Oddity of the Week: Modern Wonders
Created | Updated Mar 8, 2015
The words 'high tech' mean different things to different people.
Modern Wonders
We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.
Criswell in Plan 9 from Outer Space.
In 1911, they thought, 'The future is HERE. The future is NOW. We are so modern, we scare ourselves.' Think steampunk with atty-tude.
Who needs a boring old water fountain? Above all, who needs one you have to bend over to use? Why that lady would be embarrassed to do so, even though she's way too modern to be wearing a bustle. (Bustles were soooo 15 years ago…) You get the picture.
Actually, you don't. Not yet. See, this advert appeared in a journal called American City. Along with many, many others: adverts for street lighting, concrete, fire engines and equipment…in short, everything the modern city needed. Who read this journal? City planners, city commissioners, even that newest of professionals, the city manager.
The first city manager was hired in 1908, to run Staunton, VA. That's how things were done in the Progressive Era. Science, organization, and determination could do anything. There was no problem they couldn't lick.
That's why that water tasted so good. It was the flavour of Progress.
