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Here is an interesting shot of toilet paper being sold on toilet paper. :-)

Note toilet paper being sold in 1897 Sears Catalog. The offerings start at the bottom left corner of page 23 with a picture that is very much like the modern TP roll, perforations and all. A case of 100 rolls started at $2.25, an amount that was comparable to a day's pay at the time.

You seem to be misinformed about wages in the 1700s. According to this book, a typical laborer's wage (construction work) was between 40 and 80 cents per day, or (given today's 5-day work week) about $208 per year. According to this inflation calculator, $100 in 1770 would be worth about $2,700 today. So at the high end, inflation-adjusted wages for a construction laborer would be in the neighborhood of $5,000 to $6,000 per year.

Of course there were reasons that most people back then were farmers. And today there are reasons that most people have jobs in retail or the restaurant industry, or other jobs that will one day be done by robots. And there are reasons why most people aren't farmers today, just as in the future there will be reasons that people won't do the menial jobs of today. Just as all those people who used to be farmers found other work, future people will find other work too.

If you're so upset about CEO's getting so much more than you, instead of complaining, why don't you instead become a CEO! Oh wait, it's really hard to be a successful CEO. Maybe there's a reason they make so much money. (No, I'm not one, nor do I want that kind of headache!)

The real reason that incentive to work goes down is because people no longer have to work. They can always fall back on government programs. People used to understand that getting ahead comes from hard work. Today, too many people want to get ahead...without the work. Sorry, it just doesn't work that way.

They don't exist to serve you, they exist to serve academia; read their web page: https://www.hathitrust.org/htr...

HTRC serves a community interested in research and educational computational investigation of the HathiTrust corpus. HTRC serves a community interested in research and educational computational investigation of the HathiTrust corpus.

And it ain't going to remain free:

With the help of our advisory board, advice from the HathiTrust Board of Governors, and the input of researchers, the HTRC will develop a set of policies with a predictable set of prices

This will likely end up being bulk payments from other academic institutions; groups like these have neither the time nor the interest for dealing with mere humans. In addition, their focus is on data mining and text mining, not easy access by humans.

This is an effort by academics for academics. It's not for bringing books to the masses. And I doubt the project is going to be around that long either.

Vocational education by correspondence has a long history. There was a big boom in it a century ago. Popular Mechanics, for 1920: "Learn the automobile trade at home - spare times" - Dyke's Correspondence School of Motoring.

International Correspondence Schools was established in 1890, and they're still in business. For decades, they had ads in Popular Mechanics, Popular Electronics, etc. By 1906 total enrollments reached 900,000. The dropout rates were high; only one in six made it past the first third of the material in a course. Only 2.6% of students who began a course finished it. Udacity had stats like that at times.

"The regular technical school or college aims to educate a man broadly; our aim, on the contrary, is to educate him only along some particular line." - Clarke, "The Correspondence School", 1906

"I'd aspired to give people a profound education--to teach them something substantial, but the data was at odds with this idea." ... "At the end of the day, the true value proposition of education is employment." - Thrun, 2013

Not much has changed.

It has been free to the public since I testified in the U.S. Congress in support of the EPPA. Click here to read a transcript of my testimony: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015011381806;view=1up;seq=281 (My testimony begins on pg 275) Here is an interesting piece of historical trivia: When I testified in Congress, I put my manual, HOW TO STING THE POLYGRAPH into the Congressional Record, and the Senators and Representatives distributed more copies of my manual between 1984 and 1988 than anyone has ever distributed - including me! They sent them out by the tens of thousands in response to requests from constituents. I wonder if the Feds will get all that "list" from Congress? You can also get it by simply Googling HOW TO STING THE POLYGRAPH. I am constantly updating it and I must charge a small amount to maintain my website and keep updating the manual, so I charge for the updated version.

It has been free to the public since I testified in the U.S. Congress in support of the EPPA. Click here to read a transcript of my testimony: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015011381806;view=1up;seq=281 (My testimony begins on pg 275) Here is an interesting piece of historical trivia: When I testified in Congress, I put my manual, HOW TO STING THE POLYGRAPH into the Congressional Record, and the Senators and Representatives distributed more copies of my manual between 1984 and 1988 than anyone has ever distributed - including me! They sent them out by the tens of thousands in response to requests from constituents. I wonder if the Feds will get all that "list" from Congress? You can also get it by simply Googling HOW TO STING THE POLYGRAPH.

I have proved the polygraph is worthless as a "lie detector" - truthful people are often called liars and I can teach anyone how to control every tracing on the chart in a matter of minutes! Go to my website polygraph.com for more information about that. But, since all the scientific evidence shows there is no such thing as a "lie detector", wouldn't responsible policy makers in the government stop the use of the polygraph if they were aware of these problems? One would think they would, but the sad fact is they already know all these things - they have known since at least 1985 when I testified in Congress and got the EMPLOYEE POLYGRAPH PROTECTION ACT passed into law, (the EPPA outlawed the use of the polygraph in private industry). I testified in the U.S. Congress in support of the EPPA. Click here to read a transcript of my testimony: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015011381806;view=1up;seq=281 (My testimony begins on pg 275) Here is an interesting piece of historical trivia: When I testified in Congress, I put my manual, HOW TO STING THE POLYGRAPH into the Congressional Record, and the Senators and Representatives distributed more copies of my manual between 1984 and 1988 than anyone has ever distributed - including me! They sent them out by the tens of thousands in response to requests from constituents. (I wonder if they are going to get that "list" too?) But, there were exclusions written into the law that allowed the government - local state and federal - to continue to use the polygraph. They attempt to justify these exclusions on the grounds that the government needs this tool to protect national security and the law enforcement officials need it to protect the integrity of the criminal justice system. I have proved the polygraph is not a "lie detector" - the Congress, the Justice Department, the OTA, and all those with any scientific credibility agree with me - so there is no justification for the government to continue to use it on the pretext that it protects our national security or the integrity of the criminal justice system. But, knowing the polygraph is worthless as a "lie detector", knowing that people were wrongly accused of lying, and knowing that many were abused by polygraph operators asking illegal questions was still not enough to convince government agencies to stop using the polygraph. In fact, these agencies demanded that they be excluded from this law in order to "protect national security" and to "assure the integrity of law enforcement and the criminal justice system". The lawmakers caved and allowed the exclusions to be written into the law because that was the only way to be assured that even the watered down version prohibiting the polygraph in the private sector would pass. Why do government agencies still staunchly defend the use of the polygraph and even harass, intimidate and try to punish me for proving the polygraph is not a "lie detector" by demonstrating that I can teach anyone to easily control the results of the "test"? Why do they do everything in their power to prevent any information that discredits the "lie detector" from being exposed? Why do they intimidate applicants and others who are required to submit to polygraph "testing" by monitoring their internet activity and punishing them for educating themselves about the polygraph? Why does the government love to use this "Frankenstein's Monster", (a description given to the polygraph by its inventor Dr. Larson)? And why do they insist on continuing to use it? It is FOOLISH and DANGEROUS to use the polygraph as "lie detector" - the theory of "lie detection" is nothing but junk science. It is based on a faulty scientific premise. The polygraph operators have the audacity to say that there is such a thing as a "reaction indicative of deception", when I can prove that "lying reaction" is simply a nervous reaction commonly referred to as the fight or flight syndrome. In fact, the polygraph is nothing but a psychological billy c

I have proved the polygraph is worthless as a "lie detector" - truthful people are often called liars and I can teach anyone how to control every tracing on the chart in a matter of minutes! Go to my website polygraph.com for more information about that. But, since all the scientific evidence shows there is no such thing as a "lie detector", wouldn't responsible policy makers in the government stop the use of the polygraph if they were aware of these problems? One would think they would, but the sad fact is they already know all these things - they have known since at least 1985 when I testified in Congress and got the EMPLOYEE POLYGRAPH PROTECTION ACT passed into law, (the EPPA outlawed the use of the polygraph in private industry). I testified in the U.S. Congress in support of the EPPA. Click here to read a transcript of my testimony: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015011381806;view=1up;seq=281 (My testimony begins on pg 275) Here is an interesting piece of historical trivia: When I testified in Congress, I put my manual, HOW TO STING THE POLYGRAPH into the Congressional Record, and the Senators and Representatives distributed more copies of my manual between 1984 and 1988 than anyone has ever distributed - including me! They sent them out by the tens of thousands in response to requests from constituents. (I wonder if they are going to get that "list" too?) But, there were exclusions written into the law that allowed the government - local state and federal - to continue to use the polygraph. They attempt to justify these exclusions on the grounds that the government needs this tool to protect national security and the law enforcement officials need it to protect the integrity of the criminal justice system. I have proved the polygraph is not a "lie detector" - the Congress, the Justice Department, the OTA, and all those with any scientific credibility agree with me - so there is no justification for the government to continue to use it on the pretext that it protects our national security or the integrity of the criminal justice system. But, knowing the polygraph is worthless as a "lie detector", knowing that people were wrongly accused of lying, and knowing that many were abused by polygraph operators asking illegal questions was still not enough to convince government agencies to stop using the polygraph. In fact, these agencies demanded that they be excluded from this law in order to "protect national security" and to "assure the integrity of law enforcement and the criminal justice system". The lawmakers caved and allowed the exclusions to be written into the law because that was the only way to be assured that even the watered down version prohibiting the polygraph in the private sector would pass. Why do government agencies still staunchly defend the use of the polygraph and even harass, intimidate and try to punish me for proving the polygraph is not a "lie detector" by demonstrating that I can teach anyone to easily control the results of the "test"? Why do they do everything in their power to prevent any information that discredits the "lie detector" from being exposed? Why do they intimidate applicants and others who are required to submit to polygraph "testing" by monitoring their internet activity and punishing them for educating themselves about the polygraph? Why does the government love to use this "Frankenstein's Monster", (a description given to the polygraph by its inventor Dr. Larson)? And why do they insist on continuing to use it? It is FOOLISH and DANGEROUS to use the polygraph as "lie detector" - the theory of "lie detection" is nothing but junk science. It is based on a faulty scientific premise. The polygraph operators have the audacity to say that there is such a thing as a "reaction indicative of deception", when I can prove that "lying reaction" is simply a nervous reaction commonly referred to as the fight or flight syndrome. In fact, the polygraph is nothing but a psychological billy c

I love archie bunkers chair. and I treat it with the greatest respect. but in and of itself, it has no value in 500 years.

That's not for you, or anyone else, to decide in 2012. There's no way to tell exactly what information, and artifacts, will be of value in the future, and what will not. Professional archivists and preservation people know this, and that's why they do what they do.

you can share the present, or you can protect the past, or you can do neither. both just isn't worth it.

Nonsense. Large-scale digitization efforts like HathiTrust and Internet Archive do it every day. You are completely talking out of your ass.