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Clock and Compass - How John Byron Plato Gave Farmers a Real Address (Paperback)
Loot Price: R547
Discovery Miles 5 470
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Clock and Compass - How John Byron Plato Gave Farmers a Real Address (Paperback)
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Loot Price R547
Discovery Miles 5 470
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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A city guy who aspired to be a farmer, John Byron Plato took a
three-month winter course in agriculture at Cornell before starting
high school, which he left a year before graduation to fight in the
Spanish-American War. He worked as a draftsman, ran a veneers
business, patented and manufactured a parking brake for horse-drawn
delivery wagons, taught school, and ran a lumber yard. In his early
thirties he bought some farmland north of Denver, Colorado, and
began raising Guernsey cattle, which he advertised for sale in the
local paper. When an interested buyer eager to see his calves
couldn't find his farm, Plato realized that an RFD postal address
was only good for delivering mail. Plato's solution was a
map-and-directory combo that used direction and distance from a
local business center to give farmers a real address, just like
city dwellers. He patented his invention called the "Clock System"
and tried to sell it to the Post Office Department. What follows is
a tale of persistence and failure as rural farming declined and
technology and capitalism overtook John Byron Plato's chances at
geographic immortality.
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