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Zurich Herald, 1950-05-04, Page 7......... ... .. �� ww..�- �-�-..rye-,.�-,,.�--_-_._...-...�..,._.,.._,.--..� �-�,---•-.........ria»�nirc��a�rr�.�-��...--:-�---�-��:--._.,:_._----�:--,:r���.--,�-r�-�- M-___-�-. � �_..��v:aw The Ontario Society for Crippled Children, aided by 150 service clubs, sees that every crippled child in Ontario in need of attention gets it. Here a 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. W hen They Opened The Erie Canal Finally, the Erie Canal ... aston- ished the zorld, for it was an under- taking of such magnitude that the like of It had hitherto been accom- plished only by the greatest empires nt the Old World and by means of dhe labor of slaves, It is but natural, therefore, that the unigtie 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- corded in the old china illustra- tions. 1'he celebratiun began.at Buffalo, the junction of the canal and Lake ;Erie, continued at each little hamlet and city along the banks, culminat. irg at las, 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 Bucanitaur 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 carnal boat draped with the Stars and Stripes, he poured a barrel of Lake Erie water into the Atlantic Ocean thereby accomplishing the union of our 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 listena to the sound of 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 aritd 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 'hut Loud (.kt the Drop of a Bich) Jick Collier, who is probably the world's only professional laugher, 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, smart, chuckle, gurgle and other- wise convulse himself for all com- ers. He'll laugh any place, any tune, anywhere, if the pay is right. Collier's vocal talents alone are sufficient, since he ]las a truly in- ilectious laugh and has proved name through appearances on the eadlo 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, lie looks like a walking belly -laugh, with a built-in chortle. .As suchhe's an up -and -corning television performer and has his laughing eyes focused avidly on the fertile.. fields of Hollywood. a ; He laugh:, for a living for two reasons,. First, lie's a down-to-earth, a soinmercially-minded guy and, as lad. says. "Take a look at my puss. Doesn't it make you laugh? Sure, It does. Sc, wily shouldn't I cash in on. it?" Secondly, he's a happy character. He traces his happitic to the war, whet, he was badly hart. Tor a time, there was sonic.• question of his coniine' Out of it all right. 'But he did. "I found out that ,just being alive," he gays, ".is the most won- derful tiling. So now i get a kick mut of a rainy day," During the 'war, he'd been a Iniie-marl show for Army special wervices. He spent 17 tnouths in Persia, giving shows at remote Cramps. He'd play the piano, sing songs, tell jokes and loot: funny. The GWl , liked hii>:i. t: ,11 Wheit lir.. was discharged, he de- vided to give show business a whirl, despite the fact that he had Vent i1vo yearn at Boston College, studAftw PAVehologya Ha built his Dick Collier --He laughed the best paid laugh ever laughed. act around his laugh, a piercing shriek that had been a big hit with the boys in service. He studied laughter, and devel.. oiled a routino that ell conipasse", (lit, say -�) itiore than 200 different kinds ranging from the timid laugh (used "when the little woman is- sues her orders for the day") to the shaking laugh ("peetiliar to pleasingly plutilp, people"), A Broadway producer hired him to sil in the audience of a new musical comedy and laugh in the right places, itis laughter made others laugh, and the play beeaine a lilt. 'filen comedians took up the idea, and Collier made a nice living laughing in radio studios, night chibs and theaters. Frit his code of ethic..,, niuke hila refuse to laiigli unles, some- thing if; funny. Oil one. television prograill, Col lien gait paid $100 for laughing for five seconds. Ile says .that's the best paid latigh ever laughed. That one helped hint develop what lie calls his crownhig aebievement: -. tit(! lath laugh, the tow -path drawing the canal boat, Seneca Chief, which beara Govennor Clinton and his associates followed by the canal 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 seniles 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 has 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 liesitat- Ing to approach domains not theirs by right, to enter through the open lock. Upon the deck stand two brightly pahriiied kegs marked "Laky Erie" -the water from the lake which is to be used in the celebra- tion in New York. --From "The Blue China Book," by Ada Walker Camehi. Machine Solves Cows Problems Chess players will either be de- lighted or furious—it all depends on how they feel about the game -- by the invention of Mr. T. Nerves, Chief Engineer of the Hungarian Posts Research Station. It's a chem- probleni-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. All the player has to do is to feed his problem into the machine, which works at lightning spexd through all the possible combins- 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 sol Mr. Nenies is not content with producing a problem -solving ma- chine, Ile is now at work on wa- either nim- intricate affair which will play a t tune of chess and which, he says, "niay surpass the schemed of thought of the great masters." What a jolly evening the chemo player can have by letting the ma- chine play—and win—his games for him while he gets on with some- thing more urgent! An indolent Vicar of Bray. RIO roses allowed to decay. His wife, more alert, Bought a powerful squirt And said to her spouse, "l,et us spray." Cigarette Lighters --A Milestone In History of Conquest of Darkness Moat people don't realize what a wonderful thing the moderit cigar- ette lighter is. It is almost a magical trick, when you come to think 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 gran"ted, 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, from the year 2,500 B.C.; lamps of hollow stone or sea-sliells have been found in many parts of the world. The Greeks and Romans knew almost as much about light - Ing as was known in the eighteenth century. We know how primitive Man pro- duced fire by rubbing flints and sticks together, Ali ancient Per- sian legend describes its discovery. "A great hero named Husbenk hurled a mighty stone at a snake. The snake escaped, but the stone struck a rock. Light slione 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 a,triking a flint in such things as the tinder -box and flintlock rifle came very* much 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 1765; when a man named Spedding, who Moved near Lord Lonsdale's coal- mines at Whiteha•ven, piped coal gas to his offices, where he used it for illumination. He tried to obtain permission to build gas re- servoirs to light the streetu of his village, but this was refused by the local magistrate. Early experiments in gas illumina- tion were extremely primitive, of covrae; the burners themselves were simply iron tubes with holes pierced in them, and the slightest obstrua. tioin or rust resulted in a dim, over- cooled flame. The discovery fell into haiaids of a financial "tycoon," as we should now call hien, named winsor. He was not particularly scrupu- toua about the claims he made for late discovery. When a newspaper amain asked him whether it would be dangerous to take a lighted candle Into a room full of coal gas, he replied that th't gas WOU14 not ignite because "it is intermixed with the air of the rooms." Asked whether it was harmful to the lungs, lie replied, "Not in the leastl On the contrary, it is snore congenial to our lungs than vital air (oxygen.), which proves too strong a medicine, because it only exists fa'oln one-fifth to out -fourth III the atmosphere, whereas inflam- mable air exists above. two-thirds In the animal and vegetable king- doms, in all our drink and victuals. It forts a part of ourselves." Despite these shady beginnings, the fall Mall was illuminated by gas five years later, and, by 1811, several large cotton mills were lit by this method. A year earlier, Sir liumplirey Davy demonstrated the electric are between two carbons to the Royal Institution in Londwi. Electric lighting developed at a slower pace than gas. New kinds of improved gas -bursters were introduced, and Ari 1885—after an interval of over a bunched years—Carl Van Weis bach invented the incandescent gas mantle. It rias he, too, rt ho discovered that cerium and iron fused together resulted in a hard substance which emitted a brilliant spark on being struck with a wheel. He thus pro duced the first "flint" But it is important to reenenaher that tbis satbutance bear,# no relaion to than gmnuine fliias, the geological depo- sits used in the tinder -bort ant, flint -hick rifle. It was not until the First World War that the flint was incorpor- ated in a primitive form of cigar.. Ott lighter consisting of braided tow enclosed- in a small metal'. cylinder (sometimes a cartridge - case). This was surmounted by it fine-toothed "heel and flint. Frictioei between the two pro- duced a spark, and this ignited the tow, which wheel blown upon, created a reri glwA suffi4-4erit to light a cigarette. From this c c:veluped the ritadern cigarette 'lighter, though some years passed before the cigarette lighters were perfectly satisfactory and could be accepted as a respectable niech, ^;cal gadget. Easy Homey Ali Anierivatt had au incitation to a private Nhoot, :lricla e -irk the old gamekeeper, lie said: "frit one of the crack shots in the States. To- inOT'row -von Will be loading for nee, and fur eiery bird .1 miss I'll give you a shilling." The fol.h.nsing everiiug tilt game- keeper inet a frie.rd and told trigs the story. "If I'd had another blank cart- ridge," he. said, "I'd have made juae a pound." Midget Mummy Up For Exams --Ivan P. Goodman, Bolds bats 14 -inch figt_ire which he believes to bre the mummy of a minia- ture prehistoric man. The "mummy" was found by a. grow of workers in 1934 in a formation of solid granite inside a sealce cave. Goodman boo ht the figure from a man who believed ft brought bad luck, cientists are studying the piece to deter- ly was the body of a tnan. Cost Of The Coal Strike—here is what the+ uiorith-1u111 general strike bN 374000 ( nited Wile Workers and the resulting coal shortage cost its industrial lay-offs and either hardshipa, The Newe,chart gives highliglit.- cif a nationwide survev oil effects of Mie ;strike. NOW ftvR IN THEHis EYES ORAN" JUICE t ARE FLUTTEkINo, ^,...- HES C(NINE OOT of IT! VA By MELLC?,RS N" DID -USED To HAVE AN 00 %V KNOW - PUAIP I" THAT.. � "T TO IT Ja WAYS HAD TO ME )1 pot, YR7lMW SEFORE IT 51,NZTEp TO rMK, TOI.t b XM httg6i FOLLOW ' AUVW04 CDUER5 AAE Was a NOW ftvR IN THEHis EYES ORAN" JUICE t ARE FLUTTEkINo, ^,...- HES C(NINE OOT of IT! VA By MELLC?,RS N" DID -USED To HAVE AN 00 %V KNOW - PUAIP I" THAT.. � "T TO IT Ja WAYS HAD TO ME )1 pot, YR7lMW SEFORE IT 51,NZTEp TO rMK, TOI.t b