The 10,000 Step Thing

The 10,000 step thing was made up by a company in Japan in the 1960s. The Japanese symbol for 10,000 kind of looks like a person walking. That's where 10,000 steps came from because it looked like the symbol. This idea of a pedometer though and of walking goes back to Leonardo da Vinci who imagined a mechanical pedometer that could be used for military purposes.