Silicon Affinity

In 1952, British computer scientist Christopher Strachey taught the Manchester Mark 1 computer to write love letters:

Darling Sweetheart,

You are my avid fellow feeling. My affection curiously clings to your passionate wish. My liking yearns for your heart. You are my wistful sympathy: my tender liking.

Yours beautifully

M. U. C.

Strachey’s original program has been lost, but it was reimplemented by MIT digital media professor Nick Montfort in 2014, and now you can watch it pour out its heart online. (Here’s a PHP implementation.)

| Uncategorized

Startup Costs

On April 11, 1916, inventor Louis Enricht invited a group of reporters to his Long Island home. He showed them a car with an empty gas tank, filled a porcelain pitcher from a garden hose, stirred in a greenish fluid, poured the mixture into the car’s tank, and signaled his son to crank the engine. The car started up. Enricht announced that he’d discovered a gasoline substitute that could be made for a penny a gallon.

Chemists denounced the claim as impossible, but Henry Ford began talks with the inventor. These broke down over a dispute with the Maxim Munitions Corporation, with which Enricht was apparently also talking.

The affair went quiet for a year, but in November 1917 railroad financier Benjamin Yoakum accused Enricht of treason: Yoakum had been financing the project but now Enricht refused to turn over the formula, and Yoakum feared that he may have sold the secret to the German government. Enricht admitted to meeting with the Germans but insisted that he hadn’t given them the formula — in fact, he’d burned the only copy.

In the early 1920s he promoted a similar scheme, claiming he could produce fuel from peat, but this too remained unsubstantiated, and he ended up in Sing Sing. When he died in 1924, he took the secret to endless gasoline with him. Possibly the whole thing was hot air (he had a long history of swindles). Possibly the secret ingredient was really acetone, which would have fired the car’s engine long enough to persuade onlookers but would produce corrosion and in any event was more costly than gas. And just conceivably his claim was true — but no one’s ever been able to rediscover the formula.

| Hoaxes

Inventory Control

In 2015 British computer scientist Chris Patuzzo produced a self-enumerating pangram — a sentence that itemizes its own contents — that records its totals as percentages:

This sentence is dedicated to Lee Sallows and to within one decimal place four point five percent of the letters in this sentence are a’s, zero point one percent are b’s, four point three percent are c’s, zero point nine percent are d’s, twenty point one percent are e’s, one point five percent are f’s, zero point four percent are g’s, one point five percent are h’s, six point eight percent are i’s, zero point one percent are j’s, zero point one percent are k’s, one point one percent are l’s, zero point three percent are m’s, twelve point one percent are n’s, eight point one percent are o’s, seven point three percent are p’s, zero point one percent are q’s, nine point nine percent are r’s, five point six percent are s’s, nine point nine percent are t’s, zero point seven percent are u’s, one point four percent are v’s, zero point seven percent are w’s, zero point five percent are x’s, zero point three percent are y’s and one point six percent are z’s.

The next challenge was to extend the precision beyond one decimal place. Impressively, Matthias Belz produced this specimen in 2017:

Rounded to five decimal places, two point six five two five two percent of the letters of this sentence are a’s, zero point zero eight eight four two percent are b’s, two point six five two five two percent are c’s, zero point four four two zero nine percent are d’s, nineteen point eight zero five four eight percent are e’s, three point four four eight two eight percent are f’s, one point seven six eight three five percent are g’s, two point nine one seven seven seven percent are h’s, seven point eight six nine one four percent are i’s, zero point zero eight eight four two percent are j’s, zero point zero eight eight four two percent are k’s, zero point three five three six seven percent are l’s, zero point one seven six eight three percent are m’s, ten point two five six four one percent are n’s, eight point nine three zero one five percent are o’s, four point seven seven four five four percent are p’s, zero point zero eight eight four two percent are q’s, nine point five four nine zero seven percent are r’s, four point nine five one three seven percent are s’s, nine point six three seven four nine percent are t’s, two point zero three three six zero percent are u’s, two point seven four zero nine four percent are v’s, one point six seven nine nine three percent are w’s, zero point nine seven two five nine percent are x’s, zero point zero eight eight four two percent are y’s and one point nine four five one eight percent are z’s.

These numbers are still rounded, so later that year he surpassed that with an instance giving precisely accurate values:

Exactly three point eight seven five percent of the letters of this autogram are a’s, zero point one two five percent are b’s, three point five percent are c’s, zero point two five percent are d’s, twenty-one point two five percent are e’s, three point seven five percent are f’s, zero point three seven five percent are g’s, one point five percent are h’s, seven point two five percent are i’s, zero point one two five percent are j’s, zero point one two five percent are k’s, zero point three seven five percent are l’s, zero point two five percent are m’s, nine point seven five percent are n’s, seven point five percent are o’s, six point five percent are p’s, zero point one two five percent are q’s, nine point three seven five percent are r’s, five point one two five percent are s’s, ten percent are t’s, zero point three seven five percent are u’s, four point six two five percent are v’s, one point five percent are w’s, zero point five percent are x’s, zero point three seven five percent are y’s and one point five percent are z’s.

Details are here.

| Language

Liberty

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_Hippopotamus_and_Crocodile_Hunt_P5296.jpg

There is pictorial license in the same way that there is poetic license. … It is frequently to this that every master owes his most sublime effects: The unfinished condition in Rembrandt’s work, the exaggeration in Rubens. Mediocre men cannot have such daring; they never get outside themselves. Method cannot govern everything; it leads everybody up to a certain point. How is it that not one of the great artists has tried to destroy that mass of prejudices? They were probably frightened at the task, and so abandoned the crowd to its silly ideas.

— Eugène Delacroix (from his journal)

| Art

Capacity

In the 1967 Star Trek episode “The Trouble With Tribbles,” a small furry alien species is introduced on board the Enterprise and after three days grows to 1,771,561 individuals. In 2019 University of Leicester physics undergraduate Rosie Hodnett and her colleagues wondered how long it would take for the creatures to fill the whole starship. Using Mr. Spock’s estimate that each tribble produces 10 offspring every 12 hours and assuming that each tribble occupies 3.23 × 10-3 m3 and that the volume of the Enterprise is 5.94 × 106 m3, they found that the ship would reach its limit of 18.4 × 109 tribbles in 4.5 days.

A separate inquiry found that after 5.16 days the accumulated tribbles would be generating enough thermal energy to power the warp drive for 1 second.

(Rosie Hodnett et al., “Tribbling Times,” Journal of Physics Special Topics, Nov. 18, 2019.)

| Entertainment · Science & Math

Helmet Crash

A problem proposed by Mel Stover for the April 1953 issue of Pi Mu Epsilon Journal:

After a meeting of six professors, each man left with another’s hat. The hat that Aitkins took belonged to the man who took Baily’s hat. The man whose hat was taken by Caldwell took the hat of the man who took Dunlop’s hat. And the man who took Easton’s hat wasn’t the one whose hat was taken by Fort. Who took Aitkins’ hat?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Feats

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Conquistador_Alonso_de_Ojeda.png
Images: Wikimedia
Commons

This just caught my eye — a feat attributed to the Spanish explorer Alonso de Ojeda, who would later accompany Columbus and name Venezuela:

Queen Isabella being in the tower of the cathedral at Seville, better known as the Giralda, Ojeda, to entertain her majesty, and to give proofs of his courage and agility, mounted on a great beam which projected in the air, twenty feet from the tower, at such an immense height from the ground, that the people below looked like dwarfs, and it was enough to make Ojeda himself shudder to look down. Along this beam he walked briskly, and with as much confidence as though he had been pacing his chamber. When he arrived at the end, he stood on one leg, lifting the other in the air; then turning nimbly round, he returned in the same way to the tower, unaffected by the giddy height, whence the least false step would have precipitated him and dashed him to pieces.

Allegedly he afterward threw an orange to the top of the tower, which would have been at least 88 meters tall at the time. This account is from Washington Irving’s biography of Columbus, and even Irving calls it “unworthy of record, but that it exhibits the singular character of the man.”

Emerson mentions Ojeda’s balancing act in his 1870 essay on success, claiming also that “Olaf, king of Norway, could run round his galley on the blades of the oars of the rowers when the ship was in motion.” I’m not even pursuing that one.

06/12/2024 UPDATE: Apparently oar-walking is not as far-fetched as it sounds. While the feat is rare, it is said that King Olafr Tryggvason did indeed run on the oar blades of his ship the Long Serpent as it was being rowed. Kirk Douglas manages the feat pretty well in the 1958 film The Vikings (thanks, Orion):

| Oddities

Double Duty

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

I just came across this arresting sentence in The Satanic Verses, of all places:

“Turn your watch upside down in Bombay and you see the time in London.”

It appears this is roughly true: Because Indian Standard Time has an offset of UTC+05:30, an analog watch set to Indian time and read upside down will give the time in London — 10:10 becomes 4:40, noon becomes 6:30, and so on. The reverse is also true — a London watch read upside down will give the time in India.

Unfortunately the hand positions are only approximate, and the U.K. observes daylight saving time and India doesn’t, so just now it doesn’t work. Interesting idea, though.

06/16/2024 UPDATE: Reader Kieran Child points out also that the trick cannot work perfectly as described as we need to add 5 hours 30 minutes in one direction and 6 hours 30 minutes in the other. “By studying it for a while, you will see that going from UK time to Indian time only works when the minutes are between 31 and 59, and going the other way only works when the minutes are between 00 and 29. For times outside of these ranges, you will be off by one hour.” Examples are sometimes chosen to conceal this confusion. (Thanks, Kieran.)

| Oddities

Assimilation

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He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. Nobody can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask, then, when did they begin to be his? when he digested? or when he eat? or when he boiled? or when he brought them home? or when he picked them up?

— John Locke, An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government, 1689

| Oddities