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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren vogel Bomb here with a look into the history

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Speaker 1: of an everyday item, nail polish. It's actually been an

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Speaker 1: everyday item for folks going back at least five thousand years.

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Speaker 1: The very first people to apply color to their nails

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Speaker 1: were likely in India during the Bronze Age, and they

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Speaker 1: probably used hanna to do it. The use of hannah

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Speaker 1: as a dye for body art was very common, so

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Speaker 1: extending the designs and color onto the nails was a

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Speaker 1: natural next step. The Chinese took the nail game up

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Speaker 1: level sometime around three thousand b C. They created a

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Speaker 1: sort of nail varnish using a mixture of egg whites, beeswax, gelatine,

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Speaker 1: gum arabic which is a sap from the acacia tree,

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Speaker 1: and alum, a compound frequently used in dying to help

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Speaker 1: colors stick. These varnishes were then colored with flower petals

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Speaker 1: or gold or silver dust. They further personalized the looks

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Speaker 1: with artificial nails made of silver and gold covered with

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Speaker 1: jewels or clauswine as well. These elaborately design and colored

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Speaker 1: nails were exclusively reserved for royal classes only around the

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Speaker 1: same time the Babylonians were getting into the nail game,

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Speaker 1: but it was the warriors who were wearing color. The

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Speaker 1: men pigmented their nails with coal, which is finely powdered

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Speaker 1: sulfide before going into battle again. Even among these soldiers,

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Speaker 1: class mattered. Higher class warriors had their nails colored with

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Speaker 1: black coal, while lower class fighters used green coal. Anna

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Speaker 1: has also been found painted on Egyptian mummies, including their nails.

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Speaker 1: Nail color signified class in Egypt too. The redder ones

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Speaker 1: nails in ancient Egypt, the more power of that person had.

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Speaker 1: The Queen Nefertiti, the stepmother of King Tuton, common wore

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Speaker 1: dark red nails, a color rumored to have blood in it.

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Speaker 1: Cleopatra is said to have painted her nails from the

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Speaker 1: juice of the hennaplant, which created a deep and rusty color.

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Speaker 1: Women of lower rank were only allowed to wear pastel colors.

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Speaker 1: Colored nails were popular in Europe by the Renaissance arrow

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Speaker 1: when trade with countries in Asia opened up, coloring and

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Speaker 1: the jeweling nails hit another high and eighteenth century French Wars,

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Speaker 1: where outlandish fashion trends were the rage. By the Victorian era,

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Speaker 1: women were creating color and shine with tinted oils. Women

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Speaker 1: were also using tinted powders and creams on their nails

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Speaker 1: to give them color and shine. That apply the mild

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Speaker 1: abrasive and buffett for a shiny look, but it took

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Speaker 1: time to apply the powder, cream, polish and buff each nail.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen sixteen, q Texts changed that when it introduced

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Speaker 1: its first clear nail lacquer. Painting a layer of shine

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Speaker 1: on fingernails became much easier than all that buffing. It

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Speaker 1: wasn't until the early twentieth century that polished as we

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Speaker 1: know it came into existence, though, and we have the

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Speaker 1: automobile industry to think. In the nineteen twenties, automotive paint

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Speaker 1: was invented, and not long after French manicurist Michelle Minard

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Speaker 1: adapted the formula to create opaque nail polish. Her employer,

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Speaker 1: Charles Revson knew a good thing when he saw it,

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Speaker 1: so he and his brother Joseph launched a new company, Revlon,

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Speaker 1: with the first colored nail enamel appearing in nineteen thirty two.

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Speaker 1: Manicures were far from being the exclusive terror tory of

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Speaker 1: the upper classes at this point. A bottle of Q

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Speaker 1: text nail polished cost thirty five cents in nineteen thirty

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Speaker 1: four and affordable luxury in a time of tight purse strings.

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Speaker 1: When America entered World War Two and women joined the

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Speaker 1: workforce in huge numbers, manicures changed accordingly, along nails were

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Speaker 1: not going to last doing shift work at the factory.

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Speaker 1: Even the New York Times ran remedies for motor mechanic hands.

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Speaker 1: Rather than trying to keep up brightly painted nails, women

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Speaker 1: working manual jobs turned back to clear polish or even

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Speaker 1: buffing with cream polish. After Menard invented colored nail lacquer,

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Speaker 1: women were having their nails coated from base to tip

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Speaker 1: with solid colors. But it didn't take long before the

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Speaker 1: French manicure became a mark of sophistication. Rather than using

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Speaker 1: two colors as we often do today, women would leave

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Speaker 1: the moon at the base of the nail and the

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Speaker 1: tip completely and very carefully unpainted. Black nail varnish was

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Speaker 1: introduced in the nineteen thirties, though there's no evidence of

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Speaker 1: any soldiers getting their nails done allah the Babylonians. At

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Speaker 1: the same time, in England, women were having land escapes

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Speaker 1: painted onto their nails, a level of detail not attempted

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Speaker 1: since the Chinese Clausmene nails of nearly five thousand years before.

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Speaker 1: You can now find nail polished nearly everywhere, in nearly

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Speaker 1: every color, and for as little as a few dollars

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Speaker 1: a bottle. But the echoes of the upper class Chinese, Babylonian,

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Speaker 1: Egyptian and French still linger in products like As It

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Speaker 1: Tours Black and Diamond Polish. It contains two hundred and

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Speaker 1: sixty seven carrots of black diamonds and costs a cool

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Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a bottle. Today's episode

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Speaker 1: was written by Kristen hall Geisler and produced by Tyler Clang.

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Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other colorful topics,

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Speaker 1: visit our home planet, how Stuff Works dot com.