(If you’re interested in receiving a copy of my upcoming release, read through to the end of this post)

Did you know that the scientific principles behind 3-D movies had their first practical application as early as 1838?  That’s when Charles Wheatstone patented his reflecting stereoscope.   I’m sure you’ve all seen stereoscopes before, in pictures if not in actuality.  But do you know how they work?

Actually, they work in much the same way human vision works.  Because our eyes are spaced about two inches apart we see everything from slightly different angles.  Our brains, wonderful creations that they are, then process these into a single image with both dimension and depth.  Charles Wheatstone applied this principle to his invention, using drawings that were pairs of reverse images and a series of mirrors to create the illusion of a single three dimensional image. 

In 1850, glass images were developed.  Though an improvement on the earlier drawings, the quality was low and the price was relatively high. 

Queen Victoria took a fancy to the device when she saw one demonstrated at the Crystal Palace Exposition in 1851, and suddenly they were all the rage in Europe.  It was somewhat later before the fascination took hold in America.

These early stereoscopes were large, bulky and table mounted, requiring a large commitment of space as well as money.  But all of that changed a few short years later.  With the advent of photographic improvements, tintypes, daguerreotypes and flat mount paper became available, greatly improving the quality of the images.  Early attempts had photographers taking one photograph then slightly shifting the camera and taking a second.  The next evolution had photographers utilizing a rig that had two cameras mounted on it to take the twin photos.  Eventually an enterprising inventor created a camera with two lenses

Then, in 1862 Oliver Wendell Holmes and Joseph Bates created a compact, handheld viewer named the Holmes stereopticon and the popularity of stereoscopes exploded.  In fact, by the end of the century, in spite of their expense, you could find one of these devices in many middle and upper class parlors of the time.  The most popular slides were the travelogue type that depicted exotic landmarks such as the pyramids of Egypt and the closer-to-home scenic beauty of Yellowstone.   The marvels of the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1892 and the St. Louis World Fair also made their way onto stereoscopic slides.  As Burke Long put it, “Mass-produced and relatively cheap, the integrated system of mechanical viewer and photographs became fashionable for classroom pedagogy, tourist mementos, and parlor travel to exotic places of the world.”  You could say that, as a form of entertainment, the stereopticon was the Victorian era’s equivalent of today’s DVD players. 

By the 1920s movies and the enhanced availability of cameras to the ‘common man’ began to supplant the stereopticon’s hold on people’s  interest.  But the stereopticon survives to this day.    The child’s toy View-Master, named one of the top 50 toys of the twentieth century, is a direct ‘descendent’ of the stereopticon, utilizing the very same principles. 

So, do any of you have any first hand experience with a stereopticon? 

Oh, and about my June release – while THE HEART’S SONG is not a western, I hope it’s a book you will enjoy.  If you’re interested in winning a copy, just leave a comment related to the subject of this blog before 7:00 this evening, and you’ll be entered in the drawing!

 Thank you so much for this opportunity to blog with you today. I am the Executive Producer for Reader Hook Productions and you can find us at www.readerhook.com . I want to talk a little about an option for promotion that appears to becoming more and more popular with writers… and that’s video.

The world of entertainment is exploding. Authors today must compete with movies, television and music that is now, thanks to devices like the i-phone, just as portable as a paperback. The number of books is also on the rise. Many authors are choosing the convenience of self publishing, and this has sent the number of books available to the public through the roof.

Creating a movie-like trailer for your novel can bring you new fans, push up your sales, and it can be fun. Putting together a promotion video can seem like a daunting task, but there are a few big mistakes that beginners make that if avoided can make the process a whole lot easier.

Lets start with 5 steps that will get you off on the right foot.

1.) Do Work and Re-work the script. A video is only as good as its script. Tap into your own skill as a writer to create a quick description of your book that will grab the viewer.

2.) Do Find the Right Look. Spend some time finding the right look for your video. Try for pictures or video that will fit both the time period and theme of you book. Here is one we did that I think has a good look:

3.) Do Pick Good Music. The right music can make an average video good, but the wrong music can ruin a great one.

4.) Do Ask for Help. Find someone with some video editing experience and ask for their help putting together your video. It could be the kid down the street or a professional video production house,. The point is the right advice could really add some energy to your video. Don’t be afraid to ask, but remember that you get what you pay for

 5.) Do Have Fun. Look at the video creation process as another way to enjoy your writing. If you take the time to craft the right look and feel for your video, you will be much happier with the final product. Plus friends and fans will enjoy a video more when they know it has been made with love.

Now the 5 things to watch out for…

1.) Don’t Make it Too Long. Even the best videos can be killed by length. Short and sweet is the way to go. Try to hook the viewer quick, hit them hard and leave them wanting more. A good length to try and stick to is around one to two minutes.

2.) Don’t Underestimate a Good Voice. The right narrator can add life and pace to your video.

3.) Don’t Assume Anything. It is important to remember that the viewer will most likely know little to nothing about your book, so highlight the big themes of your story. Keep the script simple, and in the end your video will be more interesting.

4.) Don’t keep it to yourself. If you want the world to read your book, let the world see your video. There are several websites where you can post video for free. YouTube is the biggest but not the only one out there. It can also be a good idea to burn your video onto DVDs and pass them out to friends and fans. Here is a video Reader Hook did that is front and center on the client’s website: http://www.enjoyluxuryoflife.com/

5.) Don’t Forget the Details. Nothing is worse than a great video that leaves the viewer saying “Now what?”.

Remember to include the details of where and when the viewer can get your book. You may also want to include your own website or the website of your publisher near the end of the video. Here is one example of one we just did with lots of detail:

The bottom line is whether you do it yourself or with a little help, producing a video can be fun if you let it, and it can be a great way to pull in new fans.

Check out some of the latest videos from Reader Hook Productions at www.readerhook.com . Please shoot us an email if you have any questions, or you are ready to get started on your video.

Gook luck!

Margaret Brownley

Scams, advertisements and demands from Prince “Wants Your Money” from some foreign country:  Sound like your e-mail? You’re close. Only back in the 19th and 20th centuries it was called the telegraph.  Not only did the telegraph create a quicker way to get junk mail, it changed the way Victorians lived, did business, received news and yes, even fell in love.

In his fascinating book, The Victorian Internet, Tom Standage tells us that there really is nothing new under the sun.  Meetings, chat rooms, games, and illicit affairs were just as prevalent 150 years ago as they are today.  And what, for that matter is a text message but a telegram, forcing people to be brief and to the point? (Tell that to your teen!)

If you think acronyms such as LOL and BTW are a modern concept, think again. Telegram security was an issue and secret codes were devised.  Government regulators tried to control this new means of communication, but failed. Sound familiar?

Though the telegraph was first conceived in the 1600s and an optical one developed in the 1700s, it took a tragedy to make the dream of fast communication over long distances a reality.

Samuel Morse: A Love Story

Samuel Morse was an artist commissioned to paint a portrait in Washington. Upon receiving a letter informing him of his wife’s sudden death, he returned to his New Haven home as quickly as possible, but he had already missed her funeral.  This had to be very much on his mind seven years later when he in a chance conversation aboard a ship he learned that electricity could travel along any length of wire almost instantaneously.  Unaware that others had tried and failed to create a fast way of communications using this method, he immediately set to work.    

What Hath God Wrought?

It took Samuel Morse 12 years to perfect his invention and many trials and tribulations, but he was convinced that this new way of communicating would allow a husband to reach a dying wife’s bedside or save the life of a child.  He thought it might even prevent wars.  His hard work and perseverance paid off.  On May 24, 1844, he sent the telegraph message “what hath God wrought?” from the Supreme Court chamber in the Capitol in Washington, D.C., to the B & O Railroad Depot in Baltimore, Maryland.

No longer was it necessary to communicate solely through trains, mail or horse.  Even Morse himself couldn’t have imagined how telegraphic communications could change society.

Boon and Bust for Outlaws

Then as now, the first to embrace the new technology were criminals. The first telegrams sent were horse bets and lotteries.  A man named Soapy Smith opened a fake telegraph office in Skagway, Alaska during the gold rush of 1897. The wires went only as far as the wall. The telegraph office obtained fees for “sending” messages from gold-laden victims. Though outlaws such as Butch Cassidy routinely cut wires or jammed telegraph keys to prevent lawmen from tracking them down, the telegraph eventually helped put an end to the train robberies that plagued the west. 

Wired Romances

Western Union might have been the first equal opportunity employer as women telegraphers were prevalent.  The ratio of men to women in the New York office in the 1870s was two to one.  Women operators were often chaperoned but that didn’t stop women from forming relationships with partners in distant offices.  As a result, wire romances bloomed and one couple even married by telegraph. However, not all online romances had a happy ending.  In 1886, The Electrical World magazine ran an article titled The Dangers of Wired Romances. That same article would no doubt be just as timely today.

Tom Standage writes that time traveling Victorians arriving in today’s world might be impressed with our flying machines but they would be unimpressed with the Internet. They did, after all, have one of their own.

A Lady Like Sarah in Bookstores now

Leave a comment and you might even win a copy.

www.margaretbrownley.com

On our recent trip north to visit our niece Katie and hubby John in the Lake Tahoe area, we paused to take in the sites and history of Sacramento including the mansion  of Leland Stanford (1824-1893). Stanford wore such hats as California governor, railroad baron, university founder…and race horse owner. One of the video displays at the mansion shows his search to settle one of the hot debates of the 1870’s: Is there a moment in a horse’s gait when all four hooves are off the ground at once?

There is a legend that Leland Stanford bet $25,000 that it was true. Common reaction at the time nixed the idea. After all, if God wanted horses to “fly”, He would have given the creature wings.  But determined to settle the question, Stanford hired celebrity photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) to prove it.

Actually Muybridge was born Edward Muggeridge in Kingston-Upon-Thames, Surrey, near London. He adopted the more dramatic moniker, believing it to be the true Anglo-Saxon spelling. However, he soon shortened it to Helios and became one of San Francisco’s most celebrated landscape photographers, taking more then 2,000 photographs with 20×24 inch negatives. His 1867 photographs of Yosemite Valley brought the valley…and himself…almost mythic status.

He accepted Stanford’s challenge in 1872 and came to “the farm” in Palo Alto. (It now is Stanford University.)  After a bit of a detour –Muybridge went on trial for killing his wife’s lover— he found it wise to spend some time in Mexico and Central America even though he was acquitted on the grounds of justifiable homicide. Here he did photography work for Union Pacific Railroad, one of Stanford’s companies. In 1877 Muybridge came back to Palo Alto and continued his experiments in motion photography, using 12 to 24 cameras and a special shutter he developed that gave an exposure of 2/1,000 of a second. 

Muybridge’s first attempt indeed captured Stanford’s horse, Occident, silhouetted against white sheets with all four feet off the ground. Although these original pictures didn’t survive, Muybridge continued to work with Stanford to develop techniques in the “science of animal motion.”

In 1878, he succeeded in photographing a sequence of frames produced on wet plate with 12 cameras that proved the “flying horse.” The slow wet plate collodion process produced images that were mostly silhouettes, but they showed something never before seen by the human eye.

Scientific American and other prominent publications featured articles on Muybridge’s accomplishment. However, Stanford invited his close friend, horseman and medical physician  Dr. J.B.D. Stillman to produce a book analyzing the horse-in-motion. Stillman used Muybridge’s photography without crediting the photographer. Interestingly, when Muybridge sued Stanford and Stillman for copyright infringement, he lost his suit.

Eadweard migrated to the University of Pennsylvania after that where he developed sequences of human figures, both clothed and naked (including himself unclothed). This important collection helped scientists and artists study human and animal movement, and many of the sequences were published in 1887 in a portfolio,  “Animal Locomotion, An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movement.”. To simplify, imagine the “flip books” of your childhood. And actually, Muybridge’s sequences are available for kids in just this format in the mansion gift shop.

For all these reasons, and for the big one — the zoopraxiscope—Eadweard Muybridge is often called the father of the motion picture. To illustrate his lectures, he developed the’scope; its lantern projected images in rapid succession onto a screen. The images came from his photographs, printed on a glass disc. From the rotating disc came the illusion of moving pictures.

Muybridge’s zoopraxiscope display, an important predecessor of the modern cinema, was a sensation at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. Muybridge continued to promote his photography and publish his work until his retirement in 1900 at which time he returned to England. “Animal Locomotion” is still in demand by art students today.      

I’m always amazed at the progress and prowess of people who came before. What a debt we owe to their ingenuity, their resilience. In honor of Eadweard Muybridge’s legacy, what are your favorite motion pictures?

http://twitter.com/FeliciaFilly

Hi y’all.  Happy Labor Day!  I hope you’re able to take advantage of the holiday to kick back and do something relaxing or fun or, better yet, both!

My latest project had a deadline of Sept. 1^st and after a number of very late nights getting it polished up and ready to send in I’m kicking back a bit myself before I dive into the next project. 

But on to the current post.  I was recently doing a bit of research to see if it would be possible for someone in Texas in 1890 to have access to ice in the middle of summer.   I knew, of course, that in the northern parts of the country, folks would harvest large blocks of ice in the winter and store them away underground or in some other manner that would ensure they would have ice available for most of the year.  But here in the south it is rare that the ponds and lakes freeze over, even during the coldest parts of the year. 

So, I started digging around for info, and in the process I discovered a few interesting little tidbits.  Though some pioneering efforts into artificial ice manufacturing were already in place in the first half of the nineteenth century, the application was very limited and “natural ice” was still the most common source.

Before the Civil War “natural ice” was shipped from points north to the south via rail and ship.   In fact, ice from New York was shipped as far away as India.  (Who would have thought ice would survive a trip like that?)

The change from the use of natural ice to that of manufactured ice was slow in coming.  Many folks distrusted ice created in the crude factories, believing natural ice was healthier and cleaner (despite the questionable sanitary conditions of the water sources and collection procedures).  The push to accept artificial ice was ultimately accelerated by those in the south who grew tired of having to rely on the north for their supplies.  This grew more pronounced with the advent of the Civil War, when the south was almost entirely cut off from their ice suppliers.  It was at this time that enterprising and inventive men stepped forward to develop alternatives. 

Texas and Louisiana, it appears, played a large role in the early work here in the United States relating to the development of commercial ice manufacturing. 

In 1865 Daniel Livingston Holden made several improvements on the Carre absorption machine, a device patented in France, and installed it in San Antonio.  Within two years three of the eight ice manufacturing companies in the US were located in San Antonio

In 1868 the Louisiana Ice Manufacturing Company of New Orleans opened the very first large scale artificial ice manufacturing facility – a plant with a sixty ton capacity.

Charles Zilker, who moved to Austin, TX from Indiana was another early entrepreneur in the ice-making arena.  In 1884, after working in and operating ice plants for a number of years, Zilker built his own plant and made a number of design improvements.  He established his first plants in Austin and San Antonio.  Later he constructed facilities in any area where he could find a sufficient supply of cooling water for the compressors and enough people to allow him to turn a profit.  By 1928 he owned plants raging from Texas to Atlanta to Pittsburg.  He eventually sold these for $1 million.

By 1900 there were over 760 ice plants in the US.  Texas was home to 77 of these, the most of any state in the union.  Beginning in the 1920s there was a gradual decline in commercial ice plants with the greater use of home refrigerators.

So there you have it – a short history of the ice industry in the United States.  Wherever and however you’re spending this Labor Day, when you raise those glasses of iced tea or soda, you can thank those enterprising fellows in Texas for helping to develop and improve on the technology that brought those nice cubes of ice to your glass.

 I wrote this blog some time ago, before my fair homeland of Southern California exploded in flames.  Although I live on a coastal plain far from the burning hills and valleys, the sky miles away is filled with visible “pyrocumulus” clouds of smoke that resemble nuclear blasts. Nearly 200 square miles have burned. The only good thing, if a good thing can be found:   the “devil winds,” the hellish Santa Anas aren’t blowing.  The hell would become Armageddon  if that were so.

My hubby spent his professional career chasing this kind of wildfire. He’s retired now, but I remember those panic-stricken days glued to the TV set, not knowing exactly where in the state he was, or how long he’d be there. Or worse, if I’d ever seen him again.  In fact, when we were dating, if I got stood up it wasn’t personal. I’d turn on the TV and sure enough, there was a wildfire somewhere, and he was out in the thick of it. Tragically, a pal of his died in a firestorm on Monday. He  remembers “cutting line” –removing stubborn brush and growth in a path around something to save it –with Ted on the same winding, treacherous mountain  ridgeline where Ted, a fire captain, died.

Right now, let’s bombard heaven for the safety of the men and women fighting these infernos, for the folks having to evacuate and leave behind most of what they hold dear, and for the precious wildlife and domesticated animals, so terrified and displaced. We made a donation today to the SPCA to help feed the sweet animals they have sheltered.

Now, on a happier note, throughout those 34 years as a firefighter, my hubby received a ton of unique fire-related gifts from family and friends.  He’s got a crystal liquor decanter shaped like a fire hydrant, reproduction antique cast-iron toy engines, a framed collage of all his cloth patches,…and a whole caboodle of “fire marks.” 

Fire mark? Whazzat?

The fire mark, a cast iron plaque about a foot large, originated in England long ago. British fire insurance companies used these plaques to identify properties they’d insured because each company had its own fire brigade. A private firefighting team would put out a fire only when it saw its employer’s mark on a property! Yikes. 

Not here in America! Volunteer fire companies existed here long before the fire insurance companies.  In fact, groups of volunteer firefighters in many large cities organized their own insurance companies, most of which issued fire marks. However, the “badge,” was never necessary for firefighting purposes.  Firemen put out your fire no matter what. The fire mark was simply an advertising tool.

In 1736, Benjamin Franklin founded the Union Fire Company, America’s first volunteer fire company, in Philadelphia, and in 1752, his insurance company was the first to issue a fire mark. Six of the company’s  twelve directors had every inducement to reduce fire loss—they were volunteer firefighters as well as mutual policy holders. The fire mark identified properties that would be financial losses for them, and saving those properties became a high priority.  

However, no volunteer company refused to protect a burning home or business that didn’t  display a fire mark. In fact, volunteer fire companies raced each other to be “first water” on a fire. Competition among companies was fierce, rivalry intense. It was huge to be first at a fire.

 But researcher Robert M. Shea has found rumors starting in the 20^th century that claimed volunteer fire companies let structures burn if there were no fire mark. Not true! In 1929, the Franklin Fire Insurance Company in its 100^th anniversary history stated that in Philadelphia’s early years, all fire companies would respond, but only the company whose “badge” was displayed on the structure would fight the flames.  A 1938 article by W. Emmert Swigart stated that  “If no insurance fire mark was seen, the free-lancers [volunteers] would often declare a false alarm and calmly walk away from the scene, much to the chagrin of the uninsured owner of the burning building.” Not true!

No sources exist, no records, no newspaper accounts or most of all, no public outrage, indicate that volunteer fire companies ignored their firefighting duties unless the property had a fire mark. Like with most anything, a snippet of falsehood often seems more intriguing than the truth, and I myself believed the stories for years until I researched this blog.  It does appear true, however, that some fire marks indicated an insurance company that paid rewards up to five dollars to the first engine company that arrived to a fire with its equipment in good working order.

Fire marks in America were definitely not required for firefighting. Their main purpose was a sign that the property was insured in addition to good advertising for the insurance company. One insurance company took to heart Benjamin Franklin’s theory that trees attract lightning and voted not to insure houses with trees in front of them. Its mark was, appropriately, a tree.

Indeed, the fire mark was one of the longest ad campaigns in America. The use of fire marks reached its peak from 1850 to 1870 as a result of the westward expansion of established companies in the East, and the smaller new companies of the Midwest..

The heyday of the “badge” was over by the 1890’s, By then, the era of modern firefighting, with full-time trained men and high- power steam engines had begun.. And of course, printed advertising material for an insurance company was cheaper and easier to dispense than the heavy cast-iron “badges.” 

However, the Baltimore Equitable Society still issues fire marks to keep the tradition alive and well.               

So how about  you? Is “fire mark” a new term for you today, or have you seen ‘em before?  Anyone ever visited a fire station?  Ridden in or on a fire truck? Any other “fire-y” tales to share?   

Click on cover to order

Last weekend I lost my favorite wristwatch.  I’d noticed earlier that the band was beginning to show signs of wear and had planned to take care of it ‘soon’, but like most other things in my life these days, I put it off until it was too late.  I do have other watches, several in fact.  I collect ones that reflect different aspects of my mood and personality.  I have one with a dragonfly on it and one that is for ‘dress up’ occasions and one that is very bold and colorful for when I’m in a fun mood.  But, while this particular watch was not an especially showy or expensive piece, it did have a lot of sentimental value and was the one I wore most often.  My mom gave it to me as a Christmas gift about eighteen years ago and I have treasured it ever since.

As luck would have it, I was about 300 miles from my home when I discovered my watch had gone missing.  Since I’m lost as a goose without a watch, I immediately rushed out to the nearest department store and picked up a replacement.  And because this has become such an indispensible accessory for me, it got me to wondering about just when folks started wearing timepieces on their wrist.  I did a bit of research and it turns out that, historically speaking, wristwatches have not been in general use for all that long.

While there are some examples as early as 1500, and Queen Elizabeth I was supposedly given one as a special gift, they were few and far between and were specially commissioned pieces most often for royalty until the mid to late nineteenth century.

Even then men still clung to their pocket watches, viewing wristlets, as they were called at that time, as a feminine and somewhat faddish adornment.  In fact, men were quoted as saying they would  “sooner wear a skirt as wear a wristwatch”.

The established watch making community was partly to blame for this.  They looked down on them as inferior timepieces.  Because of their size, few believed they could achieve an acceptable level of accuracy and the vast majority of those being produced were made as decorative pieces with delicate fixed wire or chain link bracelets.

That began to change when soldiers discovered how useful wristwatches could be in battle situations.  Military men found pocket watches difficult to handle while engaged in physical combat and began to fit them into makeshift leather straps to wear on their wrists. Not only did this leave their hands free for other things, but being able to check the time at a glance instead of having to dig through pockets gave soldiers a strategic advantage over those less well equipped, especially when synchronization of activities was critical.  

Officers in the South African Boer war (1899-1902) were among the first to use wristwatches extensively and the veterans were not afraid to sing their praises both during and after.  By World War I, the military not only encouraged the use of wristwatches but began to demand them for the soldiers. 

By the 1920s, wristwatches had become the most popular type of personal timepiece among both men and women.  Rolex is credited with creating the first water resistant watch, a model of which was worn in 1927 by a female channel swimmer.  Both Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh wore wristwatches for their celebrated transatlantic flights.  Today, wristwatches have become as much a symbol of status and style as a utilitarian instrument to tell time.

As for my own lost wristwatch, I still cling to the hope that I’ll find it wedged down in some nook or cranny in my car or purse or some such.  In the meantime, I’ll use one of the others I own.

So what about you?  Do you select your watch(es) for their function, or do you look for one that reflects something of your style and personality?

And just a quick note – To celebrate my very first day at Wildflower junction as an official filly I’d like to give away a signed copy of my March release, The Hand-Me-Down Family (or one of my backlist if you prefer).  I’ll be drawing a name of one poster sometime Monday evening.

Howdy! When the fillies invited me a few weeks ago to toss my name into the Stetson as a permanent blogger at Wildflower Junction, I tingled with joy and nerves both. There I was, asked to join a stable of award-winning authors who inspire me, whose books I read and treasure. At a site that recently got its millionth hit and, on a daily basis, reaches hundreds of viewers. 

Writers and readers and cowgirls, oh my. Then came the decision on what to post first. Oh, I’ve done some guest blogs at the Junction that were well received. So I reckoned I had to devise some topic to eclipse those. 

Should I feature locales near my Southern California homestead where Western movies are filmed and totally evoke the inner cowboy in anybody who drives by on a busy freeway?  Here’s Rocky Peak, one of my favorite places.

Should I orate on the marvelous coincidence that both Pam Crooks and I have daughters with the same name getting married imminently? Share a sneak preview of The Dress? Nope. Had to nix that. Top Secret. The groom has been ordered to check out this blog today.  

Preview my book Marrying Minda that will be released in a few weeks?

Then of course, there’s always my toddling grandson about whom I can emote endlessly. And who I believe has romance cover-model potential in about twenty years.

Ah I can handle all of that later on. For when the clouds parted, I realized what my inaugural Filly post should be about. 

Chocolate!

My mainstay, my dear love. The ruin of my waistline, hips, thighs and every pound of flesh in every direction. And how to tie my vice, my guilty pleasure, into a Western blog?

The Mason Jar.     

Said jar was actually invented as the first canning jar in 1858 by John Landis  Mason. However, it was Frenchman Francois Nicolas Appert, a pickler, brewer, chef and distiller who established the principles of preserving food in hermetically-sealed glass containers in 1810. 

In 1858, John Mason developed a shoulder-seal jar with a zinc screw-cap. Check the name and date on the yellow jar. Ten years later, he inroduced a top rubber seal above the threads and under a glass lid.

So why do most Mason jars come marked with the name Ball? 

Let me digress. I have an antique Mason jar of my very own, the blue jar shown below. It’s been displayed in each one of my domiciles starting with my college dormitory. Why? Well, during my years of higher education in Nebraska, I often spent weekend with my roommate Bel at her family farm in Fairbury. My overly-protective father had allowed me to leave my California home because it was a church college and You’ll Be Safe There.

 Oh I loved those long leisurely weekends. I loved farm life so much I stumbled downstairs one morning about ten o’clock stating I’d love to marry a farmer. Her dad, who had been up for five hours, had just come inside for his quick mid-morning coffee. I still hear his shouts of laughter as his wife started on cooking her second big meal of the day before I’d even wiped the sleep dust from my eyes. 

These darling folks happily sent me exploring the farmstead to acquire souvenirs to take home. Old rusty tractor gears decorate my patio to this day. And I found my Mason jar all by myself in their old-fashioned  disused wash house. It’s one of the ten things I’d save if a tornado was coming. Well, make that an earthquake.

My treasured Mason jar displays the name Ball and the date  1906. Because John Mason’s patent expired in 1879 , the name changed. When the market opened for competition in 1884, the Ball brothers swooped in and started a manufacturing company in New York State. However, three years later, Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing Company moved to Indiana.

In 1909, the first Ball Blue Book was published, full of tips on home canning. I am certain my gramma and mom used this book. You see, my brother found ancient Mason jars of canned peaches a few years ago when we started cleaning out mom’s old garage. We reckoned they were left from the Cold War years when you expected a nuclear blast and had to store up indestructible food to survive it.

But for the Balls, it wasn’t all about the jar.  Frank, Edmund, George, Lucius and William Ball endowed a small college in Muncie that later became Ball State University. Even more impressive, their company did not lay off a single worker during the Great Depression!

After 88 years as a family business, the company went public in 1972, and the Ball mason jar celebrates its 125h birthday this year. Through August 23, the exhibit Can It! 125 Years of the Ball Jar is going on at Minnetrista Cultural Center in Muncie. Details at minnetrista.net 

All right now. Lesson over. Can’t help it. I am a former teacher. But what does all this have to go with chocolate?

SAND ART BROWNIES!                                 

They’re easy to make and lovely to look at. Layers of cocoa, brown sugar, chocolate chips and other goodies in a Mason jar make this a gift to remember.

I’ve made these jars for all my neighbors at Christmas, and it’s a sweet homemade gift for first-day-of school, a thank-you or hostess gift. Cover the lid with red and white gingham cover tied with a blue bow and you’ve got a perfect treat for a Fourth of July BBQ.This recipe makes one gift jar using a wide-mouth quart Mason jar.  Cover the top with a circle of gingham and tie with a pretty ribbon. And don’t forget to attach the directions.

For 1 jar:

2/3 t. salt
1 1/8 c. flour, divided
1/3 c. cocoa powder
2/3 c. brown sugar
2/3 c. sugar
1/2 c. chocolate chips
1/2 c. white chocolate chips
1/2 c. walnuts or pecans

Instructions:

In  a clean, dry canning jar, layer the ingredients as follows:

2/3 t. salt
5/8 c. flour
1/3 c. cocoa powder
1/2 c. flour
2/3 c. brown sugar
2/3 c. sugar
1/2 c. chocolate chips
1/2 c. white chocolate chips
1/2 c. walnuts

Close jar, add fabric circle and attach the following directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease one 9×9 baking pan.

2. Pour the contents of the jar into a large bowl and mix well.

3. Stir in 1 teaspoon vanilla, 2/3 cup vegetable oil and 3 eggs. Beat until just combined.

4. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes. Cool and enjoy! Or if you’re like me, eat warm. Hot, even.

Now, the big questions of the day:

1. Have you ever canned anything using a Mason jar?  (I myself am terrified of the process. I never married a farmer and am fairly helpless in the kitchen.)

2. What is your favorite way to eat chocolate? 

Thanks for stopping by today. To celebrate my first day at Wildflower Junction as an official filly,  I’ll be drawing the name of one poster to receive a pretty pressed wildflower bookmark! 

(Sincere thanks to  Country Living magazine, May 2009, Canning Pantry,  and Minnetrista for the fun facts.)

I finished a book yesterday! It’s a June Harlequin Historical for next year, and it’s tentatively titled Her Make-Believe Husband. I almost blogged about breweries in the 1800s, part of the research for my book, but then I decided to share how I celebrated last night. I bought five beachfront properties, a couple of mega casinos, fifty chain guns, a couple of getaway cruisers, and then I wiretapped the cops and robbed a couple of five-star hotels, putting them out of business. What a night.

I’m talking about a game, of course. Remember your first computer? If you can really stretch way back, you might remember when Apple came up with a few games on floppy disks and they were revolutionary! Schools even used Oregon Trail for the elementary kids.

And your first real computer, remember how it came with solitaire and minesweeper? Land o‘mercy, who could have anticipated the games that were to follow, and even online games?

I used to play hearts. And an occasional game of spider solitaire. And one of my computers came with a really addicting game where you lined up matching rocks to make them disappear – sort of like Bejeweled, but I liked it better. I was never able to find that game again. I do play Bejeweled occasionally.

I’m not a big game player, but I do go through periods where I play something to unstress, and it’s most often late at night. I didn’t realize until I asked around, but Facebook has a lot of game applications, like Poker, Risk and others. I have a friend who is addicted to Fashion Solitaire. Most of the kids I know play some type of online game, like Tunetowns, Millsbury, and of course the online pets.

I was never really HOOKED until my daughter talked me into trying a My Space application called Mafia Wars. Oh, my goodness. It didn’t take me long to climb the ranks in the mob. Once you join, you need members for your mafia, and there are all kinds of people out there whacking each other with tommy guns and crow bars and robbing each other’s convenience stores who are more than willing to join your mafia.

You start out as a street thug and earn your way up by doing jobs and fighting other gangs. You buy property and getaway vehicles and earn loot in heists. I own more bulletproof vests and body armor than I will ever use in a lifetime.  And, of course, you snuff the occasional bad guy. And every once in a while when someone beats the tar out of you, you add him to the hit list. Revenge is sweet.

There are other My Space applications, and my family has tried a lot of them, but this is our favorite. We played Fashion Wars for a while—too girly—and right now we’re also playing Pirates.

Do you have a secret—or not so secret—obsession with a game? Which ones test your skills? Do you play a few hands of solitaire before you go to bed? How about Word games like Scrabble?

If you confess a passion for a game today, I’ll add you to a drawing for an advance copy of my June book, The Preacher’s Wife. Come on, spill it!

Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I have an illegal poker game to run.

Oh, and if you play Mafia Wars, come find me. I’m Bad Bama.

Before the Civil War, most businesses were small with only a few dozen employees, and a clerk was most often a young fellow starting out in a business by keeping records and transcribing letters. The 1870s and 1880s brought the growth of corporations and trusts and employment for tens of thousands of workers. Management and labor divisions were created, and paperwork flourished. None of my research showed this, but I couldn’t help wondering if the growth in record keeping was also partly due to the influx of former slaves suddenly being on payrolls.

The idea behind the typewriter applied Johann Gutenberg’s concept of movable type developed for the printing press to a machine for individual use. Descriptions of such mechanical writing machines date as far back as the early eighteenth century. In 1714, a patent something like a typewriter was granted to a man named Henry Mill in England, but no example of Mills’ invention survives.

In 1829, William Burt from Detroit, Michigan patented his typographer which had characters arranged on a rotating frame. However, Burt’s machine, and many of those that followed it, were cumbersome, hard to use, unreliable and often took longer to produce a letter than writing it by hand.

The typewriter began at Kleinsteuber’s Machine Shop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1868. A local publisher-politician-philosopher named Christopher Latham Sholes and his fellow workers spent hours tinkering on a machine to automatically number the pages in books. Someone suggested a similar device to print the entire alphabet. An article from Scientific American was passed around and a machine that printed the alphabet resulted. It even had the QWERTY keyboard we still use today. The prototype was eventually sent to Washington as the required Patent Model.

Sholes licensed his patent to famous gun maker Remington & Sons of Ilion, New York. In 1874, the Remington Model 1, the first commercial typewriter, was placed on the market. No more than 5,000 were sold, but the invention founded a worldwide industry and brought mechanization to time-consuming office work. The original still exists, locked in a vault at the Smithsonian. Probably a couple hundred or so survived time, and those are valued from $1000 for a black model to $5000 for an ornately decorated model on a treadle stand.

Remington and his sons were already in the sewing machine business, as well, and in fact the early typewriter models with stands look like sewing machines with the same iron scrollwork. The Remington type writing machine was first displayed to the public at the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876 along with Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, Heinz Ketchup, the Wallace-Farmer Electric Dynamo, precursor to the electric light, and Hires Root Beer.

The Franklin Typewriter was a make popular around the turn of the century. Its type bars stood erect at the front of the machine and swung down to the platen. Its radical semi-circular keyboard characterized this down strike machine. Many survive today.

Other models were created and patented over the years, some which struck the back of the paper to print. Some had two complete sets of letters – uppercase and lowercase. Funny that double-keyboard promoters thought it was confusing to have to press two keys when you wanted capitals. The Smith family of Smith Premier later became Smith-Corona. It was the longest-lived name in the typewriter business.

After this practical invention became widely available, typing became a more specialized skill, requiring training other than that of a company manager moving through the ranks. New positions developed in the forms of stenographers, file clerks and typists, and the jobs were quickly seen as women’s work. In 1881 the Young Women’s Christian Association (YMCA) offered typing training.

Based on Sholes’ mechanical typewriter, the first electric typewriter was built by Thomas Alva Edison in the United States in 1872, but the widespread use of electric typewriters was not common until the 1950s. The electronic typewriter, a typewriter with an electronic “memory” capable of storing text, first appeared in 1978.

So there’s everything you always wanted to know about typewriters, but didn’t think to ask. I always enjoy learning that something I thought was a more recent discovery had actually been around for far longer.

Milestones:

1714 The first patent for a ‘writing machine’ was given to Henry Mill of England

1829 William Burt of the US patented his typographer machine

1868 Christopher Sholes, Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soule patent type writing machine

1872 Thomas Alva Edison builds first electric typewriter

1873 Remington & Sons mass produces the Sholes & Glidden typewriter

1978 Olivetti Company and the Casio Company develop electronic typewriter

I did my first writing on a Smith-Corona portable. When I think back on the changes I make by using White Out – what a nightmare. But it was easier than writing by hand, and the finished pages were far easier to read. When I got an IBM Selectric, I thought I had hit the big time. No more White Out because it had an eraser tape! Whoo hoo! We didn’t realize that those were the dinosaurs of the inventions to come, did we? Hey, they were better than anything we’d known previously.

Author and friend Victoria Alexander collects old typewriters, and she has some really awesome specimens in her office. Will anyone else admit to having written or typed letters on a standard typewriter? Do you remember the strikers getting crossed when you went too fast?