New Haven Railroad and industry, 1945

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Jobs before pollution...

The James Samson Handyvan

Produced from 1929 to 1939 by the James Cycle Company of Birmingham.  More information here.

Kings Head Inn, Burlington, Ontario

Helga V. Loverseed.  Burlington.  An Illustrated History.  Windsor Publications (Canada) Ltd., 1988.

Below, as it was in 1910 (Source:  Virtual Reference Library):

Wings and Wheels, Owls Head Museum

Sidecar Sunday

"Thing" from The Addams Family

When I was a kid, the television series "The Addams Family" was a huge hit.  I especially loved "Thing", the disembodied hand, and my parents bought me the toy above.  I still have it and it still works (although I left batteries in it years ago, and they caused some nasty corrosion in the battery compartment.  You live and learn.)

I recently picked up a magazine at a thrift store, to find the ad below:

Better Homes & Gardens, July 1966

Not cheap!  With inflation, it would be almost $40 today.

The TV show first aired in 1964, and was based on a cartoon series by Charles Addams.  There have been several films since then.

You can watch Thing doing his thing on youtube.

Vanished tool makers: L. Huggniot-Tissot, France

I recently found this pair of duckbill pliers at a yard sale.  They're marked "L. Huggniot-Tissot."  I can't make out what the logo on the left side is supposed to represent. I've read that the company's trademarks included a crown, a lion (passant, looking over shoulder), a cockerel and the letters "L.H.T."  It doesn't look to me like any of these.

Curiously, it's marked "Acier Anglais" ("English steel") but also "Made in France."  A truly bilingual tool.

There's not a lot of online information about this manufacturer.  I did discover that Lucien Hugoniot-Tissot manufactured a variety of watchmaker’s, jeweler's and watchmaker's tools.  The company was located in Montécheroux in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region of eastern France near the border with Switzerland and was active between 1850 and 1930.  How the tool ended up in the boonies of eastern Ontario will remain a delicious mystery.

Lowering a locomotive onto its wheels, Doncaster, England, 1950's

Oxford Junior Encyclopaedia.  Volume VIII.  Engineering.  Oxford University Press, 1955.

Vanished tool makers: Guys (Handtools), London, England

Above, an Archimedes screwdriver stamped with the name of this firm.  Below, close-ups of their logo, showing a hand holding a screwdriver with the motto, "Worthy of Craftsmen."

There's not a lot of information about this firm online.  Someone suggests that they operated between 1952 and 1971, but that's just a guess.  They were located at 13-19 East Dulwich Road in London. Google Maps shows a large, 3-storey building there, now residential and commercial use, which may have been their head office.  Their principal products seems to have been block planes (with their name cast into them) and spiral and ratcheting screwdrivers.  It's not clear whether they were a manufacturer or a distributor.  In any event, the screwdriver I picked up has a bent spiral shaft.  I've picked up quite a few of these kinds of screwdrivers over the years, made in the U.S., Britain and England, and this is the first time I've ever found one with a bent shaft. There's no reason for this to happen with proper use of the tool so, unless someone tried to use it as a pry bar, it doesn't speak well to the quality of the company's products.

Marx Doughboy Tanker toy, 1930