Sunday, June 5, 2011

Death ray and more

"Or you can think it's a death ray, whatever that is, or ot could be anything at all." (pg 39)
H. Grindell Mathews, a British scientist, is the inventor of the "death ray" as reported in Middlesboro Daily News on May 30, 1924. Apparently in the 1920s the news was full of British scientists trying to perfect "death rays" - which never appeared except in science fiction comics and movies such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=TNVBAAAAIBAJ&sjid=46kMAAAAIBAJ&pg=3847,1786908&dq=death-ray&hl=en
(Wikipedia has more on the story, featuring Mathews: 1923 Matthews claimed that he had invented an electric ray that would put magnetos out of action.[3] In a demonstration to some select journalist he stopped a motorcycle engine from a distance. He also claimed that with enough power he could shoot down aeroplanes, explode gunpowder, stop ships and incapacitate infantry from the distance of four miles. Newspapers obliged by publishing sensational accounts of his invention.

The War Office contacted Matthews in February 1924 to request a demonstration of his ray. Matthews did not answer to them but spoke to journalists and demonstrated the ray to a Star reporter by igniting gunpowder from a distance. He still refused to say how the ray actually worked, just insisted that it did. When the British government still refused to rush to buy his ideas, he announced that he had an offer from France.[4]

The Air Ministry was wary, partially because of previous bad experiences with would-be inventors. Matthews was invited back to London to demonstrate his ray on 26 April to the armed forces. In Matthews's laboratory they saw how his ray switched on a light bulb and cut off a motor. He failed to convince the officials, who also suspected trickery or a confidence game. When the British Admiralty requested further demonstration, Matthews refused to give it.

On May 27, 1924, the High Court in London granted an injunction to Matthew's investors that forbade him from selling the rights to the death ray. When Major Wimperis arrived at Matthews's laboratory to negotiate a new deal, Matthews had already flown to Paris. Matthews's backers appeared on the scene as well and then rushed to Croydon airport to stop him, but were too late.

Public furor attracted interest of various other would-be inventors who wanted to demonstrate their own death rays to the War Office. None of them was convincing. On 28 May Commander Kenworthy asked in the House of Commons what the government intended to do to stop Matthews from selling the ray to a foreign power. The Under Secretary for Air answered that Matthews was not willing to let them investigate the ray to their satisfaction. A government representative also stated that one ministry official had stood before the ray and survived. Newspapers continued to root for Matthews.

The government required that Matthews would use the ray to stop a petrol motorcycle engine in the conditions that would satisfy the Air Ministry. He would receive £1000 and further consideration. From France, Matthews answered that he was not willing to give any proof of that kind and that he already had eight bids to choose from. He also claimed that he had lost sight in his left eye because of his experiments. His involvement with his French backer Eugene Royer aroused further suspicions in Britain.

Sir Samuel Instone and his brother Theodore offered Matthews a huge salary if he would keep the ray in Britain and demonstrate that it actually worked. Matthews refused again - he did not want to give any proof that the ray worked as he claimed it would.

Matthews returned to London 1 June 1924 and gave an interview to the Sunday Express. He claimed that he had a deal with Royer. The press again took his side. The only demonstration Matthews was willing to give was to make a Pathé film The Death Ray to propagate his ideas to his own satisfaction. The device in the movie bore no resemblance to the one government officials had seen.[5][6]

In July 1924, Matthews left for the USA to market his invention. When he was offered $25,000 to demonstrate his beam to the Radio World Fair at Madison Square Garden, he again refused and claimed, without foundation, that he was not permitted to demonstrate it outside England. US scientists were not impressed. One Professor Woods offered to stand in front of the death ray device to demonstrate his disbelief. Regardless, when Matthews returned to Britain, he claimed that the USA had bought his ray but refused to say who had done it and for how much. Matthews moved to the USA and began to work for Warner Bros. [a movie studio)

Bill-fold
The word "wallet" has been in use since the late fourteenth century to refer to a bag or a knapsack for carrying articles. The word may derive from Proto-Germanic. The ancient Greek word kibisis, used to describe the sack carried by the god Hermes and the sack in which the mythical hero Perseus carried the decapitated head of the monster Medusa, has been typically translated as "wallet". Usage of the term "wallet" in its modern meaning of "flat case for carrying paper currency" in American English dates to 1834 but this meaning was one of many in the 19th century and early 20th century.

So what about "bill-fold." Well, the name is what the product does...a place to store dollar [bills].
knitting on an afghan

"I am completely exhausted and I make no bones about it."
From: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/make-no-bones-about.html
This is another of those ancient phrases that we accept with our mother's milk as an idiom but which seem quite strange when we later give it some thought. When we are trying to convey that we acknowledge or have no objection to something, why bring bones into it?

It has been suggested that the bones were dice, which were previously made from bone and are still called bones in gambling circles. That explanation doesn't stand up to scrutiny - 'to make no dice about it' makes little sense. Also, in a 1542 translation of Erasmus's Paraphrase of Luke he discussed the command given to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and wrote that 'he made no bones about it but went to offer up his son.' Erasmus wasn't noted for his visits to the gaming tables and would hardly have used betting terminology to discuss a biblical text.

The actual source of this phrase is closer to home and hearth. In 15th century England, if someone wanted to express their dissatisfaction with something, they didn't 'make bones about it', they used the original form of the phrase and 'found bones in it'. This is a reference to the unwelcome discovery of bones in soup - bones = bad, no bones = good. If you found 'no bones' in your meal you were able to swallow it without any difficulty or objection.

The earliest citation of the phrase in print comes from the Paston Letters, which include a collection of texts from 1459 relating to a dispute between Paston and the family of the Norfolk soldier Sir John Fastolf (Fastolf was, incidentally, the source of the character Sir John Falstaff in Shakespeare's Henry IV). In the Paston Letters, the context of which is that the litigants are finally accepting a verdict with no objection, Paston includes the line:

"And fond that tyme no bonys in the matere." [and found that time no bones in the matter]

'Making bones' is usually expressed in the negative. There are rare occurrences of people being described as 'making bones' about this or that, and an early example comes from Richard Simpson's The School of Shakspere, 1878:

"Elizabeth was thus making huge bones of sending some £7000 over for the general purposes of the government in Ireland."

'Make no bones about it' is now rather archaic and heard less often than before. It did return briefly during the 1980s, as an example of the 'waiter, I'll have a crocodile sandwich, and make it snappy' form of joke. 'Waiter, I'll have tomato soup and make no bones about it' linked neatly back to the phrase's culinary origin.

No comments:

Post a Comment