Guns. Pieces. Firearms. Rods. Heaters. Six-Shooters. Hand-Cannons. Bullet. Shot. Cap. Cartridge. .45. .38. .22. 9mm. Flintlock. Wheel-lock. Matchlock. Caplock…

In one way or another, firearms have been around for centuries…ever since some clever guy in China discovered that if you mixed sulphur, crushed charcoal and saltpetre (that’s an old term for ‘Potassium Nitrate’) in the correct quantities…and didn’t get killed in the process…you could produce a powerful explosive! It’s impossible to imagine today’s world without guns, isn’t it? What would police-officers use on violent criminals? What would soldiers fight with? What would armed criminals use to hold up the local convenience-store with?

This article will look into the history and development of firearms from the very earliest and most primative pieces, to the first modern firearms that we would know today.

The Big Bang and the Invention of Gunpowder

Just like everything else of value, such as the compass, decent food, the wheelbarrow, martial-arts and fireworks, the Chinese invented gunpowder. The first documented proof of this comes from the early 12th Century. The Chinese were quick to grasp the possibilities of this new invention. With an explosive such as this, they could create weapons…primative weapons, that’s true, but weapons nonetheless…and weapons of a kind that nobody else at the time, had ever seen. Cannons, muskets, grenades, bombs and even naval-mines, used to blow holes in ships.

By the 13th and 14th Centuries, the Europeans had also discovered gunpowder. Early gunpowder was tricky to make, though, and highly dangerous. It took considerable experimentation in the 1200s before those people brave enough to tamper with the stuff had come up with a suitable ratio of ingredients. Europeans improved gunpowder by moistening it in a process called ‘corning’. By corning the gunpowder, makers could form the powder into cakes and then break these down into individual little granules or ‘grains’. This prevented excessive gunpowder-dust from hovering around in the air, which was a significant explosive hazard.

The First Firearms

The very first firearms were crude, dangerous inaccurate weapons, little more than a tube that was open at one end, sealed at the other and with a small hole at the sealed end of the tube called a ‘touch-hole’. Called ‘hand-cannons’ or ‘hand-gonnes’, they were merely scaled down versions of larger artillery pieces in-use at the time. Little thought was given to them and they certainly weren’t relied upon in battle. Indeed, many early guns were so impractical that they often came with forked, wooden stands or poles upon which to rest the muzzle of the gun. That way, one hand could be freed from supporting its immense weight, to hold the burning match-cord or ‘slow-match’ (a precursor to the modern fuse) to the touch-hole to ignite the gunpowder and fire the ammunition.

Firing Mechanisms – Matchlock

The very first firearms had to be set off by putting a burning match-cord into a touch-hole to ignite the powder and fire the weapon. This was adequate, but hardly ideal. With both hands, or one hand and a forked, wooden stand needed to support the length and weight of early muskets and hand-cannons, guns were dangerous, agonisingly slow, inhibiting of movement and fatally slow to reload.

In the 1300s, the first reliable firing-mechanism was invented…the matchlock.

A man firing a matchlock musket. The burning white rope is the match-cord

The matchlock worked by filling the barrel of the gun with blackpowder, then driving down your bullet and a wad of cloth or paper to keep everything firmly seated. You then filled the flash-pan with powder and closed it. After this, you fitted your smouldering match-cord into the jaws of a simple, S-shaped lock on the side of the gun. You then opened the flash-pan by hand, aimed and pulled the trigger. If you’d lined up the match-cord with the pan, then the cord came forward, ignited the priming-powder in the pan and fired the gun for you. This kept both your hands free to fire and hold the gun and kept both your eyes on the target. From the 1300s until the early 1500s, this was the most advanced firing-mechanism available, even though it was incredibly slow, allowing only about two shots a minute (if you were lucky!).

It was during the matchlock period of firearms, when guns were coming onto the battlefield which had for so-long been dominated by bows, arrows, crossbows, bolts, swords and spears, that a new word was coined.

“Bullet Proof”.

These days, we’ll add ‘proof’ to the end of anything. Waterpoof. Fireproof. Leakproof. Greaseproof. Idiotproof.

What does “proof” actually mean?

The word ‘proof’ itself means to provide evidence or to show effectiveness. Hence the term ‘proving ground’, an open area where weapons were ‘proofed’ or demonstrated to show their effectiveness. Given this definition, what is the original meaning of ‘bullet-proof’?

Originally, bullet-proofing meant proving (that is, ‘demonstrating’) that bullets could not penetrate your body-armour. Back when soldiers still marched into battle wearing plate-armour, it was the job of the armourer to “proof” his armour. This was done by firing a bullet from a matchlock pistol or musket, at the breastplate of his completed suit of armour at point-blank range. If the armour was good quality, the musket-ball left a dent in the armour’s breastplate. This dent was circled or marked in some way by the armourer so that it stood out to the enemy. This circled dent, caused by the bullet, was the “proof” that his armour was impervious to firearms. Hence the term “bulletproof”.

Firing-Mechanisms – Wheel-lock

If you’ve ever used a modern cigarette-lighter, then the basic operation of the wheel-lock firing-mechanism should be pretty familiar to you. Invented in the early 1500s, the wheel-lock was the first self-igniting firing-mechanism. It didn’t rely on a tempermental and fiddly piece of smoking cord to light the powder…it created its own lighting-mechanism through pure friction.

The wheel-lock operated by pulling the trigger, which rotated a steel wheel inside the firing-mechanism. This wheel, when rotated fast enough by the pull of the trigger, created sparks which set off the gunpowder and fired the weapon.

Although the wheel-lock was pretty advanced…for the first time you could just load a gun and shoot it, for the first time, you could (with luck) shoot a gun in the rain, for the first time, you didn’t need to fumble with burning match-cords…its downfall was that the wheel-lock firing-mechanism really was…advanced. Far too advanced to be practical. The intricacies of the mechanism made it a pain in the ass to clean, lubricate and maintain. It was also hard to mass-produce and it required master gunsmiths to be able to disassemble, repair and clean them effectively. Because of this, they died out, to be replaced by…

Firing-Mechanisms – Flintlock

The flintlock firing-mechanism is one of the most famous firing-mechanisms in the world. Half of our firearms jargon and slang comes from the flintlock. A ‘flash in the pan’, meaning a sudden idea which amounts to nothing, referred to a gun misfiring, producing a quick flash of burning powder and nothing else. ‘Going off half-cocked’, meaning to start before being fully prepared, referred to flintlock guns firing before the hammer had been pulled off its safety-position. ‘Ramrod straight’ referred to the necessity for really straight, rigid ramrods, used to help load early firearms.

The flintlock mechanism was invented in the early 1600s, and for the next, at a rough estimate, 230 years…it remained the forefront of firearms technology. Even though it couldn’t operate reliably in wet weather like the wheel-lock mechanism, the flintlock was popular for a number of reasons: It was easy to use, easy to clean, easy to make and easy to repair. Its simplicity of operation meant that anybody could pick up a musket or a pistol and know how to use it within a couple of minutes, without risk of injury. The flintlock mechanism even came with its own “safety-position’: The hammer had to be cocked twice before a gun could be fired properly. The positions, called “half-cock” and “full-cock” related to how far away from the frizzen the firing-hammer could be pulled back to. Half-cock provided access to the flash-pan and frizzen, but would not cause the gun to fire if the trigger was pulled accidently. Pulling the hammer back to full-cock meant that when the trigger was pulled, the gun would fire.

The flintlock mechanism worked by using a type of stone (called…’flint’) which was clamped into the jaws of the gun’s lock (hence the term ‘flint lock’). The piece of flint ws usually a small, sharp piece of stone which, when the gun was fired, came down and struck against a ‘frizzen’ or steel striking-plate, creating sparks. After hitting the frizzen, the flint would push the frizzen back, allowing the sparks to fall into the ‘flash-pan’ which ignited the priming-charge of gunpowder. Once the priming-charge was lit, it would ignite the main charge of gunpowder inside the barrel through the small ‘touch-hole’ next to it, setting off the gun and firing the projectile. Considerably faster and safer and easier to maintain than other firing-mechanisms, a trained soldier could fire three or four shots a minute using a flintlock firearm, or, under exceptionally good training, up to five shots a minute, or one shot every twelve seconds! A considerable change from the matchlock mechanism which only allowed one or two shots a minute, a couple of hundred years before.

Firing Mechanisms – Caplock

The caplock mechanism was similar to the flintlock mechanism, but with a few advantages: It was easier and faster to load and, unlike the flintlock mechanism, it could enable a gun to be fired in wet weather. It worked like this:

You poured gunpowder down your musket-barrel, along with a bullet and a cloth or paper wad, to stop anything falling out. You rammed it all down with a ramrod, withdrew the rod, returned it to its cradle underneath the gun-barrel, and then you fitted a small brass cap (similar, but larger than a modern child’s precussion-cap, used for toy ‘cap-guns’) over the ‘nipple’, a small metal tube above the breech of the gun, which had replaced the more bulky flintlock mechanism.

With the gun loaded and the brass cap securely placed over the nipple, you pulled back the firing-hammer, aimed and pulled the trigger. The hammer hit the gun-cap, and a chain reaction occurred. On the underside of the gun-cap was a small, impact-detonated explosive charge. When the firing-hammer hits the cap, it sets off the charge, that sends sparks and flames down into the breech of the gun. This lights the gunpowder and the subsequent burning and expansion of gases forces the bullet out of the gun.

Until the advent of the modern, self-contained cartridge…this was as advanced as firing-mechanisms got, until the later stages of the American Civil War in the mid 1860s.

The Evolution of Ammunition

Ammunition has always been changing, and throughout history, there have been several kinds of ammunition used in firearms. The three most common are the round ball, the Minie ball and the modern bullet.

Musket-Ball or Lead Shot

The earliest type of ammunition was obviously a round ball. Originally made of rounded off pebbles or stones, the musket-shot, the mainstay of ammunition up until the second quarter of the 19th century, was later made out of lead. People used to make their own lead balls by melting down lead in a small spoon or cup over a fire, before pouring the molten lead into a small bullet-mould. When the lead had hardened, the mould was opened and a small, round lead ball came out. Lead-shot was easy and cheap to manufacture, but it was hardly accurate. Due to the windage (gap) between the interior of old gun-barrels and the musket-balls manufactured to go into them, and the fact that the barrels were smoothbore, meant that these bullets were not accurate beyond about a hundred meters. With the addition of rifling to muskets, a musket-ball could be fired accurately to a range of about 200-250 meters, however.

The Minie Ball

Invented by Claude Etienne Minie in the 1850s, the Minie Ball (despite its name), is not actually a ball. It’s a conical-cylindrical projectile, very similar in shape to the modern cartridge-bullet. The Minie ball was designed to be used with another innovation in firearms technology: Rifling.

Minie Balls, the new type of ammo that replaced the musket-ball of the 18th and early 19th centuries

Rifling is the process of cutting a curved, spiralling groove into the inside of a gun-barrel. This groove allows the bullet to spin in the barrel after the charge has gone off, giving it greater accuracy. Although rifling had existed on a smaller scale before the invention of the Minie ball, when the two were combined, it allowed guns to be significantly more accurate than before. This led to devastatingly high levels of carnage during subsequent military engagements such as during the American Civil War. The Minie ball fired from a rifled musket or rifle could hit a target more than twice as far away as a comparable, unrifled musket firing a regular lead ball. However, military tactics didn’t evolve as fast as the weaponry which meant that in the earlier years of the Civil War, armies were still lining up, shoulder to shoulder in close formation, within a few dozen yards of their enemies and firing at each other, just as their ancestors had done nearly a hundred years before, in the American Revolution.

Cartridge-Bullet

The modern bullet as we know it today, or rather, ammunition as we know it today, was the result and combination of three different elements: The impact-detonated precussion-cap (seen on muskets of the American Civil War), smokeless modern gunpowder and the modern, conical-cylindrical bullet, derived from the shape of the Minie Ball. But why is it called a ‘cartridge’?

The term ‘cartridge’ as it refers to firearms, has existed a lot longer than modern all-metal cartridges and bullets. A ‘cartridge’ originally referred to a rolled up tube of paper, which contained a pre-measured amount of gunpowder and a projectile (either a lead shot or a Minie Ball, depending on the period). The ball and the powder were seperated inside the cartridge by a twist in the paper. When a soldier needed to load his musket or rifle, he ripped the paper cartridge open, poured a bit of the powder into his flash-pan, closed the frizzen and then poured the rest of the powder down the gun-barrel. He then pushed in the shot or the Minie Ball and then scrunched up the paper cartridge, stuffed it into the gun-barrel and rammed it down with a ramrod.

The modern cartridge bullet as we know it today, containing the bullet and gunpowder in a sealed metal cartridge-casing, came around in the 1840s, however, its introduction was slow. In fact, in the early years of the American Civil War, many soldiers were still firing muzzle-loaded muskets and rifles, similar to the ones their ancestors used in the Revolution. The Industrial Revolution of the 19th century saw mass-production of cartridge-bullets which gradually led to the obcelescene of muzzle-loaded, loose-powder firearms.

Multi-shot Firearms

Thusfar, this article has concentrated on single-shot firearms. Pistols, muskets, rifles, blunderbusses and so-forth. The main weakness of these firearms brings me to the next part of this article…firearms that could fire more than one shot between reloadings.

Even the Minie-Ball-shooting rifle of the 1850s and 60s, though faster to reload and more accurate than its 18th century counterpart, the flintlock musket, had one major drawback: It could only fire one shot at a time. Once you loaded it and aimed and fired, you had to reload it all over again. In the heat of battle, this was a waste of precious time. This hazard of early firearms was the kind of problem that kept gunmakers up late at night, wracking their brains for centuries, trying to find a solution.

Various interesting firearms were developed throughout history, in an attempt to invent a gun that could fire more than one round before needing to be reloaded. The famous ‘Pepperbox’ gun or revolver is one of these inventions:

The ‘Pepperbox’ Revolver

Depending on the size and number of barrels, the pepperbox revolver could fire anywhere from five to ten rounds before it had to be reloaded. Pepperbox revolvers were not terribly accurate, but they did allow people to have more firepower on them without also needing more guns.

The modern revolver or “six-shooter”, a handheld firearm capable of firing six bullets in quick succession (hence the term ‘six-shooter’) was developed from the early pepperbox revolver and became a reality in the 1840s. Samuel Colt, the American inventor and firearms manufacturer did not invent the revolver, as some people believe, he merely improved on its design. Early revolvers were blackpowder firearms, requiring the user to load each bullet, powder and wadding one by one. Early cylinders had to be turned by hand and cocked and fired one by one. Sam Colt changed this by producing revolvers that would shoot cartridge-bullets. Cocking the firing-hammer immediately lined up a new bullet and pulling the trigger fired the gun. You still had to cock the revolver again after that shot, before you could fire the next shot, but the basic modern revolver as we know it today, had been invented. This style of revolver was called the “single-action” revolver, because pulling the trigger only fired the gun, it didn’t also rotate the cylinder and cock the weapon again (the later “double-action” revolver would do this, and allow you to fire the gun even faster).

Samuel Colt was many things, but amongst other things, he was a salesman. It was he who practically single-handedly, introduced the world to the modern revolver. Indeed, the revolving-cylinder handgun was so new in the 1840s that it was still called a “pistol”. It wouldn’t be for another few years that the term “revolver” became the accepted term for Colt’s new toy.

From the 1840s until the early 1900s, handheld firearms were limited to revolvers. However, a new invention, the automatic pistol, soon changed things, affecting how fast and how many bullets a person could fire at once.

The automatic pistol was developed in the late 19th century. In its most basic form, the pistol works by pulling the trigger, which sets off a chain reaction. After pulling the trigger, the firing-pin hits the primer-cap on the cartridge, which ignites the gunpowder and fires the bullet. The recoil from the bullet firing forces the slide at the top of the gun to shift backwards, ejecting the spent shell-casing and allowing a new cartridge from the clip stored in the gun-butt, to ascend into the firing-chamber above.

The automatic pistol was a big improvement on the revolver, for various reasons. It was faster to shoot and easier to reload. But an automatic pistol did require more care than a revolver. Failure to strip down and clean the pistol properly could result in the gun jamming and failing to work properly. The simplicity of the revolver meant that most civilians and police-forces stuck with the older firearm for longer, before updating to automatic handguns.

Colt M1911 pistol. One of the world’s most famous and recognisable automatic handguns

In situations where firepower means winning, revolvers were more quickly phased out and replaced with the newer handguns. The Colt M1911, one of the most famous automatic pistols in the world, developed…as the name suggests…in 1911, was the standard-issue sidearm for soldiers and officers in the U.S. Army for nearly 90 years! The Colt 1911 was finally replaced in the 1980s and 1990s by the Beretta 92, however, it continues to be used in various areas in the U.S. Army as well as in some professional police-forces. The fact that the Colt M1911 is now almost 100 years old and still in popular use says something considerable about its design and practicality.

The big problem about writing an article about firearms is that it’s such a vast topic. So far, I’ve covered the development of gunpowder, early firearms and the development of multiple-shot handguns. That’s as far as this particular article will go, however. Additional articles on various other aspects of firearms history may surface in the future.

Here’s an idyllic, family scene, isn’t it? A little boy or a little girl crawling into his or her’s grandparents laps, cuddling them while the old folks whisper sweet things into their ears and tickle them and give them cuddles…

…eventually, that little boy or little girl asks: “Momma…Papa…what was things like when you were my age?”

Grandparents smile, glad to know that their offspring’s offspring is fascinated with what they have to tell them. So gramps, nanna…what were things like when you were a child?

This year, we proudly celebrate the first decade of the 21st century. But what was it like 100 years ago, back when people were celebrating the first decade of the 20th century? Here’s a few things that used to be, that were commonplace, but which have changed drastically or which have disappeared completely from daily life. How many do you know, or remember?

The Traditional Wet Shave

These days when most of us shave, we think little of it. We turn on the razor, or we click a cartridge into our Mach 3 or our Gilette Fusion and scrape and buzz away like we’re trying to remove varnish from floorboards with a belt-sander. But things were very different back when grandpa was a child. How was it done without fancy, high-tech gizmoes like those eletric buzz-saws we call ‘razors’ today?

Back in the old days, a man tackled this, usually daily task, with something called a straight-razor…

Pretty, innit? A straight-razor (also called by the charming name of a ‘cut-throat’ razor) was the main shaving-tool from about the 18th century until the early 1900s. Straight-razors were kept literally ‘razor sharp’. They required considerable maintenance and a fair bit of skill to use. It used to be that grandpa or great-grandpa would hone and strop his razor at home in the bathroom to keep it sharp. Straight-razors had scoop-shaped blades so that as you shaved, the blade scooped up the shaving-soap and cut stubble as you shaved. Stropping and sharpening took up a fair bit of time. You sharpened the razor against a whetstone or a honing-stone and then you stropped it against a leather and canvas strop, to keep the edge sharp and even. Failure to sharpen and strop your straight-razor properly resulted in cuts or nasty razor-burn! Yeouch!

A shaving accessory of the particularly wealthy men of the 19th and early 20th centuries was to own one of these:

They’re seven-day razor sets, one blade for each day of the week. By using a different blade for each day of the week, the razors required less stropping and honing and sharpening. Of course, with so many more razors, when it did come to having to maintain them, it took a considerably longer time to do so. But if you could afford a seven-day razor set, you could probably afford to pay a valet (a personal manservant) to do all that tedious razor-maintenance for you.

Along with the brush and the blade, you also had shaving-soap. Not cream, soap. You had a cake of soap and a shaving-brush…

Cute little fellah, innie? You used the brush to apply the soap to your face, moving it across your stubble in a circular motion to lather up, spread the soap around and hydrate the skin and lift up the stubble. The brush also scraped away any dead skin. Then, you shaved.

Of course, some people preferred using the new double-edged ‘safety razor’ that came out in 1901. They look like this:

Safety-razors were popular because they were…safer! And they didn’t require as much maintenance. King Camp Gilette, the guy who came up with the safety-razor, cooked up a business-deal with the US. Army. When soldiers headed off to war in 1917, they were all given safety-razors, which led to its widespread introduction into civilian life later on, replacing the straight-razor.

Some people still shave with straights and safeties. They provide a better shave and they cost less money in the long-run. If you can find a vintage blade-sharpener, a single safety-razor blade can last for months, a straight-blade, properly looked after, lasts indefinitely, whereas you’re throwing away and buying cartridge-blades every month. I made the switch to shaving with an old-fashioned safety-razor as a new year’s resolution in early January, and I am never going back. If you want a better shave, go back to basics.

Preserving Food

Have you ever heard your grandparents call a refrigerator an ‘icebox’? Have you ever wondered what an ‘icebox’ was? How did people keep food fresh back in the old days without modern preseratives and refrigerators and all that fancy stuff?

Like me, you probably thought that this was an icebox:

Sorry folks. That’s an ice-chest (also called an ‘esky’). THIS is an icebox:

Iceboxes were common in homes from the 19th centuries until the mid 20th centuries, when home refrigerators finally became practical. It’s a handsome piece of furniture, isn’t it? But how did it work? Did it really have ICE in it!?

Oh yeah. It had ice. Back in the day, the iceman, a neighbourhood institution, would come by your house every week or every two weeks, with a block of ice. He’d come into your kitchen and put the ice into the icebox, close it and head out on his way. The block of ice (which was huge) would keep the food and drinks in the icebox nice and cold and fresh. In the photograph above, the ice went into the top left compartment. The compartment on the right was for regular food-storage such as bread, vegetables and leftovers. The compartment on the bottom, directly underneath the ice-chamber, was for food that had to be kept absolutely freezing cold; foodstuffs such as meat, poultry, fish and dairy-products were put here, to make the most of the chilled air circulating downwards from the ice-compartment above.

If the doors on the icebox above were opened up, this is what you would see

The bottom of the icebox generally had a removable metal pan where the melted water dripped into. This had to be emptied once every day or every second day (depending on the size of the box). Insulation in the box was provided by plates of zinc which kept the cold in and made everything nice and chilly. The huge blocks of ice which the iceman sold to you were kept in massive ‘ice-barns’, huge, insulated buildings where the ice could be stored until it was delivered.

Your friendly neighbourhood iceman. The thing in his hands are the ice-tongs, which he used to handle the MASSIVE blocks of ice, which you can see in the photograph. They often weighed several pounds each

As there was only so much stuff that could fit into the icebox, some food was generally delivered fresh every few days. Dairy products such as milk, butter, cheese and cream were delivered by the milkman, or you purchased them down at the local dairy. The baker’s boy might deliver loaves of bread. But once the food was home, it was your job to make sure it lasted.

Dumping the stuff into the icebox wasn’t the only solution grandpa came up with to keep his food fresh. Food was also smoked in a smokehouse to preserve it, it was dried, pickled, jarred or even canned! And all this was done at home, in the kitchen. Have you ever bought a little jar of fruit-jam and noticed that it says something like “Strawberry Preserves” on the bottle? That’s not just fancy marketing…that’s what it is! It’s preserved strawberries, by turning them into jam and putting them into an airtight jar to keep them fresh!

Schooling

Schooling has changed a lot since our grandparents were kids. These days we have computers, detention, graphics calculators and learning software to teach us. Back in the early 20th century, teaching was done with a book, a slate, an inkwell and the rod.

Flogging children for misbehaving in school has existed for centuries, and it was only recently abolished in some places. Children could be flogged for almost anything from spilling ink to talking in class to breaking a pen-nib by accident and not having a spare one! (Roald Dahl was flogged for this last, horrific offense).

Schooling was simple, but effective. It concentrated on the ‘Three R’s. What are they? Reading, WRiting and ARithmetic. Or in other words, English comprehension, penmanship and mathematics. Penmanship is a dying lesson in school these days, but back in the old days, you HAD to have nice handwriting, and you were beaten if you didn’t. Teachers used to force lefthanded children to write with their right hands. Why?

There are several theories about this, ranging from devil-worship and sinister evil to bad posture, but there is actually one very simple explanation: The pens.

Until the 1950s, children in school wrote with dip-pens, using liquid ink and inkwells. Dip pens write very wet and glossy on the paper. Writing with the left hand smudged the still-wet ink all over the page, something that right-handed scribblers had no problem with, since they wrote AWAY from their writing, moving across the page from left to right. To prevent the smudging and to encourage neat handwriting, teachers forced children to write with their right hands instead of their left.

Soft Drinks

These days, we don’t give much thought to soft drinks. They come in metal cans or they come in plastic bottles, we open them, we drink them, we burp, we throw them away. We think of them as modern inventions. But they’re not, are they?

Back in the old days, soft drinks were very different. Apart from being cheaper, they were also manufactured and marketed very differently. Coca-Cola, created in 1886, was first marketed as a medicinal syrup! By the early 1900s, it was a popular everyday beverage. Why is it called ‘coca’ cola? Because one of the chief ingredients used to be the product of the coca plant…cocaine! And you didn’t always buy ‘Coke’ in bottle form, either. It used to be that you went down to the local deli, drugstore, cafe, bar or diner and it was served ‘fresh’ to you, specially mixed from a soda-fountain. Coke was first sold in bottles in 1894 (the first experimental bottlings had started a couple of years before in 1891), but in most small towns, you could still order Coke ‘fresh’ out of the soda-fountain, served up to you by an occupation that has since disappeared, along with the soda-fountain…no this isn’t rude, it’s the actual job-title…but a fellow known as a ‘soda-jerk’ used to serve you your fresh, fizzy coca-cola, straight from the fountain. Soda-jerks probably got their name because they were constantly ‘jerking’ on the pump-handles which operated early soda-machines.

Thirsty? A soda-jerk serving up a nice cold one from an old-fashioned soda-fountain

But what if you didn’t have the money to buy soft drinks? What then? Believe it or not, people used to make their own soft drinks! Yep, right at home in their kitchens. Mostly, it was lemonade or limeade, or other fizzy or sweet drinks made from the juice of various citrius fruits. You took lemon-juice, sugar, water and baking-soda (that’s Bicarbonate of Soda or Sodium Bicarbonate) and mixed the ingredients in correct quantities. You left the mixture to stand for a while, to give the baking-soda time to react with the lemon-juice and the other ingredients, the result being that it fizzed up, to create fizzy lemonade. You can still make homemade lemonade like this, and recipes are available on the internet. Some substitute the baking-soda and water for soda-water instead, but the results are all similar. Fizzy, sweet, lemon-flavoured goodness on a hot summer’s day.

Public Transport

These days, we hop on a train, or a bus…we don’t think much of it. But public transport was very different back in the eras when our grandparents and great-grandparents were alive. In the early 1900s, buses as we know them today did not exist. Trains were steam-powered or powered by electricity. Electrically-powered trains ran on very short lines, usually confined to servicing a given city or town, not used to travelling great distances. So, what forms of public transport existed in town back in the early 1900s?

Trolleycar, cablecar, streetcar…tram

Call it what you will, from the 1870s until the 1950s, the streetcar (American English) or the tramcar (British English) was a fixture on many main roads throughout towns and cities around the world. The first trams were horse-powered, but were soon replaced by the safer, more advanced and controllable cable streetcars, which made their appearance on the streets of the world in the late 1870s. Cablecars were powered by a cable in the ground. The car rode on two tracks with a ‘grip’ (a clamp) which went underneath the car, to grab onto a cable set into a special metal trough between the rails. By gripping the cable, steam-power which turned the wheels at the cable-car barns at each end of the line, pulled the cables and pulled the cablecars along as well. The inventor of this ingenious system of transport was inspired to create it after he saw a heavily-loaded horse-tram go sliding backwards down one of the steep and slippery streets of San Francisco, where these antiquated old streetcars are still a major tourist-attraction.

This black and white photograph of a San Francisco cablecar is representative of the type of public street-transport that existed in many American cities throughout the last quarter of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century. Streetcars such as this grabbed a moving cable in the ground, between the streetcar tracks and they were operated by a two-man team: The gripman (seen on the right in this photo) and the conductor (on the left, by the door). Operating a streetcar of this kind required considerable body-strength, since everything was done mechanically and by sheer muscle-power. It was the conductor’s job to look after the passengers and collect fares and issue tickets. It was the job of the gripman to control the cablecar and work the levers which operated the grips (the clamps which grabbed or released the moving cable). It was also his job to operate the brakes and sound the cablecar bell to alert traffic.

In the 1920s and 30s, streetcars began to change. The old-fashioned cable-pulled, steam-powered streetcars were out of date by now. While they continued to exist in some places, many began to be replaced by the faster, more quiet electric trams, which ran along the streets, powered by overhead cables which delivered electrical power to the tram’s motor. They were able to move to more places and do it more efficiently. They had enclosed passenger cabins which had doors that were opened or closed by pneumatic pressure.

‘W’ class trams from Melbourne, Australia such as this one, were fixtures on the streets of the city from the mid 1920s until they were recently discontinued in 2009

Streetcars or trams were a popular and common sight on the streets of many cities around the world until after WWII. In the Postwar World of the 1950s and 60s, people considered trams old-fashioned, noisy, clanky and inefficient. Many tramlines were closed down, the tracks were ripped up or paved over, and bus-routes replaced them. In a select few places, however, such as Melbourne in Australia, San Francisco in America and various towns in Germany, trams or streetcars still exist as a form of practical public transport.

Elevated Railways

Elevated railways are a fast disappearing form of public transport. They used to be really common in the United States. Elevatated railroads ran on steel supports that held the train-tracks up above the roadways which the trains had their routes. Elways were proposed in the second half of the 19th century in the USA. The Industrial Revolution had caused a significant rise in traffic in many major American cities such as Chicago and New York. City planners and transport officials were struggling to find a way to move people around quickly and efficiently and most importantly, in a way that would get them off the streets!

Trains were considered the best way to transport people around, but digging a subway wasn’t always the best option. If you couldn’t go under, then you had to go over. Elways were born.

A typical elway track was supported on a steel frame high off the ground, usually on a level with a building’s first or second floor. This allowed sufficient space underneath for large vehicles such as trucks, buses and streetcars to move underneath without fear of damaging the supports. Elway stations were accessed by staircases that led you from street level up to the raised platforms where you could wait for the train.

A typical elevated railway station (this one located in Chicago, Illinois)

Original elway trains were steam-powered. But as you can imagine, this was ineffective up in the air, where hot coal, ashes and water could spill down into the streets below, so steam trains up in the air didn’t last very long. They were soon replaced by electrically-powered trains, which look very similar to the kind which you see in movies like “King Kong”. They were basically subway trains dumped on tracks which were stuck twenty-five feet up in the air on metal supports.

Elway trains lasted as a means of transport for several decades, but, like streetcars or trams, they were gradually torn down during the postwar years, due to a combination of lower passenger loads and changing forms of transport. A few cities,, such as Chicago and New York in the USA, still have elevated railways, but their presence has much deminished from the 30s, 40s and 50s when they were a common sight around many large American cities.

Communications and Correspondence

SMS, telephones, cellphones, email, Instant Messaging, Skype, Twitter and Facebook…these days we have so many dozens of ways to communicate. We seem to forget that not too long ago, none of this stuff existed, and that if we lived 30 or 40 years ago, we’d be stuck back where our grandparents and great-grandparents were, communications-wise, over seventy years ago.

So, how did people communicate before our modern mumbo-jumbo?

Letters

“…I’m gonna sit right down and Write Myself a Letter…” – Fats Waller

Yep. Snail-mail, as we like to call it today, was the main method of communications back when our grandparents were our age. These days, most people have never written a letter. I don’t mean typing an email, I mean actually writing a letter. With a piece of paper, a pen, a stamp and an envelope. This was how it was done back in the “old days”.

“But it’s so slooow!” you wail.

It is today, sure. But back then it was remarkably fast, even by the standards of the day. Post was delivered a lot more frequently back in the old days than it is today. These days, it’s distributed and sent out once a day. Back in the 1900s, 1910s, 1920s and the 1930s, post was collected and delivered a lot more frequently. In the Victorian era, post was gathered several times a day. The first post was done in the morning. Then at noon, then in the afternoon, then around dinnertime and then the “last post” in the late evening, before midnight, before it all started again the next day.

Telegrams

Telegrams seem funny to most people these days. How could anyone seriously hope to send a message that read something like:

“Coming into town Monday” STOP
“Meet me at station 2:30” STOP
“OOXX to Mary” STOP

Starting in the 1840s and not finally ending until the very early 21st century, telegrams have been one of the longest serving forms of communication in the world. In fact, Western Union, a company more famous today for processing money-orders, used to be the chief provider of telegrams, sending, recieving and processing millions of them every day, a service that they stopped less than ten years ago!

To understand why telegrams were so popular, you have to understand what it meant to communicate any other way.

Communicating by mail was cheap, but it took a long time to get a reply, but, you could write whatever you liked in your letter. Telephones were very fast, but a long-distance phone-call was very expensive…assuming you were lucky enough to OWN a telephone, most people didn’t. And if you did, you probably had a ‘party line’, meaning that you shared a telephone line with at least one other person. You had a specific ring-tone to your telephone so that you knew when to pick it up if there was a call. Telegrams were fast, efficient and cheap, although the messages that you could send on them were short and were able to be read by almost anyone! In the 1920s and 30s, more telegrams were sent long-distance than long-distance phone-calls!

The limited space available on telegraphic forms, combined with the payment method for telegrams caused people to write their messages to be as short and as to-the-point as possible. All unnecessary words and letters were removed to cram as much information as you could into the smallest possible space. This led to a phrase called “telegraphic English” or “Telegram-Style” English, which referred to the clipped, precise English used in telegrams.

Ever wondered why telegrams always read:

“Congrats on new baby” STOP
“Will come and visit nxt wk” STOP
“Love Dave & Sue” STOP

Telegrams were charged by their length, in words and letters and punctuation. Rates and fees varied over time, but usually, it was a set rate for the first ten or a dozen words, (say, 5c), and an additional 1c for every word after ten. So a message taking up twelve words would be 7c in total. Punctuation marks such as commas, full-stops or question-marks cost extra (they were harder to send over Morse Code). Because of this, they were often avoided altogether, and the ends of sentences were marked with the word ‘STOP’.

A typical Western Union telegram

Telegrams were generally delivered by postmen, private messengers or by telegram messenger-boys, who were young lads employed by telegraph offices to send telegrams from the office to their intended recipients as fast as possible. In WWI and WWII, telegrams were used to notify next-of-kin of the death of a loved one in battle. Being a cheap and effective means of communication, telegrams were sent in their thousands to the wives, sisters and mothers of dead soldiers, generally accompanied by the nervous and hesitant telegram messenger-boy, who had the task of delivering the sad news.

Typewriters

Of course, you couldn’t always handwrite stuff. What if you were handing in the draft of a big novel or a report on the importance of thermal underwear to your boss? You couldn’t handwrite the entire thing! What if your handwriting sucked and he couldn’t read it? Well, then you would have to type it, on granpda’s response to the PC, the humble mechanical typewriter…

The typewriter went out of the office and the home study in the 1980s with the coming of the Personal Computer, but back in the old days, this was a key business machine, as essential in the 1930s as a laptop is today. Typewriters are fun to use, but they require a bit of skill and a certain level of finger-strength to operate. The majority of typewriters that your grandparents probably grew up using were the old-fashioned mechanical or manual typewriters. These machines were made of metal and plastic and they were incredibly clunky and heavy. Typewriters allowed you to write faster than you could with a fountain pen, they produced neat lines of text, but without a ‘delete’ button, you had to be a very good typist before you could use one effectively. When you used a typewriter, you scrolled in a sheet of paper and pushed the carriage (that’s the thing on the top that goes back and forth) all the way to the right, so that you started on the left side of the page. As you typed, each keystroke sent a small metal hammer up to strike the page. The hammer hit a cloth ribbon which was saturated with ink. When the hammer hit the typewriter ribbon and then the paper, it left a neat little mark there, corresponding with the mark on the hammer.

As you typed, the carriage moved across the top of the typewriter. At the end of the line, a bell rang. This indicated that you were to finish the word you were typing and then push the carriage back to the right again. Some typewriters had ‘backspace’ keys which allowed you to go back a space to type over any incorrect words.

But what if you had to type out several copies of something? Grandpa would’ve used something called ‘carbon-paper’.

Carbon-paper is a type of paper which leaves marks on anything that it’s pressed against. Grandpa had one sheet of regular paper, one sheet of carbon-paper and then another regular sheet of paper on top. He rolled all three sheets into the typewriter and set to work. As he typed, the keystrokes would hit the first page, and the impact of the hammer-strike would cause the carbon-paper to leave a mark on the second page of this little paper sandwich. When the document was done, you had one ink copy, one carbon copy and one used-up sheet of carbon-paper.

Of course, it was necessary to change typewriter ribbons, and this could easily be done by removing the reel and fitting in a new reel. Typewriter ribbon-reels were purchased down at your local stationery store, along with all your other office supplies. Most ribbons were two-tone ribbons. Half of the ribbon was red and the other half was black. You had a switch or lever on the typewriter which moved the ribbon up or down, depending on whether you wanted to type something a different colour.

Typewriters generally came in two different sizes, gigantic clunking ‘desktop’ models which were almost as big as the PCs that replaced them…

An ‘Underwood’ desktop typewriter

…or the smaller ‘portable’ typewriters, which could fit snugly into a specially-made carrying case, a bit like a briefcase:

A smaller portable ‘Remington’ typewriter in its carrying-case

Most people used the smaller, portable typewriters purely because they were convenient and saved space, but for places where typewriters were permanent fixtures, like secretary’s offices or large business-firms, the larger desktop models were used.

A lot of terminology from the mechanical typewriter has continued to be used in the computer age. Just open up a new email blank in your Hotmail account, or have a look at your keyboard right in front of you. Maybe you see a key that says ‘Return’ or ‘Enter’? Or ‘Shift’? Or ‘Backspace’?

‘Return’ was the CARRIAGE RETURN key on the electronic typewriter which came in the 1960s and 70s. Pressing it returned the carriage to the starting point. ‘Enter’ entered a new blank line on the page so that you could continue typing.

We all know what ‘Shift’ does. That gives us nice, big capital letters. On a typewriter, the ‘Shift’ key literally SHIFTED an entire set of typebars! Moving the lowercase letters out of the way and bringing in their uppercase relations. The ‘Backspace’ key moved the carriage back one letter-space for you to type over any mistakes.

Fountain Pens

When your grandfather or great-grandfather, or maybe your parents were younger, the ballpoint pen didn’t exist. Or if it did, it was looked upon with suspicion and displeasure, since early ballpoint pens leaked their filthy, disgusting paste ink all over the place. From the 1880s until the 1950s, the fountain pen ruled supreme. There are many people who still think that it should…I’m one of them; I’ve been using fountain pens for nearly 20 years and collecting them for nearly five years now. Fountain pens are very long lasting (I’ve got pens in my collection that are nearly 100 years old and work perfectly), they’re stylish, they’re cool, they write wonderfully and they’re smooth and effortless, gliding across the page allowing you to concentrate on what you want to write, rather than whether or not your pen is getting the ink onto the page!

Keeping Time

These days, almost everything has the time. Your computer, your mobile phone, the clock in your car, your blackberry, your iPhone…everything does! But back when the only timekeepers were mechanical tickers, how did you keep time? And how did you know the right time?

The Pocket Watch

A hundred years ago, men didn’t believe in wearing wristwatches. Wristwatches looked like bracelets. And who wears bracelets?

That’s right, the ladies! No self-respecting man back when our grandparents were kids, wore a wristwatch! It wasn’t the done thing! So instead, men wore pocket watches, with watch-chains and fobs. These days, we have all kinds of heavy, chunky metal watches with dials for the day of the week, the day of the month, what second it is and so on…and we think they’re new.

But they’re not.

Pocket watches had this, and more, back when our grandparents were kids. Chronograph chronometer pocket watches had all kinds of bells and whistles, everything from repeaters (little gongs inside the watch that chimed the hours and minutes), moonphases, days, dates, months and more. If you think something is new, think again.

This 1902 Patek Philippe 18kt gold-cased pocket watch was made for Tiffany & Co. It sports a minute-repeater, a stopwatch function and a seconds subdial (which was standard for most pocket watches). The little lever on the bottom of the watch (on the left) activated the minute-repeater while the button on the top left activated the seconds hand to use the stopwatch feature

Pocket watches lasted a long time, not finally ceasing regular production until the 1960s. Many fine pocket watches are kept in families and are handed down as heirlooms, which is what most of them are these days. But be brave and take out your antique pocket watch and wear it anyway! Don’t forget that these weren’t always antiques; they were meant to be used! I own two pocket watches and wear them regularly.

The Wristwatch

The wristwatch came out in the 1910s after WWI. Originally shunned by most people (who continued to wear pocket watches regularly well into the 1950s), the wristwatch soon gained acceptance amongst the world’s men and women, being sold for a long time alongside equally stunning pocket watches. Women’s watches were small and petite, often no larger than a small coin (even smaller than a quarter!). Men’s watches were also rather small. The 1920s-1940s saw the rise of the ‘tank’ style watch, which was very popular because it was so unique. Instead of being round, it was square or rectangular and it’s a wristwatch style that remains popular to this day.

A 1930s gold-cased ‘tank’ style Hamilton wristwatch

Wind-up watches

If your watch has died on you, you may hear your grandfather absent-mindedly tell you to wind it up. My grandmother used to tell me that!

All watches back then were mechanical. You had to wind them up every morning for them to keep accurate time. There’s no reason why you can’t wear a mechanical watch, many people still do…I do! But if you decide you want to wear your grandfather’s pocket watch or wristwatch, be sure to treat it carefully. Don’t bump it or drop it or get it wet. And like your car, get it serviced regularly. As a rule, a mechanical watch in regular use should be serviced once every five years. Don’t expect your watch to keep amazing time, instead, be amazed by the time that it keeps. My regular pocket watch, seen in this photo here…

…keeps time to a minute a week, despite being over 100 years old and on the lowest end of the scale of decent quality pocket watches. Don’t think that old = bad. Old might also mean great, just superseded by something greater.

These days when we’re in trouble, our first instinct is to pick up the telephone and dial 000, 999, 911 or any other emergency number and to request ‘Police’ from the list of emergency services available. It’s quick, it’s easy and we’re assured that trained professionals are on the other end of the line, ready to do what they have to do, to protect ordinary citizens such as you and me.

In terms of history, however, the idea of a professional group of people whose sole job it is, to protect, serve, detect and prevent crimes, is a pretty new one. The world’s first real police-force which looks anything like what we would be familiar with today, only came into existence in 1829! Before then, police as we imagine them to be, just didn’t exist. So, where did the idea for a police-force come from and how have police-forces changed over time?

Before the Police.

Before modern policing came around in the second quarter of the 19th century, law-enforcers usually consisted of soldiers, city watchmen, guards or other people of authority or military experience. As late as the 1700s, modern police had not yet arrived on the scene. So, who was around to keep the peace?

Watchmen.

For hundreds of years, the only real ‘law-enforcers’ were known as watchmen. A watchman was a man who was paid by the government of the city in which he lived, to patrol the streets after dark. His job was not actually to prevent crimes, but to ensure that curfews (which were imposed in most medieval cities at sundown), were enforced. He was to arrest anyone who was out-of-doors after dark without a legitimate excuse. A watchman was usually lightly armed, if he was armed at all. He might have a flaming torch or a lantern, and a club or stick for self-defense, but that was it. Wandering dark, unlit streets at midnight was a dangerous way to make a living, but curfews had to be enforced.

Soldiers.

These days if there’s a public riot, police-forces send in their riot-squads, armed with shields, shotguns, batons and tear-gas. 500 years ago if there was a riot, soldiers would be sent in to quell the violence. And they didn’t always use humane crowd-control methods, either.

Guards.

Guards in ancient cities who watched and manned gatehouses or defensive walls might also be used to keep law and order in a city, although this wasn’t strictly their job, which was to protect the city against unwelcome outsiders.

While all these people were persons in positions of power and authority, their jobs were not actually to actively persue criminals, their job was to keep the peace. They were around to uphold existing laws, to break up riots and to settle disputes amongst people, but they weren’t there to be called upon if, for example, someone had broken into your house and robbed you, and nor was it their job to try and track down criminals who had murdered someone or done some other crime.

The Emergence of Policing.

The 18th century, in England, at least, saw the rise of the first police-style law-enforcers. They came in two forms: one legal, one not-so-legal.

Thief-takers.

A thief-taker was not a policeman. Think of him as an amateur private-investigator or a bounty-hunter. If, in the 18th century, your house was broken into, or you were mugged in the streets and had something stolen from you, a thief-taker (for a small fee), would attempt to track down the person who had stolen your property, probably by scouring the underworld and meeting up with contacts to try and strike a deal to get your goods back.

The Bow Street Runners.

The Bow Street Runners were a group of men who worked for the magistrates’ courthouse located in Bow Street, London, England. The Runners were the brainchlid of a pair of brothers, Sir John and Henry Fielding. Henry was a famous novelist and a JP (Justice of the Peace). His younger half-brother, John, who suffered from eyesight problems and who eventually went blind, was the magistrate of Bow Street. Despite his blindness, John Fielding must’ve had incredible hearing and memory, becuase he was reputed to be able to recognise up to three thousand different criminals, purely by the sounds of their voices. The brothers formed the Runners in 1749 and so was born London’s (and possibly, the world’s) first professional crime-fighting force.

The job of the Runners was not to actually arrest people, however, or to necessarily uphold the law. The job for which they were paid, was the apprehension of criminals who attempted to skip their court-dates (and possibly flee justice). The Runners were dispatched, and reported to the magistrate’s courthouse in Bow Street, providing information on criminals, such as who they were, where they were, and what crimes they were being arrested or charged for.

Bow Street Magistrate’s Court, London.

The Metropolitan Police Service.

More commonly-known today as ‘Scotland Yard’, the Metropolitan Police Service (‘the Met’), was the world’s first official, professional police-force. It was the idea of Sir Robert ‘Bobby’ Peel, who convinced the British Parliament that there should be one professional crimefighting, crime-prevention organisation to watch over London. The 1820s saw the rise of the Industrial Revolution. The explosion in London’s population, and subsequent skyrocketing crime-rate, had made it clear to Sir Robert that the Bow Street Runners, thief-takers and watchmen were either overwhelmed or outdated and had to be replaced with something more effective. The Metropolitan Police Act was passed in 1829 and the Metropolitan Police Service was formed later that year.

Early Policing.

The first ‘bobbies’ or ‘peelers’ who appeared on the streets of London, starting on the 29th of September, 1829, were true groundbreakers. These police-officers were the first kind of a new lawman whom nobody had ever seen before in their lives. The original police uniform was navy blue, with a stiffened top hat, to protect the officer against blows to the head. Policemen were armed with truncheons, primative handcuffs, and rattles for calling for backup. Navy blue was chosen for the uniform because red too-closely resembled the uniform worn by the British Army (famously known as the ‘redcoats’). Blue, on the other hand, more readily blended into the London streetscene.

British police traditionally do not carry firearms. Early on in the Met’s history, some fifty flintlock pistols were purchased for use by police-constables in ‘special circumstances’, but these were rarely used. At any rate, advancing firearms technology in the the 1830s and 1840s quickly made the flintlock pistols obsolete when the first revolvers appeared towards the middle of the century.

Today, British police are famous, world-over, for their distinctive headgear. The ‘Custodian’ helmet was introduced in 1863 as a more suitable replacement to the top hat, then in use. They have remained the official headgear for London police-officers ever since.

The current model of the Custodian helmet, worn by London policemen today

Cops on the Beat.

For over 100 years, ever since the world’s first policemen took to the streets in 1829, one of the most enduring images of the modern police-force is the ‘beat-cop’, the friendly, neighbourhood lawman who walks around the neighburhood, making sure that everyone is safe. ‘Beat-cops’ as they were called, survived a surprisingly long time, well into the 1960s, until they were gradually phased out. Some police-forces still have beat-cops, but they’re rather rare today. Those forces which do, usually protect smaller communities, such as villages and towns, instead of large cities.

But what is a ‘beat’?

A policeman’s ‘beat’ was his area of patrol, usually a couple of blocks. His job was to walk around the block or blocks assigned to him, at a specific time, for a specific length of time, usually one hour. This kind of patrolling soon became known as ‘pounding the beat’. Pounding the beat was boring at the best of times. At the worst of times, it mean chasing after someone who had broken the law. At the end of your beat, you would report back to your local precinct, where another policeman would be sent out to relieve you.

If you were out on the beat and you spotted a crime, what action did you take?

In the earliest days of professional policing, you took out your police-rattle and swung it around through the air. The rattle was shaped much like the ones you might see at sporting-matches today. The point of swinging your rattle was to alert nearby officers that a crime was in progress and that you required backup. Rattles were mediocre backup-calling devices at best. On a clear day in open country with favourable winds, a rattle could be heard for about 500 yards. In the middle of a city filled with bustling people, shouting, chattering and the rattling and grinding and rumbling of horse-drawn carriages, a rattle was pretty poor choice for a backup-instrument.

The Police-Whistle.

All cops on the beat have a police-whistle! You see them in old movies and on period TV shows and stuff like that. This may surprise you, but until the 1860s, most police-forces did NOT have police-whistles. Before then, whistles were seen as children’s toys, not crime-deterrents. The failings of the police-rattle, however, caused police-officals around the world to do some serious thinking. A backup-system was no good if there was no-one around who could hear it. They needed something better. The whistle was the answer. In tests done in open country, it was proved that a good whistle could be heard for twice as far as the loudest rattles available, with an audiable radius of up to 1,000 yards!

In 1883, a man named Joseph Hudson created what is probably one of the most famous whistles in the world. Made of brass and plated with nickel, the Metropolitan Police Whistle is the classic police-whistle. About three inches long, pealess and easy to hold, this whistle answered everyone’s prayers. The Met whistle’s size made it easy to store on an officer’s uniform. It’s cylindrical shape made it easy to hold and its split chamber and two sound-holes let out a shrill, ear-splitting ‘chreep!’ which could be heard for blocks in every direction! Anyone hearing the distinctive trill would know at once that something bad had happened.

The Metropolitan Whistle was standard-issue to all London (indeed, all BRITISH) police-officers from 1883 until they were finally retired nearly 100 years later, in 1975.

Having blown on your police-whistle, you, as an officer, could expect backup to arrive in a matter of minutes. It’s generally believed that in London, the policemen had the beat-system down so perfectly that at any place in the city at any time of the day or night, there was always a policeman within whistling-distance who could be at your service within 15 minutes.

Early Police-Equipment.

Apart from the famous Metropolitan police-whistle with an earsplitting, audiable range of one kilometer, which was assuredly going to get someone’s attention in an emergency, what other pieces of equipment did a policeman carry, ‘back in the good old days’?

The Met Whistle (of course!)

http://www.mediafire.com/?oyigvngkz12
Three blasts of a Metropolitan Police Whistle. You actually have to blow quite hard to get it to sound like it does in the movies, but as this was meant to be heard for a kilometer in every direction, that’s not surprising.

Haitt-Darby handcuffs.

A service-pistol (if allowed).

Smith & Wesson Model 10 Military & Police Revolver; formerly standard-issue to most police-departments. Some forces still use these today

Nightstick/baton/truncheon.

The ‘nightstick’ got its name because originally, policemen carried two kinds of batons; the longer ‘daystick’ and the shorter ‘nightstick’. In close-combat with criminals, policemen found that the shorter, more compact and easily-handled ‘nightstick’ was a better weapon, and so started carrying them permanently

Call-box key.

With the rise of telephones and telecommunications in general, at the start of the 20th century, policemen could also use police callboxes to summon backup or to report a crime. The callbox key was used to unlock the box to either pull an alarm-lever, or to gain access to a telephone with a direct line to the nearest precinct