Have you ever wondered how the tools we now take for granted in the building and engineering trades started to be developed?

The first hand tools were weapons, born of man's most basic instinct - to survive. These were, in effect, dual purpose tools, combining the functions of killing prey and eliminating competition. Made from wood, bone and stone, their shape, and consequently their function, was limited.

Having devised tools to kill animals, man then needed further tools to skin and process them, for clothing as well as for food. Skinning or fletching hides was a common activity in the Bronze Age, when tools could be made in clay moulds to any desired shape. However, the relative softness of bronze put significant limitations on its use for both weapons and domestic tools.

The major advance of the Romans was to discover, quite by accident, that iron ore thrown into a clay oven creates iron. By adding charcoal from the furnace to the melted iron, they then progressed to the manufacture of crude steel.

Steel versus bronze in battle proved to have the same devastating effect as did bullets versus bows an arrows in the later conquering of native North and South American tribes by European invaders. In due course, as we all know, the Romans' victories took them to lands throughout and beyond Europe, but into a world that quickly learnt from them how to make weapons and tools of steel.

Most of the hand tools that are commonplace today - pincers, pliers, hammers, saws and crude wood screws and drivers - were developed under the Romans. Much later on, in the Middle Ages, tools such as clamps and files were developed to fashion and shape steel. Much later still, in the Industrial Revolutions of the 18th and 19th Centuries, new engineering skills developed as well as advanced skills in carpentry. Even as late as the Second World War, tool shape and size was governed by how metal could be shaped. Ergonomics, or the designing of a tool to fit the shape of the hand, was inconceivable. The function of the tool and how it could be formed through forging and dies were the only manufacturing criteria.

The advent of plastics changed the evolution of tools dramatically and irrevocably. At last, comfort and function could be combined even at the design stage. The first development was PVC dipped handles, so that the hand did not have to be in contact with cold, bare metal. Secondly came moulded plastic handles, which allowed a handle to be made which really fitted the hand. Thirdly, and more recently, was the development of soft but incredibly hardwearing plastic for handles.

A typical example of how function and materials can combine to enhance the performance of a long-established tool are the latest adjustable wrenches. Featuring a specially designed jaw that grips and turns the flat of the nut, rather than the corner, these tools have imperial and metric graduations and an 'I' beam construction for lightness and strength. All the original design strengths of the steel tool have been given greater adaptability and user-friendliness by the addition of soft-grip moulded plastic handles. These modern advantages are replicated throughout many modern ranges of hand tools, bringing technical advances and true ease of use within the grasp of engineers and contractors.

Think of these developments when you next gaze down the shelves at Till and Whitehead - and profit from the ingenuity of human evolution!