Quote These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.
Gilbert Highet (1906-1978) Scottish-American author, teacher and critic

Reduce, reuse, recycle and look for products containing recycled content. Buy gifts that are durable, and with not too much packaging. If you buy disposable products, choose paper rather than plastic or styrofoam. Find ideas for holiday crafts at: http://www.ceee.uni.edu/Portals/0/recycledholidaycrafts.pdf

The New York City Bar has an extensive collection of business directories from the 19th century. Many of these books contain vintage advertisements that open a window to a city that was on the verge of greatness. This nostalgic tour takes a look at how small businesses and innovative entrepreneurs shaped the landscape of New York and built the foundation for the city to become the economic capital of the world. See cover illustration of Kampfe Brothers Star Safety Razor (1895) at: http://www.abcny.org/Library/FeaturedExhibitions6.htm
The Kampfe brothers, Frederick, Richard, and Otto, were born in Eastern Germany. They settled in New York in 1872 and started a cutlery business. In 1880 Frederick and Otto applied for a patent on “new and useful improvements in safety-razors.” This was the first use of the term “safety razor” The Kampfe Brothers began manufacturing the Star Safety Razor in 1875 in a one-room shop in New York City. The Star Razor was extremely successful and the Kampfe brothers ultimately acquired over 50 patents on razors and stropping devices. The Kampfe brothers’ designs inspired many competitors including Gillette's 1904 patent of the first razor with a disposable blade.

Have you ever worked on your laptop computer with it sitting on your lap, heating up your legs? If so, you might want to rethink that habit. Doing it a lot can lead to "toasted skin syndrome," an unusual-looking mottled skin condition caused by long-term heat exposure, according to medical reports. In one recent case, a 12-year-old boy developed a sponge-patterned skin discoloration on his left thigh after playing computer games a few hours every day for several months. "He recognized that the laptop got hot on the left side; however, regardless of that, he did not change its position," Swiss researchers reported in an article published Monday in the journal Pediatrics. Another case involved a Virginia law student who sought treatment for the mottled discoloration on her leg. Dr. Kimberley Salkey, who treated the young woman, was stumped until she learned the student spent about six hours a day working with her computer propped on her lap. The temperature underneath registered 125 degrees. http://www.theledger.com/article/20101003/NEWS/10035070

Antique Tin Ceilings Information and History by Laura Evans
During the Victorian era, ceilings were an integral part of houses. The very wealthy incorporated ornate plastered design work into their homes' ceilings, making their ceilings part of the "art" of their houses. Many people who wanted to include intricate designs on their ceilings could finally install them with the introduction of tin ceilings during the mid-1800s. Tin ceilings were made in a stamping, or hammer, press. After the tin was laid on the bottom die, the ram, or the top part of the press, was lifted by rope or chain and then dropped onto the tin, smashing the metal with the chosen pattern. Tin ceilings, or the panels and tiles which made up tin ceilings, were painted and then installed. These tin ceilings were lightweight, easier to install than plaster and, best of all, affordable to many. The popularity of tin ceilings started to wane during the 1890s. Modern manufacturers are replicating Victorian ceiling patterns, usually using aluminum instead of tin. Today's tin ceilings, and they are still called that regardless of the metal used, are lighter in weight and easier to install than the old ones. Many people are using unpainted tin ceiling panels on the walls of their kitchens as well as on their ceilings as architectural accents.
http://www.life123.com/home-garden/building-renovations/ceilings/tin-ceilings.shtml

Save these old houses--low-cost beauties pictured at:
http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/photos/0,,20278529,00.html
NOTE: The November 2010 issue of This Old House magazine devotes its last page to a house in Fairhill, Maryland. Maryland's Resident Curatorship program requires that a person pledge to restore and maintain the house according to the state's historic preservation guidelines can live there with a lifetime lease that's just $1 a year. The original section of the house was built near the turn of the 19th century, and two additions were added later.

Victorian Data Processing by Martin Campbell-Kelly
The Victorian world was awash with data and with organizations that processed it; and they usually used nothing more technologically advanced than pen and paper. The Bankers' Clearing House—the first payment system—is just one of many examples. The Bankers' Clearing House was established in London in the early 1800s. Interestingly, we owe the first description of the Bankers' Clearing House to Charles Babbage. Today we think of Babbage primarily as the inventor of calculating machines, but in his life-time he was better known as a scientist and an economist of international standing. In 1832 he published the first economic treatise on mass production, The Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. It is there that he published his account of the Bankers' Clearing House. Babbage described the operation of the Bankers' Clearing House almost in terms of an algorithm—though one executed by people, not machinery. He wrote: "In a large room in Lombard Street, about 30 clerks from the several London bankers take their stations, in alphabetical order, at desks placed round the room; each having a small open box by his side, and the name of the firm to which he belongs in large characters on the wall above his head. From time to time other clerks from every house enter the room, and, passing along, drop into the box the checks due by that firm to the house from which this distributor is sent." The amount of money flowing through the Bankers' Clearing House was staggering. In the year 1839, £954 million was cleared—equivalent to $250 billion in today's currency. However, one of the benefits of the system was that the banks now needed to bring only a relatively small amount of money to the Clearing House. On any day, the totals of checks received and checks paid out would tend to cancel each other out, so that a bank needed only the difference between these two amounts. For example, on the busiest single day of 1839, when £6 million was cleared, only approximately £1/2 million in bank notes was used for the settlement. In his account of the Clearing House, Babbage noted that if the banks were to each open an account with the Bank of England, no money in the form of cash would be needed at all. All that the Clearing House would have to do would be to adjust the account that each bank held with the Bank of England at the close of the business day. This innovation was instituted in 1850, and the physical movement of money was entirely replaced by pen-strokes in an accounting ledger. It was a key moment in both fiscal and information processing history, and Babbage recognized it as such. Communications of the ACM October 2010