Deion Sanders possessed athletic ability that most humans can only dream about. He played professionally in both football and baseball at the same time. Blessed with phenomenal speed, he is considered to be one of the best cornerbacks ever to play football, known for completely shutting down his side of the field.
nolimitpictures | Getty Images. The electric tattooing machine was officially patented on Dec. 8th 1891 by a New York tattoo artist named Samuel O'Reilly. But even OâReilly would be the first to admit that his invention was really an adaptation of a machine invented by Thomas Edison âthe Autographic Printing Pen.âReillyâs tattoo machine worked by using a hollow needle filled with permanent ink. An electric motor powered the needle in and out of the skin at a rate of up to 50 punctures per second.
Getting a tattoo is a notoriously painful process but that doesn't stop all that many people from getting their skin inked. Luckily for them, tattoo machines have come a long way from the tools used in the past. Smarter Every Day grabbed their slow-motion cameras and headed into to a tattoo parlor to find out how tattoos work. Here's what they discovered. In order for a tattoo to be permanent, ink has to get into the dermis, the tissue just underneath the outer layer of your skin, called the epidermis. This is done by making thousands of tiny pricks in the skin. To do that, a tattoo artist uses a handheld machine that has a needle affixed to it. The artist dips the needle in the ink, turns on the motor that moves the needle, and applies the moving needle to the skin. The sharp needle pricks the skin quickly and repeatedly, dragging the ink clinging to it down into the dermis.