5.14.2006
Posted by Sam at 9:54 PM
| Tags: postmortem
In 1927, Mr. Albert Vanderlaan filed a patent. Mr. Vanderlaan filed a patent because, apparently, cemeteries annoyed him:
Mr Vanderlaan thought cremation to be a temporary fix, but really, he just wanted to tile his bathroom with the ashes of the dead. What!? Exactly.
This patent application for a "process to safeguard the human ashes forever and beyond peradventure of mischance against loss or mutilation," is worth reading for the verbiage alone.
"The ugliest phase of civilized man's career on earth is not so much his inevitable physical expiration, as the manner in which it became the custom to dispose of his mortal remains by burial in earth. No matter how beautiful modern cemeteries (literally meaning "sleeping places") may have been laid out, the horror of "slow putrefaction" and of "the cold worm that fretteth the enshrouded form" remains."
Mr Vanderlaan thought cremation to be a temporary fix, but really, he just wanted to tile his bathroom with the ashes of the dead. What!? Exactly.
"...so that the remains of a person weighing 200 pounds would yield 6 pounds of ashes, which could be assimilated in as few as twelve tiles..."
This patent application for a "process to safeguard the human ashes forever and beyond peradventure of mischance against loss or mutilation," is worth reading for the verbiage alone.