William Dean Howells to Mark Twain, Nov. 5, 1875:

The type-writer came Wednesday night, and is already beginning to have its effect on me. Of course it doesn’t work: if I can persuade some of the letters to get up against the ribbon they won’t get down again without digital assistance. The treadle refuses to have any part or parcel in the performance; and I don’t know how to get the roller to turn with the paper. Nevertheless I have begun several letters to My d ar lemans, as it prefers to spell your respected name, and I don’t despair yet of sending you something in its beautiful handwriting–after I’ve had a man out from the agent’s to put it in order. It’s fascinating in the meantime, and it wastes my time like an old friend.

E.B. White on the Model T, 1936:

During my association with Model Ts, self-starters were not a prevalent accessory. They were expensive and under suspicion. Your car came equipped with a serviceable crank, and the first thing you learned was how to Get Results. It was a special trick, and until you learned it (usually from another Ford owner, but sometimes by a period of appalling experimentation) you might as well have been winding up an awning. The trick was to leave the ignition switch off, proceed to the animal’s head, pull the choke (which was a little wire protruding through the radiator) and give the crank two or three nonchalant upward lifts. Then, whistling as though thinking about something else, you would saunter back to the driver’s cabin, turn the ignition on, return to the crank, and this time, catching it on the down stroke, give it a quick spin with plenty of that. If this procedure was followed, the engine almost always responded — first with a few scattered explosions, then with a tumultuous gunfire, which you checked by racing around to the driver’s seat and retarding the throttle. Often, if the emergency brake hadn’t been pulled all the way back, the car advanced on you the instant the first explosion occurred and you would hold it back by leaning your weight against it. I can still feel my old Ford nuzzling me at the curb, as though looking for an apple in my pocket.

Schoolteacher George Pocock invented a unique means of transportation in 1826 — the Charvolant, a buggy drawn by kites. By training the kites and turning the carriage’s front wheels, the “charioteer” could steer even along a road at right angles to the wind. “Thus,” he found, “whatever road the car may travel by a side-wind, the same road it may return by the same wind; and where there is space for traverse, as on plains or downs, it is possible to beat up against the wind.”

“This mode of travelling is, of all others, the most pleasant,” Pocock wrote in his 1851 Treatise on the Æropleustic Art. “Privileged with harnessing the invincible winds, our celestial tandem playfully transpierces the clouds, and our mystic-moving car swiftly glides along the surface of the scarce-indented earth; while beholders, snatching a glance at the rapid but noiseless expedition, are led to regard the novel scene rather as a vision than a reality.”

In experiments with a four-wheeled car drawn by two kites on leads of 300 yards, Pocock found that a high wind could produce speeds of more than 40 mph; in one friendly race three Charvolants carried 12 passengers 113 miles from Bristol to Marlborough in a single morning. Pocock estimated that a party of six might cross the Sahara in 10 days and 10 hours for a total cost of about £80. “Is it too fond a hope that, by the system of æropleustics, those sands may be navigated as the sea, and thus a most speedy and safe communication be opened between the east and the west of the interior?”

As a side benefit, Pocock found that the Charvolant could travel freely on English turnpikes, which assessed tolls by the number of horses that drew an equipage. “The herald-bugle is sounded — the gates fly open — you pass unquestioned,” Pocock marveled. “Those who travel by Kites travel as kings.”

William Carr’s “improved burglar-trap,” patented in 1868, is a man-size version of a no-kill mousetrap. The unwitting burglar steps on the trapdoor and falls into the chamber, where his own weight on the false bottom pulls the doors shut again.

“It will be seen that the catches II II’ and I I act, in connection with the weight of the person upon the platform, in retaining the doors in their closed condition, and, even in case the prisoner should succeed in scaling the walls of the chamber, the locking-devices H H’ and I I’ will effectually prevent him forcing open the trap-doors.”

During the day the proprietor can pull a cord to engage the catches by hand, to prevent his customers from falling in themselves.

Indoor ski slopes tend to be short because they’re expensive to build. In 1986 Nobuyuki Matsui proposed a space-saving solution: Arrange the slope in a helix or a figure eight around a support tower that contains an elevator. Skiers can ride to the top and enjoy a long continuous run back to the bottom. To reduce cooling costs, the whole thing can be built underground (with a ski lodge at the top) and all the snow-making accomplished within a special enclosure that works its way down the slope.

“In order to simulate actual outdoor skiing conditions, provisions are made to vary the steepness of the slope from place to place. In addition, facilities are provided to produce random simulated moguls or an entire mogul field. Thus, during one run of the slope, most, if not all, of the conditions encountered on natural outdoor slopes may be simulated and incorporated into the run.”

“Even if the propeller had the power of propelling a vessel, it would be found altogether useless in practice, because the power being applied in the stern it would be absolutely impossible to make the vessel steer.” — Sir William Symonds, Surveyor of the Royal Navy, 1837

In 1988 Martine Tischer proposed a novel way to add interest to a gift: wrap it in sheets of uncut U.S. currency:

First of all, currency, particularly U.S. paper currency having the color green, is very attractive and suggests power and wealth … If desired, the package can be framed. Also if desired, the recipient of the package can deposit the whole sheet in a bank or exchange it at a bank for cut bills. The wrapping itself can be used as a medium of exchange, since it is money.

See Gotcha.