LOL! Love that! Mind if I "borrow" it? As State Archaeological Steward and as chairman of our county's Historical Commission, there's no doubt I'll find uses for it...
My dad was a welder, and during WWII he had a carbide-fueled acetylene generator on his welding trailer. Since he always had a 50-lb drum of calcium carbide around, I had plenty to play and "experiment" with. Knowing what I now know about the wide range of explosive acetylene-air mixtures, it is a marvel I survived those (and other pyrotechnic) "experiments"...
We also had carbide headlamps (like miners wore) that we used when hunting bullfrogs (and often finding water moccasins) in the hundreds of abandoned, water-filled "slush pits" that dotted the "oil patch" where we lived.
Speaking of the "ancients", I was surprised to learn that the headlamps on some early automobiles (and, earlier, on fancy horse-drawn carriages) were ...carbide lamps!
Thanks for sharing the "ancients" saying!
To the best of my memory, I heard that “ancients” expression from a grad school professor around 1974. We were studying international relations, this in the wake of the Vietnam antiwar protests, youth revolt & counterculture and our prof, an old fashioned FDR liberal, scoffed at the protesters’ belief that they had invented well, protest movements.
When he pointed out the obvious, that popular uprisings and the writings which inspired them go back many centuries, his younger charges actually expressed their chagrin that all life, innovation and original thought did not begin with them (”don’t trust anybody over thirty!”).
He characterized their youthful arrogance as “The ancients are stealing our wisdom!”. As a recent Vietnam vet at the time, I found that hilarious.
For what it’s worth, our discussion of carbide lights sent me to eBay. Lots of them out there but I passed. Grandpa was a WW1 vet and worked in the coal mines until he saved enough to go to trade school and learn steam generation & operation. He got his license and a much better paying job as the boiler operator in a local factory, and worked until he was sixty six. The miners had lost their jobs by 1932 anyway; Grandpa would go to the mines to dig coal to heat his house but except for that his miner’s tools were souvenirs of an earlier time.
Once again, that diagram of the moment of impact between Hunley and Housatonic is an awesome image. Well done!