hardware store

No, it is a place with lots of metal and wood.

A hardware store.

Oh, like when you need to fix something around the house.

Exactly.

That is the best way to learn.

Context helps memory.

Do you go to hardware stores often, Lucas?

Every weekend.

a very small group of geometric designs with endless permutations of length, material, thread pitch.

So he's asking, how long has this been true? Was the physical world always held together by these fundamental units? When were they invented, and by whom? What preceded them? And the one that gets me, were we always able to walk into a hardware store and pick up standardized hardware off the shelf, or is that a much more modern innovation than we expect?

The short answer is that the concept of the screw is ancient, 4th century BC, but the standardized, interchangeable hardware store fastener is essentially a 19th and 20th century invention.

And the thing that trips people up is that the screw spent roughly 2,000 years as a machine before it

held anything together.

The idea of using it to clamp two things together permanently, that came much later.

So let's find out how old the hardware aisle really is.

Before we get to the hardware store, we have to go back to what people used before there were any screws at all.

I got you.

You want me to hardware store? No, I have that one.

I want the real one.

Which one do you want? Sifting through the nuts and bolts.

You guys want to look up some conflicting information.

I did it during the latter half of John's news.

Here's a man who spends hours in hardware stores.

Sifting through the nuts and bolts of

On the main street itself are a number of buildings of extraordinary importance.

Smith's Hotel and the Continental and the Mariposa House and the two banks, the Commercial and the Exchange, to say nothing of McCarthy's Block, erected in 1878, and Glover's Hardware Store with the Odd Fellows Hall above it.

Then on the cross street that intersects Missinaabie Street at the main corner, there is the post office and the fire hall and the Young Men's Christian Association and the office of the Mariposa News Packet.

In fact, to the eye of discernment, a perfect jostle of public institutions comparable only to Threadneedle Street or Lower Broadway.

To the careless eye, the scene on the main street of a summer afternoon is one of deep and unbroken peace.

The empty street sleeps in the sunshine.

There is a horse and buggy tied to the hitching post in front of Glover's Hardware Store.

There is, usually and commonly, the burly figure of Mr. Smith, proprietor of Smith's Hotel, standing in his checkered waistcoat on the steps of his hostelry.

No dentists today.

Today, we are going to the hardware store.

In Danish, that is byggemarked or jernhandel.

A hardware store.

Right.

I love those places.

"Tak for hjælpen."

Brilliant.