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Your bizarre invention of the day...
Apr. 1st, 2007 11:10 pmThe 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.
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.