No Home Should Be Without One! Ads from the back pages of Harper's Magazine in the late 1850s and Other Inventions. “No Home Should Be Without One,” my father used to grate sardonically whenever something useless or absurd was advertised in print or on TV. But in my latest blog entry of the same name, I look at what we take for granted today might have seemed silly then. Rubber bands advertised as "Elastic fasteners for bundling ballots" (too many or too few Russian rubber bands in the last election?!); “Paraffine Cream” for dry skin—we call Vasoline ®; ice cream freezers; “Sanitary Patented Diapers”—How’s that for a change? (sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun.)  Not to mention kitchen ranges, portable heaters; steam heat installed in your home and floor vents designed to go with your wall or ceiling tiles.  Plus the “best peacock feathers to brush away flies,” and, presumably, keep them brushed away.  Notice, the ad promises eight different sizes of ranges; it ca...

  The Patent Office's History of the Invention of Clothes Pins Improved Subway Train 1862 SMOKE CONSUMING LOCOMOTIVE—The Subterranean railway in London is traveled by a newly invented engine, which, while in open air, works like a common locomotive, but when in the tunnel, consumes its own smoke, or rather makes one, and by condensing its own steam, gives of not a particle of vapor. It is stated that on a trial trip, as long as this engine remained in open air it fizzed and simmered like any other locomotive; but the instant it entered the tunnel it condensed its steam, and scarcely a mark of vapor was perceptible, while from its flues into the smoke box being damped, not the least smell of smoke was given off—not even the most distant lamps down the side of the tunnel were dimmed in the slightest degree.   Life Size  Daguerreotypes   Oct 23, 1853 Weekly Placer (CA) Mr.  Mayall, in England, has succeeded, after much study, in producing daguerreotype ...

  Washington Union June 11, 1857 page 3 In 1857, a German immigrant received a patent for “an improved hob for cutting screw chasers.” You probably wonder, “what will they think of next?” An avalanche of inventions was offered to the middle and upper classes.   A clothes dryer in 1850; and a half dozen different designs of clothes pins if you didn’t have a dryer; a washing machine in 1860; 4 minute ice cream freezers; water filters; “sanitary diapers”; toilet paper; matches; sewing machines; microscopes; photography; petroleum jelly; rubber bands; refrigerators; kitchen range and oven; steam heat and radiators; chewing gum; a steam driven elevator for an eight story hotel; Yale locks; speaking tubes to connect the White House to cabinet offices; and saponifiers. (Don’t know what a saponifier is?   Look it up or keep reading.) March 16, 1855 Wilmington, NC On the street, gas street lights, fire hydrants and fire alarm boxes, along with horse powered street sweepers appea...

  Magic Lanterns--Without Aladdin or Three Wishes March 17, 1854 Daily Evening Washington Star MAGIC LANTERN FOR SALE—A rare chance, by which any enterprising young man may make from thirty to one hundred dollars a night. We have on hand for sale, a superior second hand Magic Lantern, containing from 150 to 200 religious and other French Paintings. Also, a splendid chromotope, which will be sold a great bargain in if applied this week. DOWNS & HUTCHINSON Penn. Avenue, between 4 ½ and 6 th streets A standard magic lantern. The slides are hand painted onto a thin rectangular glass plate and then slipped between two clear glass plates to protect the painting from scratches.  The plates were then set into a thin wood holder with a little brass handle on one end. The slide would be fitted into the holder behind the focusing lens. In the box behind the slide was a light source--a candle, or alcohol lamp or lime light. A hole on the top and the two "doors on each side could be o...

    The Fox Sisters   In 1850, near Rochester, NY  13 year old and 15 year old sisters, Leah and Margaretta Fox started playing a joke on their mother, cracking their toes and dropping apples on the attic floor, convincing their mother and their neighbors ghosts were communicating with the girls.  Thus, started the modern era of the paranormal as the “rapping” craze swept the nation.      It did not take long before the girls were making money giving seances.  Their eldest sister took charge of them, and they never did tell their gullible parents the truth.  Though unmasked as "humbugs" early and repeatedly, the Fox sisters continued to hold seances.  They soon had competition. Dozens of imitators started giving seances, communicating with spirits "rapping" their answers back from the beyond. Young women in particular were “using society’s natural modesty” to conceal cracking their toes, or other gimmicks beneath long dre...

  What I Have Learned Writing This Blog      A little more than a year ago, while writing a magazine article on a different topic, I stumbled upon magazine and newspaper articles about the United States’ close call with war in a remote part of South America in 1858. Big news at the time; forgotten today.  “Dumpster diving” in the Library of Congress’ massive newspaper and periodical collection turned up all sorts of nuggets of forgotten history.  In fact, I could hardly open more than a few newspapers while looking for one obscure topic without finding several other mysteries.      There was just as much going on in the world between 1848 and 1868 as there was in the world between 1996 and 2016.  Yet, to the modern mind, there is practically nothing going on between 1848-1868 except the Civil War, and perhaps people might remember the 1849 Gold Rush and Commodore Perry opening Japan to trade.  I have learned how difficult it is...

  Charles P. Stone, Brigadier General, USV Inauguration Day Washington March 4, 1861 Protecting Lincoln           The Century magazine compiled a four volume history of the Civil War with an emphasis on having participants of a particular campaign or incident write about it.   The series was lavishly illustrated with new engravings as well as reprints of engravings the magazine had published before. The first of the four thick volumes starts with an account by Brig. Gen. Charles Pomeroy Stone, (September 30, 1824-Jan 24, 1887) the officer charged with protecting Lincoln and Buchanan on inauguration day as well as organizing the defense of the District of Columbia. Charles Pomeroy Stone was an 1844 graduate of West Point. He fought in several battles of the Mexican War and came out of the conflict promoted to captain.   Soon afterwards he resigned his commission because a captain’s pay would not support his wife and gro...