![O100-412.3(A) : O/2-94.3(A) : O/43(a) [tobacco : UK] Ogdens Ltd “Boy Scouts” third series, blue back (1912) card 115](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2022-04/24%20scout.jpg?itok=PrP-8RUw)
This shows how to mend a tap, but we used it obliquely to refer to tap dancing, a dance in which the performer makes a tapping noise with their feet, sometimes, but not always, enhanced by metal plates nailed to the bottom of the heel and the toe.
There are many claims for who was the first to dance it and where, but we will probably never know this as most forms of dancing involve tapping the feet in time to the music, making an ever louder noise; in fact that is how most of us join in and take our first dance steps.
Popular tap dancers include Gene Kelly, and Fred Astaire, but the earliest dancer to make their name famous, and now regarded by many as the inventor of the modern tap dance, was William Henry Lane, or Master Juba, who was touring in the 1840s, mixing clog dancing, the Irish jig and African rhythmic dancing, and even giving it his name, Juba Dancing.
Sadly he died before he was thirty years old but his fame does live on online at lots of websites, including one thrillingly called https://masterjuba.com/