This is the Guardian.

The basic idea for this piece came from my editor at the Guardian Lomaried, Johnson

Shannon, who would always sort of been curious about these two contrasting ways of drawing

our hands.

But in many ways this seemed like a classic Guardian Lomaried piece.

It's about something that is in plain sight all the time to all of us.

And yet we don't really stop to think about some of the intricate dynamics behind these

technologies and behind their opposition to each other.

And there seemed to be some kind of potential in this case for industrial intrigue for

companies on either side to push their own technologies at the expense of the other.

And so I wanted to figure out what made this industry work and try to also answer the

question, which is the better technology, the safer technology, the more hygienic technology

when you dry your hands in a public restroom.

The levels of industrial intrigue that we did end up finding what quite startling we found

companies on either side sponsoring scientific studies to boost their own position.

I learned about the art of the hard sell from the point of view of the hand dryer technology

which is of course the newer technology, but it's also been around for around a hundred

years and the evolution of the hand dryer and the evolution of the industry is in itself

just a fascinating case study.

So these opposing forces are absolutely so intriguing to anyone who is thinking about

these issues on a day-to-day basis.

A lot of these issues about hand dryer and paper towels came up again during the coronavirus

...