The Citizen, 1996-10-02, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1996 PAGE 5.
Misguided soothsayers
Everything that can be
invented has been invented.
Now who said that, do you reckon?.Don
Cherry? Preston Manning? Ned Ludd?
Nope. Those prophetic words came from the
mouth of one Charles H. Duell, chief
commissioner of the U.S. Office of Patents.
Mister Duell made his prediction back in
1899 which means the world had yet to sec
roadsters, radios, rocket ships and rock and
roll, not to mention penicillin, polyester,
Prohibition and the Bay of Pigs.
But , we shouldn't snicker too loudly at
poor old Charlie. He's not the only "expert"
ever to misread his crystal ball.
Take Lord Kelvin, president of the Royal
Society of Engineers back at the turn of the
century. Lord Kelvin cast a jaded eye at the
heavens and pronounced: "Heavier-than-air
flying machines are impossible."
Fortunately, the .Wright boys were out
working in the garage and missed the
announcement.
If you were reading The New York Times
back in 1939 you might have come across an
editorial_ that concluded, "The problem with
television is that people must sit and keep
their eyes glued to a screen. The average
family hasn't time for that."
Yeah. Right.
History is littered with the bleached skulls
Behind the scenes
Like many another industry that of
aviation is not always what it seems to be.
This is not to suggest, for openers, that
aircraft are not as safe as we are led to
believe; you are still far safer in one of them
in the air than you are in the car or bus that
took you to the airport. It is just that various
transactions or actions take plate from time
to time that don't seem to make the
newspapers and most of the details that you
read here you are probably hearing for the
first time.
On the surface the recent purchase by
Thailand of eight fighter jets, the same kind
that the Canadian Air Force currently flies,
was a straightforward deal.
I can reveal that the U.S. government took
about one-fifth of the total cost, not in
money but in barter. Included in the products
bartered were rubber, ceramics, furniture,
frozen chickens and canned fruit.
Washington really did not know what to do
with all this so they called in a Japanese
trading house to help sell the stuff on
international markets.
If you buy any of the above mentioned
products in the near future and find that they
were produced in Thailand, you will know
how they got to the store of your choice.
One newly formed British airline decided
to use a bit of imagination when it came to
finding a name for their company. In an
industry that is filled with traditional names,
i.e. Air Canada, Swissair, Air India, etc. the
chief honchos of the company hit upon the
of soothsayers who should've kept their traps
shut. An internal memo that circulated in the
offices of Western Union about a century
ago confidently predicted, "This telephone
has too many shortcomings as a means of
communication. The device is inherently of
no value •.o us."
Embarrassing for the writer — but not as
embarrassing as the prophecy put forward by
a Yale professor of Economics named Irving
Fisher. "Stocks have reached what looks like
a permanently high plateau", he'told an
audience of businessmen.
Regrettably for the professor, he made his
announcement in the late summer of 1929,
just a few weeks before the greatest stock
market belly flop in history.
Entertainment gurus fare no better. It was
H.M. Warner of Warner Brothers fame who,
back in 1927, when movies with soundtracks
first appeared, took his Havana Corona out
of his mouth long enough to growl, "Who
the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
And it was movie genius Irving Thalberg,
who confided to fellow mogul Louis B.
Mayer. "Forget it, Louis. No Civil War
picture ever made a nickel."
Mayer, like the stubborn cuss he was,
went ahead and made Gone With The Wind
anyway.
Then there was the producer for Decca"
Records who; back in 1962, panned a pop.
group saying, "We don't like their sound,
and guitar music is on its way out." Thus,
Decca Records passed on a chance to sign
By Raymond Canon
name Debonair.
I take the word for what it is, there is
neither a country Debon, nor is it the name
of the owner.
They chose as their first aircraft a sturdy
British type called the Bae 146 in which I
have flown a number of times. One of its
most noticeable characteristics is a loud
rumbling noise just before landing and after
take-off. This is very disturbing to the
travellers, who are extremely nervous about
airplane travel to begin with, but the pilot
does not always explain what is the cause of
the noise.
The truth is that it is the result of the
special flaps changing position and not the
plane falling apart. If you ever fly the Bae
146, you might like to know.
Airlines go under just like other
companies, or else they find that they have
excess capacity. What do they do with
planes that can't be used? As like as not they
go to Arizona, where they sit in the dry air,
sometimes for years.
One of the above mentioned Bar 146's,
recently put back into service, was_no less
than five years in Arizona. They really get a
thorough overhaul before taking to the air
again.
Even Air Canada sends some of its aircraft
there from time to time.
Before the financial crunch hit a lot of
airlines, they used to like to look after their
freight customers now and again. As I was
sending a considerable amount of goods to
Switzerland via Swissair, the company
decided to include me in a junket to
demonstrate how they handled goods once
they got there.
up a group called The Beatles.
I wonder what that producer is doing
nowadays? Not working for Decca Records,
I'll bet.
And what of the computer? Now there's an
invention that touches all of our lives in
hundreds of ways every single day. Surely
the experts caught the significance of the
computer from the beginning?
Well, not quite.
In 1949, a writer in Popular Mechanics
magazine wrote "computers of the future
may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
In 1977, the president, chairman and
founder of Digital Equipment Corporation
announced, "There is no reason anyone
would want a computer in their home."
Even the folks who make the things aren't
all that bright when it comes to seeing their
worth. Take the experience of a young
computer geek named Steve:
"So we went to Atari," Steve recalls, "and
said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing,
even built with some of your parts — what do
you think about funding us? We'll give it to
you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary,
we'll come work for you.' And they_said,
'No': So then we went to Hewlitt-Packard,
and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You
haven't got through college yet."
So Steve — that's Steve Jobs — and his
partner Steve Wozniak, went out and formed
a company on their own.
You may have heard of it — Apple
Computer Inc.?
Since Swissair is one of the best airlines in
the world, the flight over was really pleasant,
but somebody made a mistake when we
spent the first night in Zurich. In returning to
our hotel in the evening, we discovered a
number of ladies of medium virtue in front
of the building. It turned out that we had
been put up in the red light district of the
city. Red faces and apologies all around the
next morning; we were quickly moved to
another, more acceptable hotel.
One day they piled us into a bus and took
us to one of the famous mountains — the
Pilatus, near Luzern. You go up on a
Zahnradbahn (cog wheel car?) on one side
and come down on a Drahtseilbahn (cable
car?) on the 'other. Excuse the use of the
German words but sometimes my German is
better than my English and this is one of
them. I think that the words in brackets are
the correct translation and perhaps some of
my, readers can let me know if I am wrong.
At any rate, Swissair forget to check to see
if some of our group might have difficulty
with such a manner of transportation. It
turned out that some did, both up and down
but how do you stop a cog wheel car on the
way up and turn it around? You don't and
thus the problem. Again apologies all
around.
Other than that, Swissair was its usual
efficient self. Far better than one airline
which cancelled our flight, took us to a hotel
which had never heard of us and had n9
room, finally put us in another hotel only to
get us out of bed two hours later and take us
back to the airport, in time, we were told, to
get us to our connecting flight. We got there,
Continued on page 10
The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
An end to apathy?
When did we get so apathetic? Don't you
recall a time when we used to rumble against
injustice, rail against the big guy and rally on
the side of right? From a generation for
whom protest almost suffered from overkill,
it surprises me how many things we've
accepted in the past several years with barely
more than a whimper. Particularly with
regards to our politicians.
Government stampedes its legislation over
us with an attitude that like good children we
will accept their omnipotent power to know
what is best for us all. And is it little
wonder? Our challenges, if any, have been
weak. We say no for a time, then quietly
accept.
Now, while I admit to. being rather a
coward when faced with an adversary to
whom I am not familiar, while growing up, I
easily fought for what I believed to be my
rights among those I loved. On many
occasions my family was confronted by the
dark side of me as I stood unmoved by their
protestations in favour of what I believed to
be the correct choice. When I perceived
something as being on the side of what was
fair and just, I dug my toes in on the solid
ground of positive thinking and refused to
budge.
That, as I said before, I was too timid to
take such affirmative action against people
outside my home was always a frustration to
me. It's scary going into battle alone. For this
reason, I particularly loved it when my cause
was one based soundly with the rest of the
little people, when the free-spirited minds of
my generation stood together on an issue,
trampling the objectives of the opposition. I
could add my anonymous voice to the
crowd.
There is something almost stirring about a
united front. And as someone who came of
age when organized and peaceful protest
was an almost everyday occurrence, the
prospect of people putting a collective foot
down is exciting.
So it was, that after a phone conversation
last week I issued forth with a resounding
"Yes!", upon hearing from a local politician
that he and his peers are, "Saying no to the
province," with regards to amalgamation.
Government has suggested that
municipalities must look at restructuring, to
lower costs, while maintaining services. The
consensus among municipal politicians is
that if they do not pursue -some form of
amalgamation the province will do it for
them. Yet, as so often seems to be the case,
no concrete evidence has ever been
presented that such a change reduces costs.
So in the words of one local councillor, "We
are not going to be stampeded into anything
without merit."
This is the second time in recent months
that municipal government has said they're
fed up. Blyth council began a
recommendation for education tax reform,
which has continued to gain support and has
earned provincial attention. With tenacity
and confidence they have demonstrated they
mean business and are being taken seriously.
A provincial panel has been established to
look at education financing. The topic is
being discussed at a meeting this week
among Fair Tax Ontario, the Tax Equity
Alliance and panel chair David Crombie.
Blyth and Mullett reeves are also attending.
I applaud our local representatives for
stopping the apathy. Our voices should be
heard. Thanks for taking a stand that is
representative of the people, not the politics.
Arthur Black
International Scene
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