The History Of Handle Umbrellas And Folding Umbrellas

The handle umbrella can be said to be one of the oldest inventions of mankind. In China in the 11th century BC, silk handle umbrellas were used by Chinese princes and nobles. Umbrellas also appeared in ancient Greece and Rome in the same period, which were carried by slaves to protect aristocratic women from rain and shade. With the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, umbrellas almost disappeared from the European continent. It was not until the Renaissance that umbrellas returned to the European continent and the British Isles. In the far east, oil-paper umbrellas replaced the silk umbrellas, allowing the umbrellas to enter the homes of ordinary people, and with Tang's prosperous national power, they traveled east to Japan. For three thousand years, although the materials of the umbrella surface have ranged from silk to oil paper to nylon, the umbrella has always been that way. The shape of the umbrella of today’s New Yorkers is generally the same as that of Chang’an. Human science and technology are changing with each passing day, and there is no new invention that can make us walk into a rainy night more dignifiedly.

Compared with the 3,000-year-old handle umbrella, the history of folding umbrellas is much shorter. In 1928, German engineer Hans Haupt, the founder of Knirps Umbrella Company, invented the world's first folding umbrella. That's right, the folding umbrella was born in a Germanic barbarian country that loves to wear a jacket. Although it is more than convenient, the temperament in the hand is far from that of the handle umbrella. Moreover, after the umbrella is closed, rainwater can be left directly along the surface of the long-handled umbrella, but the folding umbrella is so wet that it is impossible to place it. Although everyone has a folding umbrella, men in suits and cashmere coats still hold a long umbrella when walking on a rainy street in London or Tokyo.