Martin Fone's Blog, page 194
May 18, 2020
You’re Having A Laugh – Part Forty One
Dr H E Licks and the Diaphote, 1880
If you happen to live in a place called Bethlehem, the one I’m talking about is in Pennsylvania, then it is a copywriter’s dream if you happen to come up with something that is extraordinary. The town’s paper, The Daily Times, ran a story entitled “A New Marvel in Bethlehem” in its edition of February 10, 1880. And what was this new marvel? A diaphote, that’s what.
Local inventor, Dr H E Licks, after toiling on the project for three years, announced to the astonished community that he had perfected an instrument by which the colours and form of an object could be transmitted along the wire of a telegraph. We would recognise the concept as a form of television. Licks called his invention a diaphote, a compound noun using the Greek preposition dia, meaning through, and phote, light. The claim generated such interest that over the next few days or so other newspapers with wider circulations picked it up.
One such was a Washington paper, The Bee, which enthralled its readership with a lengthy description of an invention it dubbed as “one of the most wonderful of the present day”. Consisting of a receiving mirror, wires, a battery and a reproducing speculum. The mirror, six inches by four, consisted of seventy-two plates, to each of which a wire was attached. The wires ran to a galvanic battery and connected to the receiving speculum. “When the circuit is closed”, The Bee reported, “the rays of light are conducted through an ordinary camera, and the accompanying heat produces chemical changes in the amalgam of the mirror, which, modifying the electric current, cause similar changes in the reproducing speculum”.
As well as awe at this major development in the world of communications, the newspapers gave its readers, courtesy of Licks, some sense of what this marvel could be used for. There was no suggestion that the machine capable of transmitting moving pictures in colour would be used for something as trivial and time-wasting as becoming a medium for popular entertainment. There were far more sensible things it could be used for, the Iola Register from Kansas reporting on March 5, 1880 that “with this instrument, fitted up with glasses and wires, a signal officer on a railroad will be able to see one hundred miles of track at one time”.
Despite the interest generated, there is no evidence that this wondrous contraption was ever seen, let alone a public demonstration. All the detail that the press had published had come directly from Licks. Suspicions that it had all been an elaborate hoax were heightened when in March 1880 stories appeared in the press of an invention, attributed to a Mr T J McTighe and the Connelly Brothers, that allowed people to see each other when they used the telephone, the telephote or what we would know nowadays as a videophone.
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However, confirmation that it was indeed a leg-pull didn’t come until 1917 when Licks confessed all in his book, Recreations in Mathematics. Licks himself, it would appear, wasn’t all that he seemed to be, probably just the pseudonym of a professor of engineering at Lehigh University, Mansfield Merriman.
Sadly, the latest marvel from Bethlehem proved to be an ingenious hoax, but, truth being stranger than fiction, a form of diaphote and, indeed, a telephote, made a significant impact on our lives in the 20th century.
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If you enjoyed this, check out Fifty Scams and Hoaxes by Martin Fone
https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/business/fifty-scams-and-hoaxes/
May 17, 2020
Record Of The Week (3)
With more time on his hands than he knows what to do with, serial Guinness World Record holder, David Rush from Idaho, has added to his collection.
The latest record to tumble is the most table tennis balls caught in shaving foam on the head in thirty seconds, thrown from a distance of 6.5 metres. For such a bizarre concept, it has been a fiercely fought crown. A stunt team called Dude Perfect held the record until 2019 with 21 balls until a Swiss duo, Jonas Lingg and Pascal Hunziker, topped it with 22.
Rush, though, with his trusty companion, Jonathan Hannon, throwing the balls, caught 29 on his head. It could have been more, several balls escaping the foam and bouncing on the floor. Their trick, it seems, was to shape the shaving foam like a bowl, making it easier to catch the balls.
Rush, who does these mad cap stunts to promote STEM education, was able to observe physical distancing. If you are really bored, why not give it a go?
May 16, 2020
Fart Of The Week (6)
Trying to evade the long arms of the law is fraught with difficulties at the best of times but doing it in the middle of an attack of flatulence is a recipe for disaster.
A 35-year-old-man had the police on his scent after he failed to appear in court. He ran into some woodlands near Haworth in Nottinghamshire and hid behind some bushes. After an initial search, officers from Nottinghamshire Police were going to give up until, according to their report, they heard a noise “believed to be the sound of someone breaking wind”.
Following the sound and, presumably, the scent, the police found their man and effected their arrest. One of the officers commented, “I was almost out of wind running but luckily [the suspect] still had some”.
Lay off the baked beans would seem to be the moral of the story.
May 15, 2020
What Is The Origin Of (282)?…
To write to the Times about it
With social media so firmly entrenched into our daily existence, providing us with an immediate platform from which to vent our feelings and ill-formed and poorly informed opinions, there has been little need to fill up one’s best fountain pen with green ink and fire off a letter to the editor of a national newspaper. It is a shame as carefully curated letters’ pages in our leading dailies can provide entertainment as well as enlightenment. There was a time, though, when send an epistle to the editor was a reader’s only outlet to get their views across.
The Daily Universal Register was founded in London in 1785, changing its name to The Times on January 1, 1788. It soon established a position for itself of being one of the country’s leading papers, earning it the nickname of The Thunderer, and the mouthpiece of the establishment. If there was one place to go to to get something off your chest as a member of the public, it was The Times.
Our phrase seems to have sprung up during the 1850s, at least in print. The earliest example appeared in Punch, the satirical magazine which we will look at in more detail next time, on April 26, 1851. A Mr C H Adams delivered his usual lecture at the Haymarket Theatre on astronomy. As well as a lecture the redoubtable Adams displayed his orrery, a mechanical model of the solar system that predicted the relative positions of the celestial bodies. The Punch correspondent, though, was far from impressed, recording in Our Colonel’s Corner that, “this is precisely the same as was exhibited last year! And he left the Theatre, warning all check-takers, that “he certainly should write to the Times about it””. One wonders quite what he was expecting.
It was the place to record one’s indignation, as this extract from the Morning Post of May 15, 1854 shows; “men of responsible standing, who belonged to other parishes, thought it necessary to leave their proper churches to spy out the doings at St Barnabas, and to write to the Times about them”, What got them hot under the clerical collar was the introduction of more elaborate observations into the religious service.
It was inevitable that the phrase would gain some traction in a figurative sense and appeared in fiction from around the same time. The Monmouthshire Beacon of May 10, 1853 published a short story, The Blessings of a Legacy, about a court case that was taking such a long time to resolve itself that all the parties concerned lost their collective rags. “Peter said it really was too bad, and he’d a great mind to write to the Lord Chancellor himself about it. Mrs Peter asked him why he did not write to the Times”.
In The Fortunes of the Colville Family, written by Francis Smedley and published in 1853, a train passenger is recorded as remarking, “what a shocking slow train this is to be sure – they hardly do their five and thirty miles an hour: I shall certainly write to the Times about it”. It is good to see that nothing really changes. Household Words, a periodical edited by Charles Dickens, published a short story on September 6, 1856 in which the anonymous contributor regaled his readers with his experiences in Austrian Italy. His experiences were not altogether pleasurable and he wistfully longed to be back in London; “I wish I was there now, for I would write to the Times about this nuisance before I slept”. Alas, he couldn’t and a retrospective moan in the pages of the Household Word had to suffice.
These days, we talk generally about writing to the papers, rather than specifically the Times, when we express our indignation, often tongue-in-cheek, about something that has annoyed us. In the 1850s, though, it was the only thing to do.
May 14, 2020
Gin O’Clock – Part Ninety Nine
Whilst the ginaissance shows no signs of flagging, it is doubtful whether more than a small proportion of the distillers scrambling for position can make a long-term sustainable business. The barriers for sustained success are high. Leaving aside the logistics of distribution and the sensitivity of price point, particularly in uncertain economic times, deploying unusual botanicals or distilling methods or distinctive packaging or coming up with an interesting back story can only take you so far. When being out of the box is the new normal, it takes something special to make that breakthrough.
I have been intrigued by Ableforth Bathtub Gin for some time, although not enough to be tempted to buy a bottle. It has a certain homemade feel about it with its brown paper wrapping encasing the bottle, the string around the neck and its wax sealant. And of course, the name Bathtub is redolent of the days of the Prohibition when bootleggers, at least so they say, used to infuse their spirit with various fruits and botanicals in their baths, often in a vain attempt to hide the dreadful quality and taste of the underlying base spirit. Bathtub has to this day that cachet of being poor quality, cheap gin, a rather difficult marketing hurdle to overcome.
Ableforth’s Bathtub Gin is created by Atom Brands, based in Tunbridge, using a base botanical spirit distilled in pot stills by Langley Distillery in Oldbury, near Birmingham. Its chief point of difference from other gins is that it is made using a process called cold compounding. What this means in layman’s terms is that the botanicals, juniper, orange peel, coriander, clover, cardamom, and cinnamon, are simply added to the base spirit and then filtered out before bottling. Distilled gins, on the other hand, infuse the botanicals and then distil.
There has been a certain sniffiness about compound gins as it was viewed as the method of choice of gin producers who were looking for a cheap product, often using artificial colourings and extracts, to maximise profits. Distilled gins, on the other hand, maintain the purity and authenticity of the product by using real botanicals and taste is as important as profit. The hard truth, though, is that distilled gins rule the roost because it is much easier to produce a consistent gin in commercially viable quantities by doing large distillation runs than fiddling around adding and filtering botanicals.
With its name, appearance and method of production, Ableforth’s Bathtub Gin has always seemed to me to have a bit of a mountain to climb. In these straitened times when trips out are restricted to the purchase of essential items, their gin was the only one on the shelves of our local Waitrose that I had not sampled. I decided that now was as good a time as any to give it a go.
Once I had got the wax sealant off and the cork stopper out, the aroma that greeted me was encouraging, a heady mix of juniper to the fore with citrus elements present but keeping a respectful distance in the background. When I poured the spirit into my glass, I was in for a surprise as it was a very light brown liquid, like an overwatered whisky. That aside, it was a smooth and more complex gin than I had expected. There was an immediate hit of juniper, always welcome, followed by more sweeter sensations and then a rush of spice and pepper before finishing off with the citrus elements. Each botanical played its part in a well-choreographed performance, there long enough for me to recognise the part it was playing but not overstaying its welcome or seeking to outdo the others.
With an ABV of 43.3% this is a well-crafted gin with a bit of welly. It does not try to be too clever or flash but delivers an eminently drinkable and moreish spirit. It does much to restore the reputation of cold compounding.
Until the next time, cheers!
May 13, 2020
Book Corner – May 2020 (2)
The Snack Thief – Andrea Camilleri
This is the third of Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano series and, for me, was the most satisfying of the ones that I have read. The book starts off with a couple of murders, seemingly unconnected. A Tunisian man on an Italian fishing vessel was killed by shots from a Tunisian patrol boat. Montalbano doesn’t want to get involved, preferring to investigate the death of a local businessman, Lapecora, found stabbed to death in the lift of the house in which he lived. Inevitably, the two cases are linked and the eponymous snack thief, a boy who steals children’s packed lunches, helps piece them together.
I’ve mentioned it before, but like most of the better fictional detectives, Montalbano, believes in a form of natural justice. Towards the end of this page-turning, gripping story, once again Stephen Sarterelli’s translation is spot on, the arrest that concludes the Lapecora leg of the case is mentioned almost en passant. What is more important to Montalbano is looking after the orphaned Tunisian boy, the snack thief, and using the boy’s mother’s ill-gotten gains to secure him a future. Decency and morality outweigh the grubby demands of feeling collars.
There is more to Camilleri’s novel than a complicated set of murders. The minor characters, his colleagues at work who all display elements of incompetence, augmented by some new characters, as well as the long-suffering Livia who chooses this time of all times to visit him in Sicily, play off Montalbano and allow Camilleri to develop his hero’s character. We learn that the weather and hunger can make him grumpy and, yes, we are treated to extensive accounts of what he eats. I didn’t find the descriptions too off-putting this time around. Camilleri has great fun in developing Montalbano’s jealousy of the growing friendship between Livia and his number two.
Livia accused Montalbano of playing God in the first book and, in a sense, his taking control of the child’s destiny is another example. He can play fast and loose with the rules when he wants, beating up a high-ranking member of the secret service and blackmailing him to ensure that his well-merited promotion is blocked. Montalbano has too good a life to ruin it by climbing further up the greasy poll.
One aspect of the story that surprised me was how sympathetic Montalbano was to the plight of the refugees. There is no sense of racism or antagonism towards those who have chosen extreme means to better their lives. There is also no room for sentiment. The elderly woman, Aisha, is treated tenderly, as if she was Montalbano’s elderly aunt, but not so tenderly that when the plot demands it, she is despatched.
An excellent book.
May 12, 2020
Find Of The Week
I’m a bit too precious about books, even ones that I do not particularly care for, to throw them away. Someone somewhere may value them and, you just never know, they could be worth something in the right hands.
In 2008 a school in Buckinghamshire was having a clear out prior to an Ofsted inspection and a load of books from the library were dumped in a skip. After all, it would not do for the inspectors to find actual books on the shelves. One of the teachers, though, couldn’t bear to see them all pulped and in a bit of what the Americans call dumpster diving, salvaged a few and put them up in her attic.
It was her son who alerted her to the fact that three of the salvaged books, a hardback edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and two paperback first editions of the same novel might be worth a few bob.
Indeed they are. With an estimated price of £18,000 they are going under the hammer at auction on May 21st at Bishton Hall in Staffordshire. According to auctioneers, Hansons of Derbyshire, only 500 copies of the hardback were printed, 300 of which were sent to schools. They contained a number of errors which were eradicated in subsequent print runs and, to quote an expert, are “as rare as hen’s teeth” and “the holy grail for collectors”.
Quite a find.
May 11, 2020
The Streets Of London – Part One Hundred And Seven
Hanway Street, W1
If you need to get from Oxford Street to Tottenham Court Road, or vice versa, of course, a handy shortcut is by way of Hanway Street, to be found on the northern side of Oxford Street. It cuts out the oft-crowded junction where the two roads meet. Given its prime location it is not surprising to learn that when the land had been fully into a street by the 1740s, it appears in John Roque’s Plan of the Cities of London & Westminster from 1746, it housed a number of coaching inns.
Records suggest that the original name of the street was Hanover Yard. It then became known as Hanway Yard before its current name was settled upon. It is thought that the Hanway in question is the traveller, philanthropist and eccentric, Jonas Hanway. Amongst his many achievements he founded The Marine Society in 1756, became a governor of the Foundling Hospital in 1758 and went on to help to establish the Magdalen Hospital.
Hanway is also thought to have been the first to use an umbrella in the streets of London. His appearance was not well-received, Old and New London from 1878 recording that undergoing “all the staring, laughing, jeering, hooting, and bullying; and having punished some insolent knaves who struck him with their whips as well as their tongues, he finally succeeded in overcoming the prejudices against it”. Less successful was his attempt to promote stilts as a means of avoiding the muck and grime of the capital’s streets.
Fortunately, the street is not as dirty as it once was but if you keep a sharp eye on where you are going, you will see several bulbous-headed bollards. These mark the boundary of the Parish of St Marylebone and its coat of arms can be seen under the layers of paint. The road was widened by six feet in 1841, a plaque informs us, thanks to some land donated by E H Baldock. He and Lieutenant Colonel Rowles also bore the cost of the expansion. The area was then extensively rebuilt over seventy years from 1850. Baldock owned a shop on the street which was rather disparagingly described by Aleph in The Old City as “a sort of museum for Chinese horses and dragons, queer-looking green vases, and doll-sized teacups”. Beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder and Baldock’s did much to establish the popularity of porcelain from the Staffordshire pottery, Davenport, in the metropolis.
William Baker, who built in 1755 and after whom Baker Street, of Sherlock Holmes fame, was named lived on Hanway Street as did Elizabeth Alexander in 1808. Her claim to fame was that she was the oldest woman in England at the time, a sprightly 106 years young, according to the rubric under her portrait. Whether she really was that old is uncertain.
Turn left as you are walking along Hanway Street towards Tottenham Court Road and you will turn into Hanway Place, where the Westminster Jews’ Free School opened its doors in 1811. One of its most famous pupils was a fireman, Harry Ehrengott. On September 17 1940 a three-storey garage used by the London Fire Auxiliary Service, the basement of which was used as an air-raid shelter, suffered a direct hit, killing twenty. Ehrengott, despite burns to his hands, dragged several survivors from the ensuing conflagration, for which he was awarded the George Cross for Bravery, the only London fireman to be so honoured during the War.
These days the street has a number of quirky shops, an ideal venue for collectors of vinyl, as well as the rear entrances to some of the shops that can afford the Oxford Street rents.
May 10, 2020
Record Of The Week (2)
Even in these difficult times, it is heartening to see that attempts on Guinness World Records continue unabated.
New has reached me that serial record breaker, David Rush from Idaho, who already holds over 100 records, has another one under his belt. Whilst observing physical distancing, he too 43 wet sponges to the face in a 30-second period. His colleague, Jonathan Hannon, threw 54 sponges at him, only 43 of which struck him in the face. Still, it was good enough to beat the previous record of 36 strikes.
Afterwards, Rush said, “there is no evidence that Covid-19 has ever been spread by a thrown wet sponge”. Especially one dipped in Dettol, a White House spokesperson did not say.
May 9, 2020
Covid-19 Tales (4)
Swedish authorities have apparently adopted a lighter touch to physical distancing than some other countries but even they have had to draw the line on plans to celebrate the annual spring festival, Valborg, in Lund. Up to 30,000 normally attend, mostly youngsters.
To get the message across, officials have spread a tonne of chicken manure over the turf in the Stadspark.
Looking on the bright side, the grass should be wonderful this summer.
