Richard Herbert, 2nd Baron Herbert of Chirbury own son, another Edward, received his grandfather's books and most of his personal property. Herbert himself, the elder son, got only his father's horses and was instructed to "make much of the white horse", while his wife, the new Lady Herbert, was bequeathed her father-in-law's viols and lutes. He was briefly a member of the House of Lords, until on 19 March 1649 it was abolished by an Act of Parliament that declared that "The Commons of England find by too long experience that the House of Lords is useless and dangerous to the people of England". The Lords did
Useless machine The Italian artist Bruno Munari began building "useless machines" ("macchine inutili") in the 1930s. He was a "third generation" Futurist and did not share the first generation's boundless enthusiasm for technology, but sought to counter the threats of a world under machine rule by building machines that were artistic and unproductive. The version of the useless machine that became famous in information theory (basically a box with a simple switch which, when turned "on", causes a hand or lever to appear from inside the box that switches the machine "off" before disappearing inside the box again) appears to have been