The Good Old Mechanical Pencil!

Advertisements Students, artists, and engineers alike are all very familiar with the mechanical pencil. Preferred by many, the mechanical pencil is reusable, refillable, and always sharp. The little mechanical pencils that students love to fidget with are a surprisingly old invention! The idea of an “always sharp” pencil has been an attractive one for centuries… Continue reading The Good Old Mechanical Pencil!

October 12, 1994 Fort Mosé — Today in History

Advertisements Long before the famous “underground railroad”, the first such track pointed not north, but south, to St. Augustine.October 12, 1994 Fort Mosé — Today in History

The USS North Carolina

Advertisements The USS North Carolina was among the most decorated ships during WWII. She was awarded more battle stars than any other battleship during WWII. She was one of the few ships still capable of battle after the attack on Pearl Harbor. North Carolina and her sister ship Washington were launched on June 13th, 1940,… Continue reading The USS North Carolina

Pep the Prison Dog

Advertisements In 1924 a black Scotch retriever received terrible news: he was sentenced to life in prison. Pep, a friendly male dog said to be good-natured, was being sent to Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania for the alleged crime of killing the governors wife’s cat. He was brought to the prison, had his mugshot taken… Continue reading Pep the Prison Dog

The First Horseless Carriage

From Wikipedia: Cugnot was one of the first to employ successfully a device for converting the reciprocating motion of a steam piston into rotary motion by means of a ratchet arrangement. A small version of his three-wheeled fardier à vapeur ("steam dray") ran in 1769. (A fardier was a massively built two-wheeled horse-drawn cart for transporting very heavy equipment such as cannon barrels). The original 1769 model. Cugnot's 1770 fardier à vapeur, as preserved at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris. Cut-away drawing The first "automobile accident"? In 1770, a full-size version of the fardier à vapeur was built, specified to be able to carry 4 tons and cover 2 lieues (7.8 km or 4.8 miles) in one hour, a performance it never achieved in practice. The vehicle, which weighed about 2.5 tonnes tare, had two wheels at the rear and one in the front where the horses would normally have been; this front wheel supported the steam boiler and driving mechanism. The power unit was articulated to the "trailer" and steered from there by means of a double handle arrangement. One source states that it seated four passengers and moved at a speed of 2.25 miles per hour(3.6 km/h).[3] The vehicle was reported to have been very unstable due to poor weight distribution - which would have been a serious disadvantage seeing that it was intended that the fardier should be able to traverse rough terrain and climb steep hills. In 1771, the second vehicle is said to have gone out of control and knocked down part of the Arsenal wall, (reported to be the first known automobile accident); however according to Georges Ageon,[4] the earliest mention of this occurrence dates from 1801 and it does not feature in contemporary accounts. Boiler performance was also particularly poor, even by the standards of the day, with the fire needing to be relit and steam raised again every quarter of an hour or so, considerably reducing overall speed. After running a small number of trials variously des

Advertisements While many people think of cars and automobiles as the product of the 19th century and the Industrial Revolution, the first horseless carriages were built before the American Revolution! Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot was an engineer in the French Army when he successfully built one of the world’s first steam engines designed specifically for turning wheels.… Continue reading The First Horseless Carriage

The Journey Begins

Advertisements Thanks for joining me! Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

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