SHATTERED DREAMS, Horns and Halos, p.27-28: Revell

Dreams, hopes, expectations, disappointments

What was perhaps the most weird auction sale in history was held in the city of Washington in 1926. By special act of Congress 150,OOO old patent models of odd inventions were declared obsolete and put up for public sale. They had accumulated in the U.S. Patent Office since 1800. Some of them had passed under the hand of Thomas Jefferson when he served as Patent Commissioner. A quiet, thoughtful man present at the sale said that as he looked over the curious conglomeration of sticks, wheels, glued wood and iron contraptions, the first thought in his mind was, "How fertile is the imagination of man!" One by one, these inventions went under the hammer. Some were clever, some were clumsy, some amusing - there was an automatic bedbug buster, and an illuminated cat to scare away mice! One woman had invented a gadget which enabled a mother to churn the butter and rock the baby in one operation. There was a device to prevent snoring.

If you're interested in that problem, it consisted of a trumpet reaching from the mouth to the ear designed to waken snorer instead of the neighbors. One man, evidently bothered with cold feet, had invented a tube with a mouth piece so arranged as to warm his feet while he slept. There an adjustable pulpit for short preachers which was operated by a release spring lifting it up or down. The auctioneer, building up his sales talk, told how one preacher in Ohio, using the adjustable pulpit while preaching a sermon on the subject, "Where will You Spend Eternity?" happened to touch the spring at the wrong moment, and down he went!

Now, to some people, the sale of 150,000 old patent models would mean 15O,OOO laughs. But the quiet, thoughtful man who watched the hammer fall and heard the auctioneer's "Going-going-gone!" said he couldn't laugh. He knew he was looking at 15O,OOO broken dreams. He was thinking of the long days and nights of tedious toil, of the people who first imagined, then made, then vainly waited for the child of their brain to bring them fortune. Some died in poverty, still trying to market their inventions. He was thinking of the thousands of people dreaming dreams that would never come true, and he wrote it up in a poignant story under the title, "The Shattered Dreams of a Century.",