Relic on the Lethe

Spring is in the air, the plants are flowering, and life is returning...including the pesky insect kind. It's a struggle as old as time for humans to repel insects, and the home is one area of special concern. No one wants to find bugs chilling in their kitchen or climbing in bed with them at night. In addition to squeezing through cracks and under gaps in doors, windows are a traditional entry point for insects into the house. Until about 150 years ago, there was not a good way to enjoy fresh air and keep the flying bugs from coming inside.  A failure in fly-paper , detail, from Puck, v. 16, no. 397 (October 15, 1884)   Window screens came into use after the Civil War, when wire mesh became easier and cheaper to manufacture. Despite the benefits, window screens were not universally hailed as savior of the summertime when houses would need to have the windows opened for ventilation. If you were not an early adopter of screens, what other method could you use to keep flies awa...

The People's Voice from April 17, 1880 continues to turn up weird and delightful stories. In "Supplanting Steam," the article claims the invention of a new fuel source that could be used with current steam engines with minimal alterations (essentially adding a condenser).  The extraordinary properties of bisulphide of carbon have been long known, but no one has hitherto discovered the means of utilizing its forces until recently, when its union with petroleum solved the difficulty. This substance, bisulphide of carbon, is more commonly known today as carbon disulfide . Petroleum, of course, needs no introduction (but in this invention, it seems to have been used primarily as a lubricant). The article claims this combination, when heated in the steam chamber to "lukewarm" temperatures around 140-200 F (60-94 Celsius), "acts precisely as steam, only more dense, and with greater force...It is claimed that three-fourth of the fuel required for steam is save...

In honor of the upcoming National Unicorn Day on April 9, I present to you a tale of the mythical beast, as related in the Alexandria Gazette & Daily Advertiser, March 19, 1821 : A King Pursued by a Unicorn , detail  THE UNICORN. In the forty-seventh number of that invaluable work, the Quarterly Review , received from our correspondent at London, we find another amusing and interesting article in relation to the Snowy Range of the Hymalaya mountains, forming that stupendous buttress which supports on the south the celebrated Table Land of Central Asia.— The article of which we speak, is a review of a tour through a part of these mountains, to the sources of the river Jumna and Ganges. In the course of the review, the writer introduces a letter from a British officer commanding in the hilly country east of Nepaul, to the marquis of Hastings, stating that the Unicorn, so long considered as a fabulous animal, actually exists at this moment in the interior of Thibet, where it is we...