The invention of scissors is frequently attributed to Leonardo DaVinci (maybe Mona Lisa just needed her hair cut?), but scissors were around long before DaVinci’s time (1452-1519) and the actual person who invented scissors is not known.

In 1500 BC Ancient Egyptians used ‘spring scissors’ with two bronze blades connected at the handles by a thin, flexible strip of bronze – which served to hold the blades in alignment, to allow them to be squeezed together, and to pull them apart when released.

Pivoted scissors or cross-blade scissors were invented around 100 AD by the Romans – made of bronze or iron, in which the blades were pivoted at a point between the tips and the handles. Large-scale production of this type of scissors began in 1761, when Robert Hinchliffe of Sheffield, England first used cast steel to manufacture them.

Scissors, X-Acto knives, and paper cutters are all readily available for your use in the Graphics Lab.