Monday, So much for MARCH madness tonight

Re: Monday, So much for MARCH madness tonight

Ken Oakley-Sunny St. Cloud, Fla

Making Noodles or Spaghetti?

Re: Monday, So much for MARCH madness tonight

Dan Donaldson

Nail clipper for a centipede?

Re: Monday, So much for MARCH madness tonight

Thomas Skaggs, Foothills of Mount Level

That is the original prototype for the Play Dough Fun Factory.

T.

Tom is closest so far, need more.

Re: Monday answer

Gary Smyth

Tom may have been close, but only he can say for sure. It is a pill making machine. From early on pill making is an exacting science, more so in the preparation. Once the Pharmacist had added his powdered drugs to an excipient (an excipient is an inactive substance used as a carrier for the active ingredients of a medication) and then mixed with a mortar and pestle, the pill mass was then rolled into a pipe or cylinder, either with the use of a wooden paddle or spatula. Sort of like Tom's reference to play dough.

The pill pipe/cylinder would then have been placed on the brass grooves of a pill making machine, the top part would then have been placed on top of the pill pipe and pulled backward and forwards until small pills were created. The pills could then be finished off with a separate pill finisher to give them a coating as well as their round uniform shape.

Sort of related fact

1891 - LifeSavers candy is created by Clarence Crane, father of Hart Crane. When Crane first marketed "Crane�s Peppermint Life Savers," life preservers were just beginning to be used on ships-the round kind with a hole in the center for tossing to a passenger fallen overboard. But that is not the whole story. Crane had been basically a chocolate maker. Chocolates were hard to sell in summer, however, and so he decided to try to make a mint that would boost his summertime sales. At that time most of the mints available came from Europe and they were square in shape. Crane was buying bottles of flavoring in a drug store one day when he noticed the druggist using a pill-making machine. It was operated by hand and made round, flat pills. Crane had his idea. The pill making machines worked fine for his mints, and he was even able to add the life preserver touch by punching a tiny hole in the middle. Later Crane was to sell his rights to his new candy for under three thousand dollars. He may have regretted that decision, for "Life Savers" earned the new manufacturer many millions of dollars

No Gold Star for me

Thomas Skaggs, Foothills of Mount Level

I had no clue what it was. So for the lack of an intelligent guess I did my usual wingnut response.

T.