Mummy Power
Comments: 4
Somehwere recently mummies were in the news (can’t remember where I saw the link - which I didn’t follow, but anyway, the headline was good ;-). Made me think of this astounding passage from Double Fold by Nicholson Baker:
In H. Rider Haggard’s novel She, mummies are used as torches - the bituminous preservatives burn so fiercely that “flames would literally spout out of the ears and mouth in tongues of fire a foot or more in length.” Combustion this intense could generate steam. The railroad from Cairo to Alexandria, imposed on the Abbas Pasha by the English in the early 1850s, runs through several bustling necropolises; Egypt had no indigenous coal and very little wood. A small item in the September 27, 1859, edition of the Syracuse Daily Standard reads: “Egypt has 300 miles of railroad. On the first locomotive run, mummies were used as fuel, making a hot fire. The supply of mummies is said to be inexhaustible, and are used by the cord.” Dard Hunter’s Papermaking cites an informant’s report that “during a ten-year period the locomotives of Egypt made use of no other fuel than that furnished by the well-wrapped, compact mummies.”
My italics. To repeat; for 10 years they used nothing but mummies as fuel for the railroad!
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Posted to Little-known Facts • 2002.03.11 (Mon) • 07:57
Comments
Posted by James Buckley 2002.03.03, 11:23
Excited myself. Just from that one shot you can tell Christine over at www.eleganthack.com has been doing a great job on usability. It feels more familiar now and fixes many usability problems (not that it wasn’t easy to use before), as well as intergrating search and recent events into the front page. This is one product I’m actually looking forward to the pay version, which I’m sure will rock.
Posted by Karl Jones 2002.08.15, 12:12
Locomotives? burning mummies? Incredible!
So I searched Google and found this debunking @ The Straight Dope:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/020222.html
- KGJ
Posted by Papermaking 2003.06.10, 02:23
Too bad it’s not true. You can get some more good info on Papermaking at: http://www.booksunderreview.com/Arts/Crafts/Papermaking/
Posted by raven 2003.11.20, 00:36
i love them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
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