Steampunk Saturday - Tide and Time

E. G. Fischer's Tide Calculating Machine No. 1

Fresh from one of Charles Babbage's dreams comes this mechanical beauty. In 1905 the US faced a problem. Its influence was spreading across the globe, exported to places like Venezuela and Panama, on the decks of dreadnoughts in what Teddy Roosevelt would call The Great White Fleet under the moniker of "gunboat diplomacy", but these seagoing behemoths became useless if they ran aground while coming into port. What was needed was an accurate and fast way of calculating the depth of a harbor at any certain point in time, and that is where E. G. Fischer's little thinking machine came into play.

The instrument, touted as "a most intricate and wonderful machine" was encoded with information obtained through human observations and allowed an operator to set 19 variables on its dials, then turn a crank to get predictions on tides at a specific point for which it had been programmed at any desired time. In 1905 when this article ran in Popular Mechanics an updated version of the tide calculator was being produced, a more accurate version which would take 39 variables into consideration when making calculations, be powered by clockwork rather than hand-crank, and print its readouts as curves on a paper tape.  This improvement, dubbed Tide Predicting Machine No. 2, would finally come to fruition in 1912, a more massive and industrial beast for the dawning age of mechanization that would come with World War I.

E. G. Fischer's Tide Calculating Machine No. 2

Either machine would be perfectly at home on Captain Nemo's Nautilus, a ticking brain to help plot his terrorist takeover of Earth's oceans. Right there in the wheel house, the first officer setting the dials and reading off the results so that his commanding officer could decide when best to make his move.

What Were They Thinking - Eversharp (1946)

Time for a new feature, a little thing I'm going to call "What Were They Thinking". If you pour over old magazines you're bound to come across some ads that simply make you ask, what the heck were the ad execs thinking? These ads feature a range of products and they employ everything from psychotic looking children to self-mutilating animals to supposedly entice the consumer into, well, consuming. Personally, when I come across one of these insults to the advertiser's dark art, the only urge that hits me is a desire to turn the page as quickly as possible.

So, without further delay, let's jump right into the big bin o' rotten ads. Maestro, if you'll cue the kitsch fifties intro music...

Eversharp started in 1915 with a patent for a mechanical pencil and they continued successfully through the 1940's, finally being bought out by Parker Pens in 1957. Apparently, in 1946 when this ad ran, the execs at Eversharp thought they should cash in on the nearly continuous state of war that existed between the beginning of WWII and the end of Vietnam, touting their machine gun-like repeater pencil.

But, just in case the war references weren't enough, they decided to go with something that says pencils...a vapid, slack jawed model. I mean, what says smart buy like a model who can be amazed by the simple clicking sound? I mean that's the pencil I want! The Brain-Stunner 7000, stores a year's worth of lead and reduces your IQ by 120 points per click!

Singing for Thanksgiving Dinner - The Brazilian Nut (1915)

My apologies for choosing such a MIDI tune, but a memory from my past made me want to have this tune on the appetizer tray and this was the only version I could find. My grandfather always had a bowl of mixed nuts out during the holidays, they were shell-on nuts that had to be cracked by hand and I don't know if anyone ever touched them. For all I know, he could have been putting the same nuts out every year. It's that bowl of nuts that made me think of The Brazilian Nut One-Step Rag for my Thanksgiving offering. Just don't get shells all over the floor.

Singing for Thanksgiving Dinner - Dill Pickles Rag (1906)

No relish tray is complete without a few Dill Pickles. The composer, Charles L. Johnson was born in the ragtime hotbed of Kansas City in 1876 and he lived out his whole life in that city. He's a heavyweight, publishing over 300 songs, nearly forty of which were ragtime compositions. His best selling piece, Sweet and Low, sold over a million copies and there's some belief that if he'd lived and worked in New York City, he would have ranked alongside other ragtime greats such as Scott Joplin, James Scott, and Joseph Lamb.

The Funnies Bonus - Election Day (1901)

Happy Election Day, everyone. Get out to the polls and express yourselves. This cover from a November 1901 issue of Life Magazine.

Singing for Thanksgiving Dinner - Coffee Rag

A good cup of coffee before or after dinner is always a good thing, how about a cup of the Coffee Rag? This one performed by Andrew Kasab, a heck of a guitarist.

The Funnies - Ye Olde New England Thanksgiving (1900)

Life Magazine, November 29, 1900