English is a weird language filled with many strange words which have wandered in from a variety of languages. One of the strange words is scissors, which came into English in the late fourteenth century from Old French. The original English was “sisoures” from the Old French “cisoires” which meant “shears. The Old French word is based on the Vulgar Latin word (meaning Latin spoken by the common people) “*cisoria” meaning a “cutting instrument.” In the sixteenth century, academics felt that “scissors” was based on the Medieval Latin word “scissor,” which meant “tailor,” and felt that the English word should be spelled with a “c” even if it was not pronounced.
The actual devise which we call “scissors,” that is, a shearing instrument with a pair of sharpened metal blades that slide against each other, may have been invented as long as 4,000 years ago in the Bronze Age cultures of Mesopotamia. The first scissors were made of two bronze blades which were connected at the handles with a thin, flexible strip of curved bronze which acted as a spring.
The pivoted scissors which most people use today are pivoted at a point between the tip and the handles. This type of scissors was invented by Romans about 100 CE.
In Medieval and Renaissance Europe, spring scissors were made from iron or steel. The metal bar would be heated, then flattened and shaped into blades on an anvil. The center of the bar was then heated and bent to form a spring.
In Sheffield, England, William Whiteley and Sons was manufacturing scissors by 1760. In 1761, Robert Hinchliffe began producing a modern-style pivot scissors made with hardened and polished cast steel. Hinchliffe, who lived in Cheney Square, London, put out a signboard proclaiming himself as “fine scissor manufacturer.”
In 1840, Thomas Wilkinson & Son, Manufacturers of Tailors Shears and Scissors, was appointed Manufacturers of Scissors in Ordinary to her Majesty Queen Victoria. In 1875, the firm was acquired by William Whitely.
Fiskars is a well-known scissors manufacturer today. The Fiskar story begins in 1649 in the village of Fiskar which was in Swedish-ruled Finland. An ironworks was founded in the village by Peter Thorwöste, a Dutch merchant. Initially, the ironworks made nails, wire, hoes, and metal-reinforced wheels.
Then almost two centuries later, in 1830, the new owner started a cutlery works which made scissors among other things. The new firm used the Fiskars trademark.