A really interesting topic (and actually on point for the supposed purpose of this blog):

Gas and Electric Stoves Promoted a Hundred Years Ago

Old tools.

 

430,000-Year-Old Wooden Tools Are the Oldest Ever Found

The finding, along with the discovery of a 500,000-year-old hammer made of bone, indicates that our human ancestors were making tools even earlier than archaeologists thought.

Yeoman's First Law of History at work again.

And, frankly, a discovery that isn't very surprising at all.

World’s Oldest Harpoons Show Whaling Much Older than We Thought

World’s Oldest Harpoons Show Whaling Much Older than We Thought: Several harpoons and the remains of whales on the south coast of Brazil show that people 5,000 years ago were able to hunt the big cetaceans.

Older than we thought?  Well of course it is. 

Going Feral: Hunter, 82, Still Bagging Wyoming Big Game With Ri...

Going Feral: Hunter, 82, Still Bagging Wyoming Big Game With Ri...: Charming story, but nothing remarkable about it: Hunter, 82, Still Bagging Wyoming Big Game With Rifle He Bought In 1968 The truth of the ma...

Hunter, 82, Still Bagging Wyoming Big Game With Rifle He Bought In 1968

Charming story, but nothing remarkable about it:

Hunter, 82, Still Bagging Wyoming Big Game With Rifle He Bought In 1968

The truth of the matter is that there isn't a big game rifle on the market today that is any better than the Mauser 98, introduced in 1898, and if you insist on going with a non Mauser action, the 721 action, used in the 700, was introduced in 1948.  

Optics, however, have improved.  But even at that, for hunting purposes, not as much as might be supposed.

And finally, if you can't hunt with an iron sight (not that you must, but that you are incapable of doing so), you need to retrain yourself as a rifleman until you can. Then go back to the scope.

We'll get into this more at some later time.

Tuesday, October 26, 1875. The Virginia City Fire.

Virginia City, Nevada suffered a devastating fire when a kerosene lamp fell over and ignited a structure while high winds were blowing in the city.

Last edition:  

Sunday, October 9, 1875. Mormon Tabernacle Dedicated.

Labels: 1870s, 1875, Mormon, religion, Utah, Utah (Salt Lake City), Yeoman's First Law of History

Blog Mirror: 1925 Description of Electric Stoves

Really interesting.  I hadn't given much thought to when electric stoves really entered the scene, but I would not have guessed it was this early.

The conversation that follows is really interesting too, especially the item noting that electricity wasn't common for rural homes until the 1930s when rural electrification came in as a Depression Era project.

1925 Description of Electric Stoves

Diston G-36 Chainsaw. National Museum of Military Vehicles.

Last edition:

M8 Buford. National Museum of Military Vehicles.

Labels: 1990s, 2000s, Armor, Army, National Museum of Military Vehicles, Wyoming (Dubois)

Blog Mirror: Hundred-Year-Old Tips for Caring for Wood and Coal Stoves

Really interesting glimpse into something routine from the past (which is what this blog is supposedly about):

Hundred-Year-Old Tips for Caring for Wood and Coal Stoves

Saturday, January 31, 1925. Leonhard Seppala and Togo.

The longest part of the Serum Run was undertaken by Leonhard Seppala with lead dog Togo.  They ran through the dark across the dangerous ice of Norton Sound.

Seppala was Kven, a group related to the Lapps.  He's a major figure in the history of the Siberian Husky dog breed.

The Saturday magazines were out.

A few interesting adds, the first for a range with a clock.

And the second for White Truck's 25th anniversary.

Of course, the humor magazine Judge was out as well.

Last edition:

Friday, January 30, 1925. Antitoxin runs out in Nome.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, 1925 Serum Run, Afghanistan, Alaska, Alaska (Nome), Cartoons, Disaster, Disease, Dogs, Heroes, Ireland, Railroads

Tuesday, March 10, 1874. Clemson hand saw.

I have one.  You probably do too.

On March 10, 1874 William Clemson was granted a patent for a new handsaw handle that could be used with one hand or two.

Last Prior:

Sunday, March 8, 1874. The Death of Millard Fillmore.

Spurs

This is one of those posts that have been lingering for a long time. . . a very long time in this case.  The draft of this dates back to 2015.

I was looking back on my lists of drafts, I have a bunch, and realized I never finished this.  I'm not sure why, even though this relates to the underlying theme of the blog pretty well and I really should have.  As the blog slows down from daily entries, as we run up on the signing of the Versailles Treaty, I ought to post some of these older drafts that have something to do with the theme, more generally, of the blog, and which assist in what I hope will be a fairly historically accurate novel (which I need to get to work on more as well).

These are all spurs, and all spurs I own.  I have a reason for owning spurs, so these are all tools of the trade in a way. But how long have these individual types been around?

"Gumball Spurs"

The spurs above are a type worn by Western riders called "gumball spurs". They lack a rowell, and just have a blunt ball on the end.  Lots of non Western spurs are like this, but its fairly rare to see very many working riders wear this type.



The spur strap here is a classic Western style that you can find examples of going way back.

Here's another set.  These are a more typical Western set of spurs with a couple of small chimes that ring.  Everyone has probably heard the song "I've got spurs that jingle jangle jingle". Well, these do.

I bought the Colorado Saddlery spurs as I wanted to replace the gumball spurs for regular use, but I wasn't very happy with them.  So I went to these:

These spurs below are U.S. Army Model 1911 Spurs, the last model used by the Army.  These spurs are quite plain as a rule.

Seriously, a $500 Swiss Army Knife?

Wednesday, September 6, 1922. Miss Eliza U. Hoffman in the kitchen.

 

The photograph above had to be some sort of kitchen demonstration, but beyond that, what?

Unfortunately, I don't know.  I'd really like to.

Coal/wood (or is it gas?) fired stove.  Some sort of basin.  What we're left with is this:

"Miss Eliza U. Hoffman, 9/6/1922".

She appeared here too:

Sunday, March 22, 1922. Before jackhammers.

Usually, if I put a newspaper up here, it's due to some historically significant event it discusses.  But that's not the case here.  In this case I put it up as the cartoon depicts a tool that never even occurred to me.  A "pounder", which is probably not what it was called, is shown. Something that came before, apparently, hydraulic jack hammers.

In news of the day, the Allies agreed to amend the Treaty of Sevres, the peace treaty with the now defunct Ottoman Empire, but Turkish Nationalist refused to sign it as long as Greek forces, now fighting alone in Turkey, remained there.

Anti treaty officers of the Irish Republican Army convened a convention in Dublin.  The one-day convention rejected the treaty and the authority of the Dail.

Blog Mirror: Before the invention of safety

Yikes!

1922 Sterno Canned Heat Folding Stove Advertisement

Indoors?

Surely not. That's asking for a house, or more likely, apartment fire.  

On Sterno, I didn't realize that it was that old of product.  It turns out that the product dates back to about 1900, and that the company advertised its very cheap camp stoves as an ideal item for soldiers during the American involvement in World War One.  The company it's named for originally made a variety of other products in addition to the camp cooking product.

None of which I knew before today.

Friday March 6, 1942. Rationing typewriters

From Sarah Sundin's blog 

Today in World War II History—March 6, 1942: US Gen. Joseph Stilwell meets with Chiang Kai-shek for first time in Chungking. Typewriters are rationed in US; sales of new and used typewriters are banned.

Also from her blog is this excellent poster.  Normally I wouldn't repost it, but it's just too good for the topic we're going to expand out a bit on.

 

The massive increase for the need of all sorts of government employees in the war is something that we are, of course, well aware of, but this really emphasizes it. The war created a shortage of "stenographers", i.e., typists, and typewriters.  An interesting article on that in Washington, D.C. can be found here:

DC's World War II Typewriter Shortage

And another one, from a court reporter's firm, appears here:

How Stenographers Became Critical During WW2

We've dealt with the role of machines in relation to the change in women's place in the workplace before, and while our big thread on that dealt with domestic machinery, it also mentioned the typewriter.

Well, in one sense, not much. The concept that World War Two's working women stayed in the workplace is grossly exaggerated.  For the most part, they didn't.  Most in fact left their wartime employment and returned to domestic lives they'd hoped for, or at least expected, prior to the war.  Indeed, a lot of occupations did not open up for women for decades.  Lawyers I know, for example, who went to law school right after World War Two have related to me that it was extremely difficult for a woman to get through the schools as they were harassed, in part, by male professors (and students) who didn't feel they belonged there.  I know one woman who did go through law school in the 1940s, and was a highly respected lawyer, but she's an example of one. For the most part, women's occupations weren't a lot wider in variety after the war than they were before. A big exception was the role of secretary, which had become an exclusively female role by the 1940s, but then it was very much well on the way to that prior to World War Two.  And that role is telling as to the reason.  The reason women replaced men as secretaries (which was controversial at first) was due to a machine. . . the typewriter.

 

Manual typewriters, 1940s.

Of interest there, women actually did not work much as secretaries, as this thread notes, until the typewriter.  Their introduction into that role was actually quite controversial when it first occurred, but as noted above, in the period from 1910 to 1940, women completely took over the role as the prior occupation of scrivener, a nearly all male role consisting of people who transcribed things by pen and ink, died away.

Not that men didn't actually occupy this position in the military.  "Clerk Typist" was an Army occupation, and there were thousands of them in the service, mostly men.  Typing skills in men were still so valued as late as the Vietnam War that a demonstrated ability to type nearly guaranteed that an enlisted man would be assigned to that occupation while in the service.

Thursday November 20, 1941. Thanksgiving Day.

 This was Thanksgiving Day in 1941. . . unless it wasn't.

The situation was pretty confused, it's easier to read about it here:

Thanksgiving in World War II

American Thanksgiving is a fairly late Thanksgiving to start with. As has been noted here on earlier posts, this holiday is much less unique to the US than Americans think it is.  Most nations do it earlier, however.

It has moved around in the US case.  The Library of Congress's "Wise Guy" posts, summarize it as follows:

Is it time to buy the turkey? In 1939, it would have been difficult to plan your Thanksgiving dinner for 12.

Today, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. But that was not always the case. When Abraham Lincoln was president in 1863, he proclaimed the last Thursday of November to be our national Thanksgiving Day. In 1865, Thanksgiving was celebrated the first Thursday of November, because of a proclamation by President Andrew Johnson, and, in 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant chose the third Thursday for Thanksgiving Day. In all other years, until 1939, Thanksgiving was celebrated as Lincoln had designated, the last Thursday in November.

Then, in 1939, responding to pressure from the National Retail Dry Goods Association to extend the Christmas shopping season, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday back a week, to the next-to-last Thursday of the month. The association had made a similar request in 1933, but at that time, Roosevelt thought the change might cause too much confusion. As it turns out, waiting to make the change in 1939 didn't avoid any confusion.

At the time, the president's 1939 proclamation only directly applied to the District of Columbia and federal employees. While governors usually followed the president's lead with state proclamations for the same day, on this year, 23 of the 48 states observed Thanksgiving Day on November 23, 23 states celebrated on November 30, and Texas and Colorado declared both Thursdays to be holidays. Football coaches scrambled to reschedule games set for November 30, families didn't know when to have their holiday meals, calendars were inaccurate in half of the country, and people weren't sure when to start their Christmas shopping.

After two years of confusion and complaint, President Roosevelt signed legislation establishing Thanksgiving Day as the fourth Thursday in November. Roosevelt, recognizing the problems caused by his 1939 decree, had announced a plan to return to the traditional Thanksgiving date in 1942. But Congress introduced the legislation to ensure that future presidential proclamations could not affect the scheduling of the holiday. Their plan to designate the fourth Thursday of the month allowed Thanksgiving Day to fall on the last Thursday in five out of seven years.

This was the last  year of the confusion, and the split dates.  Sarah Sundin, on her blog, noted:

This was a hugely unpopular decision. While 32 states adopted the earlier date, 16 refused to. In 1939, 1940, and 1941, two dates were celebrated, depending on the state. The later original date was nicknamed “Republican Thanksgiving” and the new early date “Democrat Thanksgiving” or “Franksgiving.”

By mid-1941, Roosevelt admitted the earlier date had no effect on retail sales figures. On October 6, 1941, the House of Representatives voted to move Thanksgiving back to the last Thursday of November. The Senate amended the bill on December 9, 1941 (despite the previous day’s declaration of war on Japan) to make the holiday fall on the fourth Thursday, an accommodation for five-Thursday Novembers. The president signed the legislation on December 26, 1941.

So what about Wyoming in 1941?  Did we do Democratic Thanksgiving or Republican Thanksgiving this year?

Today.

Indeed, it's a little surprising, at least in a modern context, but Wyoming recognized today as the Thanksgiving Holiday for 1941. While Wyoming had a Republican legislature, and a Republican Governor, Nels H. Smith, serving his single term, it followed the Federal lead.

Lots of Americans were having their second military Thanksgiving.

Troops training in the field gathered around cook who is cooking turkey's with a M1937 field range.

Holidays in large wartime militaries, and while the US was not fully at war yet, this really was a wartime military, are a different deal by definition. The service does observe holidays and makes a pretty good effort at making them festive, but with lots of people away from home without wanting to be, they're going to be a bit odd.  Some troops, additionally, are going to be on duty, training, or deployed in far off locations.

As noted above, we've included a wartime photo of a cook in what is undoubtedly a staged photo cooking two turkeys in a M1937 field range, a gasoline powered stove.

They continued to be used through the Vietnam War.

Holiday or not, talks resumed in final earnest between the United States and Japan, with Japanese representatives presenting this proposal to the United States

1. Both the Governments of Japan and the United States undertake not to make any armed advancement into any of the regions in the South?eastern Asia and the Southern Pacific area excepting the part of French Indo-China where the Japanese troops are stationed at present.

2. The Japanese Government undertakes to withdraw its troops now stationed in French Indo-China upon either the restoration of peace between Japan and China or the establishment of an equitable peace in the Pacific area.

In the meantime the Government of Japan declares that it is prepared to remove its troops now stationed in the southern part of French Indo-China to the northern part of the said territory upon the conclusion of the present arrangement which shall later be embodied in the final agreement.

3. The Government of Japan and the United States shall co-operate with a view to securing the acquisition of those goods and commodities which the two countries need in Netherlands East Indies.

4. The Governments of Japan and the United States mutually undertake to restore their commercial relations to those prevailing prior to the freezing of the assets.

The Government of the United States shall supply Japan a required quantity of oil.

5. The Government of the United States undertakes to refrain from such measures and actions as will be prejudicial to the endeavors for the restoration of general peace between Japan and China.

The Germans captured Rostov on the Don in Russia and slowed the British advance in North Africa.

Geologists, do you still use them? Brunton Compass

Lex Anteinternet: Brunton Compass: 

Brunton Compass

Brunton Pocket Transit, folded for carrying.

Artillerymen, do you still use them? The Brunton Compass

Lex Anteinternet: Brunton Compass: 

Brunton Compass

Brunton Pocket Transit, folded for carrying.

It's for a Dip Pen

I was rummaging in my Secretary Desk top drawer the other day rearranging things and found two of these.  I  knew they were pen nibs, I just thought they were sort of odd looking ones.

It turns out that they're for a dip pen, not a fountain pen. That is, that old fashioned sort of pen that you dipped in ink in order to write with them.

The desk itself is over 100 years old.  I don't know how old it is, but it's old.  These nibs no doubt came with it, as nobody in my family every wrote with pens of that type since the desk arrived.  It had been belonged to my Great Great Aunt Philomene, but I have to imagine that at the time of her death she wasn't writing with them either.  Surely everyone had gone to fountain pens at some point.

Apparently these pens remained common for school children into the 1950s, which surprised me.  I  know that when I was in grade school in the 60s and 70s, some desks still had ink wells to hold bottels of ink, but I just assumed that they were for fountain pens.  It turns out, I was wrong, which I didn't know until looking into this.  They were for ink bottles for dip pens.  Fountain pens were expensive and dip pens were not, comparatively.  After ball point pens started to come in some schools held back adopting them as they increased the speed, and hence the sloppiness, of writing.  Oddly enough, decreasing the speed of my writing is why I went to fountain pens.

Apparent dip pens are still made, although why isn't clear to me.  As I have the nibs, maybe I should look for the pen.