Remember that story about lifeguards rescuing 100 swimmers off Horseshoe Bay because of surge stirred up by Hurricane Frances? Did you believe it?

One hundred people pulled from the foamy deep by three people in three days? I think somebody must have been leading the reporter up the garden path - the only three lifeguards on this planet who could have handled that kind of lifesaving pace are Superman, Wonder Woman and … all right, Batman, but only if he leaves that stupid cape on the beach.

Let's say, though, for the sake of argument that I'm wrong. What does it say about the calibre of tourists we're getting these days if scores of them start sinking like stones because of a storm 1,000 miles away? Ought they to be allowed on the beaches at all? Ought we to take chances?

Here's a part of the answer to our problems. I came across it when I was leafing through a book I came across, which listed some of the patents issued by the British patent office between 1901 and 1905… (don't ask). There, on page 36, was the very thing - Maccolini's Improved Bathing Dress.

The patent blurb says it “combines an ordinary bathing costume with a life-saving apparatus which is simple in construction and operation, and may also be used as an aid in learning to swim.”

This is the important bit - “Each sleeve is provided with a hollow receptacle, secured at the shoulders, and which may be inflated by means of a tube adapted to be held in the mouth.”

Neat, huh? Kind of like waterwings, except that these shoulder things don't leave you with your face in the water if you lose consciousness. It may be a bit of a problem that the modern tourist male seems to prefer not to wear a bathing costume with shoulders, but that's only in something like 50 per cent of cases. If they start making a fuss, well, we'll just pass a law. We've got the power.

This book of mine is called ‘Edwardian Inventions', and it was written by Rodney Dale and Joan Gray. I don't know who they are, and they don't explain, but they seem to be people with more free time than they have sense of humour (librarians, perhaps?).

Sure, they know the stuff they're writing about is a little odd, but they don't seem to grasp that they're digging in as rich a seam of drollery as has ever been mined. If Curly, Moe and Larry had read this book, they'd have been too busy laughing to make another picture.

Take electricity, for example. The Edwardians were obsessed with their health, prepared to twist themselves into the most extraordinary knots, physical and mental, if they thought they'd be healthier as a result. Electricity was new to them … the little shocks you get from a few volts at low amperage were a kind of curiosity for them. Put health and electricity together and you get an entirely new kind of treatment to obsess about. But do you know what they were doing with those volts?

I'll give you an example, chosen for its suitability for all ages. ‘Stanger's Improved Medical Chair' is designed to deliver a kind of generally therapeutic charge of electricity, so that “diseases” can be treated by “an arrangement which admits of the bathing and syringing of the affected parts. The parts of the chair which support the patient are fitted with cushions which form the electrodes of one pole of an electric circuit, the other being a basin or bath fitted in the seat.” The seat. You with me so far?

“The basin is fitted with an airtight cushion or ring at the top, and a tube proceeds from its base along which the liquid for treating the patient may be pumped … The basin may also be connected to a carbonic-acid reservoir for carbonic acid baths, and a spraying device connected to one of the electric circuits may be used.”

Leaves you a little breathless, doesn't it? Good thing the boys and girls over at Abu Ghraib don't read this kind of book. Or maybe … Nah, it's too late.

The Edwardians were new to germs, which Louis Pasteur claimed to have discovered in 1877 (there's some evidence they had actually been known about for 200 years before he sort of rediscovered them and drew them to people's attention). People of the time took germs very seriously. By the turn of the century, the patent office was full of devices designed to kill them, or to prevent them from getting to the wrong places.

‘Axtell's Apparatus for Disinfecting the Transmitters and Receivers of Telephones', for example, used electricity from a hand-cranked magneto to zap the little devils before making a call.'

‘Heidelberger, Foettinger and Hagel's Protective Paper Cover for Water closet Seats' is a roll of paper perforated so that one tissue, as it were, completely covers the toilet seat from front to back and from side to side. Holes are strategically placed in each tissue for your personal convenience. A less fussy solution, it seemed to me, at least in a house with servants, is a device that allows the householder and his family to put the seat up and lock it in place until one of them needs to use it again. That's ‘Wainwright's Improved Closet Seat'.

Outside the germ and electricity spheres, the reading fare just keeps getting better:

‘Seeger's Collapsible Sun or Rain Shade' is a jumbo version of the solar topee. It is “adapted to be carried upon the shoulders so that the hands are left free for other purposes, which is of especial importance for cyclists, surveyors and others working in the open air, cripples, tourists, horsemen and others… It may also be employed, in case of need, as a tent (as a single tent for soldiers for example).” That's either some shade, or some soldier.

‘Whitney's Method for Collecting and Putting to Practical Use the Electricity from the Interplanetary Ether' has a certain simple elegance. It consists of a cable 150 miles long, “which is projected through the earth's atmosphere by any suitable form of terrestrial energy, such as a small powerful cannon or an airship.”

Sceptics, Mr. Whitney says, should take heart, as “it is only necessary to furnish energy to lift the furthest end of the cable the first seventeen miles above the earth's surface; beyond this, the electric force in the ether itself will raise the furthest end of the cable through the miles remaining without the necessity of employing any extra force.” All that's needed then is to attach our cable to a battery (secured firmly to the ground, I'd say) and charge'er up.

Finally, ‘Jephson's Improved Coffin for Indicating the Burial Alive of a Person in a Trance' is recommended. “There is a glass plate in the lid, and a small shelf attached to one side of the coffin which may hold a hammer, matches and candle so that, when the person awakes, he can light the candle and with the hammer break the glass plate, thus assisting to liberate himself when the earth above the coffin is removed.”

That's what Miss Jephson says in her patent document. I guess it would be true to say that's all she wrote.

www.pondblog.com