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The Seaforth News, 1950-03-23, Page 3The Ontario Society for Crippled Children, aided by 150 service clubs, sees that every crippled child in Ontario in need of attention gets it, Here ti patient chats with his sponsor, Robert Thompson and Lindsay Scott, chairman of the crippled children's committee of the Hamilton Shriners. The Society's Easter Seals appeal for funds continues until April 9. Donations may be sent to Timmy, Toronto. sa When They Opened The Erie Canal Finally, the Erie Canal ... aston- ished the world, for it was an under- taking of such magnitude that the like of It bad hitherto been accom- plished only by the greatest empires of the Old World and by means of the labor of slaves. It is but natural, therefore, that the unique spectacle of the celebra- tion of the opening of the great waterway, upon a stage stretching from Buffalo to New York, before an audience composed of a large part of the population of the state, should appeal to English artists in search of American views, and that their sketches should be used to decorate the pottery of Stafford- shire. It is with pride, mingled with wonder and no little amuse- ment, that one reviews the story of the opening celebration, as it is re- eorded in the old china illustra- tions. The celebration began at Buffalo, the junction of the canal and Lake Erie, continued at each little hamlet and city along the banks, culminat- ing at last in a blaze of glory and patriotism as the waters from the Great Lakes were mingled with the Atlantic in New York harbor. No resplendent Doge of Venice, stand- ing upon the prow of his gayly be- decked Bueentaur and casting the jewelled ring into the waters of the Adriatic, thereby symbolizing the marriage of Venice to the sea, was ever more proud than was Governor Clinton as, standing upon a primi- tive canal boat draped with the Stars and Stripes, he poured a barrel of Lake Erie water into the Atlantic Ocean thereby accomplishing the union of out• West and East. The first illustration presents a view of the harbor entrance of the canal at Buffalo, with sail boats in the bay, low warehouses on the dock, and a packet boat upon the canal, which sailors are tying to the wharf ... With something akin to awe, one listens to the sound off that reverberating cannon shot, which fired at Buffalo and repeated in succession by cannon stationed along the entire length of the canal, proclaims In one hour rind 20 minutes to the people of New York City that the little fleet is under way. Four gaily bedecked horses then proudly prance along He's Laughing Out Loud (At the Drop of a Buck) Dick Collier, who is probably the world's only professional Iaugher, started in business with a guffaw and worked his way down to a titter. And today, at the drop of a buck; he's ready to titter, giggle, snicker, guffaw, shriek, howl, snort, chuckle, gurgle and other- wise convulse himself for all cotn- ars. He'll laugh any place, any time, anywhere, if the pay is right, Collier's vocal talents alone are sufficient, since he has a truly in- fectious laugh and Inas proved same through appearances on the radio and on records. But when you throw in his physical appear- ance (which is a big job, because he's well over 200 pounds) you've really got something. Dick Collier looks like a laugh. in fact, he looks like a walking belly -laugh, with a built-in chortle. As such, he's an up -and -corning television performer and has his laughing eyes focused avidly on the fertile fields of Hollywood. He laughs for a living for two eaasons. First, he's a down-to-earth, etimntet•clally-minded guy and, as be says, "Take a look at my puss. Doesn't It make you laugh? Sure, it does. So why shouldn't T cash in on it?" Secondly, he's a happy character. He traces hls happiness to the war, when he was badly hurt. For a time, there was some question of his coming slit of it all right, But he did. "I found out that just being alive," he says, "is the most won- derful thing. So now I get a kick out of a rainy day," During the war, he'cl been a one-man show for Army special services. Ile spent I7 months in 't ersie, giving shows at remote tamps. He'd play She piano, sing :longs, tell jokes and look funny. The GI's liked hint. Whet' he was discharged, he de - !sided to give show business a whirl, despite the feet that he had spent five yore at Boston College, studying psyeitology. Ile built his Dick Collier—He laughed the best paid laugh ever laughed, act around his laugh, a piercing•_ shriek that had been a blg hit with the boys in service. He studied laughter, and devel- oped a routine that encompasses (he say s ) more. than 200 different kinds ranging frorn the thnid laugh (used "when the little woman is- sues her orders for the day") to the shaking laugh ("peculiar to pleasingly plump people"). A Broadway producer hired him to .it iu the audience of a new musical comedy and laugh In the tight places. His laughter made others laugh, and the play became a hit, '.Chen comedians took up' the idea, and Collier made a nice living laughing in radio studios, night clubs and theaters. But his code of ethics make: hint refuse to laugh unless some- thing is funny. On one television program, Col lier got paid $100 for laughing for five seconds. Ife says that's the best -paid laugh ever laughed, That one helped hint develop what he calls his crowning achievement -- the last laugh. the tow -path drawing the canal boat, Seneca Chief, which bears Governor Clinton and his associates followed by the cane! boats Super- ior, Commodore Perry and Buffalo. At the end of the procession is Noah's Ark, from the "unbuilt City of Ararat," having on board a bear, two eagles, two fawns, birds and fish, besides two Indian boys in na- tive costume—all taken along to gratify the curiosity of the effete New Yorkers in regard to the wild West. One smiles at the allegorical pic- ture, painted in honor of the occa- sion, which hangs in the cabin of the Seneca Chief, for in it may be seen Hercules resting upon his fav- orite club after his labor of finishing the canal, Governor Clinton in a Roman toga standing by his side, gazing upon the placid water and inviting Neptune and his Naiads, .Who coyly hang back as if hesitat- ing to approach domains not theirs by right, to enter through the open lock. Upon the deck stand two brightly painted kegs marked "Lake Erie"—the water from the lakes which is to be used in the celebra- tion in New York. —From "The Blue Chins Book," by Ada Walker Camehl. Machine Solves Chess Problems Chess players will either be de- lighted or furious—it all depend; on how they feel about the game— by the invention of Mr. T. Nemo, Chief Engineer of the Hungarian Posts Research Station, It's a cheats - problem -solving machine, an ingen- ious, fearsome looking contrivance of thermionic valves, photo -electric cells and cathode-ray tubes amid a mass of wires, lights, dynamos and other intricate gadgets, Alt the player has to do is to feed his problem into the machine, which works at lightning speed through all the possible combina- tions of three legal moves --one by Black and two by White. After a brief space, out comes the solution, If there is no solution the machine tells the player so! Mr. Nemes is not content with producing a problem -solving ma- chine. He is now at work on an- other nes • intricate affair which will play a came of chess and which, he says, "may surpass the scheme, of thought of the great masters." What a jolly evening the oboe player can have by letting the ma- chine play—and win—his games for Isim while he gets on with some- thing more urgent! An indolent Vicar of Bray, Plitt roses allowed to decay. His wife, more alert, Bought a powerful squirt And said Jo her sponse, "f.et tea spray.,, .......... Cigarette Lighters -_._.A Milestone In History of Conquest of Darkness Must people don't realize what * wonderful thing the modern cigar- ette lighter is. It is almost a magical trick, when you come to thiult of it, You whip out a little metal gadget, press the top, and a flame appears for your cigarette. This familiar, everyday gadget, which we casually use and take for granted, represents an interesting milestone in the long history of the conquest of darkness by Man. Strangely enough, the most pri- mitive methods of illumination were still in use 150 years ago, and the tremendous acceleration) in the dis- coveries which led to the modern forms of gas and electric lighting corresponded with the Industrial Revolution, :Even the Eddystone Lighthouse was maintained by candles at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Oil lamps of various kinds ap- pear to have been used, roughly, frozn the year 2,50(1 B.C,; lamps of hollow atone or sea -shells have been found in many parts of the world, The Greeks and Romana knew almost as much about light. Eng as was known in the eighteenth century, We know flow primitive Man pro- duced fire by rubbing flints and sticks together, An ancient Per- sian legend describes its discovery. "A great hero named Hushenk hurled a mighty stone at a snake. The snake escaped, but the stone struck a rock. Light shone through the dark pebble, the heart of the rock flashed out in the quarry, and fire was seen for the first time In the world." Inventive processes in the mind of early Man are difficult to trace, but it Is easy to imagine a cave - dweller watching a twig or fibre burning in fat dropped from a roast- ing carcass and proceeding from that observation to build a primitive lamp. The production of fire by striking a flint in such things as the tinder -box and flintlock rifle came very mucin later. Various kinds of oil lamps have been used in the intervening years, but the first recorded use of illu- mination by gas dates back to 176s, when a man named Spedding, who loved near Lord Lonsdale's coal- mines at Whitehaven, piped coal gas to his offices, where he used it for illumination, He tried to obtain permission to build gas re- eetvoirs to light the streets of his Tillage, but this was refused by the local magistrate. Early experiments in gas illumines tion were extremely primitive, of course; the burners themselves were 'imply iron tubes with holes pierced fns them, and the slightest obstruc- tfoin or rust resulted in a dim, over- cooled flame. The discovery fell into hands of a financial "tycoon," as we should now call hint, natned Winsor. He was not particularly scrupu- lous about the claims he made for his discovery. When a newspaper Mina asked him whether it would be dstngerous to take a lighted candle into a room full of coal gas, he replied that the gas would not ignite bel Attie "it is intermixed with the air of the room." Asked whether it was harmful to the luugs, he replied, "Not in the least! On the contrary, k le more congenial to our lungs than vital air (oxygen), which proves too strong a medicine, because it only exists front one-fifth to one-fourth in the atmosphere, whereas iuiiam- nsahie air exists above two-thirds iu the animal and vegetable king. dons, ht all our drink and victuals. It forms a part of ourselves." Despite these shady beginning&, the Pall Mall was illuminated by gas five years later, and, by 1811, several large cotton mills were lit by this method, A year earlier, Sir Humphrey Davy demonstrated the electric arc between two carbons to the Royal Institution. in Loudon, Eleetett lighting developed at a slower pstce than gas. New kinds of improved gas -burners were introduced, and bn 1885 ---after au interval of to er a hundred years—Carl Van web,. bach invented the incandescent gas mantle. It was lie, too, wltt' discoveree that cerium and iron fused togetiset resulted in a hard substance wlsicit emitted a brilliant spark on being struck with a wheel. He thus pro duced the first "flint" But it is important to remember that this rettbatettce beers Ito ;vision to the genuine flints, the geological depo- sits used in the tinderbox and flint -lock rifle. It was not until the First World War that the flint was incorpor- ated i,tt a primitive form of cigar - (Ate. lighter consisting of ltr'aided tow enclosed in a - small metal cylinder (sometimes a cartridge - case). This was surmounted by a fine-toothed wheel and flint, Friction betweoe the two pro- duced a spark, and this ignited thea tow, ,shirts when blow'. upon, created a red glow sortie fent to light a cigarette, From this developed the modern cigarette lighter, though some years passed before the cigarette lighters were perfectly satisfactory and could be accepted as a respectable inertia -it -al gadget. Easy Money An Anteriettn had at, incitation to a private shoot. Addres>iug the old gamekeeper, he said: "I'm one of the crack shots in the States. To- tuorrow yon will be loading for use, and for es cry bird 1 nib.t. give you a shilling." The following evening the game- keeper met a friend ami toldhies the story. "If I'd had another blank cart- ridge," he said. "I'd have made just a pound." Midget Mummy Up For Exams—Ivan P. Goodman, holds the 14 -inch figure which he believes to be the mummy of a minia- ture prehistoric man. The "mummy's was found by a group of workers in 1934 in a formation of solid granite inside a seal cave. Goodman bought the figure from a man who believed le brought bad luck. Scientists are studying the piece to detee ly was the body of a man. -- —,,.... ORIMEsatax uatd pot Coat 01 The Coal Strike—Here is what the month-long general strike by 372,000 Unita. Mine Workers and the resulting coal shortage cost in industrial lay-offs and other. hardshi • The Newschart gives highlights of a nationwide survey on effects of the strike. HE SAY; HE'S UP, PVT NES oral. ASLEEP, NOW Peng IN THE PRAHge JUICE NIS EYES ARE FLUTTERING, HE'S COMING OUT OF IT 1 -user. Tp NAVE AN OLP Pnp1P 1110 THAT.. rr ALWAYS HAD To Gg PRIMED BEFORE IT STARTED To 000, TPR ij see