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 epidemiologistâs behest. The John Snowâs 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.
âDoug Lawrence spies a local tool-hire company offering âvarious chemical free cleaning fluidsâ.
He suspects âthey all must be very similarââ
Easy as A, B, CâŠ
ONE more for the retronym store: Elizabeth Belben says âI am surprised that no one has mentioned âalphabetâ, created from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta.â
Elizabeth agrees with Glenn Pure that âemâ and âenâ are handy words in Scrabble (24 June), and adds âin my family we not only allow names of letters in our own alphabet (including both âzedâ and âzeeâ, but also Greek letters such as âmuâ and ânuâ. However, after I played âalephâ we agreed to be cautious about using the names of Hebrew letters until we could agree on how to spell them.â
Mutts, nuts
AND straying into the margins, Paul Allen writes to say that as well as being dashes, âenâ and âemâ were used to measure lengths across the page. âIn the noisy environment of a printing works, it is very hard to discriminate between the sound of âemâ and âenâ,â says Paul, âso printers invented alternative names for them.â To make it easier to tell them apart, an en space was referred to as a ânutâ and an em space as a âmuttâ.
âBefore you ask,â says Paul. âI 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.â
Hidden woman
PAUL DORMER writes: âIf 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.â This apparently stems, he says, from the American caricaturist Al Hirschfeldâs habit of hiding his daughterâs 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). âWhen, long ago, I was at school the atomic number of lithium was 3,â says Keith Parkin, âalbeit with a common isotope having a mass number of 7.â
Fire it up
PREVIOUSLY Jake Burger related the retronym Esso, stemming from the letters of Standard Oil (13 May). âMeanwhile, Kuwait Petroleum International has done quite the opposite,â says Dan Salmons, âand trades as Q8. Perhaps we ought to call these petronyms.â
Es-no
NOT so fast, says Anton Fletcher, who thinks some retrospective correction is in order. âA previous contributor suggested that the oil company Esso is derived from the first letters of Standard Oil spoken aloud. This is questionable, as the companyâs full name was Eastern States Standard Oil.â
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 â 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 â a German-style clipping of âEnergy Companyâ.
Tall order
FEEDBACK reader Mick Martin previously found himself on a bus seemingly bound for the infinitely accommodating Hilbert Hotel (1 July). âThis reminded me of a company in Ilford who might be capable of creating such a thing,â writes Steve Ingamells, ââ.
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 â the authoritative text on Australian English â sends Pierre Du Cray its word of the day. Thus he discovers its definition of âwelterweightâ is: âA boxer weighing between 635 and 67 kg (in the amateur ranks) and 63503 and 66678 kg (in the professional ranks).â That ought to tip the balance in their favour.
Relative success
REFLECTING on our colleague who was told he âcould already have wonâ an imagination-sized chocolate hamper (20 May), Pete Goddard has a suggestion. âMany companies chose to disappoint the vast majority in this way, given the small likelihood of success,â he says. âSurely it would be better to send a message saying that âyou may already have not wonâ, and anticipate the unbounded joy when the hamper of whatever size arrives!â