Ask most people when fake tanning was invented and they will probably tell you that it was sometime in the 1950s when a researcher at the University of Cincinnati called Eva Wittgenstein discovered that the compound she was working on, DHA, turned the skin brown. Recent archaeological evidence, however, has shown that the history of fake tanning goes back quite a long way further back than that, around sixty five million years further back to be imprecise.
Obviously spray tanning does not go as far back as the Jurassic period, that would be silly, but a researcher from Nouvelle University recently went over the notes of Barnum ‘Bones’ Brown who first discovered the T-rex.
Apparently it was originally known as the Tanasaurus Rex (the king of spray tans) after a fossil was discovered of a T-rex spray tanning what appears to be a Bronzeasaurus. Due to a typo in his seminal work Dinosaurs for Dummies (1905 edition) it was misspelt as Tyrannosaurus.
In 2018 in some caves in northern Italy the renowned archaeologist Professor Flisi discovered some Neolithic paintings that seem to show a Stone Age man spray tanning a client using a hollow tree as a pop up tent. ⠀
⠀
Quite where he got the power from for the Tanning machine is a much debated question but another painting in the same cave appears to depict an alien cleaning the windscreen of his UFO so it may well have come from there.
The practice of spray tanning gradually migrated northwards from Italy arriving in the UK where, due to a shortage of trees, the indigenous population made their tanning tents out of stone, the most notable of which is the famous Stan Henge.
The Bronze Age is so called, partly because the civilization at the time was based on the metal bronze, but mostly because the Ancient Sumerians enjoyed nothing more than a good spray tan on a Friday night. This habit they passed on to the Ancient Greeks where it appears that it was mostly soldiers who booked spray tans, particularly the famous Spa Tan Army.
Spray Tanning has always been concentrated in the west as there is arguably less need for it in Africa and Asia, however in his seminal work ‘I’m not Confucius dot com’ the ancient Chinese sage Confucius did mention spray tanning in his quote ‘She who gets spray tan with no clothes on becomes brown bare.’
Spray tanning continued through into Roman and Christian times, though the dark ages (which is how they got their name) up to the present day.
One thing that caused a huge increase in the uptake of spray tanning was the invention of the camera (and therefore the selfie) in Victorian times. It was due to this that in 1872 in the Reform Club in London a group of members, including Phileas Fogg and the French Author Jules Verne got hold of a map of the world to see if it was possible to circumnavigate the world stopping at places with the word ‘tan’ in their names.
They came up with eighteen (having missed a few such as Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan) and it was this that inspired Jules Verne to write ‘Around The World In Eighty Days, although originally it was Around The World In 80 Sprays.
In fact in that year every book on the New York Times best sellers list was about Spray tanning:-
- The Invisible Tan H. G. Wells
- The Picture of Dorian Spray Oscar Wilde
- The Eagle Has Tanded Jack Higgins
- Around The World In 80 Spays Jules Verne
- The Old Tan And The Sea Ernest Hemingway
- Fifty Shades of Spray L. James
- Our Tan In Havana Graham Greene
- David Bronzerfield Charles Dickins
- The Devil and Mary Tan Catherine Cookson
- Tantastic Voyage Isaac Asimov
after which it was sometimes referred to as the top tan list
It was not just books that brought spray tanning into popular culture, a number of related singles (small round black plastic disks that you used to put on the gramophone player) were also released, starting with ‘Ohh Happy Spray’, by the Edwin Hawkins Singers, ‘Tanned by Me’, by Ben E. King, ‘Tanned on the Run’ by Paul McCartney and wings, Brian Adams ‘Summer of ’69 (The Best Sprays Of Our Lives) and Tammy Wynette’s ‘Tanned by your man’
This pretty much brings us up to the present day but all the signs are that fake tanning will be with us for some time to come. Much of the material for this article came from my Instagram account @spraytanningguy If there is anything I have omitted or ideas for how this article might be improved please feel free to contact me.