History of toys

The education of children from the ancient Romans was not very fond. But, like all caring parents, they, of course, tried to please the kids with a good toy. Usually toys are given for exemplary behavior, but in Rome there were holidays - saturnalia, in which toys were presented to children and for bad behavior - as a token of forgiveness of their antics and misdemeanors. Many pranks - many toys. And the "assortment" of toys by that time was already quite large.

Which game on Earth originated the very first? Do not try to find the answer to this question - it probably is not. After all, a person began to play from the very first days of his existence. Since ancient times, toys are known for copying adult objects - onions, arrows, sledges, boats. The small inhabitants of ancient Egypt already had the real dolls of wood and cloth, animal figures, balls made of leather. Did toys and ivory, amber, silver, marble. Of course, children from the common people toys were simpler - from wood, clay, but they were brightly colored.

The first written mention of the game is found in ancient Greek mythology. According to one of the legends, the children of Queen Niobe were playing in "pebbles."There are drawings on the ancient Greek vases, which depicts women, amused by this game. And in the "Iliad" Homer, talking about the hero of the Trojan War Patrocles, says that he still boy led into the wrath of his comrades, constantly beating them in the "five pebbles.""Pebbles" - a game simple, you can play it anywhere - at home, on a walk, on the beach or the river. It is enough to find five small pebbles( about the size of a hazelnut).The meaning of the game is to execute various figures, manipulating pebbles, for example: throwing one, having time to raise three, four remaining ones from the floor, and so on. There are almost no people playing this game now-new, much more interesting games have appeared. But the toy for the youngest, found during the excavations of Pompeii, has not changed much, without it you, or your parents, or your parents' parents. It's a rattle.

It would be a mistake to think that in those days there were only such simple toys. Not at all. Someone very accurately noticed that a good toy can arise only in the event that the master, its creating, the adult person, he will start to play, and play seriously. Many ancient amusements of adults often contained elements of the most important discoveries made only many centuries after the creation of the toy. It happened with the toys of Heron of Alexandria, who made his name famous by many wonderful inventions. The dates of Heron's birth and death are not known exactly. Obviously, he lived at the end of the II - beginning of the I century BC.Geron described the fire pump, the water body, invented an automatic device for selling "sacred" water( by the way, we use almost the same automatic machines today).And yet the most amazing invention, perhaps, is the Geron's eolipil. It was a big ball, into which were four curved tubes. This ball was strengthened on the axis above the fire. When Geron filled the ball with water and lit a fire under it, gurgling was heard first, then steam began to break out from the pipes with a whistle, and the ball slowly came to spin. He spun faster and faster, throwing out a stream of steam that enveloped him with a white cloud. People who saw this miracle, but did not know its devices, thought that the balloon was "impure" force.

Mechanical toy. The end of XIX century.

An old toy using the principle of a steam jet engine.

Now such a toy is not surprising, but eolipil - prototype of steam turbines, which appeared in 2 millennia. This toy can be considered one of the first jet engines.

The most intricate, most complex toys were made in the XVII-XIX centuries. These were real mechanical miracles. Here is a smart hare gnawing a carrot and still ears. The beautiful woman holds a compact with a powder in her hand and, looking in the mirror, flaunts herself. Mechanical May bug, equal in size to live, crawls, moves antennae, raises wings. But a whole regiment of soldiers to fight a tiny drum marches along a tiny street. ..

Toys of that time often served to decorate rooms and were stored as family jewelry, they were inherited.

Toy store. The middle of the XIX century.

Then did doll houses with complete furnishings, rare furniture, quite like real, utensils made of silver, ivory, porcelain. And everything was copied from the present so thoroughly that today historians, artists, and art historians often resort to the help of these original toy directories. On the orders of dolls, we can judge the skills of weavers, seamstresses, lace makers, models of past centuries.

Often toys were made in order to surprise, not even hit a child, and adults, highlighting the richness and exquisite taste of their master. That's how( or something like that) could look like a party in one of the palaces of France, Germany, Italy about 300 years ago. The servants greeted the guests and led them to a large elegant hall. Hundreds of candles burn. In the center of the hall on a large platform is a harpsichord, next to which a fashionably dressed girl sits on a chair in anticipation of the public. On the sign of the owner, she stands, bowing to the guests and, sitting down at the harpsichord, begins to play. She plays perfectly. True, her stern, fixed face and bound figure do not harmonize well with beautiful music. Having finished the game, she stands up, bowing to listeners, waiting for applause. And suddenly he stops. A rumble of amazement rolls around the hall. The guests realized that the "actress" was just a big lifeless doll. The owner is pleased with his invention.

Mechanical toy. The end of XIX century.

There were many interesting mechanical toys in Russia. After the Patriotic War of 1812, there appeared an endless number of wooden soldiers - mounted, pedestrians, with guns, singly and whole platoons. The most varied sizes are those that are tiny, almost the size of a cedar nut, then a vertex, two, three. They were often supplied with a winding mechanism, and, for example, the brave drummers beat their drums with a bang.

Strangely enough, but in the Russian toy was played and the famous Gargantua, created by the imagination of the French writer Rabelais. First, with foreign engraving, he got into the Russian popular print under the name of "nice popivali and devoured", and then moved to a toy that depicted the same "eating" - with a huge head, protruding eyes and a wide open mouth, into which, if you rotate the handle, roasted ducks, pigs and other food were flying from the dishes.

At the beginning of the last century, Russian society was dominated by sentimentalism and romanticism. There were toys-birds, gently and sadly squeaking when pushing a small fur in their stand, toys-birds, nursed chicks. Out of the hands of the Troitsky handicraftsmen came the dandy and the young lady. He - in plaid trousers, in a black coat, with hair on his temples and a chic coca on his forehead. She is in a crinoline and a pink dress with a strange hairdo and a huge flower in her hand. Turning the handle in the stand, you could bring the dandy and the young lady into motion, and they started ceremoniously bowing according to the etiquette that reigned in the living rooms of our great-grandmothers.

Another favorite toy of the same time in different versions is a blue pond in front of one or several painted houses. On the pond from one house to another or around them float the white swans driven by the rotating handle. Well, did not the same picture actually occur in the manors of the landowners who liked to build artificial islands with a bird house in their ponds in front of their estates and to let swans, real and wooden, swim around?

In these toys swimming "geese-swans" was accompanied by music. The handle that drove them propelled them and rotated the drum with stretched strings, and a goose feather touched them, and as a result, a quiet melodic trick resembled the sounds of those eolian harps that were put on the roofs of arbours or among the branches surrounding the "mysterious»Ponds.

In addition to adult toys, the guys themselves made it. In Russian villages at the beginning of this century the most common toy was a homemade rag doll. Even in poor peasant huts, where the main entertainment of children served as bast shoes, spoons, wooden eggs, sometimes lived dozens of such dolls. They were done this way: a piece of cloth was folded tightly - this is the trunk. The upper part was covered with a white linen rag - the face is ready. The braid was usually braided from a tow. But here's how to dress a doll - it was here that the imagination of the master was required. In business there were shreds chintz, кумача, китайки.Dresses were decorated with embroidery, braid, even candy wrappers were used. The making of dolls and games with them was strongly encouraged by adults, because in this way the girls learned to cut, sew, embroider, spin, comprehend the ability to dress.

This century has come with its rapid development of technology, it's time for new toys. Throughout the world, the boys loved the mechanical designer. It consisted of holey planochek, miniature nuts and bolts, with the help of which it was possible to build cranes, bridges, carts. But very few people know that this wonderful game, developing imagination and ingenuity, was invented not by an engineer, but by a shop assistant from a butcher's shop in the city of Liverpool F. Hornby. The happy idea is to drill the bolt holes in the slats so that they can be screwed at different distances and at different angles, came to him in the night of 1900 on a train. Subsequently, the inventor found for his game and a good name - "mechano".Every year the new game became more complicated, became more and more interesting and varied. The mechanical cart was followed by locomotives, then by airplanes.

Wooden toy "Sukharevsky market".

Now in the world there are hundreds of different types of designers. One Italian company has even produced a kit, from which parts can be made the machines invented by Leonardo da Vinci - various cranes, a stone crusher, etc. "Every day your child will have a new toy. And he will do it himself "- this is the basic principle of manufacturers of designers. There are sets of which you can collect anything you want: from an ordinary house to a spaceship. In their basis - multi-colored plastic "bricks", on which are attached various construction, perfectly fitted to each other elements. Such construction kits are also not a new toy. They were invented in the last century by the German J. Liebig, who is known not as a toy maker, but as the founder of a whole science - agrochemistry.

What games are the most popular today? In place of simple pebbles came the latest achievements of "adult" technology, and above all electronics. With her help, and created a lot of exciting video games that quickly develop practical skills in working with modern technology, and the early development of computer technology allows you to become a qualified programmer before leaving school. For example, in extra-curricular circles of schools in different countries, the children themselves model a living heart, a nuclear reactor, a small enterprise management system. And children often outperform their teachers in their ability to program and understand programs.

Sometimes you can hear the statement that electronic games, they say, do not give anything to the player. Indeed, musculature with electronic football or hockey can not catch up. But the purpose of these games is completely different: they develop a speed of reaction, ingenuity, the ability to assess the situation and make the right decision.

In many countries, special games are produced that train the reaction speed. In one of them, the lions depicted on the display tend to get out of the cage through the side gates. The task of the player is to prevent this by controlling the buttons with two watchmen. The opponent of the player - but the essence of the chip, which controls the lions. If you successfully cope with the task, the chip itself speeds up the movement of the lions, forcing them to make false moves, in other words, it is a contest of a person with "cunning" and speed of the microelectronic circuit. And I must say that the style, options, and techniques of gaming computers are practically unlimited.

Do you know?

What game is recognized as the "game of the last century"?

Rubik's Cube. It was created in 1974 by the Hungarian architect Erna Rubik.27 miniature cubes, making up a large, contain 3 billion color combinations. The task of the player is to achieve that each side of the big cube becomes one-color. Random search gives little to solve the problem, since 43 · 1018 combinations of positions of cubes are possible. If you randomly execute 10 different combinations per second, then you will need millions of years to solve the problem. Therefore, we must act reasonably. Training ingenuity and the fascination of finding a solution to the problem made this game popular all over the world.