Umbrellas: The iPhones of the Victorian age: new technologies help create a sense of personal privacy in public.

• Author: Postrel, Virginia
• Position: HISTORY

BIG CITIES ARE great places if you're looking for work, stimulation, love, or a new life. But the density that fosters excitement and opportunity also erodes security and identity. Amid the crush of strangers, a single person can feel violated or insignificant. So city dwellers are quick to adopt any technology suitable for carving out personal space in public.

Before the smartphone or the hoodie, the iPod or the Walkman--even before the automobile--that technology was the umbrella. It gave its bearer space and a semblance of privacy. Like the smartphone and the music player, it also provided ample material for humorists, social critics, and arbiters of manners.

In 1891, an anonymous Chicago Daily Tribune columnist called the umbrella "worse than a Gatling." Average women, the writer declared, "have not yet learned to carry umbrellas and parasols in a manner satisfactory to the unarmed pedestrian with a selfish interest in the preservation of life and limb." These deadly weapons weren't today's spring-loaded compacts but big models along the lines of golf umbrellas. Carried at an angle under the arm, they jabbed anyone who got too close.

Even while mocking the umbrella's propensity to take out the knees and ribs of innocent pedestrians, the columnist acknowledged the device's important social functions. "Women rely upon it to get them through crowds, to make uncomfortable the possessors of smarter bonnets than their own, to shield themselves from too inquisitive eyes, and to defend themselves from insult if they happen to be belated without other escort," he wrote.

A closed umbrella made a handy walking stick or prop while standing. An open umbrella was a screen against prying eyes. Lovers used them to create intimate spaces as they walked together or reclined in parks or on beaches. When Mississippi banned shades and screens on the windows of saloons, in an effort to shame drinkers, bar patrons began shielding themselves with open umbrellas.

"A man taking a drink at a bar under an umbrella is...