ETYMOLOGY OF WORDS AND PHRASES, PART 11

Murphy’s Law

If anything can go wrong, it will. This expression appears to have originated in the mid-1900’s in the U.S. Air Force. According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle of March 16, 1978 (cited in the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang), during some testing at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949, Captain Ed Murphy, an engineer, was frustrated with a malfunctioning part and said about the technician responsible, “If there is any to do things wrong, he will.” Within weeks his statement was referred to as “Murphy’s Law,” and by about 1960, it had entered the civilian vocabulary and was attached to just about any mistake or mishap. In succeeding decades, it became a cliche.

If the shoe fits, wear it!

If something applies to you, accept it. This expression is a version of an older term, if the cap fits, put it on, which originally meant a fool’s cap and dates from the early 18th century. This version is rarely heard today. It’s replacement by a shoe probably came about owing to the increased popularity of the Cinderella story and, indeed, an early appearance in print, in Clyde Fitch’s play “The Climbers” (1901), states, “If the slipper fits,”

Pennies from heaven

The first time that the expression “Pennies from heaven” came into the public consciousness was on the release of the 1936 film, starring Bing Crosby. It wasn’t coined by the film’s writers though, having been used in print a few years earlier, in Abraham Burstein’s book “Ghetto Messenger,” 1928.

A country mile

The complexity of what a mile actually is, or more to the point was when this phrase was coined, is more confusing than enlightening. Each country that has used a mile as a measurement of distance, has defined it differently from all the others, and most of them have changed the measurement at some point. What may help is a look at some documentary evidence. An early expression in print is in a poem by the Cornish seaman Frederick de Kruger – “The Villager’s Tale,”1829:

“The travelling stage had set me down
Within a mile of yon church-town;
‘T was long indeed, a country mile.
But well I knew each field or style;”

It’s reasonable to assume that the expression originated in the UK. The expression crossed the Atlantic in the 19th century and is still widely used there. Hardly any early 20th century report of a baseball game fail to use the expression when a ball is hit out of the ground. The expression is used in pretty well every English-speaking country and many have their own variants of it. People also speak of a ‘Welsh mile’, ‘a Scottish mile’, ‘Irish’, Dutch’, ‘German’ and so on.

Back to the drawing board

This term has been used since WWII as a jocular acceptance that a design has failed and that a new one is needed. It gained common currency quite quickly and began appearing in US newspapers by 1947, as here in theWalla Walla Union-Bulletin, Washington, December 1947: “Grid injuries for the season now closing suggest anew that nature get back to the drawing board, as the human knee is not only nothing to look at but also a piece of bum engineering.”

A drawing board is, of course, an architect’s or draughtsman’s table, used for the preparation of designs or blueprints. The phrase originated as the caption to a cartoon produced by Peter Arno (Curtis Arnoux Peters, Jr.), for the New Yorker magazine, in 1941. The cartoon shows various military men and ground crew racing toward a crashed plane, and a designer, with a roll of plans under his arm, walking away saying, “Well, back to the old drawing board.”

Know the ropes

The first known use of the expression in print is a figurative one, that is, one where no actual rope is being referred to. It comes in James Skene’s travel mémoire “Italian Journey,” 1802: “I am a stranger and… I beg you to show me how I ought to proceed… You know the ropes and can give me good advice.”

Clearly, ‘know the ropes’ must have been in use in some context where real rope was being used before Skene wrote his diary, but it seems that no one wrote it down. The first printed example of ‘knowing the ropes’ which alludes to a context where actual rope would be present is in Richard H. Dana Jr’s “Two years before the mast,” 1840: “The captain, who had been on the coast before and ‘knew the ropes,’ took the steering oar.”

That clearly has a seafaring connection, although it appears to be using the figurative meaning of the phrase, that is, ‘the captain was knowledgeable’, but without any specific allusion to ropes.

Bag and baggage

The phrase is of military origin. ‘Bag and baggage’ referred to the entire property of an army and that of the soldiers in it. To ‘retire bag and baggage’ meant to beat an honourable retreat, surrendering nothing. These days, to ‘leave bag and baggage’ means just to clear out of a property, leaving nothing behind.

The phrase is ancient enough that the earliest citation isn’t in contemporary English. Rymer’s”Foedera,” 1422, has: “Cum armaturis bonis bogeis, baggagiis”. The earliest reference in English that most would understand is in John Berners’ ‘The firste volum of John Froissart’, 1525: “We haue with vs all our bagges and baggages that we haue wonne by armes.” Shakespeare later used the phrase in “As You Like It,” 1600:

“Let vs make an honorable retreit, though not with bagge and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage.”

Yada-yada

This phrase is a modern-day equivalent of ‘blah, blah, blah’ (which is early 20th century). It is American and emerged during or just after the Second World War. It was preceded by various alternative forms – ‘yatata, yatata’, ‘yaddega, yaddega’ etc. One of the earliest of these is from an advertisement in an August 1948 edition of the Long Beach Independent:

“Yatata … yatata … the talk is all about Chatterbox, Knox’s own little Tomboy Cap with the young, young come-on look!” All of those versions, and including ‘yada yada’, probably took the lead from existing words meaning incessant talk – yatter, jabber, chatter.

Yellow belly

The term ‘yellow-belly’ is an archetypal American term, but began life in England in the late 18th century as a mildly derogatory nick-name. Grose’s “A Provincial Glossary,” with a collection of local proverbs, and popular superstitions, 1787, lists it: “Yellow bellies. This is an appellation given to persons born in the Fens, who, it is jocularly said, have yellow bellies, like their eels.”

The usage wasn’t limited to the Lincolnshire Fens. In the same year,”Knight’s Quarterly Magazine” (London) published an account of life in the the Staffordshire Collieries. It began by describing the region as “a miserable tract of country commencing a few miles beyond Birmingham” and went on to recount a lady’s attempts at guessing the nick-name of a local resident: ‘Lie-a-bed, Cock-eye, Pig-tail and finally Yellow-belly.’

Up shit creek without a paddle

This slang phrase, like most street slang, is difficult to date and determine the origin of precisely. What we can say is that it, or at least the ‘shit creek’ part of it was known in the USA in the 1860s as it appeared in the transcript of the 1868 Annual report of the [US] Secretary of War, in a section that included reports from districts of South Carolina: “Our men have put old [Abraham] Lincoln up shit creek.”

In Lincoln’s day, as now, ‘shit creek’ wasn’t a real place, just a figurative way of describing somewhere unpleasant; somewhere one wouldn’t want to be. The ‘without a paddle’ ending is just an intensifier, added by later wags for additional effect. This dates from the middle of the 20th century. The American novelist John Dos Passos used the phrase in”Adventures of a Young Man,” 1939:

“They left the store ready to cry from worry. It was dark; they had a hard time finding their way through the woods to the place where they’d left the canoe. The mosquitos ate the hides off them. ‘Well, we’re up shit creek without any paddle’.”

Etymology, Part 9

1. Avocado (Origin: Nahuatl)

The word avocado comes from Spanish aguacate, which in turn comes from the Nahuatl ahuacatl, meaning testicle. Surprised? Perhaps, but the more one thinks about it, the less surprising it gets — they do rather resemble a man’s soft spot, and this resemblance becomes even more pronounced when you see avocado duos dangling clumsily from trees.

Nahuatl is the language of the Aztecs and is still spoken by approximately 1.5 million people native to Mexico and other parts of Central America. Avocado isn’t the only Nahuatl word that has been borrowed by the English language; chili, chocolate, tomato and guacamole were also coined by speakers of Nahuatl. Indeed, the mole of guacamole is derived from the Nahuatl molli, which means sauce. It’s a good thing the origin of this word has been obfuscated on its way into the English language. Otherwise, guacamole (Nahuatl: ahuacamolli) probably wouldn’t be as popular as it is.

2. Cappuccino (Origin: Italian/German)

Next time you’re trying to flirt with someone at your local coffee shop, impress them with this whimsical anecdote about the origin of the word cappuccino:

it’s the diminutive form of the word cappuccio, which means “hood” in Italian. Wondering what the link is between a (little) hood and a cappuccino? One must look no further than the Capuchin Monks, whose hooded habits were a dark, oak brown similar to the color of a good cappuccino.

The first recorded use of the word was in 1790 in Vienna, Austria. Wilhelm Tissot jotted down a recipe for an exquisite Kapuzinerkaffee (lit. “Capuchin coffee”), which was rather different in constitution to its modern-day successor, containing sugar, cream and egg yolks. The current, somewhat simplified recipe now consists of espresso and foamed milk, but there are still parts of Austria where you can order a good ol’ Kapuziner.

3. Disaster (Origin: Italian/Greek)

The word disaster has been passed around Europe like a hot potato. The English version is most closely tied to the French désastre, which is derived from the Old Italian disastro, itself derived from Greek. The pejorative prefix dis- and aster- (star) can be interpreted as bad star, or an ill-starred event. The ancient Greeks were fascinated by astronomy and the cosmos, and believed wholly in the influence of celestial bodies on terrestrial life. For them, a disaster was a particular kind of calamity, the causes of which could be attributed to an unfavorable and uncontrollable alignment of planets. It’s therefore interesting to note that the strict, modern English definition of disaster explicitly stipulates that a disaster is human-made, or the consequence of human failure.

4. Handicap (Origin: English)

This word originates from the 17th-century English trading game “hand-in-cap.” The game involved two players and an arbitrator, or umpire. The players would present two possessions they would like to trade. The umpire would then decide whether the possessions were of equal value or not, and if they weren’t, would calculate the discrepancy. The owner of the lesser object would make up the difference with money, and then all three participants would place forfeit money into a hat. If the two players agreed with the umpire’s valuation, they would remove their hands from the hat with their palm open. If they disagreed, they would pull out their hands clenched in a fist. If both agreed or disagreed, the umpire would get the forfeit money, while if one agreed and the other didn’t, the player who approved the transaction would receive the forfeit money.

Over time, hand-in-cap came to be known as “handicap” and started to be used to refer to any kind of equalization or balancing of a contest or game. The word handicap is still used in many sports today, such as golf and horse racing. Indeed, horse racing was probably the first sport to introduce the term in order to define an umpire’s decision to add more weight to a horse so that it runs equally to its competitors. This notion of being burdened or put at a disadvantage was carried over to describe people with a disability in the early 20th century. By the mid-20th century, it was widely used, but it has since fallen out of the popular lexicon.

5. Jeans (Origin: Italian)

Although jeans are quintessentially American, and their invention is commonly attributed to Jacob W. Davis and Levi Strauss, the etymology of the popular garment is actually of European origin. The fabric Strauss used for his patented, mass-produced trousers was first produced in Genoa, Italy and Nimes, France. Why’s that significant?

Well, the French word for Genoa is Gênes, and the name “jeans” is likely an anglicization of the material’s city of origin. Similarly, the word “denim” most likely comes from de Nimes, meaning “from Nimes” in French. Although we often talk about denim jeans nowadays, the two materials actually differed. Denim was coarser, more durable and of higher quality than the toughened cotton corduroy manufactured in Genoa. Workers in Northern Italy were sporting jeans as early as the 17th century, long before post-war American subcultures picked up on them as a fashion accessory.

6. Salary (Origin: Latin)

The word “salary” comes from the Latin salarium, meaning “salt money.” In ancient times, salt was used for many important things and was often referred to as “white gold.” It could be used as an antiseptic to treat wounds — (in Romance languages one can recognize a connection between sal/sale, meaning “salt,” and salud/saude/salute, meaning “health”) — and to preserve food; also as a method of payment in Greece and Rome.

As far back as the Egyptian Empire, laborers were paid with salt that they could use to preserve their food. The Roman Empire continued using this form of payment and it took on the name “salary” for “that which was given to workers at the end of the working month,” which adds a new dimension to the notion of a company’s solvency.

7. Trivial (Origin: Latin)

“Trivial” originates from the Latin word trivium, which was used to mean “a place where three roads meet” (tri- meaning “three,” and -vium from via, meaning “road”). A trivium gained the connotation of being an open, public place — a mini agora— where people from across society’s technicolor spectrum could relax, chat and simply coexist. The adjective trivialis was a derivative of trivium and came to mean “vulgar, ordinary, of little importance, common and contemporary,” and the English adjective trivial carries much of this definition to this day: tired, ordinary, commonplace; of little use, import, consequence or significance.

8. Whiskey (Origin: Gaelic)

Medieval monks called it aqua vitae, meaning “life water.” The expression was transformed into uisce beatha when it was transferred to Gaelic. As time passed and the word was anglicized, uisce evolved into uige, usque, and then uisky, which bears an obvious and close resemblance to “whiskey.”

You may have noticed that you can spell the drink two different ways — “whiskey” and “whisky.” Some people believe the extra “e” was added by Irish and American distilleries to differentiate their higher quality whiskeys during a period when Scottish whisky had a bad reputation.

Scotch was also introduced to denominate a Scottish whisky, and the word “whiskey” has been adopted in other countries for quite different reasons. In some South American countries, it’s used as an alternative to “cheese” to encourage people to smile when being photographed. How and why we chose “cheese,” and why the South Americans chose “whiskey” is a story for another time.

Identification of the Desert-Bred Arabian

Header pic lists the ancient Classic Egyptian bloodlines of my Saba Kharazaarouf, which was his full registered name. His sire was Zaaris (dapple gray) and his dam was Kharoufa (chestnut); there was also strong black in his bloodlines, and my ultimate dream Arab was always a black – not that I didn’t dearly love my Z, mind you! But we hoped to get a black foal from him. He shared bloodlines with Cass Ole, the horse from “The Black” movies. I have a pic of HB standing on a step stool next to Cass Ole in his paddock – we went to a Lippizzan show at the Capital Center outside DC and he was in the lobby.)

When I posted some Arabian horse pics recently, I commented briefly about the physical characteristics and was going to go into a detailed explanation of all the others, then a little voice came to mind: “That would make a great open!” Yes, Pat – I hear you! LOL

So, here it is! These are all stock pics and all of the specific descriptions I am using are for this first picture. I’m going to test you to see if you can point out the similarities in the others!😉😉😉 Open the pic in a new tab and enlarge it, if you need to.

This is the pic of the blood bay Arabian I posted – spitting image of my Z:

Let’s start with the head: Look at the top of the ears, which are a scimitar shape, moving down to the forehead – see the bulge? Note the very broad jaws, rather short head, the foreward-and-wide-set, big eyes, quickly tapering to a dish-shaped, slender face and nose, ending with the huge nostrils (which is why they are called “Wind Drinkers”), yet a small, almost dainty mouth.

OK….moving on….go back to the top of the head/neck. Note that it is a short neck with a dramatic arch, set high into the shoulders, which are broad and well-muscled, set into the short barrel of the body. The concave profile and flagging tail are not the only peculiar features of the Arabian. Many also have one less lumbar vertebrae, pair of ribs, and tail bone than other horse breeds. Also note what is called the “tabletop back,” i.e., straight and level, with the tail set high up into the spine.

Back to the front: note the wide-set front legs, very well developed chest, straight and unblemished legs, wide and substantial knees, slender, almost fragile looking cannon bones (main bottom leg bone), clean, small ankle, with a short, straight, upright pastern (between the ankles and the hooves).

The knees of young Arabians do not “close” as early as other breeds. There is a gap in the center of the knee that does not fuse until around the age of 4. This is why it is wise not to do any strenuous training that will stress the knees until then; when Arabians age, the knees are often where the damage shows up first. Nine times out of ten, it is because they started training too soon. Trained and cared for properly, Arabians can continue to thrive and perform well into their 30’s!

Even newborn’s show the basic conformation – that nose would be called an “extreme” tea cup dish face)

As to the hooves of desert-bred Arabs, in a natural setting they rarely need a farrier to trim their feet. Given a “normal” pasture/grazing area with the occasional stones/rocks/gravel, and their clean, proper conformation, they wear off naturally. Under normal life, barring stepping on something and injuring the heel or frog of the foot or being out in wet, muddy ground for an extended period (which can cause a disease called “thrush”) or being a “working” horse, they don’t require intervention.

I had my Z for 17 years and not once did I ever have to call a farrier. That entire time, a farrier looked at his feet twice – I wanted to make sure Z was good and, since they were there anyway, they agreed to check him out. First guy, said nope, doesn’t need anything. Second guy looked, shook his head, dropped Z’s hoof in disgust, and said, “These damned Arabs!!! I’d go broke with just them!!!”

Note the difference in the conformation, specifically of the hooves, between the Arab and this one. You can clearly see the dropped heels, the long toes, the slightly slanted pastern. Of course, you can also see the difference in conformation overall.

I can’t identify which breed this is but it seems to be a pony of some type.

Most people not in the horse world have never heard the phrase “showing at liberty.” That means the horses are not on leads and are running free, oftentimes without even a halter. This is a video of a woman with her Arabians working at liberty:

Another Arabian show event that I always loved is the Costume competition!!!

OSS Agent Julia Child

“The answer to the threat of man-eating sharks, the scavengers which infest all tropical waters of the world, was announced here today…” (quote from draft OSS/ERE Press Release on the development of a shark repellent; April 13, 1943)

It was the height of World War II and reports of shark attacks consumed the media. At least twenty US Naval officers had been attacked by sharks since the start of the war, raising alarm amongst sailors and airmen who increasingly found themselves conducting dangerous missions over shark-infested waters. To boost morale, the Joint Chiefs of Staff requested the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, CIA’s predecessor) to lead the hunt to find a shark repellent.

Julia McWilliams (better known by her married name, Julia Child) joined the newly-created OSS in 1942 in search of adventure. This was years before she became the culinary icon of French cuisine that she is known for today. In fact, at this time, Julia was self-admittedly a disaster in the kitchen. Perhaps all the more fitting that she soon found herself helping to develop a recipe that even a shark would refuse to eat.

Searching for Shark Repellent:

The search for a shark repellent began in July 1942, just a month after the OSS was formed. The Emergency Rescue Equipment (ERE) coordinating committee was created to keep the Armed Services and various government agencies from duplicating efforts when developing equipment to help rescue military members from dangerous situations.

Housed within the OSS until late 1943, the ERE Special Projects division was headed by Captain Harold J. Coolidge, a scientist from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, and Dr. Henry Field, Curator of the Field Museum of Natural History. Both men were avid explorers, having led expeditions into arctic, desert, and tropical regions. Coolidge had previously organized and accompanied the well-known Kelly-Roosevelt expedition to Indo-China and had a strong working-knowledge about the necessary equipment for survival in the arctic, while Field had led several anthropological expeditions into the deserts of the Middle East.

Coolidge and Field sent a memo to OSS Director General “Wild Bill” Donovan and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, proposing a plan for “unifying and coordinating the work of different agencies in the field of rescue.” Thus the ERE was born, and one of its several projects was the development of shark repellent.

Julia Child worked for Coolidge for a year in 1943 as an Executive Assistant.

“I must say we had lots of fun,” Julia told fellow OSS Officer, Betty McIntosh, during an interview for Betty’s book on OSS women, Sisterhood of Spies. “We designed rescue kits and other agent paraphernalia. I understand the shark repellent we developed is being used today for downed space equipment—strapped around it so the sharks won’t attack when it lands in the ocean.”

Shark Repellent Found:

After trying over 100 different substances—including common poisons—the researchers found several promising possibilities: extracts from decayed shark meat, organic acids, and several copper salts, including copper sulphate and copper acetate. After a year of field tests, the most effective repellent was copper acetate.

According to several memos from mid-to-late 1943, bait tests showed copper acetate to be over 60% effective in deterring shark bites. Other field tests showed even more promising results. Unfortunately, the copper acetate was deemed completely ineffective in deterring attacks from the other carnivorous fish of concern to the Armed Forces: barracudas and piranhas.

To create the repellent, copper acetate was mixed with black dye, which was then formed into a little disk-shaped “cake” that smelled like a dead shark when released into the water. These cakes could be stored in small 3-inch boxes with metal screens that allowed the repellent to be spread either manually or automatically when submerged in water. The box could be attached to a life jacket or belt, or strapped to a person’s leg or arm, and was said to keep sharks away for 6 to 7 hours.

Skepticism, Shark Chaser, and Shark-toons:

Despite the promising results of initial field tests, the Navy remained skeptical. In December 1943, Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics Edward Howell sent a memo to the Navy Research Department stating that although “slight repellence was shown in bait tests” with small sharks, it was the Bureau’s opinion “that it is illogical to expect that such effect as was shown in normal feeding behavior would give any promise of affecting the voracious behavior of the few species known to have attacked man.” Even Coolidge himself noted in personal correspondence to one of the lead investigators/ scientists on the project, Douglas Burden, in May 1943 that “…none of us expected that the chemical would really function when the animals were stirred up in a mob behavior pattern.”

Nevertheless, the existence of the repellent was soon picked up by the media, and word spread among the various branches of the Armed Forces. Requests for the repellent came pouring in from the Army and Coast Guard. Even if the repellent wasn’t guaranteed to drive sharks away, it would at least provide possible deterrence against bites and have a huge effect on seamen and pilot morale.

The Navy did end up issuing the shark repellent based on the original OSS recipe—also known as “Shark Chaser”—until the 1970s, and it was rumored, as Julia told Betty, that the repellent was even used to protect NASA space equipment when it landed in the ocean. This part of the story, however, is difficult to confirm with documentary evidence.

The Navy didn’t stop with shark repellent. Shark attacks, although extremely frightening, were relatively rare occurrences. To help dispel the myths surrounding shark attacks, the Naval Aviation Training Division in March 1944 issued a training guide based on the ERE research into sharks. Called, “Shark Sense,” the guide was filled with facts about sharks, advice on how to handle yourself when stranded in shark infested waters, and of course, cartoons.

* The entire collection of records related to the OSS and ERE shark repellent program, as well as Julia Child’s OSS service, are available at the US National Archives and Records Administration.

NATURAL CHILDBIRTH – Part 2: Home Birth

Thankfully, we were able to get the military to agree to pay for a home birth. I doubt if that would happen today. Family Birth Associates helped us organize everything. They introduced us to our midwife, who insisted I participate in Lamaze classes, which teach you how to breathe during each stage of labor, among other things. If the Father is available, they are also required to take the classes to learn the proper way to support the Mother. She gave me the name and number of an RN who conducted the classes and would help supervise the birth.

We attended the class every week and she routinely took blood tests – when I was low on iron, she directed me to eat liver and raisins, and I began taking FemIron. I made it to the last critical class before going into labor.

We had everything arranged – our closest friends, Rick and Linda, agreed to come and help direct things and support us. We brought in a hospital bed and set up speakers to play our favorite music. IIRC, it was “Jonathan Seagull.”

My midwife kept calling me to say, “Listen, I’ve got someone who is trying to get their Midwife license and they need to witness a live birth. Can they come for the birth?” Hospitals prevented anyone but the husband from being present and they do NOT like midwives! One of them was a Jesuit priest! We had ten people coming, in addition to the midwife and the RN.

The Wednesday following the last critical class, I woke up early in the morning to find my water had broken. We immediately called the RN and midwife, as well as the Jesuit priest, who had requested a call. As the day went on, my labor would start and stop, start and stop. We tried everything – herbal teas, an enema, a warm bath, jogging, running up and down the stairs. At one point, she even told us “You know, an orgasm wouldn’t hurt! No penetration, tho!” and sent us upstairs.

Nope – that didn’t work either. About 7 pm, they were listening to her heartbeat through a contraction and heard it dip, which indicated the cord was around her neck – my labor would probably never progress. During a contraction, pressure was exerted on the umbilical cord. This caused her body to secrete adrenalin, which then signalled MY body to stop the contractions. She left it up to us on the decision to go to the hospital or not.

We conferred and decided it was not worth endangering our baby’s life, but we did NOT want to go to WR. The hospital at Andrews Air Force Base was the only military hospital in the area that had a Midwifery Program, and my midwife happened to know the female Colonel Director……and she just so happened to be on duty that night.

She called and arranged it for us and off we went to Andrews. At that time, they had begun using internal monitors – they literally screw it into the babie’s scalp!!!! Since my water had already broken, they wanted to do that and we said absolutely NOT!!!! They also wanted to shave me – nope, not happening! The word went out all through the hospital that this crazy couple had tried to have their baby at home. Horrors!!! “It’s not done!”

They fitted me with an external monitor across my belly but Heather kept moving so they had a hard time tracking her heartbeat. They tried again to talk me into an internal monitor so the attendant didn’t have to stay at my bedside every minute. My reply? “Tough shit – just do your damned job!!!”

They hit me up with a very high dose of pitocin, a synthetic oxytocin, which triggers the contractions. Due to that high dose, when Heather started coming, it was FAST. They wanted to cut me so I didn’t rip or tear – I said no but my hubby freaked and I was too tired to fight it. He said they used what looked like a tree lopper! That was NOT a pleasant sound, let me tell you! It was a very loud “POP!” I had no pain killers whatsoever throughout and did not even feel it when they cut me. The cord was, indeed, wrapped around her neck so as soon as her head came through, they cut the cord.

Heather was finally born around 1:30 in the morning and, altho we both ran a low fever for a time, all was well. She was tiny – 5 lbs 6 oz – but otherwise healthy. She was 5 lbs 1 oz when we took her home and was the ONLY baby in the nursery who was not jaundiced (caused by bilirubens).

I was in the hospital until Friday; when I left, I wore my regular jeans – that extra 30 lbs? Gone! The following Sunday, we took her with us to the Lamaze class and everyone oohed and aahed. Five days old:

I bathed her myself for the most part until one day my hubby wanted to do it. The idiot took a soaked washcloth and plopped in on the top of her head – of course, the water poured down her face and scared her to death! I refrained from hitting him, miraculously! I began a campaign to rid her of that fear by bringing her into the bath tub with me. Peaceful and unfraid, enjoying the sensation of floating! I succeeded – she was never scared of water again!!!

The Shelby Light Bulb

Dangling from the ceiling of a California firehouse is a bulb that’s burned for 989,000 hours – nearly 113 years. Since its first installation in 1901, it has rarely been turned off, has outlived every firefighter from the era, and has been proclaimed the “Eternal Light” by General Electric experts and physicists around the world.

Tracing the origins of the bulb — known as the Centennial Light — raises questions as to whether it is a miracle of physics, or a sign that new bulbs are weaker. Its longevity still remains a mystery.

A Brief History of the Light Bulb

Thomas Edison worked on improving carbon filaments. By 1880, through the utilization of a higher vacuum and the development of an entire integrated system of electric lighting, he improved his bulb’s life to 1,200 hours and began producing the invention at a rate of 130,000 bulbs per year.

In the midst of this innovation, the man who would build the world’s longest-lasting light bulb was born.

The Shelby Electric Company

Adolphe Chaillet

Adolphe Chaillet was bred to make exceptional light bulbs. Born in 1867, Chaillet was constantly exposed to the burgeoning light industry in Paris, France. By age 11, he began accompanying his father, a Swedish immigrant and owner of a small light bulb company, to work. He learned quickly, garnered an interest in physics, and went on to graduate from both German and French science academies. In 1896, after spending some time designing filaments at a large German energy company, Chaillet moved to the United States.

Chaillet briefly worked for General Electric, then, riding on his prestige as a genius electrician, secured $100,000 (about $2.75 million in 2014 dollars) from investors and opened his own light bulb factory, Shelby Electric Company. While his advancements in filament technology were well-known, Chaillet still had to prove to the American public that his bulbs were the brightest and longest-lasting. In a risky maneuver, he staged a “forced life” test before the public: The leading light bulbs on the market were placed side-by-side with his, and burned at a gradually increased voltage. An 1897 volume of Western Electrician recounts what happened next:

Chaillet’s original patent:

“Lamp after lamp of various makes burned out and exploded until the laboratory was lighted alone by the Shelby lamp — not one of the Shelby lamps having been visibly injured by the extreme severity of this conclusive test.”

Shelby claimed that its bulbs lasted 30% longer and burned 20% brighter than any other lamp in the world. The company experienced explosive success: According to Western Electrician, they had “received so many orders by the first of March [1897], that it was necessary to begin running nights and to increase the size of the factory.” By the end of the year, output doubled from 2,000 to 4,000 lamps per day, and “the difference in favor of Shelby lamps was so apparent that no doubt was left in the minds of even the most skeptical.”

Over the next decade, Shelby continued to roll out new products, but as the light bulb market expanded and new technologies emerged (tungsten filaments), the company found itself unable to make the massive monetary investment required to compete. In 1914, they were bought out by General Electric and Shelby bulbs were discontinued.

The Centennial Light

Seventy-five years later, in 1972, a fire marshall in Livermore, California informed a local paper of an oddity: A naked, Shelby light bulb hanging from the ceiling of his station had been burning continuously for decades. The bulb had long been a legend in the firehouse, but nobody knew for certain how long it had been burning, or where it came from. Mike Dunstan, a young reporter with the Tri-Valley Herald, began to investigate — and what he found was truly spectacular.

Tracing the bulb’s origins through dozens of oral narratives and written histories, Dunstan determined it had been purchased by Dennis Bernal of the Livermore Power and Water Co. (the city’s first power company) sometime in the late 1890s, then donated to the city’s fire department in 1901, when Bernal sold the company. As only 3% of American homes were lit by electricity at the time, the Shelby bulb was a hot commodity.

In its early life, the bulb, known as the “Centennial Light,” was moved around several times: It hung in a hose cart for a few months, then, after a brief stint in a garage and City Hall, it was secured at Livermore’s fire station. “It was left on 24 hours-a-day to break up the darkness so the volunteers could find their way,” then-Fire Chief Jack Baird told Dunstan. “It’s part of another era in the city’s past [and] it’s served its purpose well.”

Though Baird acknowledged that it had once been turned off for “about a week when President Roosevelt’s WPA people remodeled the fire house back in the 30s,” Guinness World Records confirmed that the hand-blown 30-watt bulb, at 71 years old, was “the oldest burning bulb in the world.” A slew of press followed, which saw it featured in Ripley’s Believe it or Not, and on major news networks.

Aside from the 1930s fire house remodel, the bulb has only lost power a few times — most notably in 1976, when it was moved to Livermore’s new Station #6. Accompanied by a “full police and fire truck escort,” the bulb arrived with a large crowd eager to see it regain power, but, as recalled by Deputy Fire Chief Tom Brandall, “there was a little scare:”

“We got to new location and the city electrician installed the light bulb and made connection. It took about 22-23 min, and [the bulb] didn’t come back on. The crowd gasped. The city electrician grabbed the switch and jiggled it; it went on!”

Once settled, the bulb was placed under video surveillance to ensure it was alive at all hours; in subsequent years, a live “Bulb Cam” was put online. At one point, the bulb’s groupies (9,000 followers on FB) received another scare when it lost light.

At first it was suspected that the light had finally met its demise, but after nine and half hours, it was discovered that the bulb’s uninterrupted power supply had failed; once the power supply was bypassed, the bulb’s light returned. The 113-year-old bulb had outlived its power supply, just as it had outlived three surveillance cameras.

Today, the bulb still shines, though, as one retired fire volunteer once said, “it don’t give much light” (only about 4 watts). Owning a frail piece of history comes with great responsibility: Livermore firefighters treat the little bulb like a porcelain doll. “Nobody wants that darn bulb to go out on their watch,” once said former fire chief Stewart Gary. “If that thing goes out while I’m still chief it will be a career’s worth of bad luck.”

“They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To”

Everyone from Mythbusters to NPR has speculated on the reasons for the Shelby bulb’s longevity. The answer, in short, is that it remains a mystery – Chaillet’s patent left much of his process unexplained.

In 2007, Annapolis physics professor Debora M. Katz purchased an old Shelby bulb of the same vintage and make as the Centennial Light and conducted a series of experiments on it to determine its differentiation from modern bulbs. She reported her findings:

“I found the width of the filament. I compared it to the width of a modern bulb’s filament. It turns out that a modern bulb’s filament is a coil, of about 0.08 mm diameter, made up of a coiled wire about 0.01 mm thick. I didn’t know that until I looked under a microscope. The width of the Shelby bulb’s 100-year-old filament is about the same as the width of the coiled modern bulb’s filament, 0.08 mm.”

The Lightbulb Cartel

Light bulb companies like Shelby once prided themselves on longevity – so much so, that the durability of their products was the central focus of marketing campaigns. But by the mid-1920s, business attitudes began to shift, and a new rhetoric prevailed: “A product that refuses to wear out is a tragedy of business.” This line of thought, termed “planned obsolescence,” endorsed intentionally shortening a product’s lifespan to entice swifter replacement.

In 1924, Osram, Philips, General Electric, and other major electric companies met and formed the Phoebus Cartel under the public guise that they were cooperating to standardize light bulbs. Instead, they purportedly began to engage in planned obsolescence. To achieve this the companies agreed to limit the life expectancy of light bulbs at 1,000 hours, less than Edison’s bulbs had achieved (1,200 hrs) decades before; any company that produced a bulb exceeding 1,000 hours in life would be fined.

Until disbanding during World War II, the cartel supposedly halted research, preventing the advancement of the longer-lasting light bulb for nearly twenty years.

Whether or not planned obsolescence is still on the agenda of light bulb manufacturers today is highly debatable, and there exists no definitive proof. In any case, incandescent bulbs are being phased out worldwide: Since Brazil and Venezuela began the trend in 2005, many countries have followed suit (European Union, Switzerland, and Australia in 2009; Argentina and Russia in 2012; the United States, Canada, Mexico, Malaysia, and South Korea in 2014).

As more efficient technologies have surfaced (halogen, LED, compact fluorescent lights, magnetic induction lights), the old filament-based bulbs have become a relic of the past. But perched up in the white ceiling of Livermore’s Station #6, the granddaddy of old-school bulbs is as relevant as ever, and refuses to bite the dust.

The Mysterious Case of the 113-Year-Old Light Bulb

Source document written in 2014.