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Brrr!

clipped from www.bigfootencounters.com
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Garbage Bag

Garbage Bag Invention
clipped from www.collectionscanada.gc.ca

Enter Winnipeg inventor Harry Wasylyk who, after the Second World War, began experimenting with a new material called polyethylene. Harry made his first plastic bags in his kitchen and supplied them to the Winnipeg General Hospital to line their garbage cans. He quickly moved his kitchen production to a plant. Around the same time, Larry Hanson, an employee at Lindsay, Ontario’s Union Carbide plant began to make garbage bags to use around the plant. Union Carbide knew a great idea when it saw one. The company bought Wasylyk’s business and began producing the garbage bags from the leftover polyethylene resin piling up at its Montréal plant. Another Canadian, Frank Plomp of Toronto was also working on the same idea in the 1950s. He sold his garbage bags to hospitals and offices. Three inventors working on the same idea at roughly the same idea, and all of them Canadian!

Bowers, Vivien. Only in Canada!: from the Colossal to the Kooky. Toronto: Owl Books, 2002.

Garbage Bag
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a gas mask

clipped from data2.collectionscanada.gc.ca
http://data2.collectionscanada.gc.ca/ap/a/a022718.jpg
clipped from www.collectionscanada.gc.ca

During the First World War the German army used poison gas for the first time, against Allied troops at Ypres, France in 1915. A soldier’s only protection was to breath through a handkerchief or other small piece of fabric soaked in urine.

Out of necessity, Doctor Cluny Macpherson, from St. John’s, Newfoundland, quickly came up with the idea of a gas mask made of fabric and metal. Using a helmet taken from a captured German prisoner, he added a canvas hood with eyepieces and a breathing tube. The helmet was treated with chemicals that would absorb the chlorine used in the gas attacks. He had invented the world’s first gas mask. After a few improvements, Cluny Macpherson’s helmet became the first gas mask to be used by the British army.

Inventor: Cluny Macpherson (1879-1966)
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the light bulb

clipped from www.collectionscanada.gc.ca

Did you think Thomas Edison invented the light bulb? Many scientists from various countries had been working for many years to develop a long-lasting light bulb. Toronto medical student Henry Woodward was one Canadian who was working on the problem, with help from Matthew Evans, a Toronto innkeeper. Around 1873 or 1874, they invented a glass bulb that housed a carbon filament and nitrogen gas. They patented it in 1874.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have enough money to produce and sell the light bulbs, so a year later they sold the patent to… you guessed it: American inventor Thomas Edison!


Photograph of an electric lamp post on a city street corner, 1916
Source
Electric lamp post, Metcalfe Street looking north, Ottawa, 1916

Photograph of a gas lamp post on the corner of an unpaved street, 1882
Source
Gas lamp post, Dalhousie Street, Ottawa, April 1882

Photograph of Thomas Edison with a handwritten message, 1929
Patent for Woodward & Evans' Electric Light, July 24, 1874, with diagrams of the invention
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A FEW SUNSETS

April 19, 2009 ; 92 degrees F. Nice weather. Salty feeling on my skin. I am actually sweating!

RED LANDSCAPE

RED-ORANGLANDSCAPE

R-ORA LANDSCAPE

Impromptu

cotorra

Impromptu: Sketching releases some kind of energy

ms boyle

Sketching Sci-Fi

I saw The Day Earth Stood Still - v 1951; yesterday and will see the new version this weekend. I am in that mood also, sci-fi movies and books.. Although… I also skimmed through the Kama Sutra and read The Day Time Stopped in e-versions… Interesting (the Kama Sutra).

SPOCK

I resurrected this sketch of my favorite character in Star Trek, because I don’t have anything new to post. I could add it to the Spock’s ugliest sketches blog.

Moody

Got my make believe crayons and pens to my table for a few sketches.

KILLER CAT2

An the mood was cynic,softening a little as the day went by…

BIRD IN CAGE

Poor birdie, poor mousie.

COLOR BIRDIE

Gotta luv been retired.

HAM_FOOD_SMALLER

I love to  take photos of special occasion food.

FLOWERS_2009_EASTER

HAM_FULL_BG_1024x768

SALAD_SM

Ugly Critters

A young one in the family shared a few animal pics he had taken and I followed by sending some of mine. Here are some of them. I think he is the one in the generation after mine that will love photography.

P7110706

Not the best of cameras but the ants were cooperating. A long line of them on the door were ready to pay an unwelcomed visit.

P1070307_320x180

The poor guy —the one down — was being eaten by the vulture.

BichoRaro_320x306

This one, I don’t even know what it is; found it under the roots of a plant I was trying to revive by watering. Ugh!!!

I guess life is not always pretty. It happens

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