Hoop Rolling: Back when kids played outside. A device made for “very young children who have not acquired sufficient skill to govern the course of a hoop by the ordinary stick.” Credits: Scientific American, December 21, 1867
High Technology in 1867
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Aero-Locomotion: Easier travel, powered by steam, guided by wire ropes, and partly filled with lifting gas to reduce weight. The idea is picturesque but was overly complex and far too costly. Scientific American, March 30, 1867
Air-Powered Railway: It's not just the technology, it's the money: the construction of the Waterloo and Whitehall pneumatic railway under the River Thames, London, was abandoned after a financial crisis. Scientific American, March 16, 1867
Air-Powered Mail: Pneumatic tubes could deliver mail, packages, or even passengers. This proposal for air-powered mail delivery comes from Alfred Ely Beach, a proprietor of Scientific American. Scientific American, January 5, 1867
Better Mouse Trap: A Fort Wayne, Ind., inventor designed a spring-loaded trap “of different sizes for fish and also for other game from bears down to mice.” It appears the world did not beat a path to his door... Scientific American, July 13, 1867
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Fire Extinguisher: An ingenious version designed by a resident of Cuba. Internal pressure was created by mixing marble dust with acid, which gave off carbon dioxide gas. Scientific American, February 2, 1867
Hoop Rolling: Back when kids played outside. A device made for “very young children who have not acquired sufficient skill to govern the course of a hoop by the ordinary stick.” Scientific American, December 21, 1867
Inefficient Elevator: You've heard of the Otis company--they had revenues in 2014 of $13 billion. But this elevator was made by Campbell Whittier & Co., of Roxbury, Mass., which no longer exists. The mechanism was safe but much slower than the Otis system of 1852... Scientific American, November 16, 1867
The luxurious “Dean Richmond” paddlewheel steamer “plies between New York and Albany.” Built for the People's Line in 1865, it only sank once (it was raised) and remained in service until about 1909... Scientific American, August 24, 1867
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The New York Herald: It had the largest circulation in the country and was printed on these presses in the basement of their building at Broadway and Ann Street, New York City, 1865–1893. Scientific American, August 31, 1867
Agricultural Machinery: In 1867 almost a third of the population still lived and worked (hard) on farms. Many rural inventors (this one from Minnesota) tinkered with labor-saving devices. Scientific American, April 13, 1867
A note in the issue of November 30, 1867, states grandly: “The Age of Invention: It appears from the records of the Patent Office, that in 1864 the number of applications for patents was 6,000; in the following year the number increased a full fifty percent; in 1866, 15,000 applications were filed, and this year will probably increase the number to 25,000.” Fast forward to 2015: in that year alone the U.S. Patent and Trade Office received 589,410 applications. That figure is dwarfed by the number of patent applications worldwide: 2,888,800 (mostly in China).
Patents, though, are only one cobblestone in the continuum of invention that paves the way to progress. Before technology can be useful, it must be manufactured on a mass scale, adopted by—and bought by—a skeptical (usually!) public. Most of the inventions and products shown here fulfill a need, but most of them were neither useful or economical enough to see the light of day.
The images here come from the Scientific American Archive, which provides us with a grand tour of human progress from August 28, 1845, to the present day.
This article was originally published with the title "High Technology in 1867" in Scientific American 317, 3, (September 2017)
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