Lie-Nielsen Toolworks
Published 19 Sep 2012Bench hooks are indispensable jigs for all kinds of hand tool woodworking tasks. Roy Underhill shows us how to make a pair of them using a number of different hand tools and techniques — and offers his secrets to flawless woodworking.
In the latest from Anton Howes’ Age of Invention newsletter, we are introduced to the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce:
The London Sweep (from a Daguerreotype by BEARD).
Image from London labour and the London poor : a cyclopaedia of the condition and earnings of those that will work, those that cannot work, and those that will not work, 1851, via the Wellcome Collection.
When we think of the British Industrial Revolution, the image that springs to mind tends to be of soot-belching factories and foundries, of child labour and squalid cities. The inventors who spring to mind tend to be James Watt and his steam engines, or Richard Arkwright and his cotton-spinning machines. But what people tend to forget is that the Industrial Revolution was unleashed by a much broader tide of accelerating innovation — as I never tire of repeating, it touched everything from agriculture to watchmaking, and everything inbetween. Just as some inventors pioneered the use of factories, other inventors sought solutions to industrialisation’s social ills.
Last time, I mentioned the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, set up in 1754 in a London coffee house (the Society of Arts for short). What’s so fascinating about the organisation — which still exists today, now called “Royal” — is that it was closely involved with many of the more socially-oriented innovations of the period. By this, I mean the kinds of inventions that were rarely immediately profitable, but which aimed to save lives, to alleviate suffering, or to remedy some other social ill. The Society advertised premiums — cash prizes or honorary medals — for solutions to the problems that its members identified. And it offered similar rewards, which they called bounties, for unsolicited inventions.
It awarded a bounty of fifty guineas and a gold medal to Henry Greathead, for example, one of the claimants for the invention of the lifeboat. It gave another fifty guineas to a sergeant of the Royal Artillery, John Bell, for a method of firing a rope and grapple by mortar from a ship to the shore, to save people on board from shipwreck during storms. (Some years later, it even gave a gold medal to another inventor for a device that did the opposite, firing from shore to ship.) The Society awarded a medal to a Sheffield schoolmaster, John Hessey Abraham, for a magnetic apparatus that would prevent metal dust getting into the eyes and lungs of workers employed in grinding the points of needles. And in 1767 it awarded a bounty to a clockmaker, Christopher Pinchbeck, for a safer crane — cranes at the time were like gigantic hamster wheels, but for humans. When lines snapped, the results could be fatal, so Pinchbeck added a pneumatic braking mechanism.
The list goes on — in all, over the course of about a century, the Society of Arts awarded over two thousand premiums and bounties for inventions. But there is one that really stands out: a premium for the invention of a mechanical means of cleaning chimneys. With such an invention, the Society hoped to abolish the employment of children, sometimes as young as 4, who were forced to climb up inside chimneys in order to clean them. These children were sometimes abducted by the master chimney sweeps, and frequently perished in horrific accidents or of soot-induced cancers. Strikingly, the use of climbing boys was thought to be unique to Britain — the “peculiar disgrace of England” as the campaigners put it (though I don’t think this was quite true). The Society’s idea was that if a technological replacement could be found, then the case for outright abolition could be made — they wanted to create a machine to take the children’s jobs.
The Society of Arts played its role with the offer of a premium, but it acted alongside another campaign run by a few of its members, who ran the snappily titled “Society for Superseding the Necessity of Climbing Boys, by Encouraging a New Method of Sweeping Chimnies, and for Improving the Condition of Children and Others Employed by Chimney Sweepers”, founded in 1803 at the London Coffee-House on Ludgate Hill. Let’s call it the SSNCB for short. There had been earlier campaigns to abolish the use of climbing boys, one of the most prominent being run by Jonas Hanway (a prominent philanthropist, also a member of the Society of Arts, whose various claims to fame include being the first man in London to sport an umbrella). But the 1803 campaign was to prove the most successful, drawing on wider political support. The SSNCB’s key members included William Wilberforce, who later became famous for his zeal in abolishing the slave trade.
World War Two
Published 14 Apr 2020Now that the labour-needs and the availability of manpower has changed due to the outbreak of World War Two, Women are required to join the workforce. They’re put to work in the Women’s Land Army.
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Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tvFollow WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesHosted by: Anna Deinhard
Written by: Spartacus Olsson and Francis van Berkel
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Tom Meaden
Edited by: Mikołaj Cackowski
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)Colorizations by:
Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/
Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/Sources:
IWM A 19891, Q 54607, Q 54601, Q 54602, D 8793, D 204, D 199, D 18050, D 8463, D 18062, D 20722, D 8833, D 2973, D 14123, D 115, D 11256, D 14090, D 8806, TR 911, D 21057, D 128, CH 4119, D 3324, TR 912, D 18057, IWM TR 1568, D 21958, D 8794, TR 913
Picture of Women’s Land Army memorial in Scotland, courtesy of IWM, Martin Briscoe (WMR-69248)
Library of Congress
Portrait of Hilda Gibson, taken 2008 at 10 Downing Street, courtesy BBC PM blog http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/pm/2008/07…Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Johannes Bornlof – “Deviation In Time”
Wendel Scherer – “Defeated”
Johannes Bornlof – “Magnificent March 3”
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Max Anson – “Ancient Saga”
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”
Christian Andersen – “Quiet Contemplation”Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
World War Two
22 minutes ago (edited)
This is the second instalment of our monthly ‘On the Homefront’ series and it’s about the Women’s Land Army. Now, with these series we’re planning to cover the events and cultural and social changes that occurred during World War Two, as well as the organisations and individuals that lived through them. As with the other specials, we want to cover all the homefronts, from all nations all across the world. If you have any good ideas for future episodes, please let us know in the comments!
Cheers and stay safe!
Joram
In the latest Libertarian Enterprise, after offering us his current favourite mixed drink recipe, L. Neil Smith gets around to discussing our modern dependence on “experts” wielding their intricate and convoluted computer models to guide our lives:
My preferred variant of Mott’s Clamato … I’ll have to try it with tequila as Neil suggests.
Start with a tall glass of Mott’s Clamato over ice. Many people can’t stand the idea of tomato juice enhanced with sweet clam juice (and some spices), and I won’t try to sell you on it, here. But if you relish it the way I do (I used to buy it by the gallon), then bon appetit! Throw in a healthy shot of tequila — mine is Cuervo Gold, but your mileage may vary. Add a fat slice of lime on the edge of the glass, a slice of lemon, and a slice of orange. The citrus really dresses it up. These are all ingredients I like very much, and together, they take the edge off a day I spent writing 1000 or 2000 words (my record so far is 3200) and let me relax.
At the end of that day, when my lovely and talented wife quits work and comes home — from the dining room, these days — we have a nice, comfortable cocktail hour (she drinks Cuba Libras) and watch Tucker Carlson. Ordinarily, three giant cans of the Budweiser concoction (which is also made with Clamato) will make me the tiniest bit silly. This drink, the Bloody Mermaid (ick) is surprisingly gentle and I have had two and a half so far without embarrassing myself. I love the taste of tequila neat (many don’t), and I would still be doing shooters, except that my loving bride of 36 years won’t let me eat that much salt.
Please enjoy this silly little drink if you can until we’re all free again.
Oh yeah — I couldn’t resist after all. There’s something I need to get off my chest. I’m sure you remember the way “experts” with computer models warned us all about Y2K, and the way it meant the end of Civilization-As-We-Knew-It. Then there was Global Warming — more experts, more computer models — there are still gullible morons out there who believe it’s not an obvious hoax. Now experts and their — increasingly failing — computer models are all telling us we are in the middle of the worst health crisis since the Black Death.
I happen to be, as you know, a lifelong libertarian and the most fervid advocate of the First Amendment that you will ever read. Therefore, I cannot endorse the suggestion I’ve heard that whenever an “expert” testifies about anything before any legislative body anywhere, and the words “computer model” come out of his mouth, the Sergeant-at-Arms should smash his face in, drag him out into the street, and shoot him him the back of the head. Perhaps millions of lives could be saved that way, but, as a lifelong libertarian and the most fervid advocate of the First Amendment you will ever read, I cannot endorse that position.
So drink up, my dear friends and readers and have the best time — under house arrest — that you possibly can!
Marginal Revolution University
Published 22 Aug 2017In the 2000s, the Fed kept interest rates low to stimulate aggregate demand. But the cheap credit also helped fuel the housing market bubbles. We’ll look at the case of the Great Recession as an example of where the Fed did too much in one area, and perhaps not enough in others.
Categorizing a political position according to some simple left-right scale of values leaves something to be desired. Political views cover such a wide variety of issues that it is impossible to describe adequately any one person merely by identifying where he sits on a lone horizontal line.
Use of the single left-right scale makes impossible a satisfactory description of libertarian (and classical-liberal) attitudes toward government. Libertarians oppose not only government direction of economic affairs, but also government meddling in the personal lives of peaceful people. Does this opposition make libertarians “rightists” (because they promote free enterprise) or “leftists” (because they oppose government meddling in people’s private affairs)? As a communications tool, the left-right distinction suffers acute anemia.
Nevertheless, despite widespread dissatisfaction with the familiar left-right — “liberal-conservative” — lingo, such use continues. One reason for its durability is convenience. Never mind that all-important nuances are ignored when describing someone as being, say, “to the right of Richard Nixon” or “to the left of Lyndon Johnson”. The description takes only seconds and doesn’t tax the attention of nightly news audiences.
Don Boudreaux, “Coercivists and Voluntarists”, The Freeman, 1997-08-01.
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