July 2007 - Style Of Eye

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Many historians credit the invention of the telephone to Alexander Graham Bell. It is true that Bell was one of those who patented an "improvement" on a device known as the telephone. It is not true that he invented it.

The device that Alexander Bell imitated was the electrical equivalent of a child’s toy composed of two cans connected by a taut string. People had been experimenting with electrical sound transference and similar contrivances long before Bell performed his experiment. Bell contributed nothing to the theories on which electrical voice transmission is based, nor was he the first to apply those theories in physical form.

The theoretical background for electrical wave transmission was established by Heinrich Hertz and Leo Graetz. Hertz is best known for the transmission of electro-magnetic waves through space, a discovery known as Hertzian waves. Hertz was also the discoverer of photo-electricity, the basis for television. Leo Graetz was the first to investigate the dispersal of electrical waves. Thus the telephone, radio, and television are founded on the discoveries of Hertz and Graetz.

engraving of Phillip Reis with his telephone

Phillip Reis was one of the inventors of the telephone. Here is an engraving of Reis’s self-portrait with the seventh form of his telephone, demonstrated before the Free German Institute in Frankfort on May 11, 1862. A tenth version was marketed in Europe before Alexander Bell applied for a patent on an "improvement on telephony." The telephone achieved its potential when Emile Berliner invented the microphone and the transformer and applied them to telephony. Berliner is, therefore, the true inventor of the telephone as we know it.

There is something intrinsically satisfying about holding a telephone receiver in one’s hand, despite them being, ultimately, the nemesis of the civilized world.

Call me old-fashioned, but the design I admire the best from this selection would be one of the two straight forward golden oldies in white and gold and silver; classic and utterly elegant. But the lad in me digs the military field phone and I am partial to the Bang & Olufsen black square pop-up with the rotary dial … and those pen phones are downright dinky too.

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Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: technology

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jokers

July 27th 2007 01:32

A joker in the hand is worth much more in the bush

When I was teenager I came up with a brilliant idea. Forget collecting coins, stamps, dolls, ties, matchbooks, model fucking airplanes … I was gonna collect “jokers”. I was gonna ruin as many packs of playing cards as I could by stealing the jokers from them and displaying them in a portfolio using the face of one to exhibit the joker itself, and the back of the other to represent the generic design of the playing card.

I never followed through. I was too lazy. I collected perhaps a dozen and then realized it was too much hard work, plus I’d no doubt piss too many people off. I wasn’t gonna spend my life searching high and low for obscure makes of playing cards. Fuck that.

The most accepted explanation for the name and the role of the joker is that it originates from the game of euchre. In this game two of the jacks were named right and left bower. In the 1860s in the USA the "Best Bower" was introduced. Bower is a corruption of the German word "Bauer".

Originally the game of euchre or juker was played in the Alsace, where it was the common name for "Jack". The best bower card evolved into the joker from the American version of euchre during the 1870s and arrived in Europe along with the game of poker in the 1880s. It was gradually incorporated into the French-suited packs with 52 cards.

And the one that tickles my wicked fancy the most? I’m partial to the black and white jester’s face for traditional simplicity and the one with the ladies of leisure applying make-up arouses me so, but for sheer chutzpah "Sailor Jerry" rings my bell ... heh heh, aloha!

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Posted By: Raoul Duke - Category: graphics

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