. Bulletin - United States National Museum. Science. pointed away from the shore (fig. 4). Machines of the 18th and early 19th century were frequently equipped with an awning which shielded the bather from public view as she or he descended the steps to enter the water. These awnings were left off the bathing machines during the last half of the 19th century. Such machines were used to a great extent in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries. In the United States, howe\er. they were used only to a limited extent during the first half of the 19th century. By 1870 they had practically disappe
. Bulletin - United States National Museum. Science. pointed away from the shore (fig. 4). Machines of the 18th and early 19th century were frequently equipped with an awning which shielded the bather from public view as she or he descended the steps to enter the water. These awnings were left off the bathing machines during the last half of the 19th century. Such machines were used to a great extent in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries. In the United States, howe\er. they were used only to a limited extent during the first half of the 19th century. By 1870 they had practically disappearedâbeing replaced by the stationary, sentry-box type of indi\idual structure and the large communal bath house. '"Sentry-boxes"' were used before the 1870s at beaches where the terrain did not encourage the use of the bathing machines. At Long Branch, New Jersey, and at one of the beaches at Newport, Rhode Island, lines of these stationary structures were a\ail- able to the bather for changing, one half designated for women and the other half for men. Hours \aried but it was the practice to run up colored flags to signal bathing times for the ladies and then the gentle- men. A male correspondent wrote from Newport in 1857: If you are soc:ial and wish to bathe promiscuously, you put on a dress and go in with the ladies, if you want to cultivate the "fine and froggy art of swimming," unen- cumbered by attire, you wait until the twelve o'clock red-flag is run upâwhen the ladies ; From its early beginnings, in the late 18ih and early 19th century, the summer excursion to the resorts and spas grew in popularitv. In 1848, a writer of a Philadelphia fashion report explained that \'ery few ladies of fashion are now in town, most of them being birds of passage during the last of July and all of August. Most .Xmericans seem to have adopted the fashion of visiting watering-places through the summer.'" As the summer excursion became a social e\'ent,
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