I popped into Skibbereen this morning expecting it to be its usual sleepy morning self only to find myself sitting in a traffic jam. It is, of course, a bank holiday weekend, the Skibbereen Arts festival, and the sun is shining so it is, as we say here, jointed. It is great to see so much business and activity happening in the town but it does make the road to the library a slow one; and the library turned out to be shut because it’s a bank holiday. My mind meanders when left to its own devices for any length of time and this time it found itself contemplating furry dice. I was driving my partner’s daughter’s car and she has furry dice hanging in it. What I wondered was the origin of such a useless object? And indeed what were the origins of many things? So here, for the delictation of your meandering minds are some origin stories.
Furry Dice
Pilots in the Second World War used to have a pair of dice on their instrument panel showing 7 pips for good luck. Upon their return from war, if they were lucky, many of these engineer focused guys started driving souped-up cars, and kept the die on the dashboard. But in the sun, the plastic die often melted, and so were replaced with fluffy fabric ones. However, “a 1993 study found drivers with fuzzy dice on their mirrors were no more likely to take risks or become involved in accidents than the average driver. The era of dicing with death had passed”. (http://carmemorabilia.about.com/od/Automotive-Collectibles/a/Dicing-With-Death-History-Of-Fuzzy-Dice.htm)
Hair Dryers
The first hair dryer was a vacuum cleaner. You could stick a hose on the outlet pipe and blow your do.
Umbrellas
Invented 4,000 years ago by the Chinese, initally to keep the sun off, hence the latin root word “umbra” or shade. Though presumably the Chinese called it something else. Originally only considered suitable for women, until Jonas Hanway (1712-86), carried and used an umbrella publicly in England for thirty years and popularized umbrella use among men. English gentleman often referred to their umbrellas as a “Hanway”.
Windscreen Wipers
Mary Anderson (1866–1953) was an American real estate developer, rancher, viticulturist and inventor of the windshield wiper blade. In November 1903 Anderson was granted her first patent for an automatic car window cleaning device controlled inside the car, called the windshield wiper. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anderson_%28inventor%29).
Fax Machine
A what? If you are under twenty years of age you probably don’t remember these frustrating, and yet, at the time, wonderous, machines. You would put your document in the machine at your end, dial the number of your recipient, and a copy of the document would pop out from the machine at the receiving end. More likely though, you would put your document in the wrong way up, the number was engaged and you would hear an ear splitting, shrieking, whistling as it attempted to contact the recipent’s kettle, before your document would whirr through your machine getting stuck and jamming the entire process for a number of hours. The modern version was invented in 1947 by Alexander Muirhead. But, and this is why I mentioned it all, the precursor to the fax machine was telephotography, whereby a photograph could be sent electronically, and most famous for his experimentation with telephotography was Shelford Bidwell, my great-great-grandfather! From his work we get the term “Bidwell’s ghost”, which is a visual phenomenon associated with after-images produced by alternating flashing lights.
At this point of my mind meanderings I notice that the cars behind me are flashing in a Bidwell ghostly way trying to get me to move on along the road.