The comb, that most ancient of personal accessories, enabled anyone to keep that promise close. Plastics held out the promise of a new material and cultural democracy. The arrival of these malleable and versatile materials gave producers the ability to create a treasure trove of new products while expanding opportunities for people of modest means to become consumers. That new elasticity unfixed social boundaries as well. Plastics freed us from the confines of the natural world, from the material constraints and limited supplies that had long bounded human activity. The story of the humble comb's makeover is part of the much larger story of how we ourselves have been transformed by plastics. Ever since, combs generally have been made of one kind of plastic or another. And having crossed that material Rubicon, comb makers never went back. Combs were among the first and most popular objects made of celluloid. But in the late nineteenth century, that panoply of possibilities began to fall away with the arrival of a totally new kind of material-celluloid, the first man-made plastic.
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And from the time that humans began using combs instead of their fingers, comb design has scarcely changed, prompting the satirical paper the Onion to publish a piece titled "Comb Technology: Why Is It So Far Behind the Razor and Toothbrush Fields?" The Stone Age craftsman who made the oldest known comb-a small four-toothed number carved from animal bone some eight thousand years ago-would have no trouble knowing what to do with the bright blue plastic version sitting on my bathroom counter.įor most of history, combs were made of almost any material humans had at hand, including bone, tortoiseshell, ivory, rubber, iron, tin, gold, silver, lead, reeds, wood, glass, porcelain, papier-mâché.
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They derive from the most fundamental human tool of all-the hand. Ĭombs are one of our oldest tools, used by humans across cultures and ages for decoration, detangling, and delousing. Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Susan Freinkel's book, Plastic: A Toxic Love Story.