Martin Fone's Blog, page 244
November 5, 2018
There Ain’t ‘Alf Some Clever Bastards – Part Eighty Five
Ole Johansen Winstrup (1782 – 1867)
It must have been chastening as a 25-year-old to see your capital city set on fire by the Brits and what remained of your navy towed away. The aftermath of the Battle of Copenhagen in 1807 caused the latest inductee into our Hall of Fame, Danish-born Ole Johansen Winstrup to exercise his grey cells to come up with an ingenious method of strengthening Copenhagen’s sea defences.
In 1808 the guardsman worked long and hard in his workshop to develop a model of what he called Hvalfisken, the Whale. And a pretty Heath-Robinsonish affair it was too. The idea behind the vessel was that the best way of surprising an enemy’s fleet was to creep up on it from below. In essence, The Whale was what we would now know as a submarine.
According to Winstrup’s patent application, in preparation for an attack a diver would drill numerous holes into the submarine’s hull and seal them with corks. When the vessel was in the requisite position, the diver would simply remove the corks, causing it to sink, forming a barrier against naval attack. Presumably, once the diver had removed all the corks, he would swim to safety. Quite how many would have to be removed before the vessel became unstable was not made clear.
Of course, there was the risk that the vessel would be detected and boarded by the curious enemy. Naturally, Winstrup had thought of that. “Should it happen that they send a ship’s carpenter to examine the ship,” he wrote, “then the harpoon shown in the model should be used.”
Clearly satisfied that he had come up with a workable model and what would have been a game changer in the field of naval combat, Winstrup submitted his patent application to the Danish authorities. He even invited the Danish Crown Prince, later Frederik VI, to take a ride on the boat but the palace declined the kind offer. It may have been this act of hubris on Winstrup’s part that proved his undoing as the patent was refused “because of technical shortcomings” and the Whale was consigned to the scrap heap of history.
Bonkers as the idea of removing corks from holes to make a vessel sink may have been, careful inspection of Winstrup’s plans would reveal one revolutionary idea – the vessel used propellers. Experimentation into the way mechanical power, principally steam, was underway in various parts of the world in the early 19th century but Winstrup was ahead of the curve. It was not until 1815 that Richard Trevithick had designed a steam-powered propeller and the late 1830s that John Ericsson came up with the two-screw propeller system for use on naval vessels. The Danes had cavalierly thrown away a technological edge.
Although Winstrup gave up on the Whale, he did continue to blaze a technological trail. In 1826 he built a two-horse steam engine, which was adopted by a Copenhagen brewery owned by Hans Bagger Momme. It was the first steam engine to be used in Denmark, built by a Dane. Winstrup built a few more steam engines and in 1827 he set up an iron foundry. He even operated a wind turbine.
But by coming up with the use of a propeller to drive a boat and not being able to convince the authorities to adopt the idea, Ole Johansen Winstrup, you are a worthy inductee into our illustrious Hall of Fame.
If you enjoyed, why not try Fifty Clever Bastards by Martin Fone
http://www.martinfone.com/other-works/
November 4, 2018
Crime Of The Week (3)
What is more annoying; finding that the last page of a book is missing or someone giving away the ending of a story when you are half way through?
It takes a special sort of person to spend time in Antarctica. After a hard day’s working on scientific projects, there is very little to do other than read a good book.
Russian scientists, Sergey Savitsky and Oleg Beloguzov, have spent four years on the Bellinghausen station on Antarctica’s King George island. On 9th October, I read this week, Savitsky snapped and, allegedly, attacked his colleague with a kitchen knife, stabbing him in the chest in what is thought to be the first recorded incident of attempted murder on the icy continent.
Savitsky has been extradited to Russia whilst Beloguzov is recuperating in Chile.
The cause of the crime?
Investigators report that Beloguzov “kept telling his colleague the endings of books before he read them.”
Being a book reviewer can be a dangerous pastime, it would seem.
November 3, 2018
Crime Of The Week (2)
Well, almost.
Six individuals, apparently armed, entered an e-cigarette shop in the suburbs of the Belgian town of Charleroi, I read this week.
After demanding that the shopkeeper hand over his takings, the enterprising Didier pointed out to the would-be thieves that it was only the middle of the afternoon and that if they came back at the end of the day, there would be far more money for them to take.
The dim wits duly left the shop and Didier rang the police who were unsurprisingly sceptical that the gang would return.
But they did, at 17.30.
Again, Didier pointed out that his shop hadn’t finished trading and if they would come back an hour later, there would be much more to take.
Astonishingly, they returned a third time at 18.30 by which time a plain-clothed policeman was in situ to apprehend them. Five had their collars felt, the sixth, who, perhaps, was not quite as dim as his colleagues, scarpered.
Talking of dim wits, take a bow, Lee Furlong, from Liverpool.
He thought it would be a good idea to spray some graffiti on an inviting blank red-bricked wall at the 800-year-old Tha Phae gate in Chiang Mai in Thailand.
Not only was he and his accomplice caught on CCTV and tracked down to their accommodation, the aptly named Mad Monkey hostel, but he demonstrated his illiteracy to the world by spraying “Scousse Lee”.
He could face up to ten years in chokey, long enough, perhaps, to learn to spell Scouse.
November 2, 2018
What Is The Origin Of (204)?…
(Don’t buy) a pig in a poke
When I go out shopping (more often than I would care to, I must admit), I have always treated the seller with some suspicion. After all, I don’t want to buy a pig in a poke, making a rash offer or striking a deal without firstly examining the thing I’m wanting to buy. Caveat emptor is always the best policy, I find.
Most of the components of the phrase are pretty straightforward, save perhaps for poke. A poke was a bag or a small sack and owed its origin to the Anglo-Norman and old Northern French poke and pouque. The word is still in use in Scotland and parts of the USA. The Oxford English Dictionary opines that it was “used particularly for the conveyance of raw wool.” But clearly if you had a small pig or piglet to get shot of or something you wanted to pass off as a pig, then a poke would have been of a size to do the job.
There is no mystery in the meaning of our phrase. You need to take responsibility for ensuring what you think you are buying is the real deal. If you don’t inspect the merchandise carefully, you will only have yourself to blame. Sage advice, for sure, and words of wisdom that have been around for centuries. The first recorded usage of the phrase dates back to around 1275 in the Proverbs of Hendyng; “when a man gives thee a pig, open the pouch.” It is inconceivable that it wasn’t a common idiom in speech before then.
Sleight of hand on the part of tradesmen seems to have been so commonplace that the warning crops up on a fairly regular basis throughout the centuries. A manuscript dating to around 1450 advises the would-be purchaser; “when a man proffers the pig, open the pough/ for when it is an old swine, thou do not take it.” Richard Hill, a grocer from London, produced a commonplace book for the years 1503 to 1506, in which he gave advice to potential tradesmen. Inevitably, it contained this nugget; “when you proffer the pigge open the poke.”
Despite Hill’s advice, the temptation to pass off an ancient pig sight unseen was too great for some to resist. And so the phrase continued to crop up. The epigrammatist and playwright, John Heywood, noted in his Two Hundred Epigrammes, published around 1555; “I wyll neuer bye the pyg in the poke:/ Thers many a foule pig in a feyre cloke.”
And if you are giving advice you may be a bit sexist as well. Robert Greene’s Mamillia, dating from 1583, contains this passage; “he is a foole, they say, that will buy ye pig in a poke: or wed a wife without trial.” Perhaps Henry VIII would have done well to have taken heed of the rider.
Passing off dodgy pigs was not confined to English traders. The Swedes had a similar phrase; “Köp inte grisen i säcken!”
Letting the cat out of the bag, which we looked at some time ago and is of more recent origin, is perhaps the other side of the coin and deals with the unmasking of a deceit rather than warning a potential buyer to beware. Whether cats were actually substituted for pigs is another story.
November 1, 2018
Gin O’Clock – Part Fifty One
There is an app for pretty much everything these days, it seems. It is not surprising then that some apps have emerged to capitalise on the ginaissance. Even for a luddite like myself, it is handy to have an encyclopaedia of gins at my beck and call stored on my phone as I peruse the shelves looking for a new gin to explore.
I’m using Ginventory which lists 5,099 different gins from around the world together with descriptions of varying length and quality, culled from the distillers’ websites, plus suggestions for mixers and garnishes. There are even buttons that direct you to the websites of wholesaler so you can order the hooch there and then. It would be helpful if there were independent reviews of each of the gins but, perhaps, that is asking for too much. That said, I’m hooked.
I’ve always been a bit snooty about the German discount supermarkets, Aldi and Lidl, which have emerged here in Blighty over the last decade or so to disrupt the once cosy cartel that the likes of Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury had over the shopping needs of the Brits. Entering their stores has always seemed to me to be a bit of a depressing experience. Utilitarian they certainly are – the lack of choice and the absence of any discernible care in which they display their merchandise remind me of the East German supermarkets I visited before the Wall came down – but they score on price.
And they are making a determined effort to gouge out a place in the gin boom. In our local Lidl my attention was piqued by a rather distinctive, bell-shaped bottle that contained their contribution to the artisan gin market, Hortus Original London Dry Gin. The label had what can only be described as a wreath of botanicals in lavender against a white background with the name of the hooch in the middle, a bee and some basic information to the effect that it was distilled in England – Warrington, actually, and, presumably, courtesy of Greenall’s – and that it was traditionally distilled in copper stills.
Around the neck of the bottle, which had a nice dark blue covering, was hung at a rather jaunty angle a card giving serving suggestions and a modicum of information about the product. The stopper, artificial cork, makes a very satisfying plopping sound as it is removed. With a fighting weight of 40% ABV, at the lower end of the strength range but still strong enough to give the toper a bit of a kick, and a price of £15.99, almost half of what you would pay for an independent artisan gin, it proved a temptation that was too much to resist.
And a wise investment it proved to be.
On removing the stopper the smell of juniper immediately hit my nostrils, always a good starting point, with some citric elements in the background. To the taste it was remarkably smooth with a big juniper kick. Then came some floral elements making it quite refreshing and moreish. The aftertaste had hints of lavender and liquorice or that is what it seemed like to me. I was pleasantly surprised.
Lidl are rather coy as to what precisely are the botanicals that go in to the mix. Apart from juniper there is certainly lavender, rosemary, lemon verbena and cubebs. There is certainly more but quite what I haven’t been able to discover. All the botanicals, apparently, are carefully added by hand and left to steep for at least eight hours before distillation. An image of a tortoise on the card providing this basic information is presumably meant to indicate that this is a slow process.
I think that there is too much nonsense around the unusual botanicals that have been thrown into the mix. For the consumer the only questions are; what does it taste like and is it worth the money? Lidl’s contribution to the artisan gin market certainly scores well on both points.
October 31, 2018
Book Corner – October 2018 (5)
Three Men In A Boat – Jerome K Jerome
Comic writing is a tricky business. Apart from a bit of slap-stick humour is not universal. What one person finds amusing, another may shake their head at in bewilderment. And humour often appears in the most surprising and unintended circumstances. For me, one of the funniest moments was the announcement by the PG Wodehouse committee that they wouldn’t be awarding their prize this year as there were none funny enough.
Of course, that poses the question; what is a humorous book? Even the most tragic of works have some moments of levity. Wall to wall jokes would be tedious in the extreme. No, it is a tone and general atmosphere that marks a book of humour. And if I was pinned up against the wall to name my favourite humorous books of all time in the English language, then Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat would be up there amongst the best. It is a book I turn to time and time again and one that does not pall on me.
Published in 1889, it was an overnight success, despite being condemned by the critics (what do they know?) because of its lowbrow language and its protagonists were seen as hopeless and neurotic, not the sort who founded and maintained an Empire. It started life out as a travelogue – vestiges of the original concept remain with the descriptions of Hampton Court, Marlow and Medmenham. But Jerome quickly spotted the comedic value of confining three chaps, not forgetting Montmorency the dog, in a small boat pottering up the Thames from the outskirts of London to Oxford. It is a trope to which desperate TV producers turn to this day.
The journey is almost by the by, a peg upon which Jerome hangs a diverse series of set pieces, exploring the absurdities and mundanities of daily life. My favourite of the many shaggy dog stories that Jerome peppers the text with has nothing to do with the journey but is a marvellous account of Uncle Podger’s attempts to hang a picture on a wall. I defy anyone not to find it funny. Following up fairly closely is the trio’s increasing desperate attempts to open a tin of pineapples without a can opener. In disgust, Harris throws the by now misshapen lump of metal into the drink. We can sympathise with how he feels.
It’s easy to see the book’s appeal. It has a timeless quality about, even though the days of travelling along the river in a boat, pulling in wherever you fancied and escaping from the grime and drudgery of life in the metropolis to a spell, however brief, enjoying the bucolic charms of the countryside have long since gone. Rather like a road trip novel, it is a book about life, comradeship, how we rub along with each other and reminiscences of times past and irrespective of the time when the story is set, these are timeless concerns which affect all of us.
True, it has a particularly English slant. We are past masters at talking about the weather, the horrors of our food and the stresses and strains of suburban life but it is written with a light comic touch that makes it accessible to most, irrespective of where in the English speaking world they reside. This is its triumph and why it will long remain amongst the best of comedic writing.
October 30, 2018
A La Mode – Part Thirteen
The Patented Elastic Boot
When I was young a rite of passage was mastering the art of tying one’s shoe laces so that they were neither a danger to life or limb and did not come undone within ten minutes. With the ubiquity of Velcro this is now a dying art along with cursive handwriting and the ability to string a sentence together without peppering it with the otiose like. The latter figuratively drives me mad.
As I was growing up an alternative for those who could not be faffed with tying laces was a boot which slipped on and was held firmly to the foot by an elasticated strip near the ankle. They are generally acknowledged to have been the brainwave of J Sparkes-Hall (1811 – 1891), a shoemaker from Sidmouth in Devon who plied his trade and found fame in London.
Sparkes-Hall was interested in the possibilities presented to the shoe manufacturing trade by the then recent innovations in rubber and elastic. He started off in the early 1830s making what we now know as galoshes, waterproof over shoes, to protect fashionable shoes from the dirt of the street and the worst of the English weather. And over time they developed into rather splendid affairs. An advert from around 1853 announces enamelled overshoes with leather soles no less, which were “so soft and flexible during cold weather” and “they readily adapt themselves to any boot or shoe the wearer may select.”
Yours for just 7s 6d a pair if you were a woman, 3s 6d for a child and 12s, including box heels and plush counters, for a chap.
But Sparkes-Hall was not content to kick his heels flogging over shoes. Shoe laces were an impediment if out riding – they had a tendency to get caught in the stirrups – and for the lazy or those pushed for time an easier form of attaching shoes to the feet was the Holy Grail. There were slipper-like shoes around but they were difficult to keep on and boots that were fastened by buttons were fiddly to get on.
Sparkes-Hall’s brainwave was to fit elastic to the side of his shoes but he was thwarted by the poor quality of elastic available at the time. They were simply not elastic enough. His breakthrough came in 1837 when he patented a slip-on boot, the innovative feature of which was a gusset made of tightly coiled wire and cotton. In 1840 he patented a boot which was fitted with what we would recognise as elastic.
In a marketing masterstroke, Sparkes-Hall gave the young Queen Victoria a pair as she had been moaning about how her laces hampered her riding. He later was able to announce proudly that “Her Majesty has been pleased to honour the invention with the most marked and continued patronage; it has been my privilege for some years to make boots of this kind for Her Majesty, and no one who reads the court circular, or is acquainted with Her Majesty’s habits of walking and exercise in the open air, can doubt the superior claims of the elastic over every other boot.”
Royal patronage having been secured, sales of the elastic boot rocketed and were often used in preference to tall riding boots up until the early 20th century. The Queen and her hubby, at least the 1853 advert claimed, also used the enamelled overshoes.
When you are slipping on an elasticated boot, you have Sparkes-Hall to thank.
October 29, 2018
You’re Having A Laugh – Part Seventeen
Redheffer’s Perpetual Motion machine, 1812
I find even the simplest concepts of the laws that govern the world, what we now term physics, somewhat baffling but even I know that energy is something that needs to be transferred to an object to make it work. But in 1812 Charles Redheffer astonished the good citizens of Philadelphia by claiming that he had invented what he called a perpetual motion machine which required no energy to run. If his claims were well-founded, it would transform the world of physics as it was known then.
Redheffer had even produced a working model, which he proudly displayed in a workshop near the banks of the Schuylkill River, on the outskirts of the city. The curious were invited to inspect it but had to pay for the privilege, upwards of $5 a time if they were chaps and the fairer sex up to $1. The machine drew quite a crowd and emboldened by this success, Charles applied to the city council for a grant to build an all singing, all dancing version of the machine.
This proved to be his undoing.
In making his application for the funds, Redheffer explained that the perpetual motion machine transferred power to another machine by way of a set of interlocking gears. Eight city commissioners visited the workshop on 21st January 1813 to inspect the machine in detail but Redheffer refused to let them get too near, claiming that he was frightened they might damage it. Still, one sharp-eyed commissioner, Nathan Sellers, noticed that the gears on the machine were marked in such a way that suggested that it was receiving power from the other machine, not generating it, as Redheffer claimed.
Smelling a rat, the commissioners delayed the granting of funds and instructed a local engineer, Isaiah Lukens, to replicate Redheffer’s machine. Luckens used a clockwork mechanism hidden inside the machine to give it its power. When Redheffer saw the machine, he offered to buy it. When the ruse was revealed, Redheffer did what any self-respecting hoaxer would do, fled to New York, taking his machine with him.
Later that year, 1813, Redheffer exhibited his incredible Perpetual Motion machine in New York. As in Philadelphia, it went down a storm and crowds flocked, and paid, to see this mechanism which defied the laws of physics. One person who was drawn to the exhibition was a mechanical engineer named Robert Fulton. On inspecting the machine closely, Fulton noticed that it wobbled slightly and suspected that Redheffer’s marvel was being supplied with power by means of a hand-crank and that the operator was doing so in a jerky manner.
But where was the hand-crank and where was the operator secreted?
Fulton was of a sporting bent and offered Redheffer a sort of challenge. He, Fulton, would reveal the secret source of the machine’s energy or else he would reimburse the inventor for any damage he caused in the attempt to reveal the secret of the Perpetual Motion machine. Redheffer accepted the challenge.
Fulton removed some of the boarding behind the machine and spotted a piece of cord made out of catgut, which seemed to come from the floor above. Tracing it, Fulton revealed an old, bearded man sitting beside a hand-crank, which he turned laboriously with one hand while eating bread with the other.
The spectators, realising that they had been conned, smashed up the machine and once more Redheffer scarpered. He reappeared in Philadelphia in 1816, claiming to have built another machine and offering to exhibit it to the great and the good. Despite a number of meetings, Redheffer refused to reveal the machine.
Astonishingly, in 1820, Charles Redheffer was granted a patent for “machinery for the purpose of gaining power” but, alas, a fire at the Patent Office in 1836 destroyed all the records. We will never know whether it was the same machine.
If you enjoyed this, look out for Fifty Scams and Hoaxes by Martin Fone.
https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/business/fifty-scams-and-hoaxes/
October 28, 2018
Theft Of The Week (2)
I’m of an age that every now and again I get an invitation to apply some faecal matter to a stick and send it back in the post.
No, I’m not a member of some weird fetish group. It is part of the Health Service’s campaign to check old codgers for bowel cancer. I really must get around to doing it.
Some organisations take a more direct approach to increasing awareness of diseases to the bowel. Take the University of Kansas Cancer Centre. They use a ten-foot, inflatable model of a diseased colon, weighing 150 lbs and worth $4,000, to drive the message home.
Or did.
Someone, I read this week, has stolen it from the back of the truck in which it was stored. The Centre would rather like it back and you can imagine that the thief experienced a certain sense of disappointment when they got their loot home and unfurled it.
For sure, it might make an interesting inflatable for the kids to play with but it must have a rather limited resale value.
The police, of course, are straining every muscle to catch the culprit but the man in the picture has been eliminated from their enquiries.
October 27, 2018
Sporting Event Of The Week (18)
Do you prefer your drink shaken or stirred?
Either way it was probably best to give the Avenida de Mayo, one of Buenos Aire’s busiest streets, a miss last weekend. Yes, it was the annual waiters race, an event which has been held since 1908 when seven waiters challenged each other to see who was the fastest.
368 waiters, men and women, competed in this year’s event, the aim being to see who could complete the 1,600 metre course carrying a loaded tray the fastest. Of course, to win you had to ensure you didn’t spill a drop. The rules require participants to carry the tray using only one hand.
Competitors are split into age groups and the winner of the 31 to 45-year-old category this year was the aptly named Walter Kantor. Perhaps not so much a canter as a trot.
Whatever his style, it obviously worked.
