A plan brewing
ALL great minds need lubrication, and where better to fuel idle curiosity than in the pub? Michael Zehse writes to tell us of his trip to The J. P. Joule in Manchester, UK, named after physicist James Prescott Joule, who spent the last years of his life nearby. He wonders: how many other hostelries bear the names of famous scientists?
Surely this name game has the makings of a great pub crawl. We can offer the John Snow in London, near the location of the cholera-spreading Soho water pump whose handle was removed at the epidemiologist鈥檚 behest. The John Snow鈥檚 taps continue to flow, and thankfully with no trace of the disease.
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No doubt there are plenty more pubs named for great scientists. Tell us where to head next.
鈥淒oug Lawrence spies a local tool-hire company offering 鈥渧arious chemical free cleaning fluids鈥�.
He suspects 鈥渢hey all must be very similar鈥濃��
Easy as A, B, C鈥�
ONE more for the retronym store: Elizabeth Belben says 鈥淚 am surprised that no one has mentioned 鈥榓lphabet鈥�, created from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta.鈥�
Elizabeth agrees with Glenn Pure that 鈥渆m鈥� and 鈥渆n鈥� are handy words in Scrabble (24 June), and adds 鈥渋n my family we not only allow names of letters in our own alphabet (including both 鈥榸ed鈥� and 鈥榸ee鈥�, but also Greek letters such as 鈥榤u鈥� and 鈥榥u鈥�. However, after I played 鈥榓leph鈥� we agreed to be cautious about using the names of Hebrew letters until we could agree on how to spell them.鈥�
Mutts, nuts
AND straying into the margins, Paul Allen writes to say that as well as being dashes, 鈥渆n鈥� and 鈥渆m鈥� were used to measure lengths across the page. 鈥淚n the noisy environment of a printing works, it is very hard to discriminate between the sound of 鈥檈m鈥� and 鈥榚n鈥�,鈥� says Paul, 鈥渟o printers invented alternative names for them.鈥� To make it easier to tell them apart, an en space was referred to as a 鈥渘ut鈥� and an em space as a 鈥渕utt鈥�.
鈥淏efore you ask,鈥� says Paul. 鈥淚 should point out that printing before the days of phototypesetting required the use of lead-based type metal and that might have been the cause of such useless alternative names.鈥�
Hidden woman
PAUL DORMER writes: 鈥淚f Nina Baker is interested in eponyms named after women (10 June), she may be interested to know that in crosswords, a hidden message discovered in the completed grid is known as a Nina.鈥� This apparently stems, he says, from the American caricaturist Al Hirschfeld鈥檚 habit of hiding his daughter鈥檚 name in his drawings.
Elemental error
EARLIER Feedback claimed that the 7 in 7Up was derived from the atomic number of lithium, one of the ingredients (1 July). 鈥淲hen, long ago, I was at school the atomic number of lithium was 3,鈥� says Keith Parkin, 鈥渁lbeit with a common isotope having a mass number of 7.鈥�
Fire it up
PREVIOUSLY Jake Burger related the retronym Esso, stemming from the letters of Standard Oil (13 May). 鈥淢eanwhile, Kuwait Petroleum International has done quite the opposite,鈥� says Dan Salmons, 鈥渁nd trades as Q8. Perhaps we ought to call these petronyms.鈥�
Es-no
NOT so fast, says Anton Fletcher, who thinks some retrospective correction is in order. 鈥淎 previous contributor suggested that the oil company Esso is derived from the first letters of Standard Oil spoken aloud. This is questionable, as the company鈥檚 full name was Eastern States Standard Oil.鈥�
Anton concludes that the name Esso is simply an acronym. But Feedback has discovered that court cases were fought over exactly this issue, after regulators broke up Standard Oil into 34 companies, one of which tried to hold on to the brand heritage 鈥� or at least an echo of it, by marketing their fuel as Esso.
Readers will doubtless be pleased to learn that when the company using the Esso brand, Jersey Standard, was forced to give it up, they chose instead to use Enco 鈥� a German-style clipping of 鈥淓nergy Company鈥�.
Tall order
FEEDBACK reader Mick Martin previously found himself on a bus seemingly bound for the infinitely accommodating Hilbert Hotel (1 July). 鈥淭his reminded me of a company in Ilford who might be capable of creating such a thing,鈥� writes Steve Ingamells, 鈥溾��.
What a weigh in
AUSTRALIA is a fearsome place, overrun with an improbable number of creatures ready to kill you. So it follows that a fighting man in this continent needs to be just as fearsome to survive. Every morning, The Macquarie Dictionary 鈥� the authoritative text on Australian English 鈥� sends Pierre Du Cray its word of the day. Thus he discovers its definition of 鈥渨elterweight鈥� is: 鈥淎 boxer weighing between 635 and 67 kg (in the amateur ranks) and 63503 and 66678 kg (in the professional ranks).鈥� That ought to tip the balance in their favour.
Relative success
REFLECTING on our colleague who was told he 鈥渃ould already have won鈥� an imagination-sized chocolate hamper (20 May), Pete Goddard has a suggestion. 鈥淢any companies chose to disappoint the vast majority in this way, given the small likelihood of success,鈥� he says. 鈥淪urely it would be better to send a message saying that 鈥榶ou may already have not won鈥�, and anticipate the unbounded joy when the hamper of whatever size arrives!鈥�