ketchup time.

So give me crap already, I have been very remiss in keeping my end of the barn up. We've had visitors, the house keeps asking to be repaired, and it's been so damned hot you can't think without sweating. The first two are easy to deal with: at the worst you can just ignore them. The last though, the awful heat, just puts me into a no sleep cycle that just grinds at your head. So, enough crabbing.

As usual I will fill in the void with a few notes about what happened this day many years ago.

One of my favourites was that Nicholas Jacques Conte was born on this day in 1755. This versatile Frenchman was a painter, balloonist (there were a lot of them 350 years ago) and inventor of the pencil.

He was most widely know for his balloon exploits. As was the case then, just like a hundred years hence, when electricity was being toyed with, you had to make the damn things yourself. Considered to be a true aeronautical pioneer, he flew an early home made balloon through the town square.

Napoleon was attracted to the notoriety it produced and asked Conte to work with the French army in Egypt. He was one of the first to figure out that a balloon with an observation deck, flown high enough might be a good thing for an army to have. So did Napoleon.

At the first test flight in Egypt the balloon caught fire and Conte had to be fast to avoid disaster. Ironically, many of those present thought the idea was to SET it on fire then fly it over the enemy and let it down on them. In that context, it was partially effective.

A second flight was made, sans fire, but no one was really convinced it was more than a stunt.

Conte was a versatile inventor so he turned to the next best thing to ballooning and invented the pencil lead. More specifically, that cornerstone of the art world, the conte stick.

As is often the case, clever, and often times great inventions are the children of dire need. In this case, years of British naval blockade limited the French's access to graphite. Conte blended graphite, clay and wax to form a stick or lead that users could hold and draw with. Being an artist himself, he realized pretty quick that he could control the hardness of the lead, and the resulting depth and thickness of the line.

Starting tomorrow, it's the Barn's look at fast food.