{"id":70,"date":"2021-03-21T13:53:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-21T13:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/?p=70"},"modified":"2022-06-29T15:13:53","modified_gmt":"2022-06-29T15:13:53","slug":"rule-britannia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/2021\/03\/21\/rule-britannia\/","title":{"rendered":"Rule Britannia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When it comes to patented rulers, it’s difficult to concieve of anything more basic than this particular example. It consists simply of a pentagonal section ebonised rod with the end imprint “REG. No. 659657”, and was issued as a promotional ruler by C.W. Kellock & Co.<\/a>, a long-established firm of ship brokers. In addition, the rule is lettered in gold: “A SOUVENIR OF H.M.S. “BRITANNIA”, in reference to the 1860 battleship (originally the HMS Prince of Wales<\/a>) later turned cadet training ship that was broken up from July 1916.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kellock<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The registered design number dates to the first quarter of 1917, so it likely marked the first time that Kellock had hit upon the idea of a ruler for recycling the timber of old ships. However, they had previous form with desktop accessories made out of scrapped vessels, having issued promotional desk blotters both before<\/a> and after<\/a> the First World War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For comparison, I have photographed the end of Kellock’s rule alongside the earlier Harrison’s patent octagonal-ended rule of 1907 (of which there is a short description in an earlier post). It’s interesting that a decade on Kellock went for a registered design; perhaps by then even the Patent Office had had enough of applications for wooden sticks of subtly-differing profile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kellock<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So now I have the eight-sided Harrison rule, six-sided AW Faber, five-sided Kellock’s, four-sided Kern, and a few dozen three-sided scales. If anyone comes across a heptagonal ruler, please let me know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it comes to patented rulers, it’s difficult to concieve of anything more basic than this particular example. It consists simply of a pentagonal section ebonised rod with the end imprint “REG. No. 659657”, and was issued as a promotional ruler by C.W. Kellock & Co., a long-established firm of ship brokers. In addition, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[39,31,30,29,18],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rulers","tag-20th-century","tag-patent","tag-polygonal","tag-rolling","tag-ruler","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions\/74"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graphography.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}