Times Past

Not long ago I came across one of the most curious and delightful mechanical appliances that it has ever been my fortune to see…

Not long ago I came across one of the most curious and delightful mechanical appliances that it has ever been my fortune to see. It amounted to nothing less than a clothes towel. Actually it consisted of a pipe bent into the form of an almost complete ellipse, with something which, I presume, contained the words at the top. I moved a pedal up and down, placed my wet hands between the two ends of the pipe, and in a few seconds they had been dried by a pleasant breeze of hot air. I washed my face, planted it squarely in front of a tiny grille, pulled a lever, and a similar current of delicious warmth flowed out, drying my wet face at once.

Here is a solution to the problem of towels in railway carriages. Restaurants and other public places. Everybody knows how difficult it is at times to find a clean towel in such places, and the managements, no doubt, realise to the full how costly fresh towels are. The new "towel" ought to solve the difficulty.

The Irish times, April 11th, 1931.