Comb

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Comb

A comb is a device made of solid material, generally flat, always toothed, and is used in hair care for straightening and cleaning hair or other fibers. Combs are among the oldest tool

Tool

A broad definition of a tool is an entity used to interface between two or more domains that facilitates more effective action of one domain upon the other....
s found by archaeologists, having been discovered in very refined forms from settlements dating back to 5000 years ago in Persia

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran and formerly known internationally as Persian Empire until 1935, is a country in Central Eurasia, located on the northeastern shore of the Persian Gulf and the southern shore of the Caspian Sea....
.

s can be made out of a number of materials, most commonly wood or plastic.

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Encyclopedia

A comb is a device made of solid material, generally flat, always toothed, and is used in hair care for straightening and cleaning hair or other fibers. Combs are among the oldest tool

Tool

Iran

Description

Combs can be made out of a number of materials, most commonly wood or plastic. Ivory and tortoiseshell were once common but concerns for the animals that produce them have reduced their usage. When made from wood, combs are largely made of boxwood

Boxwood

Boxwood may refer to:* Boxwood , a genus of about 70 species in the family Buxace?* Boxwood Public School, a school located in Markham, Ontario...
, cherry wood or other fine-grained wood. Good quality wooden combs are usually handmade and polished.

Combs can vary in shape according to function. Hairdressing combs may have a thin, tapered handle for parting hair and close teeth. Common hair combs usually have wider teeth half way and finer teeth for the rest of the comb. A little known fact is that the spaces between the teeth on a comb are called combdrums.

A hairbrush

Hairbrush

A hairbrush is a small brush with rigid bristles used in hair care for brushing, styling, and detangling human hair, or for brushing a domestic animal's fur....
, which is larger than a comb, is also commonly used for shaping, styling and cleaning the hair.

Uses

Combs can be used for many purposes including: securing long hair in place; decorating the hair; matting sections of hair for dreadlocking; or keeping a kippah

Kippah

A kippah or yarmulke is a thin, slightly-rounded skullcap traditionally worn at all times by observant Jewish men, and sometimes by both men and women in Conservative Judaism and Reform Judaism communities....
or skullcap in place. In Spain, a Peineta

Peineta

Peineta is a studio album by Los Tres. In Spain, a Peineta is a large decorative comb to keep a mantilla in place....
is a large decorative comb to keep a mantilla

Mantilla

A mantilla is "a lightweight lace or silk scarf worn over the head and shoulders, often over a high comb, by women in Spain and Latin America" ....
in place.

In industry and craft, combs are used in separating cotton fibers from seeds and other debris (the cotton gin

Cotton gin

A cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates the cotton fibers from the seedpods and the sometimes sticky seeds, a job previously done by hand....
, a mechanized version of the comb, is one of the machines that ushered the Industrial Revolution

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, production, and transportation had a profound effect on the socioeconomics and cultural conditions in United Kingdom....
). A comb is used to distribute colours in paper marbling

Paper marbling

Paper marbling is a method of aqueous surface design, which can produce patterns similar to marble or other stone, hence the name. The patterns are the result of color floated on either plain water or a viscous solution known as sizing, and then carefully transferred to a sheet of paper ....
to make the swirling colour patterns in comb-marbled paper.

Combs are also a favorite spot for police

Police

Police are agents or agencies, usually of the executive , empowered to enforce the law and to ensure public and social order through the legitimized use of force....
investigators to collect hair and dandruff samples that can be used in ascertaining dead or living people's identities, as well as their state of health, toxicological profiles, and so forth. The phrase often used by police detectives: "we are combing through the evidence" relates to the actual use of an over-sized, novelty "Acme" comb at the scene of a crime.

Making music

Making music (stringing a plant's leaf or a piece of paper over one side of the comb and humming with cropped lips on the opposite side dramatically increases the high-frequency harmonic content of the hum produced by the human voice box, and the resulting spread sound spectrum can be modulated by changing the resonating frequency of the oral cavity.

This was the inspiration for the kazoo

Kazoo

The kazoo is a device fitted that adds a "buzzing" timbral quality to a player's voice when one vocalizes into it. The kazoo is a type of mirliton - a device which modifies the sound of a person's voice by way of a vibrating membrane....
. Moreover, the comb is also a lamellophone. Comb teeth have harmonic

Harmonic

In acoustics and telecommunication, a harmonic of a wave is a component frequency of the Signalling that is an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency....
qualities of their own, determined by their shape, length, and material. A comb with teeth of unequal length, capable of producing different notes when picked, eventually evolved into the thumb piano

Thumb piano

The African thumb piano is a musical instrument, a type of plucked idiophone, which is common throughout Subsaharan Africa. Thumb pianos in Africa usually consist of a wooden board to which staggered metal keys are attached....
and musical box

Musical box

A musical box is a 19th century automatic musical instrument that produces sounds by the use of a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder or disc so as to strike the tuned teeth of a comb....
).

Hygiene

Sharing combs is a common source of parasitic infections, as one user can leave a comb with plenty of eggs or even live parasites, facilitating the transmission of lice, flea

Flea

Flea is the common name for insects of the order Siphonaptera which are wingless insects whose mouthparts are adapted for piercing skin and sucking blood....
s, crab

Crab

Crabs are Decapoda crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, which typically have a very short projecting "tail" , or where the reduced abdomen is entirely hidden under the thorax....
s, mite

Mite

Mites, along with ticks, belong to the subclass Acarina and the class Arachnida. Mites are among the most diverse and successful of all the invertebrate groups....
s, fungi, and other undesirables.

Nit comb

Specialized combs such as "flea

Flea

Flea is the common name for insects of the order Siphonaptera which are wingless insects whose mouthparts are adapted for piercing skin and sucking blood....
combs" or "nit

Nit

Nit or NIT may refer to:* The egg of a louse**Head lice * A trivial detail; the object of nitpicking* An exceptionally tight poker player...
combs" can be used to remove macroscopic

Macroscopic

Macroscopic is a word commonly used to describe physics objects that are measurement and observation by the naked eye. When applied to phenomena and abstract objects, it describes existence in the world as we perceive it....
parasites and causing them damage by combing. A comb with teeth fine enough to remove nits is sometimes called a "fine-toothed comb", sometimes misrendered as "fine toothcomb" or merely "toothcomb", including in the metaphor

Metaphor

Metaphor is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects. It is a figure of speech that compares two or more things without using the words "like" or "as." More generally, a metaphor describes a first subject as being or equal to a second object in some way....
ic usage "go over it with a fine toothcomb" meaning a close detailed search of something.

Images

External links

H Morewitz (2008), "A Brief History of Lice Combs," http://nuvoforheadlice.com/lice_combs.htm
TheOriginOf.com (n.d.), "The Origin of Combs," http://www.theoriginof.com/combs.html