Today in history

[resonant]

Wonder who got the first paper cut ever?

It would require machine-cut paper, wouldn't it? Handmade paper has a soft, thin edge. Old books have an uneven or deckled edge top and bottom, and the outer edge was folded over and had to be cut with a paper knife, and I can't imagine that a paper knife could cut evenly enough to make a cutting edge out of the paper. Newsprint won't cut.

Sometime in the past, oh, hundred and fifty years, someone discovered for the first time that, whoa, paper could cut you. I'd like to know when and who.

Comments

[kalpurna.livejournal.com]

That is a really interesting question, come to think of it. He must have felt so betrayed. WTF? Paper can hurt me now? What next, pillows?!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

No, no, not the comfy chair!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Maybe it was the start of the whole modern bad-news industry, where sunshine and bacon and butter are all bad for you.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

Hah, yeah, and don't drink the water!


Been thinking about it seriously, though. Had two main conclusions: a) there was heavy paper, single shee documents, and I'm sure those edges cut?! b) once we had the really dangerous industrial paper, it was by it's nature so widely distributed that I guess there had to be more than one person who semi-simultaneously cut themselves. *nods sagely*

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

GOOD QUESTION! I wonder what the OED has to say about paper cuts?

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Do you have one? (An OED, not a paper cut. Though I've got a paper cut, which was the origin of this whole line of thought.)

[libitina]

a full text search of the OED for "paper cut" and "paper-cut," which options it considers equal, returned no results other than sources talking about paper having been deliberately cut.

[cyprinella]

Hm. I've gotten paper-cut like cuts off of blades of grass. Maybe they were just called grass cuts first.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Me too! I'd mostly get those when I was trying to pick a good blade of grass to whistle with.

[moonpupy.livejournal.com]

Some days you just scare me.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Hey! All I'm trying to do is advance human knowledge here!

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

*spews wine*

[swtalmnd]

actually, I've gotten papercuts off of thick things like cardboard boxes and watercolour paper, so I think it was probably longer ago than all that

[shored.livejournal.com]

Ditto, man. Cardboard cuts hurt like a bitch.

[marici.livejournal.com]

And it's so rarely just one -- the evil things come in packs.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Oh, me too on the cardboard -- cereal boxes are the worst.

But with cardboard, you've got the same issue -- it would have to be machine-cut.

Watercolor paper I don't know anything about, though.

[libitina]

You think the factor is more that it is machine cut than that it has a lower rag content?

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I don't know enough about paper making to guess what the significance of the rag content would be -- does a higher rag content make paper softer?

I think you probably need two elements: paper of a certain crispness, and machine cutting to give you that perfectly uniform edge.

It kind of worries me how much I'm thinking about this.

[shored.livejournal.com]

Hah, this makes me want to stead some homemade paper from the art school and see if I could give myself a papercut on it. Oh, the things I do in the interest of science. ;)

[fullygoldy.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking you've identified a key point with the machine-cut edges. I've been cut by all kinds of paper products. I can ask my cousin's wife if she's ever had a paper cut from hand-made paper. She works with it all the time.

[lotesse]

That? Is a wonderful wonder.

[raucousraven.livejournal.com]

paper could cut you

Uh... I guess turnabout is fair play?

[the-star-fish.livejournal.com]

I used to work in a paper mill ... my own personal best was 14 papercuts in one day.

Ow.

You have the coolest brain EVER.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

How old is rock paper scissors?

[cluegirl.livejournal.com]

I know the game was originally Japanese, (and called Gan, Ken, Pon) and I think it was pre-opening to the West at very least, but I'm not positive exactly how old.

[vass]

I'm now imagining the lack of sympathy and/or belief the first paper-cut victim must have received.

[fenris_wolf0]

I hate to disillusion you, but but newsprint can cut if you are sufficiently awkward or unlucky: I have had paper cuts from newspaper pages... and yes, grass blades too.

:(

[fer-de-lance.livejournal.com]

Hee, that is so very like the sorts of things I ponder.

For instance, I have frequently wondered when the first roadkill happened -- did it make the newspaper somewhere? Was it treated like a freak accident, that a horseless carriage and a critter had somehow managed to be on the road at the exact same time and place? Did anyone ever foresee such a thing being a major influence on local wildlife populations? When did it happen, and what sort of vehicle was it? I would think it wouldn't happen till cars could achieve reasonable speeds, but if it were at night the lights might make even a very slow automobile more of a threat.

I'm thrilled to find out there is someone else who actually sits around contemplating this sort of thing. :D

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow! I'd never thought of that, but obviously there must have been a time when a vehicle ran over an animal for the first time.

Do you suppose a horse-drawn carriage killed animals, or did that require a motor? (As an aside, I've been helping the kidlet doing a report on the first gas-powered car in the U.S., and so I've learned that it didn't have brakes. Oh, yeah, good idea.)

Robert Heinlein once praised science fiction by saying something like: Once trains were invented, anyone could have predicted the automobile, but it took a genius to predict a traffic jam.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Of course horse-drawn carriages killed animals. They killed *people*, after all. Animals wouldn't have even been noticed -- what's a stray dog here or there when the streets were crawling with them?

[fer-de-lance.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I suppose a runaway carriage could certainly hit someone's dog and trample it, or something. I think I was contemplating wildlife incidents, subconsciously. The first deer/badger/other "uncommon" thing.

Also, I suppose I tend to associate "road" with motorised vehicles, and carriage accidents with urban areas (aside from the very convenient losing/damaging a wheel, which inevitably occurs in the middle of nowhere near the Romantic Interest's or Evil Power's mansion).

I was contemplating the Headlight Effect, as well -- I imagine it would be easy for even a slow, early automobile to hit an animal at night even if it had little chance of doing so by day. At what point did bright electric lamps become a component of cars, does anyone know? :D I do recall them being mentioned in Watership Down, but with no indication of how common or how new such a thing would be. (Rabbits not being much for the study of vintage vehicles.) :D

[skuf.livejournal.com]

I'd think fresh papyrus could give pretty nasty cuts? Vellum probably not, though? Which could mean there was a dark ages of paper cuts, too :o)

[elizabeth-rice.livejournal.com]

LOL

[elizabeth-rice.livejournal.com]

Now that you've mentioned it, so would I. :)

[lydia-petze.livejournal.com]

And imagine his reaction!

"Dude, the PAPER cut me!"

"Pull the other one mate."

"I'm not kidding, it DID! OWWW!"

"You big baby."

[delurker.livejournal.com]

Paper cuts are like a small betrayal, aren't they? It's all nice and safe and wonderful, and then bamm! slicing you open, and you're all, "What? What did I do wrong? I've done that a thousand times before and it was perfectly safe..." And being the first person would totally suck, because there would be mockage, and no bandaids with pictures on them as a consolation prize.

[cluegirl.livejournal.com]

I've got papercuts from leaves on trees before though. I don't think it's an accident that paper units were sometimes called 'leaves'.