Comments on: Grumpy 1833 letter calls BS on car-maker's extravagant claims

By: CLamb

CLamb — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:20:00 +0000

Darn, this reads like a challenge. Now I want to make one of those steam carriages.

By: Blair Berkelmans

Blair Berkelmans — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 02:30:00 +0000

>”…damaged while making a turn.”
Reminds me of the Reliant Robin on Top Gear (UK): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh56geU0X8

By: Lupus_Yonderboy

Lupus_Yonderboy — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 21:40:00 +0000

Hiyo! How’s your steak? I’ll be here all week.

By: HurfDurf

HurfDurf — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 18:21:00 +0000

I was thinking that when I made my comment. By the way, is it cold/hot enough for ya?

By: Lupus_Yonderboy

Lupus_Yonderboy — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 18:09:00 +0000

Conversely, some would say that there are jokes that got old before the first time someone said them.

By: HurfDurf

HurfDurf — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 17:54:00 +0000

I love that, “How’s the weather up there” has survived for so long. Some jokes just don’t get old.

By: jsd

jsd — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 17:12:00 +0000

Artificial and homosexual.

By: Beanolini

Beanolini — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:59:00 +0000

'Junius Redivivus' was apparently the engineer William Bridges Adams. The picture to which he was referring can be seen here- it's not the one above, though it does seem to show a similar machine.

By: BookGuy

BookGuy — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:32:00 +0000

The letter writer concluded, “And if anyone shall disagree with the contents of this letter, that person is certainly a homosexual and/or mother-fornicator, and I will certainly chuckle aloud at that person’s ignorance.” And thus YouTube comments were born a full 170 years before there was a platform to host them.

By: Tagishsimon

Tagishsimon — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:19:00 +0000

Redivivius may have been right about Church’s vehicle; or not. For instance, clearly, in the picture, not all of the wheels are of the same diameter. Putting that aside, there’s some fascinating disruptive technology / unhappy incumbents stuff in the early development of steam carriages for the road. Goldsworthy Gurney, who arguably got further than most in building steam carriages with a view to commercial operations, was kyboshed in large part by the horse carriage trade which, in concert with toll road operators, managed to get tolls for steam carriages set at impossibly high levels; and then resurfaced roads with loose gravel designed to bog down Gurney’s machines. These sorts of actions, and the whole Watt / Trevithick / steam engine patent wars, are 180 year old lessons contemporary legislators still will not learn.