All about the mask
Few of us know that the current N95 mask was the brainchild of a single woman called Sarah Turnbull who while tending to her ill relatives went to the 3M company and suggested a safer mask.

Never have masks played such an important role in our lives. They are even making designer masks now and you have to pay top whack for them.

My introduction to masks was the Lone Ranger and as kids we would cut out our own and paint them black. Then came the broader Zorro mask and you could buy them in the shops.




The word mask comes from the Latin "mascus" and "chew" which means ghost. In Arab, "maskharah" literally means jester and man with mask. That is why comedy and tragedy are traditionally depicted through masks. So much for the phantom of the opera.

The main reason that masks were worn was for theatrical purposes, and Greeks and Romans used them to change the character and expression of the actors.

In Africa, they used them to make contact with ancestors and even today there are people who collect masks from different parts of the world.

For the Chinese, masks represent religious symbols and we use them to hide our feelings.

Then there is Halloween.

Few of us know that the current N95 mask was the brainchild of a single woman called Sarah Turnbull who while tending to her ill relatives went to the 3M company and suggested a safer mask. The podcast Throughline relates how it went down. And so she spent a considerable amount of time in the medical situation with, you know, doctors and nurses and watching them fiddling around with these flat masks that they had to tie on. And she just was thinking, oh, man, I wonder if there isn't some way we can make a better one.

And in 1961 she did create what was the forerunner to the N95.


SOURCE:

https://www.khaleejtimes.com/coronavirus-pandemic/all-about-the-mask/