A Beautiful Relic

https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtefactPorn/comments/1fpq2ru/trinity_bridge_is_a_unique_threeway_stone_arch/

The River Welland used to split into two channels in the heart of Crowland, Lincolnshire, and in 1360 the townspeople arranged to bridge it with this unique triple arch, which elegantly spanned the streams at the point of their divergence, allowing pedestrians to reach any of the three shores by a single structure. The alternative would have been to build three separate bridges.

The rivers were re-routed in the 1600s, so now the bridge stands in the center of town as a monument to the ingenuity of its inhabitants. It’s known as Trinity Bridge.

From the ArtefactPorn subreddit.

Things to Come

https://www.flickr.com/photos/home_of_chaos/7609870922
Image: Flickr

An intriguing photo caption from A Mind at Play, Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman’s 2017 biography of AI pioneer Claude Shannon:

Shannon set four goals for artificial intelligence to achieve by 2001: a chess-playing program that was crowned world champion, a poetry program that had a piece accepted by the New Yorker, a mathematical program that proved the elusive Riemann hypothesis, and, ‘most important,’ a stock-picking program that outperformed the prime rate by 50 percent. ‘These goals,’ he said only half-jokingly, ‘could mark the beginning of a phase-out of the stupid, entropy-increasing, and militant human race in favor of a more logical, energy conserving, and friendly species — the computer.’

Shannon wrote that in 1984. He died in 2001.

In a Word

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cube_teapot.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

heuretic
adj. of or relating to discovery or invention

Sea travel is not kind to teapots, which tend to drip when pouring, tip over on tables, and chip in storage. Entrepreneur Robert Crawford Johnson solved all these problems by designing a pot in the shape of a cube, with the spout tucked into a corner. His invention, patented in 1917, was quickly adopted by Cunard, and it was still in use on the Queen Elizabeth 2 as late as 1968.

A Fistful of Scrawlers

https://archive.org/details/strand-1897-v-13/page/652/mode/2up?view=theater

From an 1897 Strand article: The “typewriter glove” was “a contrivance of wash-leather, upon which were embossed a set of rubber types. ‘Caps’ were on the left hand. Small letters on the right. The ink was supplied by a couple of pads, fixed to the palms of the gloves; and the alternate opening and shutting [of] the hands was supposed to bring it in contact with the type.

“Then, all that was necessary was for the operator to dab the impression of the particular letter he desired to use upon the paper in front of him. How the alignment was to be preserved, with even a tolerable degree of accuracy, the inventor did not deign to explain.”

(C.L. McCluer Stevens, “The Evolution of the Typewriter,” Strand 13:6 [June 1897], 649-656.)

Misc

  • Vatican City has 2.27 popes per square kilometer.
  • Skylab was fined for littering.
  • Five-syllable rhyming words in English: vocabulary, constabulary
  • 8767122 + 3287682 = 876712328768
  • “We die only once, and for such a long time!” — Molière

Above is the only known film footage of Mark Twain, shot at Twain’s Connecticut home in 1909. The women are thought to be his daughters Clara and Jean.

Moment

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giuseppe_zocchi,_naufragio_dib_aristippo_che_arriva_a_rodi,_04.JPG
Image: Wikimedia Commons

It is related of the Socratic philosopher Aristippus that, being shipwrecked and cast ashore on the coast of the Rhodians, he observed geometrical figures drawn thereon, and cried out to his companions: ‘Let us be of good cheer, for I see the traces of man.’

— Vitruvius, De architectura

Hope Springs Eternal

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fotothek_df_tg_0006004_Mechanik_%5E_M%C3%BChle_%5E_Rad.jpg

Ulrich von Cranach of Hamburg devised this perpetual motion machine in 1664, offering it to drive pumps in mines. An Archimedean screw raises a succession of iron balls that then descend by a wheel that turns the screw.

Robert Fludd had proposed a water mill in 1618 that used essentially the same design. The anonymous variant below dates from the Middle Ages.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PerpetuummobileWasser.jpg

A Twist

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Al-Jazari_Automata_1205.jpg

Here’s a surprise: The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, a 1206 manuscript by the Turkish author Ismail al-Jazari, depicts a chain pump in the form of a Möbius strip. A rope bearing a chain of cups dips them successively into a water source at the bottom and then pours them into a course at the top. The single, continuous rope makes two passes through this route, describing the edges of a strip with a half twist so that the cups suspended between the loops are turned 180 degrees with each pass. This would permit the cups to last longer, since they’re worn more evenly, and even a broken cup might still convey some water with every second pass.

(Julyan H.E. Cartwright and Diego L. González, “Mobius Strips Before Mobius: Topological Hints in Ancient Representations,” Mathematical Intelligencer 38:2 [June 2016], 69-76.)

Reinvention

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:San_Giorgio_e_la_principessa_(Antonio_Cicognara).jpg

Above: Antonio Cicognara, Saint George and the Princess, tempera on panel, 1475.

Below: Lewis Carroll, Saint George and the Dragon, photograph, 1874.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St._George_and_the_Dragon_MET_DP135035.jpg

Of photography Carroll wrote, “It is my one recreation and I think it should be done well.”

Jukebox Groceries

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Keedoozle_1949_first_store.jpg

The first automated grocery store in the United States appeared in 1937. At Keedoozle, each customer received a key bearing a roll of paper tape. At a series of display cases, she’d insert her key at each item she wanted and press a button, which would punch a pattern of holes in the tape. At the cashier, an electronic “translator” would total the price and release the requested items through chutes onto a conveyor belt. The customer would wait in a lounge until her packed items were delivered to her.

Founder Clarence Saunders claimed that the automated store required only seven employees, half as many as a traditional supermarket. This permitted a 7.5 percent profit on prices 10 percent lower than competing stores, he said.

The system wasn’t entirely automated — humans kept the stocks filled and bagged the orders — and it could handle only cans and cartons, not fresh meat or vegetables. And it tended to founder when the store got busy. But historians also say that the concept was too far ahead of its time — the American public just wasn’t ready for automated shopping. Only three stores were ever built, and the last closed in 1949.

(Thanks, Abi.)