Who Made the First Umbrella?
No one knows who made the first umbrella but we know that Jonas Hanway of London was the first man to carry one over his head to keep off the rain.
Umbrellas seem to have been known as far back as the days of Ninevah and Persepolis, for representations of them appear frequently in the sculptures of those early days. The women of ancient Rome and Greece carried them but the men never did.
Mr. Hanway is said to be the first man who walked in the streets of London with an open umbrella over his head to keep off the rain. He is said to have used it for thirty years before they came into general use for this purpose.
HOW MAN LEARNED TO TELL TIME
The first picture shows what was probably man’s first method of telling time. The principle was the same as that of the sun-dial. It provides to-day an accurate method of telling time.
Of course, man in the early days needed to find some other means of noting the passing of time at night, for then the sun cast no shadow for him. His ingenuity taught him to make a candle which was light and dark in alternate rings, and as each section burned he made a mark to record the passing of a certain length of time. Before candles were invented he used a rope in which he tied knots at equal spaces apart and which he burned as shown in the third picture.