"How would you like to be able to start up an interesting conversation at a cocktail party?"

If you want to strike up a conversation or perhaps impress someone at a cocktail party, look at some object in the room. Perhaps a corkscrew or a soft drink can, and ask them if they ever thought about how these objects came into being.

Author Joel Levy's appealing and informative book entitled REALLY USEFUL: THE ORIGINS OF EVERYDAY THINGS will provide you with the information to continue your conversation. According to Levy "your house is a kind of museum. In every room, on every surface, are the exhibits: everyday things that you take for granted, but each of which has its own story."

The book is a superb endeavour that leads the reader from room to room pointing out the origins and components of such items as deodorant, toothpaste, shaving cream, eyeglasses, razor blades, Tupperware, plastic band aids, tea bags, instant coffee, tooth brushes, mirrors, showers, plugs and switches, toilets and toilet paper and many more that we presume have always existed.

For example, did you know, as the book mentions, "cave paintings and archaeological finds show that prehistoric man was shaving at least as far back as 30, 000 BC. Stone- age cultures used sharp-edged flints, shells, shark's teeth, or volcanic obsidian glass, implements that were still in use under medieval Aztecs and other Stone-Age cultures right up to the 20th century." Perhaps you were not aware that toilet paper dates back to the sixth-century China, but in most parts of the world was a rare commodity until the 17th and 18th century.

Levy also takes us outside the home and tells us about some of the toys we play with, such as the Frisbee. You probably are not aware that the modern recreation of tossing the Frisbee all started at Harvard and Yale in the 1940s. Apparently students attending these Universities amused themselves by throwing around shallow tin pie-pans from the William R. Frisbie bakery of Bridgeport, Connecticut. A gentleman by the name of Walter Frederick Morrison, who was inspired by flying saucers, created his own flying disks and sold his patent to a company called Wham-O Manufacturing. Initially the toy was called "flying saucers." The president of the company, Richard Kerr, decided to name the disks Frisbee after he visited the campuses of Harvard and Yale. We all know how successful the toy became.

These are a sampling of the more than the 100 objects and "goodies" Levy writes about in a book that will surely interest young and old. In fact, for most readers, it will probably be a book to slowly digest during the course of several readings. After all, you do want to be able to remember many of the tidbits.

Reviewed by Norman Goldman
Courtesy Bookpleasures
Posted December 26, 2002

Summary

You undoubtedly know what a paperclip is and how to use it, but did you know that during the Second World War the people of Norway adopted paperclips as a symbol of protest against the occupying Nazis? Really Useful tells these and other stories of how the things we use every day came into being.

As much a sociological history as a compendium of entertaining stories, Really Useful takes you on a tour from the kitchen to the bathroom to the office and beyond. Along the way it tells us about the technology, design, social conditions and even intrigue that contributed to these remarkable innovations, which include:
- sliced bread, microwave oven, coffee, tea bags, corkscrew and Teflon
- razor blades, Band-Aids, the toothbrush, lipstick and tissues
- air conditioning, buttons, vacuum cleaners, stockings and neon lights
- Post-It notes, the floppy disk, smoke detectors, fireworks and the battery
- barcodes, traffic lights, parking meters, padlocks

We sometimes curse these things as just so much clutter but in fact they form the fabric of our daily lives and we'd be lost without them. The stories of their origins are as interesting and illuminating as these objects are truly useful.