Lever

From a scientific perspective, tools are machines. 

Engineers describe machines as either simple (having few working parts) or complex (having many).  A number of animals use simple tools, but only humans have been observed using tools to make other tools.  Ron fashioned this one-handed wire bender from a broken porch swing with an angle grinder.  It is, for all intents and purposes, a glorified (or maybe not so glorified) lever.  There are six types of simple machines known since antiquity:  wheel, wedge, inclined plane, pulley, screw, and lever.  Greek philosopher Archimedes, known to many as “the father of experimental science,” studied the later three and described in detail the mechanical advantages of the last.  The lever is powerful and simple; it is a rigid body capable of rotating on a point.  Given the right conditions, it could, as Archimedes puts it, move the Earth.  Levers can be divided into three types depending on locations of load, fulcrum, and force (as exemplified by the crow bar, wheel barrow, and broom).

  This wire bender cleverly has two ends, one with just a hole and the other with a more obvious claw. The hole in the far end allows it to be slipped over free wire, while the claw is ideally suited for in situ bending--taking the slack out of fence wire, for example.  It has been oft used and well loved.

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

-Thomas Jefferson