The History of the Chainsaw: It Was Invented for Childbirth

The History of the Chainsaw: how did a tool first drawn in an 18th-century childbirth manual end up as the roaring machine we know today? The answer is one of the strangest origin stories in the history of tools. In 1785, Scottish doctor John Aitken illustrated a small, flexible chain of cutting teeth — hand-powered, and meant for the human body, not for wood. It's the surprising ancestor of an idea that would be invented, forgotten, and reinvented for two centuries before it ever touched a tree. This is the real, messy history of the chainsaw: no single inventor, a hand-cranked "bone machine" from 1830, a bitter race between rival German engineers, and a cutting chain reverse-engineered from a beetle. We trace the whole chain of hands — from Aitken's surgical saw and Bernhard Heine's osteotome, to the loggers battling giant Pacific redwoods, the Stihl-versus-Dolmar fight over the first powered chainsaw, and Joseph Cox's beetle-inspired chipper chain that finally made the chainsaw a one-person tool — and close on the strange irony of what this life-saving invention eventually came to symbolise. In this episode of BeforeSystems you'll discover: Why an 18th-century surgeon wanted a tiny, bendable chainsaw Bernhard Heine's osteotome: a hand-cranked chainsaw from 1830 The giant-tree problem and the first "endless chain saw" patents Stihl vs Dolmar: the real fight over the first electric and gasoline chainsaws How a beetle larva inspired the modern saw chain What the one-man chainsaw did to logging and the world's forests Love hidden history and the surprising origins of everyday objects? Subscribe — a new story drops every week. ▶ Watch the full series: The History of Power Tools    • The History Of Power Tools   And catch the video that led here: The History of the Saw. #history #chainsaw #hiddenhistory #tools #woodworking ———————— FOOTAGE CREDITS (Creative Commons) All footage is used under Creative Commons licenses — Title — Author — License — Source: “Arbeitswelt Forst - Schleifen der Kettensäge mit der Rundfeile” — Alltagskulturen im Rheinland / Andrea Graf / LVR-Institut für Landeskunde und Regionalgeschichte — CC BY — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... “Beetle larva (Chlamisine chrysomelid) with its fecal case” — Alex Popovkin, Bahia, Brazil — CC BY — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... “Chainsaw in use to cut branches - Tokyo area - 2018 10 2” — Nesnad — CC BY — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... “Chainsaw Speed Competition” — Sound, photo & video: Antti Makkonen — CC BY — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... “Komatsu 941 harvester” — Work With Sounds / Video recorder: Pekko Vuorela. Sound recorder: Aleksi Klemetti — CC BY — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... “Leaf Beetle eating Common Plantain (video)” — Katja Schulz — CC BY — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... “Loading an Oregon logging truck” — Maria Thi Mai, BLM, Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington — CC BY — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... “Loading an Oregon logging truck (33614791031)” — Maria Thi Mai, BLM, Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington — CC BY — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... “Tree Felling II: Felling the Tree” — Sound, photo, video: Antti Makkonen — CC BY — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... “Tree Felling IV: Cutting the Trunk” — Sound, photo, video: Antti Makkonen — CC BY — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... License details: CC BY — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ (see each file page for the exact version). No changes were made unless noted.