Two hundred years before the internet, the collective wisdom of the people was locked up inside a yearly publication called the almanac. Among the first books ever published, aside from the bible, by the Gutenberg press, almanacs have enjoyed a seven-century run that continues, albeit abated, to this day. Benjamin Franklin had his, as did many others, and among the most notable — which lasted to our modern age — was the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

On this day, October 13, in 1792, Robert Thomas founded the first edition of the Farmer’s Almanac. He would add the word “Old” to the beginning of the title years later.

Like Benjamin Franklin’s almanac, Thomas’s combined astronomical observations with meteorological data and prognostications, with a dash of homespun wisdom on top. While he did not have Franklin’s folksy sayings, e.g. “early to bed and early to rise…” or “hunger never saw bad bread,” he did have a top-secret weather forecast formula, based on his years of observation and study, locked up in a black box, available only to the almanac forecasters. He also had a hole drilled through the almanac, so it could hang from a hook. Thomas recommended the outhouse, where his book would only provide informative reading material, but also a good source of toilet paper.