as to be all the more useful. Says Mr. George Bourne:—

“The beauty of tools is not accidental but inherent and essential. The contours of a ship’s sail bellying in the wind are not more inevitable, nor more graceful, than the curves of an adze-head or of a plowshare. Cast in iron or steel, the gracefulness of a plowshare is less destructible than the metal, yet pliant, within the limits of its type. It changes for different soils; it is widened out or narrowed; it is deep-grooved or shallow; not because of caprice at the foundry or to satisfy an artistic fad, but to meet the technical demands of the expert plowman. The most familiar example of beauty indicating subtle technique is supplied by the admired shape of boats, which is so variable, says an old coastguardsman, that the boat best adapted for one stretch of shore may be dangerous if not entirely useless at another stretch ten miles away. And as technique determines the design of a boat, or of a wagon, or of a plowshare, so it controls absolutely the fashioning of tools, and is responsible for any beauty or form they possess. Of all tools, none, of course, is more exquisite than a fiddle-bow. But the fiddle-bow never could have been perfected, because there would have been no call for its tapering delicacy, its calculated balance of lightness and strength, had not the violinist’s technique reached such marvelous fineness of power. For it is the accomplished artist who is fastidious as to his tools; the bungling beginner can bungle with anything. The fiddle-bow, however, affords only one example of a rule which is equally well exemplified by many humbler tools. Quarryman’s pick, coachman’s whip, cricket-bat, fishing-rod, trowel, all have their intimate relation to the skill of those who use them; and like animals and plants adapting themselves each to its own place in the universal order, they attain to beauty by force of being fit. That law of adaptation which shapes the wings of a swallow and prescribes the poise and elegance of the branches of trees, is the same that demands symmetry in the corn-rick and convexity in the barrel; and that, exerting itself with matchless precision through the trained senses of haymakers and woodmen, gives the final curve to the handles of their scythes and the shafts of their axes. Hence the beauty of a tool is an unfailing sign that in the proper handling of it technique is present.”[8]

[8] Cornhill Magazine, London, September, 1903.

In the course of a judicious review of the mechanical engineering of machine tools, Mr. Charles Griffin has this to say regarding convenience:—[9]

[9] Engineering Magazine, New York, May, 1901.