...a postcard recording a record run

This postcard records the record run in a motor vehicle in 1913 by Ivan Beaucleck Hart-Davies from John O'Groats in Scotland to Land's End in Cornwall. This he achieved with his co-driver, and the assistance en-route of guides, in a record time of 34 hours 39 minutes to cover the 886 miles. He had achieved the same record two years earlier on a Triumph Motorcyle in 29 hours 12 minutes.

His average speed was twenty-five and a half miles per hour, and therefore in breach of the Motor Car Act of 1903 which set the maximum speed for motorised vehicles on the road at twenty miles per hour.

Hart-Davies joined the Royal Flying Corp in 1916, the precursor of the RAF, and was killed in a flying accident in England aged thirty nine, shortly before his intended transfer to the battlefront in France.

More information about Hart-Davies can be discovered online.

...a pencil sharpener fashioned as a medieval catapult

This little pencil sharpener is in the form of a medieval catapult. The topic of medieval siege engines is a fascinating one. There were various types. A Trebuchet used a large counter-balance to launch missiles - either solid stones or later cannonballs filled with gunpowder - over the battlements of castles or walled towns. Fireballs and dead bodies, especially diseased ones, were also sometimes launched into besieged places. A working reproduction of a Trebuchet can be seen at Warwick Castle, and proves it was a fearsome weapon. The Mangonel worked on a similar principle but was designed to strike and destroy walls, and thus had a lower and faster angle of fire. The Onager was probably nearest in type to the above, as it was a small engine that used twisted rope and springs, more like a catapult.

This pencil sharpener is capable of firing small balls of paper and plasticine.