Ahtanum Valley Museum

Originally, of course, all writing was done by hand. The first ever person to patent a typewriter was Henry Mill. His idea is entered in the records in the British Patent Office in 1714. Unfortunately Henry Mill never got around to manufacturing his machine due to impatience with manufacturing it. More types of typewriters were invented after this, but were huge and heavy, some resembling the size of a piano, and took actually longer to use than handwriting itself, which obviously defeated the object!

Chronological Handbag History 14th Century: The 14th century is the first time any kind of written word was found about handbags. The Egyptians wore them as a status symbol in the form of a leather or animal skin pouch that was worn around the waist. Each pouch was either embroidered or has jewels sewn on it.

One of the earliest brain games is the Rubik's Cube (1974). With 54 separate cubes which need to be combined together, the Rubik's Cube is an amazing game which is played world-wide and is known as one of the three miracles in the brain games category, along with "Hua Rongdao" in China and Solitaire in France. The popularity of the Rubik's Cube goes that far that people even hold world-wide tournaments and competitions for it. Everyone wants to complete the cube in as few steps as possible and some of them even find themselves addicted to this cube, attempting over and over to become the best. To become good with the Rubik's Cube you should have a good sense of abstract thinking and also be excellent at coordination. Playing the Rubik's Cube can help cultivate a strategic plan and also boost your confidence because the player must deal with a lot of cubes at the same time. In order to complete the cube, good memory and hands-on work are also required, for that reason, the cube is also used in retirement homes to help the seniors keep their minds active.

"Hua Rongdao", also known as "Klotski", was invented by John Harold Fleming in 1932 but only became famous in China in combination with the story of the "Three Kingdoms". It is a very simple game with ten blocks in a square frame, and the final goal is to remove the biggest one from the exit without extracting the other blocks which are different in size. It is a game which has a big emphasis on strategic planning, cooperation and leadership.

Today the handbag is also known as a purse, but handbag history tells that the original meaning of a purse was a bag for holding money. Men and women in early history had no way to carry coins except in a drawstring pouch called a purse. What started out to be merely a way to carry personal items has also become a fashion statement. And women today have many choices and styles when it comes to selecting a handbag.

The most well-known one is the round chess board with three horizontal lines and three vertical lines combined into a cross, with 7 holes in each line. At beginning of the game, every hole has a glass ball except the center hole which is used as the starting point. The glass ball has to be used to jump over the other ball to the empty hole whether in a vertical or horizontal direction. The glass balls will be less and less and the criteria for success are: the less, the better. The record of this game is to just have one ball left in the center hole completed in 18 steps, which was marked as the world record by the University of Cambridge. It is an amazing puzzle which can be used to challenge ones intelligence.

In the 1970's a Remington was still used and most students had to complete an RSA Certificate of competence in typing. This took a lot of time and care and if an error was made Tippex was used to correct errors. In the 1980s computers became more and more advanced and of course today we have the modern computer (thank goodness for that)!