layla: grass at sunset (Default)
Layla ([personal profile] layla) wrote2007-04-01 11:10 pm
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Your bizarre invention of the day...

The Tempest Prognosticator, invented in the 1850s, predicts storms using ... leeches. Leeches that use teeny hammers to ring bells. I swear this is not an April Fool's joke, at least to the extent that one can trust Wikipedia and Google.

The basic idea is that leeches apparently become agitated by the electrical activity that precedes storms, so the "prognosticator" uses a leech array as a sort of barometer. Squirmier leeches wiggle around enough to trip the wire that rings the bell, thus indicating the approach of a storm (with the likelihood of an actual storm depending on the number of times the bell is rung).

Just to make it better yet, "the leeches were placed in glass bottles placed in a circle to prevent them from feeling "the affliction of solitary confinement"".

It's good to see the working conditions for the leeches were taken into account.

[identity profile] senri.livejournal.com 2007-04-03 02:05 am (UTC)(link)
I totally think about the working conditions for leeches every night before I go to sleep. I just for your information, I send up a little prayer for them every night too.

*hugs you!*

[identity profile] laylalawlor.livejournal.com 2007-04-03 06:04 am (UTC)(link)
I KNOW! I lay awake and worry about it! I've written to my congressperson but I never got anything back. (I really can't imagine why.) I dream of a day when the working leeches of the world will be able to throw off their shackles, lay down their hammers and frolic in the streams! Or unionize, at least.

LET US WORK TO MAKE THIS DREAM COME TRUE!

*hugs you back*

[identity profile] senri.livejournal.com 2007-04-03 08:09 pm (UTC)(link)
I await the day when our leech brothers may throw off the shackles of prognosticator oppression and join us dancing in the sun.