Austrian mechanical engineer Gernot Zippe invented the Zippe-type centrifuge.
In Hebrew, his name (גרנוט ציפה), is an anagram of the word “centrifuge” (צנטריפוגה).
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The Last Blessing
After his daughter Jean’s death in 1909, Mark Twain began to write:
Would I bring her back to life if I could do it? I would not. If a word would do it, I would beg for strength to withhold the word. And I would have the strength; I am sure of it. In her loss I am almost bankrupt, and my life is a bitterness, but I am content: for she has been enriched with the most precious of all gifts — that gift which makes all other gifts mean and poor — death. I have never wanted any released friend of mine restored to life since I reached manhood. I felt in this way when Susy passed away; and later my wife, and later Mr. Rogers. When Clara met me at the station in New York and told me Mr. Rogers had died suddenly that morning, my thought was, Oh, favorite of fortune — fortunate all his long and lovely life — fortunate to his latest moment! The reporters said there were tears of sorrow in my eyes. True — but they were for ME, not for him. He had suffered no loss. All the fortunes he had ever made before were poverty compared with this one.
“I am setting it down,” he told his friend Albert Bigelow Paine, “everything. It is a relief to me to write it. It furnishes me an excuse for thinking.”
He wrote for three days, handed the manuscript to Paine, and told him to make it the final chapter of his autobiography. Four months later he was dead.
Eternity in an Hour
At the end of his 1986 book Paradoxes in Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics, statistician Gábor J. Székely offers a final paradox from his late professor Alfréd Rényi:
Since I started to deal with information theory I have often meditated upon the conciseness of poems; how can a single line of verse contain far more ‘information’ than a highly concise telegram of the same length. The surprising richness of meaning of literary works seems to be in contradiction with the laws of information theory. The key to this paradox is, I think, the notion of ‘resonance.’ The writer does not merely give us information, but also plays on the strings of the language with such virtuosity, that our mind, and even the subconscious self resonate. A poet can recall chains of ideas, emotions and memories with a well-turned word. In this sense, writing is magic.
Keyboard Variations
Inspired by Isaac Newton’s theory that the seven notes of the diatonic scale were related to the colors of the spectrum, French mathematician Louis Bertrand Castel in 1725 invented an “ocular harpsichord” outfitted with lanterns so that “the pressing of the keys would bring out the colours with their combinations and their chords; in one word, with all their harmony, which would correspond exactly to that of any kind of music.” Voltaire devoted Chapter 14 of his Eléments de la philosophie de Newton to the the theory and to Castel’s instrument, and Telemann composed several pieces for it.
The Great Stalacpipe Organ in Luray Caverns, Virginia, produces its tones by striking stalactites with rubber mallets. Leland W. Sprinkle spent three years in the 1950s identifying promising stalactites, shaving them to pitch, and wiring solenoids to trigger the mallets. The tones can be heard throughout the cavern even without amplification, but a loudspeaker system is normallly used.
I think I’ve written elsewhere about the Katzenklavier, a thankfully imaginary instrument first described by Athanasius Kircher in 1650. In the words of one writer, “if a key was pressed on the keyboard, the corresponding tail would be pulled hard, and it would produce each time a lamentable meow.”
Allegedly Louis XI of France challenged Abbé de Baigne to do the same thing with pigs to produce a “piganino”:
That brutal monarch, Louis XI of France, is said to have constructed, with the assistance of the Abbé de Baigne, an instrument designated a ‘pig organ,’ for the production of natural sounds. The master of the royal music, having made a very large and varied assortment of swine, embracing specimens of all breeds and ages, these were carefully voiced, and placed in order, according to their several tones and semitones, and so arranged that a key-board communicated with them, severally and individually, by means of rods ending in sharp spikes. In this way a player, by touching any note, could instantly sound a corresponding note in nature, and was enabled to produce at will either natural melody or harmony!
“The result is said to have been striking, but not very grateful to human ears.”
After our civilization has destroyed itself, the Adriatic will still be playing harmonies on the “sea organ” in Zadar, Croatia. Wind and waves interact with a system of polyethylene tubes to produce sound in a resonating cavity. In 2006 architect Nikola Bašic received the European Prize for Urban Public Space for the project, voted the best among 207 candidate projects from across Europe.
12/17/2016 UPDATE: I completely forgot the mouse organ! (Thanks, Gavin.)
Podcast Episode 133: Notes and Queries
In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll explore some more curiosities and unanswered questions from Greg’s research, including a pilot who saved Buckingham Palace, a ghost who confronted Arthur Conan Doyle, what Mark Twain learned from a palm reader, and a bedeviling superfluity of Norwegians.
We’ll also discover a language used only by women and puzzle over a gift that’s best given sparingly.
Legerdemain
Apart from being mathematically true, ONE + TWELVE = TWO + ELEVEN is also famously an anagram — the same group of letters appears on each side of the expression.
In numerical form (1 + 12 = 2 + 11) it’s both an anagram and a palindrome — the same numerals appear on either side of the equal sign, and in opposite order.
Expressed in Roman numerals (I + XII = II + XI) it remains an anagram and a palindrome — again, the same numerals appear on both sides, and in reverse order.
In a square font the equation remains the same when each character is turned upside down:
In Word Ways, contributor Anil points out a further coincidence: Write the original equation in a square font, turn it upside down, and twist the first plus sign 45 degrees to make a multiplication sign:
A similar trick works in Roman numerals: Start with the original expression, turn it upside down, and change the plus signs to minus. If IIX is taken as 8, then we get another valid expression:
I + XII = II + XI
IX + II = IIX + I
IX – II = IIX – I
(Anil, “One + Twelve = Two + Eleven,” Word Ways 35:4 [July 2012], 308. See also Spanagrams and Immortal Truth.)
Sommelier!
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” may be a classic horror story, but it’s full of “weird wine howlers,” according to Clifton Fadiman.
Fortunato, who is immured in the story, “prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine,” and Montresor, who does the immuring, adds, “I was skilful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could.”
But Fortunato tells him, “Luchesi is quite incapable of telling Amontillado from Sherry,” and, later, “Amontillado! You have been imposed upon; and as for Luchesi, he cannot distinguish Sherry from Amontillado.”
But Amontillado is a sherry! H. Warner Allen points out that André Simon’s wine encyclopedia defines Amontillado as “one of the most popular types of Sherry, neither too dry nor too sweet.”
Compounding this error, Montresor tells Fortunato that he wants Luchesi’s opinion of a pipe of Amontillado that he has received. But a pipe is a cask of port; a cask of sherry is a butt.
Also, Poe seems to have thought that Amontillado is an Italian wine, perhaps judging by the look of the word. Fadiman writes, “What he thought ‘a flagon of De Grâve’ could be is almost beyond conjecture.”
(Clifton Fadiman, Dionysus: A Case of Vintage Tales About Wine, 1962.)
Mens et Manus
David Hagen offered this puzzle in MIT Technology Review in 2007. The MIT logo can be thought of as a slider puzzle. In the figure above, can you slide the tiles about so that the gray I can escape through the opening at top left?
Podcast Episode 129: The Voynich Manuscript
In 1912, bookseller Wilfrid Voynich discovered an illustrated manuscript that was written in a mysterious alphabet that had never been seen before. The text bears the hallmarks of natural language, but no one has ever been able to determine its meaning. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll learn about the Voynich manuscript, which has been bewildering scholars for more than a century.
We’ll also ponder some parliamentary hostages and puzzle over a tormenting acquisition.
“A Postal Problem”
Browsing the Post Office Guide in June 1891, Lewis Carroll discovered an ambiguity that produces “a very curious verbal puzzle” — he sent this pamphlet to friends and interested parties:
The Rule, for Commissions chargeable on overdue Postal Orders, is given in the ‘Post Office Guide’ in these words, (it is here divided, for convenience of reference, into 3 clauses)—
(a) After the expiration of 3 months from the last day of the month of issue, a Postal Order will be payable only on payment of a Commission, equal to the amount of the original poundage;
(b) with the addition (if more than 3 months have elapsed since the said expiration) of the amount of the original poundage for every further period of 3 months which has so elapsed;
(c) and for every portion of any such period of 3 months over and above every complete period.
You are requested to answer the following questions, in reference to a Postal Order for 10/- (on which the ‘original poundage’ would be 1d.) issued during the month of January, so that the 1st ‘period’ would consist of the months February, March, April; the 2nd would consist of the months May, June, July; and the 3rd would consist of the months August, September, October.
(1) Supposing the Rule to consist of clause (a) only, on what day would a ‘Commission’ begin to be chargeable?
(2) What would be its amount?
(3) Supposing the Rule to consist of clauses (a) and (b), on what day would the lowest ‘Commission’ begin to be chargeable?
(4) What would be its amount?
(5) On what day would a larger ‘Commission’ (being the sum of 2 ‘Commissions’) begin to be chargeable?
(6) What would be its amount?
(7) On what day would a yet larger ‘Commission’ begin to be chargeable?
(8) What would be its amount?
(9) Taking the Rule as consisting of all 3 clauses, in which of the above-named 3 ‘periods’ does clause (c) first begin to take effect?
(10) Which day, of any ‘period,’ is the earliest on which it can be said that a ‘portion’ of the ‘period’ has elapsed?
(11) On what day would the lowest ‘Commission’ begin to be chargeable?
(12) What would be its amount?
(13) On what day would a larger ‘Commission’ begin to be chargeable?
(14) What would be its amount?
(15) On what day would a yet larger ‘Commission’ begin to be chargeable?
(16) What would be its amount?
Signature:
Date:
He followed up with this supplement later that month:
The trouble, as I read it, is that clause (c) is ambiguous. Presumably the postal authorities intended the general rule to be that a patron had three months to redeem a postal order, and beyond this would be charged a commission (here, 1 penny) for every three months that had elapsed since the deadline — including the last such period, which would not be prorated. Unfortunately, the phrase “every complete period” means exactly that — it refers to every completed period on the calendar. This sets the clock going twice as fast as intended. Our patron should owe 1d on May 1, 2d on August 1, and 3d on November 1. But with clause (c) worded as it is, she’ll owe 1d on May 1, 4d on August 1, and 6d on November 1. The final effect is that, beyond the first period, postal patrons who follow these rules will pay twice the intended commission.
I don’t know whether the post office ever learned about this. I imagine most patrons trusted them to do the math, and no one but Carroll recognized the ambiguity.