This device measures something. What?
The answer is here.
Or after the jump.
More in extended >>
The oldest surviving outsider art installation in the USA.
Home page.
Creator's Wikipedia entry.
Sometime in late 1902, a rumor began to circulate that a worker at the mint, while making the 1902 pennies, had accidentally dropped a bar of gold into the copper. As a result, the 1902 pennies were worth more than a penny. The treasury would supposedly pay up to 18 cents for each penny. So people began frantically hoarding and stockpiling the 1902 pennies.
Despite frequent denials by the treasury, the rumor persisted as late as the 1960s.
There are different theories about how the rumor began. The article below attributed it to a Brooklyn school superintendent. Another theory, offered over at
coinbooks.org, said that it started as a joke told by a fish dealer named Alvah W. Haff:
The rumor was said to have been started by Alvah W. Haff, a fish dealer of the Fulton fish market. Being a fish dealer, Mr. Haff had to always be ready to give change and when the Amityville bank accumulated too much small change, it notified Mr, Haff, who would take the change off of the bank's hands.
On January 29, 1903, Mr. Haff bought 3,000 copper pennies from the bank. Someone who witnessed the transaction commented on the strange occurrence, and Mr. Haff jokingly explained that he was going to take the coins and get the gold out of them.
The story spread like wild fire and people began hoarding 1902 pennies.
The Formoso New Era - Dec 11, 1903
The Spokane Spokesman-Review - July 12, 1961
As far as I know, Jeanette Wallace's only claim to fame was appearing in an ad for Danderine Hair-Growing Remedy. The ad ran in numerous magazines and newspapers between 1906 and 1908.
She claimed that Danderine made her hair "fairly crawl out of my scalp"... which sounds like it could be the premise for a horror story.
Incidentally,
according to Google maps, her address in New York is now occupied by a noodle shop.
The electricity adds that extra flavor!
Munsey's Magazine - vol 29, 1903
An idea proposed, but never realized, for the Pan-American Exposition held in Buffalo in 1901.
Some info from the
Butte Miner - June 26, 1899:
Chicago's great fair had the Ferris wheel and Paris had the Eiffel tower. What will be the chiefest "dominant extraneous feature" of the Pam American exposition, which will be held at Buffalo on the Niagara Frontier in the summer of 1901 is not yet known, but there will be a number of features of special interest…
[An] idea, which was born in the brain of a man of biblical mould, is that of the "Jonah" theatre, and the submitted plan calls for the construction of a mammoth whale: a whale of iron and steel, which is to lie anchored in shallow water near the banks of the exposition. Dainty ferry boats are to play between the shore and the mouth of the simile of the floating Standard Oil company of former days, and those cheerful ones who live to enjoy themselves in strange ways are to be ferried from the shore to the tongue of the floater. There a smooth young man will have his hands crossed with silver and after this transaction the passengers will be at liberty to walk down the whale's tongue to the room where for three days and three nights Jonah sat and mourned the day that he became a Populist.
In that section all will be light and cool and cheerful, and on a stage vaudevillians will kick and sing and cavort and musicians will add to the gaiety of the scene and will make many believe that the ancient stories of Jonah's troubles were much overrated.
The application is simplicity itself. You merely apply the ointment to the part you wish reduced, then literally, "wash the fat away" without injury to the most delicate skin.
I can't find any description of what was in this ointment, but it sounds like something out of a horror story.
Munsey's Magazine - vol 29, 1903
Carl Kusch of Germany invented a way that a person would never be without a saw when they needed one, because the saw could be worn around their neck at all times.
From his 1909 patent:
This invention relates to a saw which can be worn on the dress or on the person and is also provided with a frame adapted to serve as a guard.
The invention consists in a flexible saw frame convertible at any time by suitable means into a rigid frame and which is so constructed that the saw blade can be put into the frame in the known manner, when the saw is used as a tool, or be fixed to the flat side of the frame when the frame is used as a guard. In the latter case the frame of the saw protects the dress or the body from contact with the saw blade.
Kusch evidently had high hopes for his invention, because he obtained patents for it in the United States, Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. Although in his patent he never explained who he thought was going to buy the thing. The military, I'm guessing, because it seems designed to be part of a German soldier's uniform. Although as far as I know, no army ever outfitted its soldiers with this thing.