Urban life

Living in inner cities requires particular strategies for maintaining privacy. Venetian blinds and fine-weave curtains do the trick.

So I found myself wondering whether the Venetians did actually invent the eponymous slatted blinds, living as they did in such extreme proximity with their neighbours. On the www I find one site suggesting that the idea came via trade routes from Persia to Venice, then with freed Venetian slaves to France. The first patent was to an Edward Bevan in London in 1769; the second to a John Hampson in New Orleans in 1841. It was another 20 years before the first set were installed America, in St Peter's Church Philadelphia, P.A.

Idle Saturday - amazing what I'll do to avoid house cleaning.