News/Blogs

STRASBURG, PA. Replica sailing ships and historic buildings are commonplace; I have lost count of the number of reproduced Santa Marias . Locomotive replicas are much more rare. During the past 70 years or so, only three have been built in the United States, so it was newsworthy when Stanley P. Gentry, an industrialist of Ribbing, Minnesota, decided to build a replica of the Virginia & Truckee Railroad’s first locomotive, the Lyon .

Mary Phelps Jacobs was only 19 when she became dissatisfied with the confining corset-style under-garments of the era.  It was 1910, and the wealthy socialite wanted to wear a revealing gown to a debutante ball.  But her tight and restrictive corsets, a typical fashion of the day, poked out from under the plunging neckline.  

Struck with inspiration, she asked a maid to bring her two silk handkerchiefs and a pink ribbon and transformed them into a comfortable undergarment suitable for backless gowns.   

We are so pleased to be able to once again produce an issue of Invention & Technology, especially one chronicling the lives of 50 women inventors.

In early September 1900, a tropical storm crossed Cuba, its precise location and intensity largely unknown to weather services, and intensified over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It smashed into the Texas coast as a Category 4 hurricane, destroying the low-lying town of Galveston with a 12-foot storm surge. An estimated 8,000 people died.