Walking streetlamps for hire in seventeenth-century London | Hacker News Reader

Walking streetlamps for hire in seventeenth-century London

daily.jstor.org

82 pointspepys18 comments

I had to look up the term link-boy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-boy

>The term derives from "link", a term for the cotton tow that formed the wick of the torch. Links are mentioned in William Shakespeare's Henry IV, part 1, as Falstaff teases Bardolph about the shining redness of his face:

"Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern." (Act III, scene 3)

Where’s my drone mobile streetlamp + surveillance livestream cam + flechette platform?

ETA: Ah, already here, just not widely distributed.

https://www.directline.com/fleetlights

I can see these being used in emergency situations, but there's a reason all their promo footage has music. All urban drone applications are DOA if they don't address the noise issue.

See, you've gone and confused the concept with a music video. In order to avoid the drone noise issue, they've installed loud speakers with the lights that play the music you're hearing. Just like when you turn up the radio in the car to make that belt squeaking noise go away.

You've just confused the concept with music added in post when that's actually what it'll sound like when fully deployed.

Use Miyazaki as the designer, and the little lantern from Spirited Away.

> medieval Londoner

The 17th century hardly classifies as "the middle ages".

Right, by this point English is more or less the language we have today (the idioms are sometimes unfamiliar but we understand what's basically going on in Shakespeare's plays, which were written at about the turn of the century) and the Enlightenment is well under way.

It's not obvious to me that there could not have been link boys in say, 15th century London, which really was still a medieval period - they just need a torch or maybe even a candle - but I didn't find records of such a thing. It's possible that wealthy people in 15th century London just would not venture out alone at night in numbers to justify this trade.

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Walking lamps are very common in Indian marriages even today.

Link-boys (Uber for torches) etc etc.

Mostly unrelated: in the illustration there are some iron railings and presumably an arch over where the man is walking. Attached to this arch are these horn-shaped ornaments. They are reasonably common on older houses. What are they for?

Keep reading the article - it's explained later as a way to extinguish the torches when no longer needed.

Ugh, It’s not even hidden in there. Perhaps I experienced some banner blindness and skimmed straight over the pull quote (or online tweet). Though mostly I’ve had this question for a long time and didn’t expect this article to contain the answer.

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