Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/611

 Popular Science Monthly

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��Kitchen Luxury— The Ivory Pie-Crust Trimmers of New England

NEW ENGLAND has long been famous for pie, which, if it is not the actual staff of life, at least runs the other food con- tributions a close second. In the old Dartmouth Historical Museum in New Bedford is a curious collection of quaintly carv- ed ivory instruments known then as now, in the old New England households as piecrust crimpers.

New Bedford was at one time the greatest whaling port in the world. A whaling trip is by no means short. The average trip was one year. Ofttimes three or four years passed before the whaler would reach his own shores again. No doubt with thoughts of home came visions of the pies for which their house- wives were famous; for most of the curious pie-crust crimpers were carved by the whalers during their idle hours at sea from the ivory which was part of their catch.

The pie-crust crimper consists of a handle and wheel which has a crimped edge so that when it is run around the sheet of thin pie crust dough it cuts the dough out with a fine serrated design. Trimmers were used not only to cut around the border of the pie but also back and forth along the top of the crust. In baking, the openings spread, leaving beautiful leaf and flower designs on top of the pie.

���The envelopes are fed automatically by a turn of the typewriter platen

Let This Automatic Device Feed Your Envelopes

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���Ivory pie-crust trimmers made by the old whalers who used to put in at New Bedford

��SIMPLE machine designed to in- crease the efficiency of typists by auto- matically placing envelopes in proper posi- tions in typewriters has just been put on the market. The instrument consists of a framework attached to the machine and operated by the ordinary space-line lever. With one turn of the typewriter platen, the addressed envelope is forced up and out from the roll and the next one simultane- ously and automatically placed in the proper position to receive the next address. From four to six envelopes can be ad- dressed per minute by an amateur typist, thereby allowing the higher- priced stenographers to con- centrate on letter- writing; or the time saved will permit the same stenographer to do more work in the same time as formerly.

The automatic envelope feeder consists of a magazine holding one hundred and fifty envelopes and a framework having four steel fingers, two above the others. The upper ones, one on either side, press down on the uppermost edge of the envelope and force it behind the platen, adjusting it in a straight position. The two lower fingers engage the en- velope inside of the flap and push it from the magazine down behind the roll, after which the address is written.

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