The Optimist's Almanac

February 19th

Foot and mouth returns to Britain

One of the images I have in my head of the mid to late 1960s is of policemen wearing wellington boots, putting up notices on farms saying "Danger - Foot and Mouth Disease". It was only later I realised it was a particularly unpleasant disease of livestock and not people. On February 19th 2001 it returned to Britain in a major way.To try and prevent an nationwide outbreak, more than 6 million farm animals were culled and burnt on pyres, spreading noxious fumes and probably more contamination, across the country. About 1.3 million of the animals killed were actually on infected farms, the rest were part of the government’s “contiguous culling” strategy, ie the animals on all neighbouring farms were to be slaughtered, even if they were healthy. The numbers are all here if you’re interested.

The scandalous thing about this was that many, many scientists thought the cull was
unnecessary – many parts of Europe and the rest of the world either vaccinate or simply live with the disease, as meat from infected animals is perfectly safe to eat, but of course the supermarkets threatened  to go abroad for 'uncontaminated' supplies.

Then there is the story of Phoenix the Calf, which could have come straight out of an Ealing film. It’s a great illustration of how badly the cull was handled and how quickly the Labour government of Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell would seize on any PR opportunity.

So put the memory of huge bonfires of dead cows out of your mind and try and remember today for one of the greatest inventions ever.

Edison patents the phonograph

I know there are loads of stories about how Thomas Edison was ruthless and unscrupulous and ripped off the ideas of junior staff and rivals, but I think his own life story is amazing and inspiring. He was an odd looking kid, literally an egg-head; he had a squeaky voice and suffered from deafness. Whether you believe in genius or not, he turned himself into an entrepreneur and a prolific inventor simply by reading a lot of books, inspired by his dad who offered him ten cents for every book he read.

His invention of the phonograph (patented today, in 1878) was a brilliant synthesis of the telegraph and the telephone. A lot of inventions are in the ether at the same time and the patent is often granted to the inventor who got to the patent office only minutes before a rival, but Edison was out on his own with the phonograph. Only one other person in the world was thinking along the same lines and they never even got beyond the drawing board.
Edison's method of reproducing sound, by recording vibrations physically in a groove, is what allowed young people in the 20th century to enjoy pop music, and enabled otherwise unemployable oddballs like Joe Meek, Andy Partridge and Nik Kershaw to earn a living.

It's the sort of invention that James Burke used to explain so well, but I can’t find him describing how phonograph works, so here is someone else having a go.

 

 

February 18th

Fox-hunting outlawed.

The banning of hunting with dogs, in February 2004, was cheered by the idealistic Left as another stage, along with the reform of the House of Lords, in the demolition of the Ruling Class’s ivory tower - an edifice almost as shaky as this metaphor. But the ban on hunting was, in fact, a terrible waste of Government time and actually part of quite a sinister development in British politics.

I am no fan of hunting or the people who hunt – I tend to find hunting types pretty repulsive and ludicrously toffee-nosed but I’m well aware that large numbers of working class people take part in and earn their living from hunting. I can also accept that  hunting is part of the fabric of the British countryside and as a city dweller I shouldn’t really stick my nose in. I don’t much go for cruelty to animals either but the fox is one of nature’s bad guys (read some fairy tales) and using natural means to keep the numbers down seems a lot more eco-friendly than using gas or lead shot.

I also have to confess I fell for the idyllic scenes in Siegfried Sassoon’s lovely book, ‘Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man'.

Sassoon was reassuringly confused about a lot of things including his attitude to The Prey and would often try and prevent the hunt from making a killing.

Passing a law to ban foxhunting is legislating against a type of person and an activity that the governing party finds offensive; it’s no different Section 28, the Tory legislation preventing the promotion of homosexuality by local government. Every year it seems we have new laws about what we can and can’t eat, where we can smoke and what jokes we can tell. It’s fine if your own gang is in control, but what happens when they aren’t?

I’m staying with animals for today’s reason to be cheerful.

The first cow in a plane 

(This is a painting of the actual cow)

As part of the 1930 International Air Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, a cow called, among other things, Elm Farm Ollie was taken up in an aeroplane (maddeningly no-one has details on what type of plane) and became the first cow to fly. She was also milked up there too. It seems a bit self-consciously wacky and the sort of thing Simon Bates would find funny, but I like the story. It epitomises that Golden Age of Aviation between the two world wars, of wing-walking, flying boats and the Great Waldo Pepper, when people flew planes like this.

There were all sorts of bogus scientific experiments which were supposed to have been carried out on Elm Farm Ollie, but basically it seems to have been a massive publicity stunt to show that cattle could be transported safely by air. I don't know whether that caught on. You can celebrate Ollie's achievement at the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum in Wisconsin, if you’re in the area and fancy going.

February 17th

This is a day late because I couldn't find a bad anniversary to write about, which must be a cause for optimism in itself. In the end I decided to go for two good anniversaries. 

First of all,

The London Congestion Charge.

Of course thousands of people in London think the introduction of the C-charge in 2003 is one of the worst things that's ever happened to them. Ken Livingston is seen as devious, money grabbing and driven by class politics. Maybe he is -I'm a Boris man myself, but yes, the C-charge has been extended into affluent boroughs of London, the fee has been raised twice over the last couple of years and now it's being used as a stick to beat the wealthy with their big expensive cars.
I prefer to see it as a huge step in the right direction which should be rolled out across the country - driving a private car into a major city with a huge public transport network should be seen to be just as anti social as smoking. If even a fraction of the money raised is diverted into public transport, that has to be a good thing and if it annoys Jeremy Clarkson too, so much the better.

The Birth of Ron Goodwin

Born in 1925, Ron Goodwin was a great British composer of great British film soundtracks. In my book he's up there with John Barry, Ennio Morricone, Bernard Hermann and Eric Rogers as one of the greatest soundtrack composers ever. Here's his opening march for the Battle of Britain; Sir William Walton was commissioned to compose the score for this, but although beautiful, his music wasn't quite long enough (or rousing enough?) for this kind of film, so they sent for Ron. Sir Lawrence Olivier was so furious he threatened to take his name off the credits - a bit queeny if you ask me.

The 633 Squadron theme is another stirring piece and I'd recommend this film to any Star Wars fans who haven't seen it, just so they can appreciate the debt owed to it by the 1977 original.

And just to show Ron could do skittish and frivolous too, here's the terrific theme for the Margaret Rutherford 'Miss Marple' films.

There's more stuff about Ron here.
   

 

February 16th

The Toddlers' Truce abolished

It may seem hard to believe now, but from the end of World War II until 16th of February, 1957, there was no television broadcast in Britain between 6pm and 7pm, to allow parents to get their children off to bed. This became known as the Toddlers’ Truce. Many people might think this is typical of the patronising attitude of the BBC and the government of the day towards ordinary people, but I think it was a brilliant thing to do, and the abolition of the truce, at the prompting of commercial tv, marked the tightening of television’s grip on the nation. I love television – it has paid my mortgage for the past 12 years but I still think it should be limited. This is the programme which filled the 6-7pm hour when broadcasting was permitted.

The Tonight programme may have had good reporters on it like Alan Whicker, but it was basically an hour of pointless, frothy local news stories about men in sheds making battleships out of matchsticks and boy scouts jumping over pillar boxes, and this kind of programme has occupied that slot ever since. Just as with the breakfast television experiment, no-one thought: “this was a terrible mistake, let’s stop now”. Instead, they kept commissioning the stuff until we ended up with this:

That theme tune brings back so many depressing memories and makes me think how much happier I’d have been to be asleep in bed instead of watching television.

So, it's back to the Americans and their brilliant inventions for the good news that:

Nylon patented by Wallace H. Carothers

He received the patent in 1937. He doesn’t seem like the kind of man you would connect with this..

...he was just a humble, well-qualified Chemist doing his job. DuPont had recruited him to develop first a synthetic rubber, which he helped to do (Neoprene) and then synthetic fibres (Nylon). Nylon was the first synthetic material made to order from scratch and was a brilliant solution to a shortage of natural raw materials. Even the name Nylon is completely made up and doesn’t refer to anything, not even, as some people think, "New York and London".

It was a life changing invention, not just for the women who wore stockings but for future generations who grew up in a world of brightly coloured plastic when there used to be just wood, metal and leather.

There are some negative aspects to this story – Carothers suffered terrible depression, felt he had achieved nothing, and eventually committed suicide; DuPont have a poor ethical record – here are some pros and cons – and although Nylon was created to replace natural raw materials, it is itself made from an increasingly rare and expensive raw material – oil.
But in the 1930s when a man could spin artifical fibres out of a glass full of chemicals you would have to say you were on the frontier of a brilliant future.

If, by any chance, you want to have a go at making nylon, the recipe is here.

February 15th

Surrender of Singapore to Japan

It was the largest surrender of British-led military personnel in history. In 1942, 85,000 troops were surrendered to the Japanese by Lt. General Arthur Percival.

Singapore was massively fortified, the British had plenty of time to prepare for the attack, and the Japanese were at the very limit of their supply lines. There have been many arguments about how badly the troops were supplied and trained, how intelligence was ignored, how the British guns were pointing the wrong way, how Percival made blunder after blunder and how it was really Churchill to blame for prioritising the Middle East over South East Asia. The bottom line is, thousands of local inhabitants were massacred by the Japanese and 75,000 British and Australian soldiers spent the rest of the war in appalling conditions in Japanese prisoner of war camps.

So I prefer to remember that today in 1971 was:

Decimal Day for Britain

This was a terrific blow for progress and an example to lots of people, including myself, who think any change is bad and new stuff isn’t as good as old stuff and why can’t everything be always the same. Because Decimalisation worked straight away, and it not only got rid of a load of stupid little coins that were only of interest to collectors...

it also liberated schoolchildren from counting in base 12; although it wasn’t even as simple as that – pounds, shillings and pence meant counting in 12s and 20s. There were 12 pennies in a shilling, 30 in half a crown and 240 in a pound, which was equivalent to 20 shillings. Got that?

The government were terribly concerned that counting up to ten was going to confuse people, especially the ladies – here’s a cracking public information film from 1971.

Full Metrication was planned for 1978 and still hasn’t happened. Obviously I like the old imperial method and think the new system would be rubbish. You can go too far with this sort of thing, as they found after the French Revolution when they tried to decimalise Time.

 

February 14th

Ayatollah sentences Rushdie to death

A bad day for freedom of speech; today in 1989 the Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s spiritual leader and the West’s biggest bogeyman at the time (the names change but the beards and the eyebrows remain the same) declared a fatwa on Salman Rushdie for the blasphemy against Islam in Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses.

It’s not worth going into details about the book or the strict theological meaning of a fatwa (you can read about it all here if you like) but basically, a leading figure in a global religion instructed its members to try and kill a man who had written a book they didn’t like. It provoked violence and diplomatic crises all over the world  and saddled the British taxpayer with a massive bill for round-the-clock protection for Rushdie, who is not a particularly attractive personality.

While Rushdie was able to marry top models and appear on quiz shows in safety, unfortunately the fatwa succeeded at another level: infidels are now terrified of saying anything which might offend Islam, and whatever Rowan Atkinson and his mates say about wanting the freedom to make religious jokes, you can guarantee they don’t have many Islamic gags in their locker.

So, let's try and forget that the Middle Ages are closer than we think, and instead, think of this:

The world's first proper computer unveiled

A great day to remember for the online community and anyone who uses a computer of any kind - so that’s everybody. Today in 1946, the world’s first fully electronic, fully programmable, digital computer was unveiled at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania and it weighed 30 tons. From this point, according to people who know, began “The Information Age”.

Called the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator, it was principally the work of John Mauchly and J Presper Eckert, and had been produced with funding from - get this - the Army Air Corps to calculate shell-firing and bombing angles and distances. If only the military could get interested in climate change, we’d have it sorted in no time. 

There had been several other computer-type things before this unveiling, but none of them had ticked all the boxes that this baby did. I don’t pretend to understand any of this but it was the first computer to be digital, programmable and “Turing-complete”. I have tried to understand “Turing-completeness” but failed dismally. It’s something to do with him having thought up what a computer should be able to do before it had actually been constructed and this became some kind of definition for what it should be when it eventually was constructed – or something, I dunno. What it is it about arts graduates that makes them incapable of engaging with science at a sophisticated level? All we can do is marvel at stuff that scientists do while holding our hands up in admission of total ignorance. I’ll bet Alan Turing could have made a decent fist of Latin or English Literature given time.

Here’s an interesting clip of Simon Schaffer talking about the history of computing and its relationship to engineering, and managing at the same time to speak with great clarity while making me feel like an idiot.

February 13th

The Bombing of Dresden

In 1945, in one of the most shameful acts of the Allies in World War II, British and American planes dropped almost 3,500 tonnes of explosives on a picturesque city full of refugees (and Kurt Vonnegut) famous for making dolls and teapots. What made this worse was that the Germans were only weeks from surrender. No-one knows exactly how many died – it could be hundreds of thousands. There was no clear objective and it may well have been a demonstration of power to frighten the advancing Russians.

The concerns about the methods required to win a war against a deadly enemy have never been given a better airing than in Powell and Pressburger’s Colonel Blimp – perhaps the best film about war, or anything else, ever made.

If anyone can get hold of it anywhere, Jonathan Ruffle’s award-winning radio broadcast of Len Deighton’s ‘Bomber’ is worth listening to for a real-time account of the  Dresden raid.

As an example of a good thing to remember February 13^th for, I was going to mention the formation of ASCAP in 1914 – an organization set up to generate payments to songwriters for the use of their work. But this unlikely to meet with great approval on web, where everyone expects to own everything for nothing. You have to ask, if no-one is going to make a decent living from music who is going to create it?

Anyway, we won’t mention that. I’d like to remember this day in 1938 for:

The birth of Oliver Reed.

A great British actor. Not a great actor, but a great British one; a wonderful caricature of a certain British type - the Hell Raiser (cf Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton).

I’ll always smile at the memory of Athos in Three Musketeers, kicking the Cardinal’s men up the arse in a sword-fight; the quite badly digitized posthumous slave-owner in Gladiator; the naked wrestler in women in love, and the fabulous Bill Sykes in Oliver. Here are a couple of extracts from a decent documentary about him – it’s cheering to know that he was happy to stay in England at the height of his earning power, and look after the garden in his crumbling stately home.

And although I found it a bit sad that he felt he had to turn up drunk on every chat show in the 80s, he did liven up a dismal BBC programme called “Saturday Night At The Mill”, the only constant element of which was the music of Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen. In the middle of his interview with presenter Tony Lewis, Oliver Reed was asked, in a rather insulting way, if he was dyslexic. Rather than deal with the subject, which was still a joke in those days, Ollie dropped his trousers round his ankles and demanded that Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen play “some Jock music”, at the sound of which he began to shuffle around the studio in his underpants until the interviewer changed the subject. I can’t find any images of the show on the web, but here is a picture of Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen. They didn’t always dress as Cossacks.

February 12th

James Bulger murdered

An appalling murder of a 2 year-old by some older boys in 1993. The reaction of people not directly involved in this – the media, locals, politicians – was pretty shameful too. As with all horrific murders these days, the details were revealed at the time of the crime, once more at the trial and again on successive anniversaries. With respect to the boy and his family, it can’t help to go over it all again or use this highly unusual case to suggest that our whole society is somehow doomed.

So in the true spirit of the Optimist's Almanac I'm going to remember today for this:

Independence of Chile proclaimed by Bernardo O’Higgins

It happened in 1818. Now, I know next to nothing about South American history but years ago, when I was helping my brother revise for his A Level History exam, the name Bernardo O’Higgins gave me no end of pleasure. He may well have done great things for Chile
but, I just love the fact that he is called Bernardo O’Higgins; it really cheers me up whenever I think of him. And just look at him – isn’t he tremendous?

Here is all you need to know about Bernardo O’Higgins; the O’Higgins family and how someone caught up in the struggle for a South American country’s independence could end up with a name like Bernardo O’Higgins.

I’m similarly cheered by the name Simon Bolivar, as well as the relatives of Carthaginian troublemaker Hannibal: Hasdrubal, Bomilcar and Hamilcar Barca. I can’t wait to come across them later in the year so I can mention them again.

 

 

February 11th

Henry VIII goes postal.

(Henry and his wives, as if they were on a poster for some kind of rom com)

Today in 1531, King Henry VIII appeared in parliament and demanded that all members of the Church in England recognise him as Supreme Head and Sole Protector of the Church in England.
There was a bit of resistance but not enough, and so pretty much just like that Henry separated England from the rest of Europe, instituting cultural and political suspicion between Britain and the mainland which persists to the present day. He also began a programme of unparalleled cultural vandalism with the dissolution of the monasteries and most significantly  kicked off a 450 year religious conflict which, with its burnings beheadings, bombings, shootings, has only just (we hope) run of steam in Northern Ireland. And all for the sake of a male heir who, in the event, died aged 15.

Far better to remember today for an image of reconciliation.

Nelson Mandela released

(What a shame they couldn’t have locked Winne up as soon as Nelson was out))

The calls to release Mandela had become part of the wallpaper of the eighties; you could pass by the permanent demo outside the South African Embassy in Trafalgar Square almost without noticing it. This protest song, though, was one of the things that really stood out.

Mandela’s release in 1990 was one of those events you never thought would actually happen - a bit like the release of Terry Waite – and then it did. All of a sudden we were watching live coverage a white-haired man walking along a dusty road, waving. No-one had heard him speak for years and years, and I found it really odd that he spoke like someone doing an impersonation of a Chinaman.

Having made the transition from prisoner to President in a few short years, one his most significant acts after the dismantling of apartheid was the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It was a brilliant attempt to combine a feeling of justice and retribution without revenge and bloodshed.

It's a testament to Mandela’s benign nature and willingness to see the good in anyone that he was happy to be photographed in these situations.

February 10th

The Gestapo are given unlimited power.

 

On February 10^th 1936, a law was passed which meant the Gestapo were unaccountable to any judicial process. The less said about this the better but there seems to be a weird cachet about the imagery and ‘fashion sense’ of the Gestapo as portrayed in many war films. It's aesthetically pleasing to such diverse characters as Bryan Ferry and Sergeant Wilson from Dad's Army, but it is a world away from their grubby and evil trade. Their hold over Nazi Germany and the occupied territories was maintained not by handsome Teutons in leather coats but by the paperwork of dead-eyed jobsworths like this: 

But as the man said: "What a piece of work is man!" While the Nazis were unfettering another monster from their cabinet of horrors, across the ocean, some oddballs were spending all their energy on trying to make people laugh, as: 

Tom and Jerry appeared for the first time. 

Could there be a happier day in the history of entertainment than the 10^th of Febrary, 1940? Tom and Jerry is the best cartoon ever (forget the Simpsons) and  the best double act ever, bar Laurel and Hardy. If you can get hold of a box set (the old VHS editions are unexpurgated) you’ll see just how much care has gone into making these magical five minute chunks. How brilliant it must have been to be Hannah and Barbera or Irving Spence or Kenneth Muse or Ed Barge or even Fred Quimby (although apparently he never ’got’ cartoons); to turn up to work every day and think: “How about Tom finds a corset in a drawer and turns himself into a flying cat?”.

What I love about Tom and Jerry more than other animated characters is that although the violence is spectacular (check this scream out), there is a genuine relationship between the two. I yield to no-one in my admiration for Buggs, Daffy, Sylvester and Wiley Coyote, but I suspect pure sadism is at the root of Warner Brothers cartoons.

“Puss Gets the Boot” was the first release and in fact featured a cat called Jasper (we know this because that’s what Mammy Two Shoes the maid calls him. Here, by the way is an excellent bit of Mammy audio)

Anyway, Jasper is clearly Tom and the old name was dropped soon after. You can read more about it on the excellent unofficial Tom and Jerry website, which has loads of pictures, downloads and biogs, including an extended piece on a true musical genius, Scott Bradley, who created such a rich musical language, he could write the score for a cartoon without having seen any of the pictures. My favourite Tom and Jerry is Cue-ball Cat and here is a bit of it. Actually it's all of it.