Street Sweepers &   Alderman Mud Harper's Magazine   Touching position of the New York Alderman who prefers being smothered in mud and slush to conceding an iota of his imaginary dignity.   (See the official Report on the Reasons why the Board of Aldermen won't confirm any Street Inspector the Mayor may name.)                           Streetsweeper  in Operation      Keeping streets clean, particularly in large cities has always been a challenge.   In a pre-mechanical world when nearly every conveyance depended on horse power, horse shit was more than just a political problem.       Moreover, cows and pigs were kept in the city before zoning laws. Feral cats and dogs roamed the streets. Dead animals and animal waste added to whatever humans contributed throwing out food scraps and emptying chamber pots.      Crossing a street a...

Coal Gas--The Original Gaslighting Rembrandt Peale      One of America's leading painters of the early 1800s was the first to use gas lighting. Rembrandt Peale opened the first American museum of any sort in Baltimore in 1806.  Trained in natural science as well as fine arts, Peale sought a way to illuminate his paintings using methods beyond candles and sunlight.  Candles and oil lamps were dim and expensive; sunlight was unpredictable. Peale had studied in Europe and was aware of early experiments in England using coal gas lamps to illuminate several streets and a town square.               Coal gas--later called town gas-- is produced by burning crushed lumps of coal in an oxygen starved atmosphere to produce methane and hydrogen, both of which burned brightly, as well as small amounts of nonflammable but poisonous gases such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and nitrogen.   ...