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A Holiday Thought...

12/19/2011

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Picture
This is a cover of one of my many old copies of magazines from the late 1800's and early 1900's. Although I really don't have a collection but more of a "big pile" of ephemera, they continue to be interesting. By far, The Youth's Companion is the magazine that I have the most  of and I still find the content interesting.
  This monthly periodical (1827–1929), known in later years as simply The Companion—For All the Family, was an American children’s magazine that existed for over one hundred years until it finally merged with TheAmerican Boy in 1929. The Companion was published by the Perry Mason Company (later renamed "Perry Mason & Co." after the founder died).
What I find surprising is that although the magazine was family orientated and targeted at young people, this cover shows no children. My best guess as to why this is the case is that images at that time were hand drawn and very expensive. So, magazines shared both images and content, and this image may have appeared in other publications.
A real piece of trivia is that the fiction writer Erle Stanley Gardner read this magazine as a child and took the publishers name and used it as his fictional attorney/detective, Perry Mason. Ho, Ho, Ho...



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A Bright Idea, but not all Edison's idea!

12/4/2011

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It is often said that most ideas are built on the shoulders of others. The history of the incandescent light bulb is a perfect example of that thought. Perhaps it all started with Sir Humphrey Davy, or even earlier, but no one can argue the fact that the light bulb has been a successful product. It is surprising that it lasted as long as it did considering that it gives off more heat than light. And although Edison had a patent on a light bulb, there was a previous patent that Edison bought for a reported $50,000. It was an incandescent light bulb invented by Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans and was essentially the same invention. But the argument has always been that Edison patented the first  successful bulb. It was all in the resistive filament and inert gas that allowed the Edison bulb to be unique.

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This is the drawing on the patent from Woodward and it does not look like the familiar bulb that we all know and have replaced with compact fluorescent bulbs. But, it had the important features of a resistive element being a filament, and current causing the element to heat up and give off light. One big difference is that Woodward filled the tube with nitrogen. But, the real change came with the improvement of the carbon filament when tungsten was used as the resistive element. See some history here. Let there be light and a lot of heat...
A comment received by Krystel has a great reference to the history of the light bulb. It can be found here.

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