Tattoo You??
David Howton
Issue date: 10/6/05 Section: News
As we grow up and decide what college we are going to attend, many of us usually experiment in various ways. Some of us take different classes and decide our major that way, some of us, . . . well, . . . uh, . . . yeah. And some of us get tattoos. Today, in three percent of American households, at least one person has a tattoo.
The world record for tattoos, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is a Scottish ex-soldier, Tom Leppard, who has 99.9 percent of his body tattooed, leaving only the inner ear and the spaces between his toes. He is known as the "Leopard Man." Leppard shares this record with Australian Lucky Rich.
The leading ladies are Canada's Krystyne Kolorful and American Gnuse who each have 95 percent done.
Tattoos have a long history, dating back to ancient times, and people get them for different reasons. Samuel O'Reilly revolutionized the way tattoos are done when he created the electronic tattooing machine. Machines now use either disposable or single-use needles.
These machines insert a small drop of ink an eighth of an inch under a person's skin at a rate of up to 3,000 times per minute. Depending upon the complexity of design, the process takes anywhere from fifteen minutes to several hours, or sometimes months, to complete.
Randy Wilson, a 38 year old JSU graduate student from Tifton, GA, prefers the decoration and color to any special meaning. There are more than 100 different color variations. Each of Wilson's five tattoos has a history behind it, in the sense of the location where he had it done; Fort Knox Kentucky, Paris, London, Frankfurt and Madrid.
Wilson was 18, living at Fort Knox, when he got inked the first time and he did it because his older brother was in the Army and he wanted to be more like him.
Another JSU student, Joshua "JT" Thoney, a 21-year-old sophomore and chemistry major from Jacksonville, got his first tattoo when he was 12 years old by using a needle and thread with Indian ink.
The world record for tattoos, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is a Scottish ex-soldier, Tom Leppard, who has 99.9 percent of his body tattooed, leaving only the inner ear and the spaces between his toes. He is known as the "Leopard Man." Leppard shares this record with Australian Lucky Rich.
The leading ladies are Canada's Krystyne Kolorful and American Gnuse who each have 95 percent done.
Tattoos have a long history, dating back to ancient times, and people get them for different reasons. Samuel O'Reilly revolutionized the way tattoos are done when he created the electronic tattooing machine. Machines now use either disposable or single-use needles.
These machines insert a small drop of ink an eighth of an inch under a person's skin at a rate of up to 3,000 times per minute. Depending upon the complexity of design, the process takes anywhere from fifteen minutes to several hours, or sometimes months, to complete.
Randy Wilson, a 38 year old JSU graduate student from Tifton, GA, prefers the decoration and color to any special meaning. There are more than 100 different color variations. Each of Wilson's five tattoos has a history behind it, in the sense of the location where he had it done; Fort Knox Kentucky, Paris, London, Frankfurt and Madrid.
Wilson was 18, living at Fort Knox, when he got inked the first time and he did it because his older brother was in the Army and he wanted to be more like him.
Another JSU student, Joshua "JT" Thoney, a 21-year-old sophomore and chemistry major from Jacksonville, got his first tattoo when he was 12 years old by using a needle and thread with Indian ink.