What is it?
This Edwardian invention was patented in Britain and manufactured between 1902 and 1910. Tomorrow in this space I will reveal all, but in the meantime you may wish to offer your suggestions of what it is?
You might even know. Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below....
What it is.
Great deduction from some of you. I suppose today we'd call it a contraption. A complicated way of producing something that can be delivered quite simply by ordinary means. That might explain its relatively short period of production. So what is it?
The patentee was Englishman Frank Clarke (1876-1937). And as some of you guessed this is an automatic tea-making machine. But the story is interesting, for the design was thought up by Albert Edward Richardson, an iron turner and fitter from Lancashire. He then sold the design to a Birmingham gunsmith Frank Clarke, who patented it as "An apparatus whereby a cup of tea or coffee is automatically made." (if you enlarge my photo you can see the patent number engraved on the contraption).
In short, the idea was that the alarm clock would wake you up to a hot cup of tea or coffee. It had quite an ingenious timing system and was (of course) entirely analogue. The Lancashire Daily Post in 1904 said, "Could anything more uncanny well be imagined? Why not fit on a megaphone, so set as to say, 'Get out of bed, old sleepy head.'"
This item became part of the QVMAG collection in 1956.
What is it?
This Edwardian invention was patented in Britain and manufactured between 1902 and 1910. Tomorrow in this space I will reveal all, but in the meantime you may wish to offer your suggestions of what it is?
You might even know. Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below....
What it is.
Great deduction from some of you. I suppose today we'd call it a contraption. A complicated way of producing something that can be delivered quite simply by ordinary means. That might explain its relatively short period of production. So what is it?
The patentee was Englishman Frank Clarke (1876-1937). And as some of you guessed this is an automatic tea-making machine. But the story is interesting, for the design was thought up by Albert Edward Richardson, an iron turner and fitter from Lancashire. He then sold the design to a Birmingham gunsmith Frank Clarke, who patented it as "An apparatus whereby a cup of tea or coffee is automatically made." (if you enlarge my photo you can see the patent number engraved on the contraption).
In short, the idea was that the alarm clock would wake you up to a hot cup of tea or coffee. It had quite an ingenious timing system and was (of course) entirely analogue. The Lancashire Daily Post in 1904 said, "Could anything more uncanny well be imagined? Why not fit on a megaphone, so set as to say, 'Get out of bed, old sleepy head.'"
This item became part of the QVMAG collection in 1956.