When was the nail invented?

Answer 1

Invention of the Nail

From bookrags.com;

"The earliest nails were probably made in the Middle-East about 5,000 years ago. Metal was heated and then pounded into the desired shape."

This is from an e-text at the University of Virginia:

"For hundreds of years men had made wood frames for houses out of heavy timbers (often a foot or more thick) which were joined together by cutting down the end of one timber to form a tenon which could be fitted into a hole, or mortise, which had been cut out of the other timber. If the joint had to support a pull, rather than a thrust, the two pieces were fastened together with a wooden peg driven through auger holes.

"With the invention of nail-making machinery early in the nineteenth century, and the resulting availability of cheap nails, the way was open to the development in the United States of a new construction which soon replaced the old type and which has been used throughout the country ever since. This was the balloon frame (so nicknamed, in contempt for its lightness, by traditional carpenters and builders), which the mid-century builders G. E. and F. W. Woodward described as characterized by light sticks, which did not require laborious mortising and tenoning, and (in language very reminiscent of that used in contemporary descriptions of American locomotives) by 'a close basket-like manner of construction.' The balloon-frame house is nailed together with light studs only two inches by four inches, but is so tied and strengthened that every nail holds to its utmost strength."