Air Sweeps Dust off Home Plate (Nov, 1939)
Filed under: Sports — @ 1:09 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Nov, 1939
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Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Nov, 1939
| Buy on Ebay
Air Sweeps Dust off Home Plate
Baseball umpires can throw away their whisk brooms if an automatic home-plate duster recently invented is generally adopted. When the device is placed in operation, a valve built into the plate rises and a blast of compressed air sweeps it clean of dust and dirt, as shown in the photograph below.
Nice to see that within 60 days of Germany invading Poland, we have this silly invention.
And it saves so much labor with that whisk-broom.
Comment by Rick Auricchio — August 13, 2008 @ 4:33 pm
I guess taking 3 seconds to manually dust off home plate was just too much work for some umpires.
Comment by John M. Hanna — August 14, 2008 @ 2:37 pm
I recall that Comiskey Park in Chicago had something like this installed in the early ’60s. It must have been in use elsewhere in the major leagues.
Comment by Ernie — August 17, 2008 @ 11:45 am
I’m a huge sports fan and have read alot of articles. But I had never heard of this. Can you imagine this thing malfunctioning when someone was sliding home. Ouch. Ruin a foot, ankle, knee or head. Bad idea. Some things need to be done manually.
Comment by arizona term life insurance — August 18, 2008 @ 10:14 pm