In
Benjamin Franklin's Last Will and Testament, he lists a "Weeweiser".
That is important to our neck of the woods. Let me explain.
A Wegweiser is a road side guide...a mile marker if you will. For reasons unknown, his Weeweiser (way marker perhaps), is one of his least know inventions. Our ignorance is showing.
It was a pretty simple device. It attached to the wheel of a carriage and every time the wheel turned, one of the cogs in the wheel would move forward...an odometer in your car is the perfect example...and the device would count the wheel turns and you could figure out pretty accurately how far you traveled. Neat.
As postage was charged by the delivered mile, Franklin placed "mile-markers" from New York to Boston so that he, as postmaster, could have a pretty accurate way of figuring out how much it would cost to deliver the mail from point a to point b.
Well, these stone markers are called Franklin Milemarkers and our area (to Orient Point) has its share. They survived. And by the way, the Connecticut roads were reportedly so bad, that the NY-Boston Route came out through Long Island and then by ferry to New London where they resumed. Here are some local ones...we are about finding and mapping the rest.
A Wegweiser is a road side guide...a mile marker if you will. For reasons unknown, his Weeweiser (way marker perhaps), is one of his least know inventions. Our ignorance is showing.
It was a pretty simple device. It attached to the wheel of a carriage and every time the wheel turned, one of the cogs in the wheel would move forward...an odometer in your car is the perfect example...and the device would count the wheel turns and you could figure out pretty accurately how far you traveled. Neat.
As postage was charged by the delivered mile, Franklin placed "mile-markers" from New York to Boston so that he, as postmaster, could have a pretty accurate way of figuring out how much it would cost to deliver the mail from point a to point b.
Well, these stone markers are called Franklin Milemarkers and our area (to Orient Point) has its share. They survived. And by the way, the Connecticut roads were reportedly so bad, that the NY-Boston Route came out through Long Island and then by ferry to New London where they resumed. Here are some local ones...we are about finding and mapping the rest.
