Houghtalings Useful Information

I have a book called Houghtalings Hand-Book of Useful Information published in 1887. On it’s cover it clearly states that it costs 30 cents but if you look inside it you find out that you can order the book in an elegantly bound cloth cover for 60 cents. Then book I have is in a red alligator leatherette and inside it is the strangest mishmash of unconnected information I’ve ever seen out of a book this size.

Here’s some of what you can find out from this 1887 book.

  • If a railway were built to the sun and trains upon it were run at the rate of thirty miles an hour, day and night without a stop it would requite 350 years to make the journey from the earth to the sun.
  • How to prevent accident to steam boilers.
  • How the President of the United States of America is chosen.
  • The cost of a cable telegraph message. (Washington DC, to Burmah in India, $2.22 per word, DC to Portugal, 57 cents per word, etc.)
  • Friday is an eventful day in American history: Columbus discovered America, The Pilgrims arrived, George Washington was born, Bunker Hill was seized and fortified, Cornwallis surrendered Yorktown. etc.
  • Height of principal monuments and towers.
  • Decisive battles of the world.
  • Cure for drunkenness.
  • The tallest man of modern times. (8’9”)
  • And of course, the salaries of all United States Officials. (Department of the Interior, Indian Affairs Division Chief $2000 per year for instance)

Mr. Houghtaling attempts to put everything you ever might need to know into a book that you could carry in your shirt pocket. It’s a monumental task and though I would question the “usefulness” of some of it’s facts, I also stand in awe. How many publishers today would attempt to fill a book with useful information using only 224 pages, and would they spend one of them listing the number of words in each President’s inaugural address? (Geo. Washington 1,300 first address, 134 second. The most? James K. Polk, 4,904) It’s hard to fathom that I would find myself in a discussion with Sweetie over this kind of thing, but perhaps that what passed for entertainment in those days.

Really when I look at it, I think it’s a book for picking up ladies. What woman in 1887 could resist a man who knew the cost of tin roofing per square foot, how to make dynamite or how to remove the smell of paint from a room? Not many, I would think.

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