Skinny III: Skinny Water. An Extremely Thin Shower Apparatus, 1888.

JF  Ptak Science Books   Post 408
                                                                                                       

There's nothing in this image that doesn't make sense, right down to the water recycling part (from my read, anyway) and the effort that goes into making the shower happen.  You can work up a sweat while exercising and get rid of it at the same time, saving on laundry--like taking a vertical bath with only tiny water accumulation.  Also the water has been retro-electrified to minimize dripage and to make it "power fall" in a smooth, orderly, canonical fashion, as we see here.  (Just kidding about this last part.)  Seriously, though, this fashionably entrunked (?) man must have been really pumping away to get that much action from that big shower head. 

The slightly odd thing here is that this image, made for the Illustrirte Zeitung in October 1878, is that plumbing--which had been introduced by this time--was not a factor here, nor was a shower curtain (which also had made an earlier appearance).  I'm guessing that this cold water shower machine was unusual for being foot powered.  The earlier showering devices, particularly those seen in America, were hand-driven shower benches. 

The second image has nothing whatsoever to do with the first save that it, too, in its own way, is "skinny".  The suspended monorail horse powered railway car, seen here in the 1878 September issue of The Scientific American. In its own secret way, it is a splendid idea, meant to pursue it own very heavily programmed way around the street of New York City.   It might have been a smoother ride for the passengers than being pulled over miles of macadamized roadway, and may have been easier for the horse, but it does seem as though there is an awful lot of metal to make these relatively minor advancements worthwhile. 

Also, it really is a beautifully rendered image.

Comments

[Jeff]

The pump shower is a nice metaphor for how man lives on the earth. Man and the water start out clean; soon enough, both are dirty.

The street car is lovely. Perhaps the horse was merely to get it going on a downhill course. Then the horse would veer out of the way, and the street car would take you on a ride through the city. We could do something like this in Salida. It's all downhill, and usually downwind, to the river.