Cane with a Pull-Out Map of Boston

The best part of this cane with a pull-out map of Boston is that it was made by the "In-A-Cane Display Co.," an entire company devoted to a single, retractable purpose.

Easily pulled out from the cane to guide the pedestrian, the spring-loaded map depicts the city, complete with significant buildings and a key at the bottom for modern and historical destinations. Produced at the time of the 1940 American Legion National Convention in Boston, where thousands of members gathered from around the country, the map notes twenty-nine hotels and forty-three historic sites and monuments.

Wait a second, I may have had a breakthrough: are canes called "canes" because they used to be made out of cane? I never put that together.

Collection Page [Ideo.CooperHewitt.org via the ever-dashing Gadget Lab]

[#1 posted by pork musket , September 18, 2007 7:37 AM]

It has also been suggested that the word 'cane' is derived from Cain, who slew his brother with a staff.

[#2 posted by strider_mt2k , September 18, 2007 7:45 AM]

He was Able.

[#3 posted by cha0tic , September 18, 2007 9:50 AM]

Replace the paper map with some e-paper, pop a GPS unit in the thing. Voila! Updated for the 21st century.

[#4 posted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden/Moderator , September 18, 2007 12:25 PM]

From the Online Etymology Dictionary, an excellent resource:

cane
1398 from O.Fr. canne, from L. canna "reed, cane," from Gk. kanna, probably from Assyr. qanu "tube, reed," from Sumerian gin "reed." Sense of "walking stick" in Eng. is 1590; verb meaning "to beat with a walking stick" is from 1667.

In short, you're right: it is.

[#5 posted by Tubman , September 18, 2007 1:22 PM]

As it's likely that this is the only opportunity I'll ever have in my life to mention this factoid without it being a complete non sequitur, I'd like to point out that the Oxford English Dictionary famously (well, it's famous to puerile lexicographers) chose to illustrate usage of the verb 'to cane' with the 1866 quotation, "I had a little Greek caned into me".

[#6 posted by Anonymous , September 18, 2007 4:30 PM]

I don't take coffee I take tea my dear
I like my toast done on one side
And you can hear it in my accent when I talk
I'm an englishman in New York

See me walking down fifth avenue
A walking cane here at my side
I take it everywhere I walk
I'm an englishman in New York

I'm an alien Im a legal alien
I'm an englishman in New York
I'm an alien Im a legal alien
I'm an englishman in New York

(Sting - Englishman in New York)

[#7 posted by Anonymous , September 19, 2007 1:37 AM]

If only they had a US American version of this map, It would be a perfect gift for Lauren Caitlin Upton.

[#8 posted by Anonymous , September 19, 2007 4:52 AM]

So while I'm looking at my map, I tip over?

[#9 posted by Whereismyrobot , September 19, 2007 7:43 AM]

Someone should send this to Boston By Foot.
http://www.bostonbyfoot.org/