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stormdogI'm starting on the research for my assistantship by trying to find information about one Robert Gatliff of Miama, Florida who invented an "Automatic City Directory", patented 1921. I got really excited when I happened on this while looking through Access Newspaper Archive:
Tell me this does not sound like a guy who's probably spending most of his time tinkering with hardware in his garage! There are even pictures of his hats!
I don't know whether I've talked about it here. My RAship will involve genealogical research on people who patented cartographically related inventions through the mid nineteenth century. Dr. Monmonier thinks it will make for an interesting parallel literature to academic literature and journals.
"California cannot, it seems, claim credit for the hardware hat idea. Florida, so certain citizens of Miama have emphatically stated, has been making such curious millinery creations for several years and gaining considerable publicity as a result.
Two years ago, Robert T. Gatliff, window dresser in a Miami hardware shop, put together half a dozen such hats and enlisted the aid of as many pretty girls to wear them while cameramen clicked shutters and popped off flashlight bulbs.
"Modiste" Gatliff, if his neighbors know what they're saying, designs much more thrilling hats than those produced out on the west coast. He has exceptional originality and employs all sorts of gadgets to get his effects. One of his best numbers, it is reported, was a bridesmaid's hat fashioned of copper screening, metal scouring cloth, a soup strainter, a small paint brush and several hand-picked pieces of fishing tackle."
-The San Antonio Light, July 12, 1936
Tell me this does not sound like a guy who's probably spending most of his time tinkering with hardware in his garage! There are even pictures of his hats!
I don't know whether I've talked about it here. My RAship will involve genealogical research on people who patented cartographically related inventions through the mid nineteenth century. Dr. Monmonier thinks it will make for an interesting parallel literature to academic literature and journals.
