Dropped by the Giant Swede's to pick up a motorized muscle hammer, in the hopes of undoing the back contrusion that continues to plague. Yes, contrusion. The personal word for things that are wrong and frustrating. He was keen to show off an item he has restored to working condition:
He brought it back to life. Which means, I guess, DEATH:
We're going to get together with some of the old Valli Stalwarts and play it again some night. As we did forty years ago.
That was the highlight of the day, perhaps - the rest was characterized by wincing, hence the muscle hammer. He reminded me not to use it on my neck, or I'd probably have a stroke. I'm pleased to note that it is not plastered on the side in a big yellow sticker that ruins the aesthetics of the thing.
In other news: my boss sent me a press release fromthe Duluth Trading Company, offering to give you a new pair of underwear if you bring in an old one. Since I regard all such suggestions as Marching Orders - why yes I can get a column out of this - I set to work, and ended up hours later rewriting the lyrics of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" to apply to underwear, because that is what I do.
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Our weekly recap of a Wikipedia peregrination. Expect no conclusion or revelations, but if you've been with us since this started next year, you know . . . sometimes we learn interesting things.
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So! How do we get from here . . . |
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I saw this ad in a 1961 paper, and was taken back to the days of personal label guns.
We loved those things when we were kids, because we could. . . label things! The world was full of unlabeled items, and we could bring order to the chaos. We would eventually realize that the labels would lose their adhesive power and bow, and you’d have to press them back on, but they never stuck as well. In a decade or two the sight of embossed labels like these would be declasse, a sign that the people here were old and hadn’t really changed past that point where everything gets fixed in place and the years roll over you, one after the other, and you budge not, and you notice not.
Who invented it? The first search result was R. Stanton Avery, but only because he invented the self-adhesive label. Wikipedia notes that his other names were “Stan Avery, Stan the Sticker Man.”
But that’s not the label-maker maker. When I found the answer, the name leapt right out:
Dymo Industries, Inc. was founded in 1958 to produce handheld tools that use embossing tape.
Dymo! Of course.
The embossing tape and handheld plastic embossing labeler was invented by David Souza from Oakland, California.
There’s no link for him. I find someone with that name in the 1940 census, with a birth year of 1901, so that might work. Nothing else . . . ah, there’s this, from Time magazine, 1968.
Rudolph Hurwich, owner of a small packaging outfit in San Francisco, was willing to listen to the visitor in his office one day in 1958. The guest was David Souza, from nearby Hayward, Calif., who had dropped by to try to peddle his invention: a simple, hand-operated labeling device for punching embossed letters onto adhesive plastic tape.
Hurwich liked the idea. He bought the rights for $100,000, and formed Dymo Industries Inc. with another $300.000 to produce the new tool.
Well, that’s a nice bag of moolah, especially for 1968.
This history page gives us his middle name: David W. Souza, and puts the patent date at 1959. Yeeeeah well about that
It wasn’t his only patent. He was still at it in the 80s:
Variable quantity dispensing device for granular material
And a security lock. But I find no obit. It’s possible he’s still around. Anyway, Mr. Avery’s house, at one point, was a Scottish castle. It once belonged to the Sinclair Clan. The histories of the clans and other powerful families is terra incognito to me. I find it all rather thick reading. But this stuck out:
The Sinclairs supported the Scottish Crown during the Scottish–Norwegian War
The what?
The Scottish–Norwegian War lasted from 1262 to 1266. The conflict arose because of disagreement over the ownership of the Hebrides. The war consisted of mainly skirmishes and feuds between the kings, and the only major battle was the indecisive Battle of Largs.
The Norwegian holdings at the time: I had no idea.
But where's the Largs site?
The probable site of the mound upon which the Norwegians and Scots fought is not commemorated at all. Located at grid reference NS 2073 5932., and surrounded by a housing development, the mound is crowned by a 19th-century monument known as "The Three Sisters", which may have been erected by astronomer Thomas Brisbane.
We can see a sign that seems to say Three Sisters:
A google search turns up a picture of it.
I asked OCR to help out:
The three pillars, known locally as the "Three Sisters", stand as a monument to one of Largs' most famous sons. Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane. The pillars are remnants of tho astronomy Observatory built in 1808 at Brisbane House, the first of three established by Brisbane.
His favourite Observatory seems to have been the large one, as he did his main work from it. To heip with his observations, Brisbane built the "Three Sisters" hero on Green Hill with a Meridian pillar midway between his Observatory and the "Sisters", which enabled him to establish a true North South line In the sky for his telescope measurements. Further down the hill is an inscribed plaque which translates as "For the. purpose of the study of astronomical science, T. Brisbane laid It out A.D. 1808.”
I think we can end here.
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