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EUREKA MOMENTS

ARE YOU HAVIN’ A LAVA? EDWARD CRAVEN WALKER SEES THE LIGHT

During the Second World War RAF reconnaissance pilot Edward Craven Walker flew dangerous missions over enemy territory to photograph Nazi bases. When the conflict ended, Walker continued his interest in photography: credited on-screen as Michael Keatering, he produced and occasionally appeared in naturist films, and pioneered the, admittedly niche, subgenre of nudist documentary that focused on naked, underwater, ballet. Travelling Light (1960) features a troupe of all-swimming, all-dancing women expressing themselves in the warm coastal waters of Corsica. British nudists, Walker’s target audience, may well have been interested in the onscreen choreography, but it’s unlikely many would have been inspired enough to consider following suit in British seas. Nor were they likely to be encouraged to shed their thermals by Walker’s attempt to merge nakedness and winter sports with the ‘documentary’ Eves On Skis (1963).

Both films were considerable box office hits in the few UK cinemas that screened them. In turn, further revenue was generated when they were picked up for worldwide distribution, generating enough income for Craven Walker to establish his own nudist retreat, The Bournemouth and District Outdoor Club. He became something of a spokesperson for British naturism, but he wasn’t exactly egalitarian about attracting new members – especially those on the larger side. He once declared, ‘We at Bournemouth have a health centre and only want healthy people here… We are against all these fat fogies – it’s not what naturism should be about’.

In between all that, he invented what’s popularly known as the Lava Lamp, but which Walker originally dubbed the Astro Lamp. By either name, the psychedelic beacon became shorthand for the 1960s, but it took Craven Walker most of the 1950s to develop it.

Around 1950, over a pint in the Queen’s Head pub in Ringwood, Hampshire, he became mesmerised by a novelty lamp behind the bar. The lamp was invented by Donald Dunnet, a Scot living in England, but how it ended up behind the bar is a mystery. It may have been a prototype because we do know that it was patented in 1951. The lamp featured two liquids – ‘one’, says the patent description, ‘of a lower gravity than the other, the two liquids being non-miscible and the upper layer being of lower specific gravity than the lower layer and means for heating the lower layer so that it rises through the upper layer in the form of liquid bubbles or as a liquid column which breaks into such bubbles, the bubbles being cooled by the upper layer so that they return to the lower layer.’ Basically, when the liquids were heated, the lower of the two sent a column of bubbles to the top, then the light would turn off, the water cool and the bubbles sink to their original position. It was developed from one of Dunnet’s earlier patents, an egg timer. This was a close-ended glass tube filled with viscous liquids that would break into bubbles after about four minutes when submerged in boiling water – time enough for the perfect boiled egg.

The bubble action fascinated Walker. He saw potential, but for what he didn’t really know. Nonetheless he began tinkering with liquids and wax, heating them with a light bulb that he had installed inside an orange cordial bottle. Later he used a glass cocktail shaker – a shape that would inform the finished product. Initially this was only a hobby for Walker – he was otherwise engaged with his films and then his nudist club – but he began to devote more time to the project in the late 1950s. Finally, in 1963, he had the perfect ratio of oil and wax, and achieved a sweet-spot melting point for the wax (which continues to be produced to a secret recipe). The egg timer was now a desk light cum moving objet d’art, which he called the Astro Lamp.

The mixture of oil and wax takes several minutes to warm and become liquid but then changes form and viscosity rapidly as it rises up the water column within the tube and into the cooler water. Before it hits the bottom, the heater has melted it again and the cycle restarts. Walker created 100 different designs over the years with range of different colours.

Once on sale the hypnotic ooze created by the lamps became instant conversation pieces in the hip homes of the 1960s. They achieved cult status thanks to being featured in hit shows like Doctor Who, The Avengers and The Prisoner. Sales of Edward’s Lava Lamp soared and even though it wasn’t marketed at the cool cats of the day, its bewitching yet mellow dance was seen as an ideal accompaniment to any psychedelic trip, forever linking it with the mind-altering drugs of the time. Asked if this concerned him, Walker commented, ‘If you buy my lamp, you won’t need to buy drugs.’ For him, the lamp was a groovy enough trip in its own right.

CASH IN A FLASH – JOHN SHEPHERD-BARRON HITS PAY-DIRT WITH THE ATM

ATM cash machines are so ubiquitous we see them only when we need them. But for weeks after the very first one went into service in 1967, people would travel from all over just to watch one magically dispense cash. It was a revolutionary concept that suddenly meant our hard-earned cash was available around the clock.

Like the Greek scientist Archimedes, who coined the phrase, the cash machine’s inventor, John Shepherd-Barron, had his eureka moment in the bath in 1965.

Earlier that day he had gone to the bank, only to arrive moments after it had closed. Until as recently as the 1980s, High Street Banks kept rigid hours; if you needed cash outside of 9 a.m. to 3.30 p.m. on a weekday (9 a.m. to noon on Saturdays), you were stuck.

As he soaked, John pondered how he could liberate his money when it suited him. He hit upon the idea of a chocolate bar dispenser that instead vended cash. As an executive with bank note printers De La Rue, John was able to arrange a chat with the Chief General Manager of Barclays Bank, who gave him just 90 seconds to pitch his idea. Apparently the pitch took 85 seconds, and the bank agreed a deal: six machines initially and a contract for De La Rue to provide the armoured trucks to fill them.

John’s idea wasn’t too far removed from the modern machines that are now present on every high street – and the major concern was, as it is today, fraud. Plastic bankcards stored with personal information were still a way off, so Shepherd-Barron had to work out a way to ensure that the only person who could get your cash was you. He developed a two-step process for this. Step One seems positively dangerous – radioactive cheques. These were impregnated with the compound carbon-14, an isotope the machine was programmed to recognise. John played down health concerns, claiming you would have to eat over 100,000 cheques for them to have any effect on health. Step Two is much more familiar. You’d have to prove to the machine you were the right person to withdraw money by punching in a personal identification number or PIN. If that PIN corresponded with the carbon-14 numbers on the voucher, the machine would pay out.

It was John’s wife Caroline who gave the world the four-digit PIN. Recalling his army days, John originally proposed using a six-digit personal identification number (PIN) but rejected the idea when Caroline insisted she could only ever remember four digits at a time. So four numbers became the world standard.

It took only two years to go from a rapid pitch to delivering the world’s first cash machine. But what was the prestigious address for such a technological wonder. Tokyo? Frankfurt? New York? No, Enfield in Middlesex. By keeping the launch relatively low profile – although Reg Varney, the comedian and future star of On the Buses, was on hand to officially launch the machine – Barclays and partners De La Rue could play down any teething problems. In fact, being made to look foolish by the robot teller was such a concern that a smaller than average man was actually concealed inside the machine to push the first bundle of notes through the slot in case of a breakdown.

Today there are more than two million cash machines in the world, and the only real difference from the Enfield model is that we use plastic cards and not glowing cheques to access them. John Shepherd-Barron was awarded an OBE in 2004, his only real reward for the idea. Ironically, having never patented the concept because he wanted to keep carbon-14 secret from potential forgers, he didn’t ever get any cash out of his own invention.

BRIGHT SPARK – WILLIAM BICKFORD INVENTS THE SAFETY FUZE

Working with gunpowder was a deadly business in the nineteenth century, so William Bickford’s invention of the safety fuse – a design in use to this day – was truly life-saving. Born in Ashburton, Devon, he moved to Truro in Cornwall, where he worked as both a currier and leather merchant. Even though he had no direct involvement with the mining industry, Bickford grew increasingly troubled by the number of fatal accidents and serious injuries that resulted as miners tried to break up large masses of rock. The method at the time was to use straws or goose quills filled with gunpowder. These had a wildly unpredictable burn rate and many fatalities were caused by explosives going off before miners could reach cover or by miners walking back to see if their fuses were still burning… and discovering too late that they were.

One day in 1831 Bickford had his eureka moment while watching a friend, James Bray, twining rope. As he observed Bray twisting separate strands together, Bickford realised that a similar approach could be used in order to make a safer type of fuse. He adapted the rope-making technique by trickling gunpowder into strands of jute cord as they were being twisted together. He then coated the strands in a waterproof varnish to create the safety fuse.

To help with the process, Bickford designed a machine that would spin the strands of jute over the gunpowder for him and also prevent them from ever untwisting. The finished product was so accurate that a burn rate of 30 seconds per 1.2 m (1 ft) of fuse could be safely relied upon. All that remained was for the person laying the explosive to cut off an appropriate length, in order to guarantee a safe escape.

Bickford patented ‘The Patent Safety Rod’, later renamed the ‘Safety Fuze’, and travelled Britain’s mines showing off his invention, gaining the approval of – and just as importantly, orders from – mine owners. He co-founded the factory that would eventually go on to become Bickford, Smith, & Company, and work soon began on the production of these new fuses. Within the first year, they had manufactured 72 km (45 miles) of fuse and the factory operated for more than 100 years, going on to make thousands of miles of it. Sadly, William died shortly before the factory opened and did not witness the profound effect his invention had in the mines, saving hundreds of lives and creating a process for making fuses which remains largely the same to this day. He truly was a bright spark.

STICKY BUSINESS – KINNINMONTH AND GRAY ROLL OUT SELLOTAPE

Sellotape has been generally useful for more than 80 years. Invented in 1937, in Acton, West London, it made short shrift of the wrapping of parcels – once hostage to string – and dozens of around-the-house fixes that required various pots of glues.

It’s a pretty clever tool we rarely stop to appreciate. It’s a simple strip of Cellophane with a rubber resin glue on one side. Developers Colin Kinninmonth and George Gray had planned to call their product Cello-Tape – because that’s what it was (and is) – but Cellophane is a trademark and they were warned off.

Renamed Sellotape, it rapidly became indispensable in the home and the workplace. When the Second World War was declared, two years after Sellotape launched, it was even used for national defence.

As fears of a Blitz grew in 1938 and 1939, so rehearsals for the inevitable began – there were even test runs of blackouts in cities, which gave a taste of the casualties that could be expected in urban environments trying to function in complete darkness. But the immediate concern was the sheer amount of glass potentially flying through the air during a raid. Government issue brown tape soon criss-crossed the nation’s windows – an enduring image of the plucky Home Front. The downside was it required moisture, was fiddly to apply and looked pretty ugly. Sellotape, if you could afford enough rolls, was all but invisible but, apparently, just as effective against ordnance dropped off by the Luftwaffe.

Sellotape continues to be produced in the UK, though the brand is now owned by Henkel, a German company.

STICKLERS FOR THE RULES

Like Hoover for vacuum cleaner, the British use the term Sellotape to mean any variety of sticky tape. The exception to this rule is made by the BBC children’s magazine show, Blue Peter. During their famous ‘makes’ the product is referred to as ‘sticky tape’ so as not to contravene BBC rules about advertising. This is admirable, of course, but past presenters have been known to refer to ‘sticky back plastic’, which is misleading. ‘Sticky back plastic’ refers to cut-to-size sheets of, usually patterned, Cellophane, one side of which has to be peeled off to activate the adhesive. This is the kind of information that wins pub quizzes and one day you’ll thank us for including it.

BELT UP! BUILDER OF WORLD’S FIRST GLIDER ENCOURAGES SERVANT TO CRASH IT

It’s one of the most important inventions of modern times, but the first man to wear a seatbelt didn’t really appreciate it at the time.

In the mid-nineteenth century, John Appleby was a coachman for the ‘father of aviation’ Sir George Cayley. His employer had created a full-sized glider, an aircraft that has no engine but which uses currents of air for flight. As Appleby was about to find out, this would be the world’s first successful glider – complete with a strap device to hold the pilot into the seat.

Appleby’s contribution to aviation cannot be underestimated. He set in stone the aerodynamic forces of flight – weight, lift, drag and thrust – and he dreamt up cambered wings, the fundamental of aircraft design. All of this was about to be put to the test when Cayley’s glider was prepared to take its maiden flight.

But Sir George, then aged 80, was neither light enough nor nimble enough to sit in the driving seat of such a contraption himself, so Appleby was volunteered. Technically Appleby might not have been the first person in the world to fly a glider (if you count probably hundreds of prior attempts), but he was the world’s first wearer of a seatbelt. Just as well. The glider flew 183 m (600 ft) and crash-landed. John reportedly screamed, ‘Sir George, I wish to give notice. I was hired to drive, not to fly.’

Though the seatbelt was later patented for use in cars in the USA in 1885 by New Yorker Edward J. Claghorn, Sir George remains credited as the inventor, and he campaigned to see seatbelts fitted into trains.

On 31 January 1983, it became a legal requirement to wear seatbelts in cars on UK roads.

LOUIS LE PRINCE – KING OF CINEMA

Number One Dock Street in Leeds, a Victorian office and warehouse that’s been converted into luxury apartments, can make a valid claim to being the birthplace of the motion picture.

In 1888, from the window on the third floor, French photographer and inventor Louis Le Prince hand-cranked photographic paper through a camera he had designed and built himself to capture the street scene below. The resulting clip, two seconds long and shot at 20 frames per second, showed horse-drawn carriages and pedestrians crossing Leeds Bridge in almost ‘real’ time. In spite of its brevity, this snippet of life 130 years ago is the most important documentary ever made – the world’s first successful moving picture.

The story of how this defining moment came about begins in France in 1842, when Le Prince was born. As a child, he often visited the studio of his father’s friend Louis Daguerre, who was one of the pioneers of photography.

He moved to Leeds in 1866 after being invited to join a family firm of brass founders by John Whitely, a college friend. He then married John’s sister Elizabeth, who was a talented artist. Together they established a school of applied art, and became renowned for their photography work. It was here that he saw Eadweard Muybridge’s pictures of a galloping horse – taken with a series of 12 still cameras set up along a route and then animated to look like motion. Although Muybridge had succeeded in portraying a galloping horse in a photographic sequence using multiple stills, this was not an economical, practical or easy way of creating moving images. Le Prince wanted to go one step further and capture moving images on a single camera.

Le Prince’s first film camera was partly inspired by Muybridge’s multiple-camera setup. It featured 16 lenses, and each took one photograph, fractions of a second apart. Although the camera was capable of ‘capturing’ motion, this wasn’t a complete success because each lens photographed the subject from a slightly different viewpoint, meaning that the projected image jumped about.

Then came Louis’ eureka moment. He realised that he needed to use one lens and capture multiple images on a single strip of paper, to avoid the laborious task of stitching the still images together. By turning a handle, Le Prince was able to spool a roll of photographic paper past a rotating shutter. However, in order to capture a steady, non-blurred image, he had to invent a clamping and releasing mechanism that would ensure the paper held steady for the fraction of time it needed to be correctly exposed. His first attempts managed to capture 12 frames per second – not enough to portray smooth, real-looking motion. Remodelling the camera to shoot 20 frames per second, he lugged it up three flights of stairs in Dock Street and positioned it at the window. He deliberately chose the location, knowing it to be one of the busiest spots in Leeds, and started to turn the crank. The rest is…

Well, actually, it isn’t. In spite of his remarkable achievement, Le Prince is anything but a household name. He’d ploughed all of his money into developing his camera, and applying for UK and European patents was proving to be a complicated logistical and bureaucratic challenge. There was an enormous amount of interest in his work – especially from agents of the Edison Company in the USA. That may have spurred Le Prince into arranging to travel to America to demonstrate his camera and get a US patent before anyone else could. But first he needed to pay a quick visit to the continent, to see his architect brother in France – in order to claim his share of an inheritance. Not only did he fail to stake his claim but the trip also seems to have cost him his life. On 16 September 1890, Louis Le Prince boarded a train at Dijon, bound for Paris. He never arrived. Louis and his luggage – among it his precious camera – seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

Le Prince’s body was never found. As there was no proof that he had died, his family couldn’t protect his inventions. A year later, Edison successfully patented his own motion picture camera. Le Prince’s family was distraught and entered into a long copyright legal battle, even accusing Edison of having Le Prince murdered. It’s an accusation that has never been proved.

IN LIVING COLOUR

Despite being nicknamed ‘Daftie’ as a child, Edinburgh-born James Clerk Maxwell went on to become one of the great nineteenth-century scientists. From his colour vision studies, Maxwell found that all the colours of nature could be counterfeited to the eye by mixing just three pure colours of light – red, green and blue. In May 1861 he presented the first-ever colour photograph at a lecture he gave to the Royal Institute.

His pioneering demonstration used an image of a tartan ribbon photographed three times. A trio of exposures of the ribbon were taken through red, green and blue filters and then projected through separate magic lanterns in order to create one single image – the first colour photo. These experiments have formed the basis of nearly all photochemical and electronic colour photography since.