The Marshall Islands Postal Service has issued six new stamps featuring Carousel Horses. During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, young French noblemen honed their jousting skills by straddling legless wooden "horses" attached to a contraption pushed around a center pole by a servant. Stationed nearby was a post from which a brass ring dangled, waiting to be speared. This game of "catching the brass ring" became the forerunner of the present-day carousel. The first carousels were powered by horses, mules or even men who cranked the rotation mechanism manually. By 1860, English engineer Frederick Savage had designed a portable center-mounted steam engine capable of propelling three or four rows of carousel horses on platforms up to 48 feet in diameter. He later developed a system of overhead gears that moved the festive mounts in their familiar up-and-down motion.
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