If you want to know what was truly important to any particular generation, you could probably do a lot worse than browse the patent applications of the time.
I was therefore pleasantly surprised whilst trawling through the patents of the late 19th and early 20th Century to find a glut of animal baths. At first I found them funny, but eventually found myself enamoured with the beautiful (OK, so sometimes funny too) line drawings. Those shown above are:
What’s the best old patent you can find in the database? Can you top the wonderfully simple sex aid (sorry, “Appliance For Assisting Anatomical Organs“) from 1897?
You never realise how much you could do with one of these till you see one, do you?
Thanks for leading me to Google Patents. Happily wasted a great many hours producing instant installation fodder by the simple expedient of searching on promising words on advanced search restricted to the time span 1880-1919.
@Judy Tell me about it. I think I exhausted every rude word and taboo I could think of.