August 4, 1899
New Harmony, Ind., is probably the one town in the Mississippi valley that has a sun dial town clock. It is probably the oldest and most reliable timepiece in the country. It has been turning off the minutes and hours and days since 1821 without over 50 cents repair. It never runs down, never goes on a strike and as long as the sun does business, it is reliable. Today it is something more than a timepiece – it is a curiosity. It is historical, probably having an edge over any other timepiece in Indiana in this respect. New Harmony was a colony settlement. The building on which the dial is placed was built by the colonists and was used by them as a barracks. It was erected in 1814. There were no railroads in those days and as everything was local there was no need of anything but sun time. The whole world ran on the same schedule then. For several years the colony operated by a number of sun dials and hour glasses but this became unsatisfactory and at last George Rapp, the leader, conceived the idea of having a town clock.
He was probably the first to endow any Indiana town with such an adjunct. He went to the forest and cut the solidest black walnut tree he could find. He finished it down to six foot lengths and made a facing 6x4 feet. A strip was nailed across the top to throw off the rain. He then had the colony blacksmith turn out a piece of steel wire. The date of the construction was printed across the top in letters of fire, in other words, burned in, as were also the hours. At the top and in the center is the figure of the sun, a thing of glory, with a man’s smiling face and rays jutting from all sides. From the nose of the sun the steel wire was run coming to a point and then fastening directly below the sun. The sun was then put to work and the hour markings were defined.
Though the storms of seventy-eight years have beat against the dial, it has not begun to show the wear.
Sundials are curiosities now. Probably less than one person under 35 years out of every 1,000 population ever saw one. Still it has been but a short time since the sundial regulated affairs, and though watches were used they took their time from the dial. Up to 1869 there was no uniform time. In that year Professor Charles F. Dowd first took active measures for establishing a standard time. He sought the railroad managers as the persons best adapted to bring such a plan into general service. In that year in the country alone there were about seventy-five different standards – all of them on the sun basis.
From his work and energies evolved what is now known as standard time and which also has the sundial as its basis. Four meridians, each one hour apart – sun time – were chosen as standard meridians. They are the seventy-fifth, which passes near Philadelphia; the ninetieth, passing near New Orleans and St. Louis; the one hundred and fifth, passing near Denver; and the one hundred and twentieth, near Virginia City. By the division thus adopted, the space between them readily became divided into minutes and they into seconds, so that after all the world is thus transformed into one great sundial of imaginary lines, not only tracing the minutes but even the smaller divisions. Theoretically it was intended that each meridian should govern the belt seven and a half degrees on each side of it; but there has been a slight variation from this. The local time of those places at the edge of the belt will differ from the standard time by half an hour. The details of the system were worked up by W.F. Allen, secretary of the railway time convention. It was not until 1883 that the railways took hold in earnest. In that year 90 per cent of them adopted standard time, and now the United States and the commercial world operates on that plan. The time of the seventy-fifth meridian is called eastern time, that of the ninetieth called central, that of the one hundred and fifth mountain, and the one hundred and twentieth Pacific. The adoption of standard time made New York’s time four minutes slower than previously. At the conference of the International Geodetic association, held in Rome in 1883, the question of cosmopolitan time was first discussed.
If you meet a dark-eyed stranger whose features resemble a pair of bicycle lamps on an ice pick, feeling his solitary way by means of a fishpole covered with dog’s hair, you will be safe in assuming that he is melanolestes picipes, alias kissing bug. In order to recognize him after this fashion, however, it will be necessary to use a microscope. The illustration was obtained by this means at the Smithsonian Institution.
This hideous insect is a predatory insect. Until recently it was never known to feed on man. Its favorite pasture has been the cubicular bug that inhabits bedding, and its most acceptable feeding time is just after that bug has had a meal of blood from a human being. In this way it gets a taste of human blood. It has now gone into the business for itself, and taps its food supply without the aid of a vicarious distributer.
The kissing bug is black, has a fat body, and does all its hunting by night like the wolves in “The Jungle Book.” It is about an inch long, has a narrow, pointed head, and a beak as sharp as that of a mosquito. When it sucks its victim, who is always asleep, feels no pain, but the stung parts swell to ten times normal size in from two to four days. Collodion is used in the treatment. The probable cause of the prevalence of the melanolestes this year is the great abundance of insect life to be found everywhere. Nature has provided this species to prey upon caterpillars and other insect pests, and with the disappearance of these the melanolestes will disappear also. Again, nature has provided millions of of parasites which in turn feed upon this insect and destroy its eggs.
As a rule the melanolestes picipes makes his home under the bark of rotten trees. The insect runs with great swiftness and is hard to catch. It flies mostly at night. In the larvae state these creatures resemble somewhat the common bedbug. In fact, in the states of California and Texas and in all the Southwestern country where considerable annoyance and suffering are caused by its depredations, it is commonly known as the “Great Big Bedbug.”
I can't leave you with the image of a “Great Big Bedbug” in your head so here is one more:
AUGUST 11, 1899
Among all the European languages the English is the richest so far as the number of words is concerned, and it is also the one which has added to its vocabulary the largest number of words within the last half century. The latest English dictionaries contain not less than 260,000 different words. Next in rank comes the German language, with 80,000 words, and then come in succession the Italian, with 35,000, the French with 30,000, and the Spanish with 20,000 words. Among the oriental languages the Arabic is the most copious, its vocabulary being even richer than that of the English language. In the Chinese languages there are 10,000 syllables or roots, out of which it is possible to frame 49,000 words. Another notable language is the old Indian Tamil, which is now spoken in the south of India, and which contains, according to the latest calculation, 67,642 words. In the Turkish language there are 22,530 words. A singular fact is that aborigines, as a rule, have very limited vocabularies. The Kaffirs of South Africa have at their disposal not more than 8,000 words, and the natives of Australia use only 2,000 words.
Note: Today the number of words in the English language is: 1,025,109.8
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