what was original soap made from

What was soap made of in the 1800s?

After a hog had been slaughtered and its palatable parts removed, much of what was left was fatty tissue. This soft tissue could then be boiled down into a substance that we are familiar with – lard! Lard is the pork product used in the production of lye soap.

How was soap made previously in history?

Soap likely originated as a by-product of a long-ago cookout: meat, roasting over a fire; globs of fat, dripping into ashes. The result was a chemical reaction that created a slippery substance that turned out to be great at lifting dirt off skin and allowing it to be washed away.

When was the first soap made?

2800 BCEvidence has been found that ancient Babylonians understood soap making as early as 2800 BC Archeologists have found soap-like material in historic clay cylinders from this time. These cylinders were inscribed with what we understand as saying, “fats boiled with ashes” (a method of making soap).

What is the origin of soap?

Ancient Middle East The Ebers papyrus (Egypt, 1550 BC) indicates the ancient Egyptians used soap as a medicine and combined animal fats or vegetable oils with a soda ash substance called Trona to create their soaps.

What did the Native Americans use for soap?

For thousands of years, Southwestern Indian tribes used yucca to wash clothing, hair, and as a ceremonial bath. Yucca soap produces an interesting lather. Spaniards and other settlers from Europe used soap made of lye and animal fat.

What did people wash with before soap?

Before soap, many people around the world used plain ol' water, with sand and mud as occasional exfoliants. Depending on where you lived and your financial status, you may have had access to different scented waters or oils that would be applied to your body and then wiped off to remove dirt and cover smell.

Do humans need soap?

You don't need to use conventional soaps in your daily hygiene routine. All you absolutely need, bare bones, to stay clean is water. Just water. Water does a fine job of rinsing away dirt without stripping vital oils from your skin.

Which is the No 1 soap in the world?

1. Dove. Dove is a personal care brand owned by Unilever, it is also the most popular brand name in the soap markets across over 80 countries in the world. In the USA and the UK – two of the world's largest soap markets – Dove is also the number one soap brand that are dominating the markets.

What is the oldest bar soap?

Aleppo soap, known as ghar in Arabic, or Savon d'Alep, is revered by aficionados around the world. Many historians consider it to be the world's first modern soap bar—solid, rectangular, and used for bathing and personal hygiene.

How was soap made in the 1700s?

In colonial times, soap was made by leeching lye out of hardwood ashes. The lye was then mixed with a fatty acid, typically tallow, lard or oil. It was difficult to gauge the strength of lye.

What are the 3 main ingredients in soap?

However, if you add soap to the water, the grease washes away, and the result is clean dishes. There are 3 key ingredients in soap: oil or fat, lye and water.

What is real soap?

'Real soap' is made of fats which can be vegetable oils or animal fats (tallow). These fats are mixed with a strong alkali, which leads to a chemical reaction called saponification. The result of the reaction is soap and glycerine and water. The word “soap” is strictly regulated by regulators such as the FDA in the US.

How was soap made in the 1700s?

In colonial times, soap was made by leeching lye out of hardwood ashes. The lye was then mixed with a fatty acid, typically tallow, lard or oil. It was difficult to gauge the strength of lye.

How do Pioneers make soap?

Early Americans made their own soap from animal fats and lye. Folks would put wood ashes in barrels, hollowed-out logs, or V-shaped troughs lined with hay. Water poured through the ashes and leached out the potash or, more scientifically, potassium hydroxide.

What was used before soap in India?

Before the advent of soap, the primary cleansing agent in ancient India was taken from soap nuts also known as soap berries (from the plant Sapindus saponaria). The literal translation of Sapindus is sap = soap and indus = India.

How is soap made from animal fat?

Tallow soaps are made by mixing animal fat with sodium hydroxide, more commonly known as lye. Lye is highly corrosive, but when it mixes with tallow it undergoes a reaction called saponification . After the reaction, a fatty acid salt is formed, known as sodium tallowate.

What is soap made of?

It is made from tallow and ashes, the best from beechwood ash and goat fat, and exists in two forms, solid and liquid; among the Germans, both are used more by men than by women. The earliest known written soap recipe was written on clay tablets and is credited to the ancient Babylonians. A soap-like material found in clay cylinders during ...

When did soap become popular?

Soap became hugely popular throughout the Roman Empire, around 100 BC to 400 AD. When the ruins of Pompeii were excavated, an entire soap factory was discovered in the rubble. Bathing habits all over Europe rose and declined with Roman civilization. When Rome fell in 467 A.D., so did bathing.

How to determine the strength of soap?

The most difficult part of early soapmaking was determining if the lye was the correct strength. The “lye water” was considered the proper strength to make soap when an egg or small potato placed in the solution floated about halfway beneath the surface of the solution. If the egg or potato floated on top, the lye was too strong. If it sank quickly, the lye was too weak. Some early soapmakers used goose or chicken feathers to test their lye. If a feather inserted in the lye water began to dissolve in it, then the lye water was at the right strength.

How is lye made?

Old fashioned lye was made using hardwood ashes, a barrel or ash hopper, and rainwater. Holes were drilled in the bottom of a barrel. The barrel was placed on a grooved stone slab that rested on a pile of rocks. A layer of gravel was placed over the holes. Then a layer of straw, twigs, and sticks was placed on top of the gravel as a filter to prevent the ashes from getting in the solution. After filling a barrel with hardwood ashes, rainwater was poured through the ashes to leach out the brown lye liquid which would flow into the groove around the stone slab and drip down into a container.

Why is soap called soap?

According to Roman legend, soap was named after Mount Sapo, an ancient site of animal sacrifices. After an animal sacrifice, rain would wash animal fat and ash, that collected under the ceremonial altars, down to the banks of the Tiber River. Women washing clothes in the river noticed that if they washed their clothes in certain parts ...

Why did women wash their clothes in the river?

Women washing clothes in the river noticed that if they washed their clothes in certain parts of the river after a heavy rainfall their clothes were much cleaner. Thus the emergence of the first soap – or at least the first use of soap.

How often did the Queen take a bath?

It seems that Queen Bess set the fashion herself, for it was reported that the Queen took a bath every four weeks "whether it was necessary or not."

Where was soap made?

In the 8th century, soap making was well-known in Italy and Spain where soap was made with goat fat and Beech tree ashes. During the same period, the French started using olive oil to produce soap. Eventually, fragrances were introduced and soaps for bathing, shaving, shampooing and laundry began to be made.

What did the ancient Germans use to make soap?

Ancient Germans and the Gauls mixed ashes with animal fat to produce soap, and they used it to decorate their hair. Arabic chemists were the first one to produce soaps made from vegetable oils (such as olive oil), aromatic oils (such as thyme oil) and lye.

What did the Babylonians use to make soap?

Babylonians discovered the basic method of making soap (fats boiled with ashes and water). Soap was used mostly in the textile industry. The Ebers papyrus (Egypt, 1550 BC) describe how animal and vegetable oils were mixed with alkaline salts to produce a soap-like substance and mention that soap was used for threatening sores, ...

What did the Greeks wash with?

They preferred to wash with water, blocks of clay, pumice, sands and ashes and then to anoint themselves with oil. In the second century AD, Galen, the famous Greek physician, recommended washing with soap as a preventive measure for skin diseases.

How did the Romans clean their bodies?

It is believed that Romans cleaned their bodies by rubbing abrasive substances, like sand or pumice, over the skin and then used sticks to scrape off the grime and gravel. Regardless of the end uses of soap, soap became popular throughout the Roman Empire.

When did bar soaps become available?

Due to a better understanding of the role of hygiene and the promotion of popular awareness of the relationship between cleanliness and health, industrially manufactured bar soaps became available in the late eighteen century.

Who invented soda ash?

In 1791, Leblanc patented a method of making sodium carbonate or soda ash from commonly available salt. In 1811, Chevreul discovered the relationship and chemical nature of fatty acids, glycerin, and fats. .Andrew Pears began manufacturing a high-quality, transparent soap in 1789 in London.

When was SOAP released?

SOAP was designed as an object-access protocol and released as XML-RPC in June 1998 as part of Frontier 5.1 by Dave Winer, Don Box, Bob Atkinson, and Mohsen Al-Ghosein for Microsoft, where Atkinson and Al-Ghosein were working. The specification was not made available until it was submitted to IETF 13 September 1999.

What are the components of SOAP?

SOAP specification can be broadly defined to be consisting of the following three conceptual components: protocol concepts, encapsulation concepts and network concepts.

Why is XML used in SOAP?

XML Information Set was chosen as the standard message format because of its widespread use by major corporations and open source development efforts. Typically, XML Information Set is serialized as XML. A wide variety of freely available tools significantly eases the transition to a SOAP-based implementation. The somewhat lengthy syntax of XML can be both a benefit and a drawback. While it promotes readability for humans, facilitates error detection, and avoids interoperability problems such as byte-order ( endianness ), it can slow processing speed and can be cumbersome. For example, CORBA, GIOP, ICE, and DCOM use much shorter, binary message formats. On the other hand, hardware appliances are available to accelerate processing of XML messages. Binary XML is also being explored as a means for streamlining the throughput requirements of XML. XML messages by their self-documenting nature usually have more 'overhead' (e.g., headers, nested tags, delimiters) than actual data in contrast to earlier protocols where the overhead was usually a relatively small percentage of the overall message.

What does SOAP stand for?

SOAP originally stood for "Simple Object Access Protocol " but version 1.2 of the standard dropped this acronym.

What is SOAP in computer?

SOAP (formerly an acronym for Simple Object Access Protocol) is a messaging protocol specification for exchanging structured information in the implementation of web services in computer networks. It uses XML Information Set for its message format, and relies on application layer protocols, most often Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), ...

What is a SOAP machine?

These are physical/logical machines with processing units which are used to transmit/forward, receive and process SOAP messages. These are analogous to nodes in a network.

What is SOAP in web development?

SOAP allows developers to invoke processes running on disparate operating systems (such as Windows, macOS, and Linux) to authenticate, authorize, and communicate using Extensible Markup Language (XML). Since Web protocols like HTTP are installed and running on all operating systems, SOAP allows clients to invoke web services and receive responses independent of language and platforms.

What was the first soap made of?

Records from A.D. 77 indicate the Romans were making soap from a mixture of tallow (likely coming from beef fat) and ashes. Lye, a common alkaline ingredient in soap making, naturally occurs in ashes and water.

What is the history of soap making?

As soap rose in popularity, the science and chemistry behind it slowly became more advanced. Experiments done by P&G led to the creation of Crisco Vegetable Shortening, and soon hydrogenated fats were all the rage. Today, soaps are much more complicated than they used to be.

What is lye soap?

Lye, a common alkaline ingredient in soap making, naturally occurs in ashes and water. Originally, this soap was used to clean clothing and fabrics rather than for toiletry use. It appears soap was highly popular during the Roman Empire (100 BCE - 400AD), as a perfectly preserved soap shop was discovered when the ruins of Pompeii were excavated.

Why do detergents not require warm water?

This is because detergents don’t require warm water as soap does, and they rinse clean rather than leaving any residue or soap scum. As the history of soap making advances, more toxic chemicals are finding their way into products.

Why did people start using soap during the Civil War?

Around the time people were beginning to colonize the Americas, people began to believe that water spread disease. This led to a decrease in the number of people regularly bathing. During this time, soap was mainly used for cleaning and laundry. In the end, it took the Civil War to change things for the better.

What is the difference between soap and detergent?

The first issue with what currently passes for soap lies in the difference between soaps and detergents. To simplify it, soaps are made from natural ingredients, whereas detergents contain synthetic (man-made) ingredients. Most of what is on the market are actually detergents. This is because detergents don’t require warm water as soap does, and they rinse clean rather than leaving any residue or soap scum. As the history of soap making advances, more toxic chemicals are finding their way into products. Here are a few of the top ingredients to stay away from: 1 Fragrances 2 Parabens 3 Sodium Laureth Sulfate/Sodium Lauryl Sulfate 4 Methylisothiazolinone 5 Cocamidopropyl Betaine 6 Triclosan

Where did oil soap come from?

Olive oil soaps became a luxury item, particularly for Europe’s upper-class citizens. The first of these came from Syria, but soon France, Italy, Spain, and England began creating their own soaps.

When was soap invented?

Evidence has been found that ancient Babylonians understood soap making as early as 2800 BC Archeologists have found soap-like ...

When did soap start?

Commercial soap making began in the American colonies in 1600, but was for many years a household chore rather than a profession. It was not until the 17th century that cleanliness and bathing started to come back into fashion in much of Europe, particularly in the wealthier areas.

What is soap called?

Today, most things we call “soap” are actually detergents . It has become so common to call detergents “soap,” that most people would be confused if you asked for a “liquid hand detergent” when shopping.

How did soap get its name?

Soap got its name from an ancient Roman legend about Mount Sapo. Rain would wash down the mountain mixing with animal fat and ashes, resulting in a clay mixture found to make cleaning easier. By the 7th century, soap-making was an established art in Italy, Spain and France.

What did ancient Egyptians use to bathe?

Records show ancient Egyptians bathed regularly. The Ebers papyrus, a medical document from about 1500 BC describes combining animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to form a soap-like material used for treating skin diseases, as well as for washing. Many other ancient civilizations also used early forms of soap.

What are detergents called?

These are what are known today as “detergents.”. Today, most things we call “soap” are actually detergents.

When did soap manufacturing become a major industry?

This discovery made soap-making one of America's fastest-growing industries by 1850, along with other advancements and development of power to operate factories. The chemistry of soap manufacturing stayed essentially the same until 1916.

When was soap invented?

The history of soapmaking. How soap came to be discovered is unclear, but we know that the Sumerians were using soap solutions by 3000 BC. [The Sumerians] used a slurry of ashes and water to remove grease from raw wool and cloth so that it could be dyed.

Where did soap come from?

Ancient Roman legend has it that the word ‘soap’ is derived from Mount Sapo, where animals were sacrificed, and from where rainwater washed a mixture of melted animal fats (tallow, a foul-smelling substance also used to make candles) and wood ashes into the River Tiber below.

Why was speckled soap forbidden?

For a while, the making of speckled soap was forbidden, not simply because it smelt so bad but because its manufacture would deplete the nation’s tallow reserves, thereby driving up the cost of candles beyond the reach of the poor.

How did the Sumerians make soap?

Thus, the Sumerians, realising that a little grease improved the performance of the alkali, proceeded to make soap solutions directly by boiling fats and oils in the alkali before using it for cleaning. Specific directions for making different kinds of soap solution have been found on cuneiform tablets.’.

What were the crafts of the Middle Ages?

In the Middle Ages, artisans independently worked away at crafts like dyeing and soapmaking. Secret recipes, refined by trial and error, were handed down from master to apprentice, and from father to son. Soap was largely developed for use in the cloth industry, to prepare wool for dyeing, and not for personal hygiene.

Where was soap made in the 13th century?

By the 13th century, soapmaking in Britain became centred in large towns like Bristol, Coventry and London, with each making its own variety. Large areas of British woodland were destroyed to meet the growing demand for wood ashes, causing a country-wide shortage of winter fuel.

Who invented the sunlight soap?

Sunlight. In the 1880s, William Lever leased a chemical works in Warrington, where he experimented with different ingredients to manufacture soap. He settled on a formula of palm kernel oil, cottonseed oil, resin and tallow, and named it Sunlight soap.

What was the first soap made from olive oil?

One of the first soaps to gain national distribution was Procter & Gamble’s Ivory. Originally introduced as a plain white soap, and designed to compete with Spanish castile soap (traditionally made from olive oil), the primary attribute of Ivory—the name was adopted in the 1870s, after a biblical passage—was that it floated, which the company claimed was an indicator of purity. A formal creation myth was manufactured for a product that was fundamentally the renderings of slaughtered livestock; the tale involved a mixing machine left on, an extended lunch break, and extra air accidentally pumped into a gooey agglomeration. In 2004, company archivists uncovered an 1863 diary entry, written by James Gamble, that seemed to dispel the legend of the buoyant accident: “I made floating soap today,” Gamble wrote. “I think we’ll make all of our stock that way.”

What is the basic ingredient in soap?

The alchemist’s recipe for soap calls for either olive oil or beef tallow. Tallow, or animal fat, along with lye, remains a basic ingredient of soap. Fat reacts with lye—a substance made in ashes that can be pretty toxic, which is why soap makers need to wear protective gear—in a process called saponification.

What are the ingredients in modern cleaning bars?

Modern cleansers can also contain additional ingredients, including brighteners, water softeners, and antibacterials/antivirals like alcohol, benzalkonium chloride, and chloroxylenol. (Triclosan, one of the most effective bacteria-fighting additives, is no longer found in US consumer products; it was banned in 2016 in light of medical and environmental concerns.) These modern cleaning bars can contain some of the same ingredients as soap—animal fats, which appear on ingredient lists as sodium tallowate and sodium lardate, or vegetable fats like sodium palmitate and sodium cocoate—but they are not, in the legal/chemical/alchemical sense, really soap.

What was the purpose of soap in the Middle Ages?

People in the Middle Ages faced disease and sickness, just as people do today. In the ancient alchemy manual, soap is described less as an object used in sanitation and more as an ingredient (gold solder can be made from a mixture of soap, copper, and a dyeing agent called calcothar). Riches from price-gouged bottles of hand sanitizers notwithstanding, it’s a good thing that today’s more complicated cleansers serve a more practical and urgent purpose.

How long does it take for soap to solidify?

The saponification process yields a thick slurry. As it solidifies, fat neutralizes the caustic lye. “After 48 hours, you’ve got soap,” says Natalie Wong, of Vancouver, British Columbia’s Pep Soap, which offers both vegetable- and animal-fat-based bars.

How long has soap been around?

Written recipes for soap date back nearly 5,000 years, with variations from Mesopotamia, Egypt, ancient Greece, and Rome.

What was the name of the chemical that was used to clean clothes?

But in the early 1900s, German engineers discovered an alternate cleaning product: a synthetic called “detergent” (rough Latin translation: to wipe away). Detergents didn’t contain soap. Instead, they used enzymes that lifted stains off clothing and skin.

Overview

History

Types

Soap-making for hobbyists

See also

Further reading

External links