"Wat'cha makin'?" "Eggs"

I like to think that beaten egg whites were not invented until after the creation of the electric mixer. The fact that someone might actually have the patience (not to mention arm strength) to beat egg whites by hand slightly sickens me. If you don't know what I mean, here's a quick filler-in. Eggs are made up of a yolk (round yellow thing) and a white (clear, definitely not white, gooey stuff). When an egg white is mixed very very fast for a verrrrryy long time, it gets a whole bunch of air mixed in and becomes quite fluffy. Looks sort of like foam. Yesterday, I made pound cake, and had to "beat 6 egg whites until stiff." Put in my super-duper electric mixer and turned on as high as I dared without risking culinary takeoff, I stood back to watch my mixer do the work for the next ten plus minutes. Now, I know there is no way that I or anyone else armed with a wooden spoon could mix at that speed for any length of time at all, meaning that if it's possible to beat egg whites by hand, it would probably take about an hour of intense dedication and pain. I've decided that the only way it's conceivable for beaten egg whites to have existed before electricity is as a form of extreme torture. I'm sure not too many nobles would have noticed that badly behaved kitchen helpers coincided with Coconut Cream Pie for dessert.