A tool is a device that can be used to produce an item or achieve a task, but that is not consumed in the process. Informally the word is also used to describe a procedure or process with a specific purpose. Tools that are used in particular fields or activities may have different designations such as ''Instrument'', ''Utensil'', ''Implement'', ''Machine'', or ''Apparatus''.

History

Anthropologists believe that the use of tools was an important step in the evolution of mankind. Humans evolved an opposable thumb — useful in holding tools — and increased dramatically in intelligence, which aided in the use of tools. Because tools are used extensively by both humans and wild chimpanzees, it is widely assumed that the first routine use of tools took place prior to the divergence between the two species. These early tools, however, were likely made of perishable materials such as sticks, or consisted of unmodified stones that cannot be distinguished from other stones as tools. The beginning of the Stone Age marks the era when hominins first began manufacturing stone tools, and evidence of these tools dates back at least 2.6 million years in Ethiopia. One of the earliest distinguishable stone tool forms is the hand axe.

Tools are the most important items that the ancient humans used to climb to the top of the food chain; by inventing tools, they were able to accomplish tasks that human bodies could not, such as using a spear or bow and arrow to kill prey, since their teeth were not sharp enough to pierce many animals' skins.

The transition from stone to metal tools roughly coincided with the development of agriculture around the 4th millennium BC. Mechanical devices experienced a major expansion in their use in the Middle Ages with the systematic employment of new energy sources: water (waterwheels) and wind (windmills).

Machine tools occasioned a surge in producing new tools in the industrial revolution. Advocates of nanotechnology expect a similar surge as tools become microscopic in size.

Functions

One can classify tools according to their basic functions:

Cutting tools, such as the knife, scythe or sickle, are wedge-shaped implements that produce a shearing force along a narrow face. Ideally, the edge of the tool needs to be harder than the material being cut or else the blade will become dulled with repeated use. But even resilient tools will require periodic sharpening, which is the process of removing deformation wear from the edge. Other examples of cutting tools include gouges and drill bits.

Moving tools move huge and tiny things. For example, concentrating-force tools: the hammer moves a nail, the maul moves a stake, or a whip moves flesh on a horse. These operate by applying physical compression to a surface. In the case of the screwdriver, the force is rotational and called torque. Writing implements deliver a fluid to a surface via compression to activate the ink cartridge. Also grabbing and twisting nuts and bolts with pliers, a glove, a wrench, etc. All these tools move items by some kind of force. Also trucks, rockets and airplanes move larger items and particle accelerators move very small items.

Tools that enact chemical changes, including temperature and ignition, such as lighters and blowtorches.

Guiding, measuring and perception tools include the ruler, glasses, set square, sensors, straightedge, theodolite, microscope, monitor, clock, phone, printer

Shaping tools, such as moulds, jigs, trowels.

Fastening tools, such as welders, rivet guns, nail guns, or glue guns.

Information and data manipulation tools, such as computers, middleware, IDE, spreadsheets

Some tools may be combinations of other tools. An alarm-clock is for example a combination of a measuring tool (the clock) and a perception tool (the alarm). This enables the alarm-clock to be a tool that falls outside of all the categories mentioned above.

There is some debate on whether to consider protective gear items as tools, because they do not directly help perform work, just protect the worker like ordinary clothing. They do meet the general definition of tools and in many cases are necessary for the completion of the work.Personal protective equipment includes such items as gloves, safety glasses, ear defenders and biohazard suits.

Tool substitution

Often, by design or coincidence, a tool may share key functional attributes with one or more other tools. In this case, some tools can substitute for other tools, either as a make-shift solution or as a matter of practical efficiency. "One tool does it all" is a motto of some importance for workers who cannot practically carry every specialized tool to the location of every work task. Tool substitution may be divided broadly into two classes: substitution "by-design", or "multi-purpose" use, and substitution as make-shift. In many cases, the designed secondary functions of tools are not widely known. As an example of the former, many wood-cutting hand saws integrate a carpenter's square by incorporating a specially shaped handle that allows 90° and 45° angles to be marked by aligning the appropriate part of the handle with an edge and scribing along the back edge of the saw. The latter is illustrated by the saying "All tools can be used as hammers." Nearly all tools can be used to function as a hammer, even though very few tools are intentionally designed for it and even fewer work as well as the original.

Multi-use tools

A Multi-tool is a hand tool that incorporates several tools into a single, portable device; the Swiss army knife represents one of the earliest examples. Other tools have a primary purpose but also incorporate other functionality - for example, lineman's pliers incorporate a gripper and cutter, and are often used as a hammer; and some hand saws incorporate a carpenter's square in the right-angle between the blade's dull edge and the saw's handle.

Tool metaphors

A telephone is a communication tool that interfaces between two people engaged in conversation at one level. And between each user and the communication network at another. It is in the domain of media and communications technology that a counter-intuitive aspect of our relationships with our tools first began to gain popular recognition. Marshall McLuhan famously said "We shape our tools. And then our tools shape us." McLuhan was referring to the fact that our social practices co-evolve with our use of new tools and the refinements we make to existing tools.

In North American colloquialism, the word "tool" may be loosely used to describe an individual of low mental capacity (essentially, an "idiot") or someone who fails to realise that they are being taken advantage of by others. This metaphor is drawn from the understanding that tools (as understood by most of society) are objects that are used for specific tasks.

Use by animals

Observation has confirmed that multiple species can use tools including monkeys, apes, several birds, and sea otters. Philosophers originally thought that only humans had the ability to ''make'' tools, until zoologists observed birds and monkeys making tools. Now the unique relationship of humans with tools is considered to be that we are the only species that uses tools to make ''other'' tools.

See also

Device paradigm

Toolmaker

List of tool-lending libraries

Toolbank

References

Category:Manufacturing

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name	Andy Rooney
birth name	Andrew Aitken Rooney
birth date	January 14, 1919
birth place	Albany, New York, U.S.
occupation	Writer, humorist, television personality
nationality	American
period	1949–present
citizenship	United States
alma mater	Colgate University
spouse	Marguerite Rooney (1942-2004, her death)
children	Brian, Emily, Martha, Ellen
influences	Harry Reasoner, Mike Wallace, E. B. White
awards	{{awd|awardEmmy| year2003 |titleLifetime Achievement| year2 1980| title2 "Tanks"| year3 1980| title3 "Grain"| year4 1978| title4 "Who Owns What in America"| year5 1968| title5 "Black History: Lost, Stolen, or Strayed"}}

| signature = | website = | portaldisp = }} Andrew Aitken "Andy" Rooney (born January 14, 1919) is an American radio and television writer. He is most notable for his weekly broadcast "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney," a part of the CBS News program ''60 Minutes'' since 1978.

Youth

Andrew Rooney was born in Albany, New York, the son of Walter Scott Rooney (1888–1959) and Ellinor (née Reynolds) Rooney (1886–1980). He attended The Albany Academy, and later attended Colgate University in Hamilton in Upstate New York, where he was initiated into the Sigma Chi fraternity, until he was drafted into the U.S. Army in August 1941. Rooney began his career in newspapers while in the Army when, in 1942, he began writing for ''Stars and Stripes'' in London during World War II. He later published a memoir, ''My War'' (1995) about his war reporting. In addition to recounting firsthand several notable historical events and people (like the entry into Paris, the concentration camps, etc.), Rooney describes how it shaped his experience both as a writer and reporter.

In February 1943, flying with the Eighth Air Force, he was one of six correspondents who flew on the first American bombing raid over Germany. Later, he was one of the first American journalists to visit the Nazi concentration camps near the end of World War II, and one of the first to write about them. During a segment on Tom Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation," Rooney confessed that he had been opposed to World War II because he was a pacifist. He recounted that what he saw in those concentration camps made him ashamed that he had opposed the war and permanently changed his opinions about whether "just wars" exist.

CBS career

Rooney joined CBS in 1949, as a writer for ''Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts'', when Godfrey was at his peak on CBS radio and TV. It opened the show up to a variety of viewers. The program was a hit, reaching number one in 1952, during Rooney's tenure with the program. It was the beginning of a close life-long friendship between Rooney and Godfrey. He wrote for Godfrey's daytime radio and TV show ''Arthur Godfrey Time''. He later moved on to ''The Garry Moore Show'', which became a hit program. During the same period, he wrote for CBS News public affairs programs such as ''The 20th Century''.

According to CBS News's biography of him, "Rooney wrote his first television essay, a longer-length precursor of the type he does on ''60 Minutes'', in 1964, 'An Essay on Doors.' From 1962 to 1968, he collaborated with another close friend, the late CBS News correspondent Harry Reasoner — Rooney writing and producing, Reasoner narrating — on such notable CBS News specials as 'An Essay on Bridges' (1965), 'An Essay on Hotels' (1966), 'An Essay on Women' (1967), and 'The Strange Case of the English Language' (1968). 'An Essay on War' (1971) won Rooney his third Writers Guild Award. In 1968, he wrote two CBS News specials in the series 'Of Black America', and his script for 'Black History: Lost, Stolen, or Strayed' won him his first Emmy." Rooney also wrote the script for the 1975 documentary ''FDR: The Man Who Changed America''.

In the 1970s, Rooney wrote and appeared in several prime-time specials for CBS, including ''In Praise of New York City'' (1974), the Peabody Award-winning ''Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington'' (1975), ''Mr. Rooney Goes to Dinner'' (1976), and ''Mr. Rooney Goes to Work'' (1977). Transcripts of these specials, as well as of some of the earlier collaborations with Reasoner, are contained in the book ''A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney''. Another special, ''Andy Rooney Takes Off'', followed in 1984.

''A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney''

Rooney's "end-of-show" segment on ''60 Minutes,'' "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" (originally "Three Minutes or So With Andy Rooney"), began in 1978 as a summer replacement for the debate segment "Point/Counterpoint" featuring Shana Alexander and James Kilpatrick. The segment proved popular enough with viewers that beginning in the fall of 1978, it was seen in alternate weeks with the debate segment. At the end of the 1978-79 season, "Point/Counterpoint" was dropped altogether.

In the segment, Rooney typically offers satire on a trivial everyday issue, such as the cost of groceries, annoying relatives, or faulty Christmas presents. Rooney's appearances on "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" often include whimsical lists (e.g., types of milk, bottled water brands, car brands, sports mascots, etc.). In recent years, his segments have become more political as well. Despite being best known for his television presence on ''60 Minutes'', Rooney has always considered himself a writer who incidentally appears on television behind his famous walnut table, which he made himself.

Rooney's shorter television essays have been archived in numerous books, such as ''Common Nonsense'', which came out in 2002, and ''Years of Minutes'', released in 2003. He pens a regular syndicated column for Tribune Media Services that runs in many newspapers in the United States, and which has been collected in book form. He has won three Emmy Awards for his essays, which now number close to 1,000. He was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 2003. Rooney's renown has made him a frequent target of parodies and impersonations by a diverse group of comedic figures, including Frank Caliendo, Rich Little and Beavis.

Views

He has claimed on ''Larry King Live'' to have a liberal bias, stating, "There is just no question that I, among others, have a liberal bias. I mean, I'm consistently liberal in my opinions." Though in a controversial 1999 book Rooney self-identified as agnostic, Rooney has, as of 2008, come out as an atheist. Over the years many of his editorials have poked fun at the concept of God and organized religion. Increased speculation on this was brought to a head by a series of comments he made regarding Mel Gibson's film ''The Passion of the Christ'' (2004).

Though Rooney has been called Irish-American, he once said "I'm proud of my Irish heritage, but I'm not Irish. I'm not even Irish-American. I am American, period."

In 2005, when four people were fired at CBS News perhaps because of the Killian documents controversy, Rooney said, "The people on the front lines got fired while the people most instrumental in getting the broadcast on escaped." Others at CBS had "kept mum" about the controversy.

Andy Rooney was briefly interviewed on HBO's ''Da Ali G Show'', where he became one of the only guests to be so annoyed by Ali G that he furiously ended the interview several minutes into it. Before ending the interview, he repeatedly corrected Ali G when he used "does" as the conjugation of the verb "to do" in the second-person singular when addressing Rooney. When Ali G said, "I think that's an English/American thing going on," Rooney replied, "No, no. That's English. The English language is very clear. I have fifty books on the English language if you'd like to borrow one." Near the beginning of the interview, Rooney misspelled his own last name as ''Runey'' when Ali G asked him how it was spelled.

Racial remarks

Andy Rooney wrote a column in 1992 that it was "silly" for Native-Americans to complain about team names like the Redskins saying, "The real problem is, we took the country away from the Indians, they want it back and we're not going to give it to them. We feel guilty and we'll do what we can for them within reason, but they can't have their country back. Next question."

In a recent column for ''Tribune'' media services, he wrote, "I know all about Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, but today's baseball stars are all guys named Rodriguez to me." Rooney later commented, "Yeah, I probably shouldn't have said it, [but] it's a name that seems common in baseball now. I certainly didn't think of it in any derogatory sense."

Rooney has always denied that he is a racist. In the 1940s, he was arrested after sitting in the back of a segregated bus in protest. Also, in 2008, Rooney applauded the fact that "the citizens of this country, 80 percent of whom are white, freely chose to elect a black man as their leader simply because they thought he was the best choice." He said that makes him proud, and that it proves that the country has "come a long way - a good way."

Suspension by CBS

In 1990, Rooney was suspended without pay for three months. It is believed that this punishment was for saying that "too much alcohol, too much food, drugs, homosexual unions, cigarettes [are] all known to lead... to premature death." He wrote an explanatory letter to a gay organization after being ordered not to do so. After only four weeks without Rooney, ''60 Minutes'' lost 20 percent of its audience. CBS management then decided that it was in the best interest of the network to have Rooney return immediately.

After Rooney's reinstatement, he made his remorse public:

Remarks on Kurt Cobain's suicide

In a 1994 segment, Rooney attracted controversy with his remarks on Kurt Cobain's suicide. He expressed his dismay that the death of Richard Nixon was overshadowed by Cobain's suicide, stating that he had never heard of Cobain nor his band, Nirvana. He went on to say that Cobain's suicide made him angry. "A lot of people would like to have the years left that he threw away," Rooney said. "What's all this nonsense about how terrible life is?" he asked, and he added, speaking rhetorically to a young woman who had wept at the suicide, "I'd love to relieve the pain you're going through by switching my age for yours." "What would all these young people be doing if they had real problems like a Depression, World War II or Vietnam?" "If he applied the same brain to his music that he applied to his drug-infested life, it's reasonable to think that his music may not have made much sense either." Later, Rooney admitted that he might have been "unfair" and apologized on air.

Family life

His wife, Marguerite "Margie" Rooney (née Howard), died in 2004 of heart failure, after 62 years of marriage. Rooney later wrote, "her name does not appear as often as it originally did [in my essays] because it hurts too much to write it." He has four children, including a daughter, Emily Rooney, who is a TV talk show host and former ABC News producer; she currently hosts a nightly Boston-area public affairs program, ''Greater Boston'', on WGBH. Emily's identical twin, Martha, is Chief of the Public Services Division at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland. The third daughter, Ellen, is a photographer based in London. His son, Brian Rooney, has been a correspondent for ABC since the 1980s.

Rooney currently lives in the Rowayton section of Norwalk, Connecticut and in Rensselaerville, New York, and is a longtime season ticket holder for the New York Giants.

Awards

2001 – Emperor Has No Clothes Award from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Books

Books written by Rooney:

''A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney'', 1981 (ISBN 0-689-11194-0)

''The Complete Andy Rooney'', 1983 (ISBN 0-446-11219-4)

''And More by Andy Rooney'', 1985 (ISBN 0-517-40622-5)

''Pieces of My Mind'', 1986 (ISBN 0-689-11492-3)

''The Most of Andy Rooney'', 1986 (ISBN 0-689-11864-3)

''Word for Word'', 1988 (ISBN 0-399-13200-7)

''Not That You Asked...'', 1989 (ISBN 0-394-57837-6)

''Most of Andy Rooney'', 1990 (ISBN 0-88365-765-1)

''Sweet and Sour'', 1992 (ISBN 0-399-13774-2)

''My War'', 1997 (ISBN 0-517-17986-5)

''Sincerely, Andy Rooney'', 1999 (ISBN 1-891620-34-7)

''Common Nonsense'', 2002, (ISBN 1-58648-144-4)

''Years of Minutes'', 2003 (ISBN 1-58648-211-4)

''Out of My Mind'', 2006 (ISBN 1-58648-416-8)

''60 Years of Wisdom and Wit'', 2009 (ISBN 1-58648-773-6)

See also

List of newspaper columnists

References

External links

CBS Biography

Archive of previous "A Few Minutes..." segments

Andy Rooney Podcast among other CBS podcasts

Snopes.com on Rooney E-Mail Snopes.com's article on false e-mail claims

Potential Racialism from Rooney

Category:1919 births Category:American atheists Category:American humorists Category:American television journalists Category:American military personnel of World War II Category:American memoirists Category:Colgate University alumni Category:Commentators Category:American people of Irish descent Category:Living people Category:Recipients of the Bronze Star Medal Category:People from Albany, New York Category:People from Norwalk, Connecticut Category:United States Army soldiers Category:War correspondents

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