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FARM TOOLS
Plow
Yoke
Rip saw
Grinding stone
lathe
hay rake
corn husker
guns & ammunition
water mill
covered bridge
fertilizer sprayer
bee sprayer
seed spreader
block plane
auger
pipe wrench
cherry stoner(pitter)
Phonograph
Thomas Edison of Menlo Park invented the phonograph on August 12,1877.
He secured a patent No. 200, 521 on February 19, 1878 on a "phonograph"
or "speaking machine". His original idea had been to invent a
telegraph repeater.
There are two kinds . The older and more common type is an analog recording
of sound waves. They are stored as jagged waves in a spiral groove on the
surface
of a plastic disc. The needle or stylus rides along the groove. The waves
in the groove causes the stylus to vibrate. Vibrations are transformed into
signals that may be converted back into sound by speakers. The other kind
is an optical digital recorder called CDs or compact discs. The standard
parts include the turntable, the drive system, the stylus, the cartridge,
the tone arm, and amplifier.
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Bellows
A bellows is a device used to produce a stream of air. There are many kinds
of bellows. Each can do different kinds of jobs. The simple, manual bellow
consists of two boards surrounded by an air-tight pleated leather bag. It
has a nozzle at the narrow end and handles at the other. The handles are
used to bring the boards together or to separate them. A leather strip at
the narrow end is acting as a hinge. The air is sucked in as the boards
are pulled apart and expelled as the boards are brought together. One of
the boards has a hole covered on the inside with a leather flap that acts
as a valve. The valve permits air to enter the bellows through the hole
when the handles are pulled apart. It seals the hole when the bellow is
compressed so that the air taken in can't escape back out the valve, but
must pass out through the nozzle in a stream of air. The force with which
the air is expelled depends on the force on the handles. Today they are
used to help start fires in fireplaces. They also supply the air for reed
organs. Blacksmiths use them to intensify the heat in their furnace.
Also different types and shapes of bellows are used. A double bellow is
used for continuous air blasts. Tiny bellows measure pressure in certain
types of gauges.
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Cane Bottom Chair
Cane bottom chairs are forms of chairs that have seats made of wood and
not of cushioning. Cane has another name that it is referred to, which is
rattan. Cane or rattan is found growing in the tropical part of Asia.
The cane bottom chair was introduced to the western world by the Dutch and
also by the Portuguese. The cane bottom chair became so popular in the western
world that the English textile makers around the 1690's suffered a great
down fall in the trade of the worlds upholstered fabrics. So the English
textile makers petitioned the parliament for the requested suppression of
the makers of the cane bottom chair so they could keep from going bankrupt.
Cane bottom chairs had many models. There were the Mr. Lockwood, then came
the model William Penn chair which came to the Americas around the year
1702. The last model that was made before the decline of the popular cane
bottom chair was the Queen Ann style. Those are only some of the models
that were made in the world. Then a great change happened to the cane bottom
chair. The four legs of the cane bottom chair were transformed into a set
of rockers, and that was the first rocking cane bottom chair. The rocking
cane chair was made around the 1840's and 1845's.
Cane bottom chairs were very popular in England until the early 1700's then
the popularity of the chairs fell. The fall of the cane chairs made one
company very happy and it was the textile industries because they made money
again. In the Americas it was popular until the 1720's then it fell. The
next big chair of the world was the banister back and plush seats chairs
which were faster and easier to make.
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Spinning Wheel
A device used for making yarn or thread, consisting of a foot or a hand
driven wheel and a single spindle, or a revolving skeiner or reel is ancestral
to the hand spinning wheel, which probably originated in India early in
Christian era such as the chark wheel.
Because the reel and spindle are placed on horizontal brackets on a board
and linked with a circuit , the wheel is rotated on the spindle. One hand
moves the reel or wheel. The reel thread moving or weaving also turns. One
hand moves the real when fibers are woven through the spindle tip. With
others this type is more commonly called the spindle.
Another type of wheel has two sets of spokes. This type of wheel is found
in Indonesia and in eastern Asia. The hand driven machine is different from
the first one appearing.
(1979 American Encyclopedia)*
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Wooden Icebox
The wooden Icebox is the refrigerator from the past. In the early 1900's,
ice boxes were made of wood and stained. They looked like another piece
of furniture, with the door panels carved and decorated. The inside was
lined with metal for insulation. Using the principle of cold air falling,
they placed the area for the ice on top. Then the door in front opens to
a compartment with shelves for food storage. On the bottom there were rollers
to make it easier to move the heavy units. As ice melted, water drained
into the pan set below the ice box. As I'm sure many people found out, you
had to keep it emptied. The latches on the doors were intricate and some
were spring-loaded.
There were various sizes and styles. The bigger ones measured about 4 feet
tall, 3 feet wide, and 2 feet deep. Some were called milk coolers and were
used expressly for keeping milk cold. They were used like our refrigerators
today.
Ice blocks were supplied by the "ice man". He delivered ice about
twice a week.
The blocks were cut from ponds and creeks during the cold winters. In the
summer, ice was stored in ice houses. Each block was 16-18 inches thick
and weighed 75-100
pounds. Many people were needed to cut the blocks and I have been told it
was a very cold job.
Prices ranged from $6.85 for a small icebox to $17.95 for a large refrigerator,
that was in 1908, if you bought it at Sears. They were selling appliances
even back then. By todays standards, that was a very cheap refrigerator,
but back then that was a lot of money.
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TheLoom
A loom is a device used for weaving, the interlocking of threads and/or
yarns to form a fabric. The earliest looms were probably simple stick frames
on which were wound a series of parallel lengthwise threads. the weaver
used fingers or a needle to lace the filling threads, called the weft, over
and under alternate warps. Only when a means was found to lift alternate
warp threads mechanically did looms become capable of weaving significant
quantities of cloth. A simple loom contained parts called heddles which
had wooden slats with holes through which alternate warp threads are strung.
When a heddle is lifted, its load of warp threads is lifted at the same
time, and an open area, the shed, is created, through which the weft thread
is passed. It is pressed tight or beaten in against the previous rows of
weft by a batten, or reed, or a fine comb originally made of reed and now
usually made of wire. By using a number of heddles, the order of lifted
warp threads can be varied, and different patterns can be created. The early
looms were often vertical. Some vertical looms, instead of having a bottom
beam, had groups of warp threads tied onto stone weights.
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Washing Machine
Laundering clothes has been high on the list of routine chores for centuries.
This used to consist simply of scrubbing the clothes in clean water. They
would used oil and potash to shift the dirt if needed. Soap wasn't used
until the eighteenth century for scrubbing clothes.
People began inventing different types of washing machines that weren't
very efficient in the 1800's. The scrubbing board was popular in 1846. The
wringer took the place of twisting clothes to get the water out in 1847.
There were public laundries which would wash people's clothes and iron them
quickly. In the laundries, the clothes were spun around in large tanks of
hot water by injecting steam.
The first dry cleaners was established in 1950. When carpets became popular
cleaning methods had to be developed. Around the turn of the century the
vacuum cleaner was invented. So they started to focus a lot of their attention
to the vacuum.
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Baby Buggy
The first baby carriage was built in New York by an American, Charles Burton.
There was one problem or at least the protesting pedestrians thought , because
those who pushed the carriages, through lack of experience, often bumped
into them. Burton then left for London, where he continued building carriages
for Queen Victoria, Queen Isabel of Spain, and Pasha of Egypt.
In 1906, a Persian, E. Bauman, noticed the difficulties that his fellow
country men were encountering in storing the baby carriage inside their
cramped housing space. He had the brilliant idea of creating an easy-to-store
folding model. It was described as a handsome bent varnished wood, cane
trimming two 20-inch rubber wheels. The four wheeled carriage didn't come
about till after World War I in Landau, Germany
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Women's Clothing-1890-1920
In the 1980's, the influence of the English actress Lily Langtry and
the American Gibson Girl made women display an "hour glass" figure.
This figure was an unrealistic, although ideal, 19 inch waist. Womens' health
was ruined by trying to seek the impossible. The "hour glass"
figures were set off by collars boned to ears, leg o' mutton sleeves, and
trailing skirts. Women wore stiff sailor hats or wide brimmed "merry
widow" hats. The "hour glass" dresses also had lace wrapped
tightly to make them appear as small as possible.
Another common item was full length skirts with often formal looking blouses.
The sleeves were always a good indicator of the period of early clothing.
The skirts had replaced the Knickerbockers , which were a #1 item on the
fashion agenda.
In the 1980's the women preferred gauze for a material. They also preferred
an old time silk wrap challis. Black taffeta was popular, along with cashmeres
and organelles with a new canvas cloth in fancy weave, otherwise known as
"mouline natte." Popular fashions for Springtime were the transparent
fabrics. This included grenadine, moussline de soie and chiffon. The small
standing collar became popular, too. Covering light fabrics with flowers,
vines, scrolls, and trimmings of blossoms lent a feminine look.
After 1890, women most often wore suits or shirt waists with balloon sleeves,
a wasp waist, which gave the look of a Gibson Girl.
By 1898, it was the time to try stripes. All the cord effects were for the
coming season. The ruffles flourished in every possible width, overshadowing
the gown itself.
By the late 1800's to early 1900's, almost any color was in , and any shape,
although black dominated color-wise and the flouard was gaining favor. The
flouard encompasses several fabrics, such as plain woven silk, silk, cotton,
or lightweight twill. The fabrics used in more expensive gowns were made
over by using original material. Dresses made of crepe de chine had fascinating
trim, narrow lace ruffles, or deep ruffles edged in lace.
During the last part of the 19th century, a depression swept the world.
For women, the depression meant that women's apparel was more conservative.
The fabric had a brief category. The silk was used for the middle-class,
and the cotton used for the lower class. The average woman though, was thinking
about a ready-made dress of silk for Sunday. This was not a problem, considering
there were several good-sized clothing firms in the United States.
Women began to wear looser, lighter-weight clothing in the 1900's. As the
styles changed, they gradually uncovered different parts of women's bodies,
especially in leisure and sporting clothes.
Women wore hobble skirts for a few years around 1910. A woman could hardly
walk in these skirts, because they were so tight at the bottom. During World
War I, clothing became simpler and less formal. The "boyish" look
became popular with women in the 1920's. Dresses were straight and unfitted.
They ended at, or a little above the knee, because women's legs were being
bared in the 1920's.
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Plow
The first plow was made about 8,000 years ago. A farmer sharpened one prong
of a forked branch to turn the soil and probably hitched a person to the
other prong. The farmer guided the branch's stump while the other person
pulled. Later, oxen were used to pull the plow, and a pointed iron spade
replaced the bottom prong.
Plow bottoms are manufactured in four main designs. The rotary bottom buries
residue with the soil. The disk bottom tills hard, sticky or stony ground.
The chisel bottom leaves residue on the surface. The share is the sharp
edge that cuts the furrow slice loose from the ground. It slides along the
land at the bottom of the furrow, where a slice of soil has been cut out,
and stabilizes the plow.
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Yoke
The oldest form of harness, the yoke is a device for linking two or more
draft animals to a cart or plow. Early yokes consisted of curved wooden
bars that rested on the shoulders of the animals or were fastened to the
horns or neck by metal or rope collars. The yoke was attached to the tool
or instrument by a pole.
The yoke worked well enough when used on oxen, the earliest draft animals
; however, when used on the horse, the rope pressed against the animal's
neck choking it. Thus only when the yoke was replaced by the horse collar
(in Europe during the middle ages) could horses be used as draft animals.
Yokes are still used in India, with humped oxen, and in Africa with the
African buffalo.
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Rip Saw
A rip saw is a course toothed saw for cutting wood in the direction of the
grain, compared to a cross cut saw.
A cross cut saw is a saw designed to cut across the grain of the wood. A
carpenter had to use a cross cut saw before he could joint and assemble
the one a carpenter used. The carpenter would use a narrow-bladed saw and
framed it like a medium buck saw.
A two man cross-cut saw had wooden handles, a steel blade, and blade dimensions
of 69 inches by 11.5 inches. The handle was 13.5 inches long.
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Grinding Stone
Grinding tools are mostly wheels that rotate at high speeds, and usually
are power driven grinding wheels. They are available in many sizes and with
a wide range of abrasives, with grains ranging from coarse to fine. The
most common abrasives are silicon carbide, used for grinding hard brittle
materials such as cast iron, and aluminum oxide. A tougher abrasiveis used
for tool steel and wrought iron. Grinding tools sometimes have rubber as
the bonding material. Grinding belts use the same abrasives as wheels, as
well as such natural abrasives as crushed granite, flint belts grind metals,
glass, and ceramics.
Surface grinding produces a smooth, accurate flat surface on machine part,
tools, and dies. Surface grinding machines may have the axis of the wheel
either horizontal or vertical to the surface of the work. Cylindrical grinding
is used to finish accurately the outer surface of shafts, pistons and other
cylindrical machine parts. This is called external grinding.
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Hayrake
The hay rake was invented by Mr. Edward L. Walker. He patterned this product
on September 6, 1864. The rake devised by Walker was far more advanced than
anything preceding it. His principle and ideas were excellent but the instruments
themselves were crude and needed work. The first improvement to the fork
was done by Mr. Deymour in 1865.
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Cherry Pitter
The cherry pitter sometimes called cherry stoner or seeder is used for removing
stones from the cherries one by one or two by two. Some could not be used
because they squashed the fruit. One type of cherry pitter could also be
used for olives. There are several types of these. Some are the ones that
fastened to the table and others are hand held cast iron ones. You could
not adjust anything for the different shapes or sizes.
This information came from American Kitchen from Hearth to Cook stone by
Linda Campbell and the pictures were illustrared by Antiques From the Country
Kitchen by Frances Thompson.
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