THEIR SPAN OF LIFE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4383, 27 February 1922, Page 3

THEIR SPAN OF LIFE.

The length of usefur life possessed by .articles of man's handiwork forms an intresting speculation, and one Which is full of surprises. For in-i stance, an artificial leg has been wor i by its owner for sixty years,,and was still serviceable at the end of that time.! * The average life off a Ipcomptive engine is about twenty years, but there are many cases, on record of this term being greatly exceeded. -I One, built in the year 1846, worked upon the Furness railways for, a peri-; od of over fifty years, first as a passenger, then goods, and finally as a shunting engine. \ Another, belonging to the NorthWestern, completed over two million miles, equal, to one hundred years’ service oh the ordinary basis of twenty thousand miles a year. In the year 1913 the town of Bildeston was “using a fire engine which had been in active service for seventy years on end. It was still capable of goodwork. But this record pales when compared with that of an engine Which was still in use at the beginning of the present! century by a firm of metal rollers in Birmingham. This, a beam engine, was erected in the year, 1767, and worked continuously for 136 years before it was at last pulled down and replaced. In the year 1902 a letter appeared in "The, Daily Mail”(from a correspondent who was wearing a. watch, still keeping good time, which had belonged to an ancestor of his In the year 1780, and incidentally had also been worn at Waterloo. '

A Swindon family preserve -as a relic a waistcoat made out of a material which once was .worn by the great Queen Bess. This w,aistlcbat had belonged to a well’-ikhown cricketer.