Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into History Read online

  The first child born on the Mayflower was named Oceanus Hopkins.

  WEAR COMPUTERS CAME FROM

  * * *

  What do your clothes and your computer have in common? Lots of history—and apparently a future, too.

  About 7,000 years go, somebody invented the loom system, which makes cloth using threads attached to bars. About 5,000 years ago, someone in Asia developed the abacus system, which allows someone to perform calculations by sliding beads along wires attached to a frame. In the 19th century these two simple machines for weaving and counting were combined. . .and that changed the world.

  A WARPED CHILDHOOD

  Joseph Marie Jacquard grew up in France in the mid-18th century. At the age of ten, he was put to work in the weaving trade. His job was to lift certain warp threads on a weaving loom. Watching the loom, he could see that to weave fabrics, when some of the warp threads strung on the loom were raised, others stayed down. A shuttle pulled a weft thread through the space in between. Then different warp threads were raised, and the process was repeated. The order of raised threads created a pattern in the fabric. With fancy fabrics, the order got complicated.

  PROGRESS LOOMS ON THE HORIZON

  The process was too complicated and boring for young Jacquard. There had to be a way to make cloth more easily. When Jacquard was grown, he introduced a loom that did the job automatically, with punched cards that gave his loom instructions. Each warp thread was connected to a separate metal needle. With a punched card in place, only the needles corresponding to the holes could move—meaning only certain warp threads were raised. A different card controlled each group of threads to be raised, and the cards came around in a continuous loop, repeating the pattern again and again. Apparently a lot of people were as bored by manual weaving as Jacquard. By 1812, he had a medal and a pension from Napoleon, and the automatic loom was in widespread use.

  Before he died, Lenin attacked the despotism and bureaucracy of Communism.

  MATHEMATICAL DUMMKOPFS

  Enter an English mathematician named Charles Babbage. In the 1830s, Babbage was annoyed by errors he saw in astronomical tables used for navigation. Mechanical calculators using combinations of wheels and gears had been invented, but none had a memory, so none could do complicated calculations. People did the complicated calculations, and people made mistakes. Mistakes in astronomical tables could mean lost ships and lost lives.

  A CALCULATED EFFORT

  Babbage tried to build a machine to produce those tables automatically and accurately, without human mistakes. After 20 years he abandoned his prototype for a better idea—the Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine used Jacquard’s punch-card system. If a mathematician could create the cards, Babbage realized that anyone could put them into the machine. With simple commands from the operator, the machine would do whatever job was programmed into the card. The cards had a kind of memory and could be used again and again. However, after waiting 20 years for action on the prototype, nobody paid much attention to Babbage’s new machine. It would be another century before his ideas were rediscovered and understood. Too bad, because his designs led the way to the modern computer.

  A HOLE NEW WAY TO COUNT HEADS

  Punch-card computing got practical in 1889 when American inventor Herman Hollerith used the cards to record and store data from the United States census. The original estimate for compiling census results was ten years. With his punches, Hollerith speeded up the process to six weeks. In 1896, Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company, which later became International Business Machines (IBM). The rest, as they say, is history.

  WHAT LOOMS AHEAD?

  Appropriately enough, today’s commercial looms are run by computers. There’s even futuristic talk about “wearable computers”—miniature screens in glasses or contact lenses, and even clothing with woven-in sensors designed to process information with your every move. Soon you’ll be able to wear your computer and you can work while walking, jogging, and driving. . . Too bad we can’t go back and burn Jacquard’s first automatic loom.

  There has never been a North American secretary general of the United Nations.

  WHITE GUYS WITH SMALL HEADS DIDN’T INVENT THE BANJO

  * * *

  Carry a banjo into a public place and no doubt someone will say “Saw you in Deliverance! My, my, you’re all growed up now!” What most people don’t know is that the banjo was invented at least 400 years ago on the other side of the world.

  Most banjo players lament the best-known image of their musical calling—that strange-looking gnome plucking away at a 5-string banjo in the movie Deliverance.

  BAD PRESS FOR THE BANJO

  Unlike a violin or guitar, the mere sight of a banjo triggers spontaneous derision in many otherwise kindly citizens. This is probably due to the banjo’s early history in American entertainment as a universal prop for stage comics playing the witless “rube” for all it was worth while strumming the old “banjar.” But in spite of such unpleasant associations, the banjo was not born in America. Nor did white guys of any nationality—or I.Q.—have anything to do with its creation.

  PINHEADS NEED NOT APPLY

  Drums with strings stretched over them (which is what a banjo is) can be traced throughout western Africa as well as the Far East and Middle East almost from the beginning of recorded history. These primitive instruments can be played like the banjo, with a bow like a violin, or plucked like a harp depending on the style of music.

  AFRICAN ROOTS

  The banjo as we know it today most likely began in southwestern Africa. The original instrument is believed to have been called an “akonting,” but scholars have found countless entries in diaries of 17th century British explorers that refer to instruments with names surprisingly close to the modern word “banjo”: banjar, banza, and banshaw among them.

  Founded in 1923 in Vienna, Interpol was absorbed into the Gestapo during the Nazi era.

  WITH STRINGS ATTACHED

  The earliest African version was a gourd sliced in half, with an animal skin membrane stretched tightly across the opening to which a wooden neck and twine or animal gut for strings were attached. It may have had as few as two and as many as ten strings, depending on local custom. Westerners were first exposed to the banjo through the slave trades beginning in the 1600s.

  CLAWHAMMER STYLE

  The Europeans’ playing style was to pluck stringed instruments like the guitar. Evidence from African-American communities in the United States’ Appalachian Mountains in the 19th and early 20th centuries suggests that African slaves played instruments much differently: They used their fingernails in a downward “rapping” motion, hitting the strings percussively. This style of banjo playing has survived to this day and is called “clawhammer” style. Enter Southern peanut planter Joel Sweeney, who claimed that he learned to play the 4-string “banjar” from slaves on his family’s Virginia plantation when he was growing up early in the 19th century. In 1835, he added what most historians believe to be the fifth string, creating for posterity the 5-string banjo as it is known today. Sweeney took what he’d learned to the stage, playing as an “Ethiopian”-style banjoist in minstrel shows, using that percussive “clawhammer” style of playing he learned from the slaves.

  THE MINSTREL SHOW

  In the 1830s, minstrel shows featured banjo-playing whites in blackface. The minstrel show first developed as a way for whites to explore what they perceived to be the “mystery” of African-American culture. In the early days they weren’t the meanspirited, racist parodies they became by the 1890s and early 1900s. Billed as “Ethiopian [African] characterizations,” these performances of music, dance, and comedy were based more on whites’ perceptions of Africans than on the reality of African-American slave life. The minstrel show’s comic descendants continued the tradition of the witless banjoist into the 20th century. We cite Hee-Haw comics Stringbean and Grandpa Jones popping out of the cornfield, pluckin’ away on the old banjo. And did anybody hap
pen to notice that arrow sticking out of Steve Martin’s head while he was strummin’ on the old ban-jo? Banjo case closed.

  Twenty-six of the 42 men elected U.S. president have been lawyers.

  THE MAKING OF A MARATHON

  * * *

  . . .in which a runner named Pheidippides ran his heart out.

  Marathon was a place before it was a race: ten square miles of open land just northeast of Athens. During the summer of 490 B.C., it was a battlefield where the soldiers of the Greek army fought the Persians. The odds weren’t good for the home team. The Greek army, at 10,000 strong, was outnumbered by more than two to one.

  ADVANTAGE, PERSIA

  Miltiades, the Greek general, noted the disadvantage. What he needed was some Spartans, Greece’s fiercest soldiers. The army had a stable of messengers, runners who were the elite athletes of the day, trained to cross difficult terrain in a short amount of time. The general sent his strongest messenger, Pheidippides (whose name was pronounced “fi-DIP-uh-dees”), to fetch some Spartans.

  OVER HILL, OVER DALE

  Pheidippides ran nearly 100 miles, up and down hills in summer heat, through enemy territory to the Spartan camp, only to find them in the middle of a religious ceremony. The Greek army would have to wait a few days for reinforcements. Pheidippides ran back to camp to give Miltiades the bad news. He’d run about 200 miles in two days.

  FOUR-STAR GENERAL

  Undaunted, Miltiades waged a brilliant attack on the Persians by using smaller, faster, lighter units of troops to surround the slower, more numerous Persians. In all, the Greeks lost 192 men. The Persians lost over 6,000 and retreated back to their ships. Ironically, the Spartans arrived later that same day.

  THE THRILL OF VICTORY

  Pleased with his victory, Miltiades once again dispatched his best runner to bring the good news to Athens, a distance of almost 25 miles. Pheidippides raced to Athens, entered the city, exclaimed “Nike!” (which means “victory”—thus the name of the sneaker company) and then collapsed and died.

  Until 1709, Sweden was a major European military power.

  MODERN MARATHON SCANDALS

  The modern marathon was established in Pheidippides’ honor. The official distance is 26.2 miles, from the course at the 1908 Olympics in England (and set permanently, after much debate, at the 1924 Olympics). The participants, while encouraged to run with as much heart and effort as Pheidippides, are strongly discouraged from dying as they cross the finish line.

  • The first Olympic marathon was held in 1896 and followed Pheidippides’ original route. It was won by Spiridon Louis, a Greek, in a time of 2 hours, 58 minutes, and 50 seconds. The second-place finisher was also a Greek, Spiridon Belocas. However, the fourth-place finisher, the Hungarian Gyula Kellner, didn’t remember Belocas passing him. It turned out that Belocas completed the marathon with the assistance of a horse-drawn cart. He was later disqualified, and Kellner was bumped up to take third place.

  • In 1909, Howard Pearce, competing in the Boston Marathon, ran the first eight miles and then hopped in a car to “run” the remainder of the race. Officials tried to stop him, but encouraged by the cheers of the crowd, he pressed on to the finish. Pearce was later disqualified.

  • In 1980, Rosie Ruiz, also competing in the Boston Marathon, took the subway for most of the race. One mile from the finish line, she joined a pack of passing runners to finish before the legitimate female winner, Jacqueline Gareau. Ruiz was later disqualified.

  AND THE WINNER IS. . .DEAD?

  The Ancient Greeks took their competition seriously. Dead seriously. In 564 B.C., Arrachion of Phigalia became an Olympic champion and died in the process. His downfall was the pankration event, a mix of boxing and wrestling where virtually anything was permitted. After a very tough fight, his opponent conceded the bout as Arrachion lay on the ground. Unbeknownst to his rival, Arrachion had expired from the duel, becoming the only dead person to win an Olympic event.

  Persian king Xerxes I punished stormy water by having it whipped 300 times.

  THE FISH THAT BEAT NAPOLEON

  * * *

  How a turbot was the secret weapon in the battle of Copenhagen.

  In 1800, the British Navy was blockading France, boarding neutral ships, and even confiscating cargoes to prevent supplies getting through to the enemy. This angered the Russians, who allied with the Scandinavian countries to break the blockade.

  HYDE HIDES FROM NELSON

  Admiral Horatio Nelson, the hero of the Navy for his victories against Napoleon, was eager to attack before much damage was done. But the Admiral in charge, sixty-two-year-old Sir Hyde Parker, had recently taken an 18-year-old bride and was reluctant to go to sea. When he finally did, he insisted on negotiating with the alliance, and wouldn’t even speak to Nelson.

  NELSON FINDS SOMETHING FISHY

  However, Nelson understood that Sir Hyde’s voluptuous young wife (known as “The Batter Pudding”) was not his boss’s only indulgence. Hyde was also a noted gourmand. On a dark and stormy night, Nelson sent his crew out searching for a turbot, which he then sent, with his compliments, to Sir Hyde.

  HYDE STOPS HIDING

  Pleased with the tasty gift, Sir Hyde relented, invited Nelson to the next meeting, and listened to the younger admiral’s suggestions. Nelson got his way—and a stunning victory for the English.

  THE (FISH) SCALES TILT AGAINST THE FRENCH

  Napoleon threw a temper tantrum when he heard about the defeat of the Russians and Scandinavians. The alliance was disbanded. The blockade against Napoleon was successfully resumed, eventually contributing to his final defeat at Waterloo.

  NO ONE KNEW THE NEWS

  Actually Czar Paul I of Russia, instigator of the alliance, had been assassinated. Had the British gotten the news, the battle need never have taken place. But then we wouldn’t have this fish story.

  Karl Marx was once a correspondent for Horace Greeley’s New York Daily Tribune.

  THEM’S FIGHTIN’ WORDS: COLONIALISM

  * * *

  As if they were dividing up what was left in the world, the European nations—beginning about 1870—stepped up the pace of acquiring new colonies, mostly in Africa and Asia.

  By 1905 nearly all of the choicest territories in Africa were gobbled up by the Belgians, British, and French, who maintained their hold for the next half-century. By the late 1950s, numerous African colonies sought independence, sometimes by peaceful means (like Ghana and Nigeria) and sometimes by violence, as in the Congo and in the Mau-Mau rebellion.

  trek

  The acquisition wasn’t a universally peaceful process. One area of periodic clashes was South Africa, which saw conflict between the British and the Boers (descendants of the early Dutch settlers) from the time the British took Cape Province from the Dutch (1806). The Boers found life unbearable alongside the British, and in 1835 they began a mass migration to the north and east, away from British rule. This movement was known as the Great Trek, trek being Dutch for a journey by ox wagon and today used for any difficult journey. This meaning also appears in Star Trek, the popular television and motion picture series about space travel.

  commando

  In their inevitable difficulties with hostile native tribes, the Boers organized small military units or kommandos, capable of making quick raids against native villages. During World War II, the British anglicized the term to commando and applied it to small elite units trained to engage in some especially hazardous undertaking. In perhaps the first commando raid, on March 7, 1941, the commandos destroyed a plant in occupied Norway that was making glycerine for the Germans. Americans also used the word as an adjective to describe military actions involving surprise and shock, as in “commando tactics.”

  Kaiser Wilhelm II and George V were both grandchildren of Queen Victoria.

  commandeer

  Another term adopted from the Boers’ Afrikaans language was to commandeer, originally meaning to conscript or appropriate for military use. The latter
is now used more broadly to mean taking over something arbitrarily, as in “the director commandeered Main Street for shooting the last scene.”

  fed up

  The Boers eventually set up the republics of Transvaal, Natal, and the Orange Free State, but in succeeding decades the British took over Natal and moved into the other two states. Hostile relations continued until 1899, when Transvaal and the Orange Free State finally declared war on Britain. This Boer War proved to be a long struggle. At first the British suffered serious setbacks, but in 1900 reinforcements arrived in large numbers. Along them were Australian troops, who, at least one authority believes, expressed their exasperation by saying they were fed up, a phrase that continues to be a synonym for “disgusted” or “having had enough.”