Over a glass of wine with friends, an architect friend of mine and I started talking about hinges. And yes, I know you are thinking what an exciting conversation that must have been. But when you think about it, hinges are everywhere and affect all aspects of our lives. In fact, you probably have at least five hinged items on your person or in your purse/attaché/backpack/briefcase. You might have less, but I think you'll be surprised as you read on.

When the first hinges were invented, they were only used for city or kingdom gates and doors to sacred or holy places. Hinged doors and gates protected only the most valuable of items and lives; everyone else still had to roll a rock in front of the door, or its equivalent.

These simple ones were called pivot hinges and consisted of a post that fits into a ring or a socket. If you put a post on the top and bottom of each door and a socket in the floor and top of the doorframe, you have a simple door that swings open both ways. Other mountings of them stop the door at a certain point. An example of an ancient pivot hinged door with a stop is a drawbridge. Two massive pivot hinges were mounted on the bottom outside corners of the castle; chains raised the bridge into a door position which was then barred from the inside to hold it in place.

Ancient pivot hinges wore out and were subsequently reinforced with metal. Eventually they were made only of metal. As advances in metallurgy made metal stronger, they could carry heavier loads. They were also advancing by being downsized and used in homes; on doors, trunks, and boxes.

Today, hinges are literally everywhere. Modern garage door panels are put together with them.

Makeup compacts open with them. Your cell phone flips open with a spring–loaded hinge. Clip earrings rely on hinges. So do eyeglasses. The laptop I am writing this on opens with two of them. Some purses have hinge clasps; others have straps attached with hinges. Toolboxes, briefcases, humidors. Kitchen tongs, can openers, coffee pots. Copiers have about a bazillion hinges; every time you open a door or flip a part up to free a paper jam, you are using a hinge or two.

Now back to my friend and our hinge conversation. Our group started chipping in with all the places that they saw hinges in the restaurant. Now our server had gotten into it. Where were all the hinges? We found them on decorations, on the bar, on the icemaker. And all the different door hinges; we found four different types in that restaurant alone.

Then one of my friends brought out his money clip to pay his tab. It had a hinge! This sent us all into furious digging. How many things did we have right then that were hinged? Here's what ended up piled on the table from six friends, our server and the bartender:

five cell phones,

two lighters,

four briefcases,

five laptops,

one purse,

one set of clamshell speakers,

a multitude of makeup compacts,

two belts,

three watches,

seven CD cases,

three pocketknives,

two corkscrews,

three hair clips,

two necklaces,

a bracelet,

a ballcap,

a clipboard,

a hairbrush,

two calculators,

a travel alarm clock,

four business card holders,

three key fobs,

seven eyeglass cases,

six pair of eyeglasses,

two cameras,

two staplers,

one staple–puller,

five tins of Altoids,

a retainer case,

and a can opener!

So how close was I when I said most of you would have at least five? Close enough, I bet, to make you look at hinges in a completely different light. Imagine where we would be today without the simple, overlooked, underappreciated hinge. "Once, an empires' survival hinged on them. Today we couldn't function without them," I thought as I left the restaurant. Then I closed my car door – which hangs on hinges.