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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1951-1-10, Page 3Man My'siory Ey Lula W. Kellents At .1.30 laddie House called his wife from the office. "Know what I've been thinking about, rnge ---? ({erring! My mouth's simply drool- ing. What's for supper- ?" "V our favourite menu, supper -special .. " Eddie groaned, "That's too ela- borate, baby. I only want herring. Jost herring , , . Evelyn---! are you listening?' There was silence, then a click in his ear, There was wifely under- standing! And just because a man got a hankering for herring! Soon, however, he grinned. She'd have the herring, all right. That was I?velytt's way, flying off the handle: then after consideration, humoring hint. He had gone to work by bus that morning because Evelyn needed the car for some special shopping, site said. 'I'o be sure of a healthy appetite for the herring, he decided to walla hone. Pausing when he reached his own back door, Eddie clocked his hike, proud of the four minutes clipped front last trip's walking time. His hand, carefully replacing his watch, touched a small square of folded paper in his pocket. Ile drew it out, opened it and read: Anniversary gift for Evelyn , . Their first anniversary! llow could he have forgotten? Days ago he had scribbled down this re- minder, to be sure. Furtively he glanced at the high kitchen windows. There stood Eve- lyn, her head and her shoulders {nutted in glass like she were a beautiful portrait. She teas working at the sink and she was crying! Eddie felt like a heel. No wonder site had used the car to shop, and had fixed his favourite menu. She had remembered, while he --he had requested herring for supper! He watched Evelyn sniffle and Mirk tears. He stood ou the stoop, considering. if he went home with a gift, he might convince her the herring was a gag. All the stores would be closed by now --unless Old jan, the jeweler, was still tinkering in his. shop. Because Eddie thought Evelyn might miss the car if he took it, he walked to the nearest drug- store and phoned for a cab. Thir- teen minutes passed before it came. "Hurry!" begged Eddie. "Jan might remember to close on time." Jan had closed on time., He re- turned slowly to the cab. "Flowers are always appreci- ated," suggested the driver, !'hat's an ideal" They drove to 4larley's Flower Shoppe—attd found it locked. iTe just had to find something! He couldn't go home empty-handed and face a weeping wife. Ile was moping toward the Cab when inspiration hit him. "Haufel, the furrier! My business neighbour( llc'll come and open up for me." "Wait twenty minutes;" Hanfel said when Eddie called, "We're eating. I got herring, yet" 1It rring1 Eddie moaned. He said, "1'11 wait," Ile waited forty -live minutes be- fore Daniel drove up. "1 want a mink, 5150 nine." "A size nine think, 1 don't have, I got a Russia Fitch jacket, size nine.,' "Wrap it up," Eddie said, re- signed. With a good fur sale transacted - and gorged on herring, Daniel felt good. "I'll drive you home, Eddie. 'You're wife's going to think she's got a wonderful man of memory!" Evelyn must have been watch- ing for hint. She met hint at the door. ":Anything wrong, Eddie_?" inside, Eddie proudly displayed tete Russian Fitch jacket. "It's a special day, honey—remember—?" Evelyn squealed with delight atni kissed hint. "You're the best'hus- band a girl ever had, darling. And I was afraid. you'd forgotten our anniversary --imagine 1" She seemed scared audeuly. "Eddie -1 Yott were kidding about the herring -1" Eddie held he clostl. "Certaitay nahyi t4exl to you, 1 love herring best." "Olt honey—I You're worth all the smelly old herring in the world , Only, Eddie—remind ate to look through my household hints for mute method of peeling onions that always go with herring --•so they won't make ate cry 1 GOT A WORLD -SHATTERING IDEA. THEN SAID "FOOL THAT WAS" Every day millions of Wren, the world over, hack off hundreds of thousands of miles of hair front countless acres of fares, 'rhe harvesting of this formidable erep has invoked more oaths and IatltetttatiOtls through the ages than airy other toilet activity. 1t is of great antiquity writes Jeff Peters in "Answers". Bronze Age razors lacebeen un- earthed and metal r:vors used in Egypt in 3400 B.C. have been dis- covered. Farther hark the first razors acre probably sharpened flints. Before that the technique was probably to pluck the hairs out --a method that is still its use in parts of China to -day, Nl:alc agony began to ease in the early 19th eetttury when the tech- nique of hollow grinding was evolv- ed. Until then steel razors were wedge-shaped, tapering to a sharp edge. They were bard to sharpen. The trick of hollowing out the sides of the • blade by grinding made it easier to sharpen and improved the cutting edge, That Sharp Edge The cut-throat is still the r;tor favoured by most barbers, who as- sert that you can get a closer shave tvitlt it than wiat any other razor. But in every day use it is out- numbered by the safety. The first safety, razor was design- ed by a Frenchman, Perrci, in 1771. Ile made a razor with a small blade placed in a holder so that only the edge could touch the fare. But although Perret's razor worked, ,he world had to wait another 150 years before the efforts of an American, King C. Gillette, made the safety razor as universal in modern bath- rooms as toothpaste. A razor was only a sharp edge, he argued. 'Clic rest but a support for this edge. Why spend time and labour forging a big piece of s-ecl, hardening and grinding it, and riv- etting a handle to it. Why not make a blade that could be used once and thrown away? "I stood there before the mirror in a trance of joy at what I saw," he wrote. He sent off a letter to his wife. "I've got it; our fortunes are made." Gillette strode blithely to a near- by hardware store, bought brass lengths of clock spring steel, a hand -vise and files. • "Fool that I was," he said later. "I knew little about razors and practically nothing about steel, and could not foresee the trials and trib- ulations 1. was to pass through he - fore the razor was a success." One of his biggest headaches was to find a thin steel that would keep flat when sharpened. For six years Gillette played round with his bits of steel and tried to find someone to back his idea with hard cash. In 1901 he stet William Nicker- son. a mechanic, who ironed out some of the technical snags. More struggles lay ahead, but the razor was now a practical proposition, and they found backer. Gillette's Boston, U.S.A, factory, started in 1905, to -day turns out 27 million blades'. week and 16 million razors a year. The London factory slakes 10 million blades a week. Two Rivals Another landmark in the Battle 00 Whiskers came with the inven- tion by another American, N. J. Gaisman, of a stroppable safe,y razor. He offered the idea to Gil- ette who turned it down. Gaisman consegttet.tly started to manufacture on his own account. Ile, too, had an uphill struggle at first, but by the end of the 1920's the atttostrop razor was a formid- able rival to Gilletters blades. In 1930 the two American com- panies merged. Other manufacturers were soon producing safety blades. Other in- ventors were busy, too, and elec- tricity was about to be haruessed to the problem, In 1919 Colonel jacob Schick re- tried from the American Army be - rause of ill healtIt, A few years later, while recovering from a sprained ankle and growing au irri- tating crop of whiskers in the Alas- kan wilds, Schick experienced much the sante sort of inspiration as that which had burst tpon Gillette. Why not a shearing edge and blade on a powerful little motor he asked him- self as be thought the problem over. Schick was an engineer and in- ventor, and 5115 better equipped thin t;3llclte. But even so, it was still several Nears before Schick had solved his problems. "1'lte original factory in. 1930 had a staff of two--Schicic and a helper. The first electric dry- sbatcr rattle 011 the market in 1931 in the middle of the 13ig Slump. It was a compact little gadget with cutting teeth moving at the rate of 7.200 times a minute. Inventions to Conte? Other manufacturers caste into tete field, some with different ideas for heads and cutting edges, All dryshavers, whether electric or Itaud•driven, work broadly on the same principle. Blades or teeth, moving at high speeds, cut or pul- verize the hairs as they project through round holes or slots i0 a shaving bead. Razors, whether cut-throats, safe- ties or dry -shavers, are all gadgets for cutting hairs. Perhaps at this moment all unknown is afire with a revolutionary idea for burning the hairs away with a harmless ray. Or with a scheme for an effecive hair remover ---or better still, something that will stop hairs front growing at all. One Of The Oldest Arts--Ropemaking The twisting of fibres into rope is one of the oldest of the arts. The Egyptians and the Chinese did it; the American Indians and the Poly- nesians did it; the Romans and the Greeks and the Anglo-Saxons did it. Boston imported a ropemaker from England as early as 1641; by 1794 there were fourteen ropewalks in that town alone; by 1810 there were 173 ropewalks in the United States. But competition constantly reduced their numbers, while output increased.. , . 'rhe essential processes of rope - making are the same now as in 1824, although machines have im- mensely speeded up every process. The fibre, purchased in great bales as it came from a warehouse on the Baltic or a "!temp mill" in the American West, first had to be hackled, This was a process like combing a Lady's long hair. Every subsequent operation, ex- cept the tarring, had to be perforat- ed in a ropewalk when Plymouth Cordage was founded. Originally a ropewalk was a level yard or field marked out with a series of pegged posts on which the yarn, strand or rope was hung as fast as it .was spun, formed or laid. The vagaries of New England weather required ropewalks to be covered, and by 1824 these long wooden sheds with square wit,dows, resembling a mod- ern "roadside diner" pulled out to thirty tines its length, were famil- iar features of almost every sea- board town. There were already oite or more in Plymouth in 1824. Ow- ing to the use of tar in ropentaking, ropewalks frequently burred down and selectmen'were always trying to push theta out into the country. In Boston, for instance, the princi- pal ropewalks in 1819 were on the edge of what is stow the Public Garden. After the third big fire that year, they were rebuilt in the sub- urbs. The Charlestown Navy Yard still operates a stone ropewalk built in 1831, bat only tate Navy could afford to build with stone.— Prom "The Roponakers of Ply- mouth", by Samuel Eliot Morison. ow to rBY 7 , HAROLD ARNETT twsessimitstelkat 1�41i'411r>Ilt,t G4 HACKSAW BLADES IIACKSAW TtWEIZERS TO MAKE TWEEZERS PROM HACKSAW BLADES, GRIND TEETH OPF AND SHAPE DESIRED POINT. HEAT,BEND TIPS,AND BOLT TOGETHER, SPACING WITH NUTS. FASHION NOTE FOR WOMEN A bouffant skirt of black silk net contrasts with the white im- ported listen sheath. The wide revere -collared jacket has wing - cap sleeves- .open to the banded waistline. Land Of Peace And Independence Oran Welles' propaganda against Swiss neutrality in the film, the "Third Ilan,"-- that all 100 years of peace had produced was "the cuckoo clock" did not disturb the Swiss. The peace, independence, and well- being achieved for 4,000,000 people speaking four languages, they be- lieve something to cherish and be proud of. "Besides," they tell you, "the cuckoo clock conies from Germany." Probably there is no country in Europe where the public attitude today toward government is more nearly Iike the American than in Switzerland. Railroads, telephones, radio, and telegraph are national- • ized but the Socialists are not the dominant party. 'rhe railroads run at a deficit, but government sub- sidy seems to be the only way this small country can operate then! efficiently. It has been 15 to 20 years since the leading Swiss plants have had strikes, though a large portion of workers are organized. Both labor and management are protected by industrywide no -strike agrepntettts that set wages. Switzerland ]las ventured a little way in -to health insurance but it covers only lowest -income groups. Management is enlightened to a point where it provides welfare programs that many wage earners in other countries . are still striving for through collective bargaining. Brown Boveri which employs 6,000 workers in its vine -decorated shops at Baden, put into its welfare fund two and one-half tines what it paid to its share -holders -in 1949-50. Most of Switzerland's factories are close to the green countryside where man- agement is helping finance garden flats or houses at lower costs than workers would otherwise have to pay. The bathtub is still a novelty in many rural Swiss homes but is a feature of these housing projects. If he looks closely, even tete Anierican used to the spectacular in modern contrivances can find things in Switzerland to excite the iutag- ination. For instance, you can dial any telephone number in the count- ry. You can get the latest news on the telephone every four Ito es, and a telephone operator will wake you in the morning for just a slight charge, 111 Sl. Gall, many civic -minded persons have done away with the habit of scudiug Christmas cards that usually go into the wastebasket, Instead, for about $5, they insert greetings to their friends in tete St. Gall 'Tagblatt. The stoney goes to charity. On the outskirts 01 Zurich, one finds the Protestant Markus Church —as pleasing a piece of • modern architecture as anything the Mn- seunt of Modern Art bas put on dis- play in New York, A colorful Swiss humanitarian projects that effects many visitors from other countries these' days is the Pestalozzi Children's Village at '1'rogen. Here youngsters of eight nations, most of them war orphans, are living as families in houses supervised by their nationals. Each child is brought up in the majority religion of its homeland and learns its national traditions with the prospect of returning home when be or she becomes of work- ing age, After World War II, the Swiss had an ardent resire to help rehabil- itate Europe's children out of their peace -accrued stores. Young Poles and Hungarians carne and were re- called, but Greeks, ,Italians, Finns, and others still live and play to- gether, learning German as a com- mon language. Recently a group of English children arrived to joist the the little "family of nations" on an Appenzell hilltop. Pestalozzidorf's big problem is to find a way to get money without encouraging the continual stream of visitors front abroad to increase. The latchstring is always out as long as visitors are discreet enough not to interview the youngsters on their war experiences. Switzerland is the world's prime example of what hard work can do for a country, Without coal, oil, or other basic natural resources the Swiss have built a flourishing and stable economy. Around the eaves of a Louse in Maloja, !tear the famous ski resort of St. 1loritz is carved, ".Arbeitsam- keit ist Pflicht"—"Industriousness is a choral duty." Swiss schools begin at 7 a.m. in the summer and you will find night schools in Zurich where workers are still studying at 10 and 11 o'- clock. The 48-hour week is still reg- ulation in industry; yet every Swiss finds time to go home for two hours at noon tohavedinner with his fam- ily. With no city in the country over 400,000, this custom is tradi- tional and preferred. Yodeling, embroideries, Alpine horst-blowing, carved music boles, and other tourist attractions int Switzerland have not changed much in the last 20 years, but Orson Welles was more clever than accur- ate in summing up the benefits of Switzerland's long era of peace, CHILDREN SHOULD BE SEEN —NOT HURT He Midst Like Joe Minister -President Otto Grote- wohl of East Germany piled the superlatives on Prime Minister Stalin in a birthday oration for the Soviet leader, A packed audience in the State Opera cheered itself hoarse as Herr Grotewohl said the Soviet leader was: 1. The greatest of all living men. 2. The greatest defender of peace, 3. The greatest master of sciences. 4. The go eases t philosophical vrartician. 5. 'rhe best friend of the Soviet people, 6. 'rhe greatest politician. 7. The wisest prophet , 8, The most .experienced catival- lor, Each of the eight points got more than a minute's cheers. Playing Chess By Machinery It is possible to devise machines that could learnt to play chess and other games, says Dr. J. Bronow- ski, British mathematician, in a contribution to "Nature," British scientific journal. Machines ran be made to make the best move at each step in a game of tic-tac-toe or chess by providing them with a mechanism for learning, he writes. When playing against a series of hnntan opponents, he asserts, "such a machine may never do ntuch better than draw. A good human player against the same opponents may score more wins by making un- sound bttt more puzzling moves." On the other hand, he continues, a machine can be made to imitate the human player. Instead of play- ing perfectly, it can be made to play well by the inclusion of an empirical or statistical mechanism in three units. One unit would retake the machine experiment with different alternatives each time certain positions are reached. The second would count the results and' relate them to the alternatives cho- sen, while the third unit would steer the machine into the lines of play that had been winning most often. Could Classify Players "Indeed, the mechanism can be made more subtle;" Dr. Bronowski states. "The second unit could also be made to classify players, say by their opening moves, into the bold and the timid. The third unit would then, in a given end game, choose the move which had won most often against players of that type. "By putting in a mechanism which estimates the probability of success in the future by analyzing the distribution of successes in the past, it is possible to devise a ma- chine so that it learns, matures and even develops a style, "Perhaps this is not the way in which animals learn, or perhaps, on the contrary, it is the very reason wlty animals play games at all, But I ant confident that the inclu- sion of such statistical mechanisms will be an important development in machines. I can speak for its usefulness in strategic problems, for I myself used it in a rudimen- tary form in bombing studies, in those days when we worked with punched cards." While it is true, he argues, that a machine cannot learn unless it is provided with a mechanism for learning, it is quite possible to de- vise such a ntechanisnt. Dr. Bronowski thus takes issue Royal Batik Figures Set New Record Total assets , reach new peale of 593,468 7hig42betDt int Citanadiw an bank ing history,r Loans show narked. gain, Liquid posftf,n strong. Profits increase, ?Ttirlced growth in every depart - Meat and the establishment of new high records in the field of Cana- dian tanking etre revealed in the balance sheet of Th4, Royal Bank of Canada, just issne7. Covering the year eadinti Novem- ber 30, 1950,.the balance sheet shows total assets of 52,07,376,342. This total represents an increase of 1,162,390,988 over the record figure or .5 year ago. Deposit s have moved up to $2,337,503,468. This is an increase of 5146,362,890 over the figures of a year ago and is a new record in the field of Canadian banking. in- terest bearing deposits have in- creased by 543,785,626 to reach total of $1,103,918,226, a new high. Indicative of the iltoutniug tem- po of business and industrial acti- vity in the Dominion is the increase is commercial loans in Canada. Continuing a trend which has been steady since 1945, the total under this heading now stands at $555,- 160,656, an increase of $83,727,318, as compared with the figure of a year ago. The liquid position of the bank is very strong. Cash assets totalling 5471,113,083 are equiealenr to 19,54 per cent of all the bank's public liabilities. Liquid assets are again higher and stand at $1,717,765,402, which is equal to 71.26 per cent of the bank's liabilities to the public. Included in the batik's liquid assets are Dominion and Provincial se- curities totalling $906,766,904. Bank Premises accounthas in- creased from $13,601,961 to $17,- 068,704, reflecting the banks pro-' gramme of branch building attd improvement. A number of new branches were established in areas of new development, existing pre- mises were modernized and the latest type of mechanical equipment installed to ensure faster and more efficient service to the bank's steadily increasing clientele. After the usual deductions for the Staff Pension Fund and Contin- gency Reserves, profits for the year were $11,845,138 as compared with $10,918,243 a year ago. Of this amount $4,012,000 has been set aside for Dominion and Provincial taxes and $1273,413 for depreciation of bank .premises. After the above de- ductions, the net profit was $6,559,- 725. This compares with $5,827,521 in 1949. Out of net profit $3,500,000 was paid in dividends and $3,059,725 carried forward to Profit and Loss Account, resulting in a balance of 56,920,039. From this amount $6,000,000 Inas been transferred to the Reserve Fund, which brings the latter up to $50,000,000, leaving a balance of $920,039 in Profit and Loss Account. with the prevailing view that no machine can Iearn front its mis- takes. A machine incorporating his concept of a mechanists for learn- ing, Ile believes, could learn to beat the greatest human chess master by profiting from its mistakes. And only another machine like it caul snatch wits with it. It's illegal for a wife living in Maryland, to go through her bur - band's pockets. Ia Canada • it's merely useless, Santa Rings Twice 1r00 little Hans in Berlin, Santa makes two calls. On the first visit Ile fills Han's shoes --or in this case his father's, because they're bigger—with apples, cookies and netts. Alen, on t:1iristin tas Eve, Santa briny, the preset t s. Hans and his elders in VVcst Cierntany had their itmOSt prosperous holiday since before the tear, A PROWLER, CCItt REAM S HAVE YOU COVEteb$ 13y Arthur Pointer Paz g P 5*. Mr& 4. ersiale _, Strong Gowdy J. Dale - - ,iermanta Johetoa .ik Sills Webster NLuCana , Swartz - loholsoa - -dlerWOQd ' ei. Brock Finnigan • Johnson 'ay Adair 0