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Sign up for your £1 per month trial at Shopify.com.uk slash Spotify. This is pessimists archive, a history show about why people resist new things.

I'm Jason Pfeiffer.

So let's start at the beginning.

If you were a 9th-century Scandinavian warrior, you'd likely use the word skiota.

It's an old Norse word that means to shoot or to throw,

and etymologists think it's likely that skiota evolved into the English word scoot. By the

1700s, scoot meant to fly or to run. And what would you call something that flies or runs?

By the 1820s, the word answered this question by going from verb to noun.

A scooter was a person who moves quickly.

Then the word scooter seemed to transfer over to objects.

In the 1840s, farmers were talking about planting corn using a scooter or a kind of plow.

Over the coming decades, a scooter also became a kind of boat, a train, all manner of DIY wooden vehicles that sent kids flying

down streets or hills.

When an early version of the motorcycle came along in the late 1800s, they called it a motor

scooter.

Then around 1915, a new variety was added to the mix.

It looked like the kids toy, the thing we think of today as a basic kick scooter, you know,

a plank to stand on,

some wheels underneath, and a handle on top with a pole.

But this new scooter had an engine, so it moved on its own with speeds up to 25 miles an hour.

And instead of kids riding this thing around their neighborhoods, adults were taking it everywhere,

...