Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  “I’ve never been a fan of amphibians. They are nature’s fence-sitters. Come on, amphibians, which is it? Water or land? Pick one!”

  “Like any good newsman, I believe that if you’re not scared, I’m not doing my job.”

  “Just because the Pope is infallible doesn’t mean he can’t make mistakes.”

  “If these foreign newspapers have nothing to hide, how come they don’t print them in English?”

  “Why do we have to wait for elections? Why not have every elected official have electrodes implanted in their chest? If they don’t please us, every morning, we stop their hearts.”

  “America has a simple deal with the wealthy: we cut their taxes and in return they inspire us with their golden toilets and trophy wives.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with stretching the truth. We stretch taffy, and that just makes it more delicious.”

  Wich-craft: The average American eats 200 sandwiches a year.

  THE MUSIC MAN

  Do you like electronic music? Then raise your glass and drink a toast to Thaddeus Cahill.

  MUZAK MAKER

  In 1893 an inventor from Washington, D.C., named Thaddeus Cahill was experimenting with telephone transmissions when he had a novel idea: He noticed that when an electric generator, or dynamo, sent current down a phone line, it created a tone in the earpiece. And different frequencies of current created different tones. Cahill quickly realized that if he had 12 dynamos—each corresponding to a note on the scale—he could send music over phone lines. He spent the next four years perfecting the idea, and in 1897 received a patent for the Telharmonium, not only the world’s first significant electric musical instrument—but the first one that could be potentially heard by thousands of people at once.

  Think about it: At that time (and for all time before that) if you wanted to listen to live music, you had to be within hearing distance of the person playing the instrument. The phonograph was becoming popular—but that was recorded music. And the popularity of the radio was decades away. Cahill envisioned hiring serious musicians to play “respectable” music, such as Bach and Chopin, on his telharmonium, and sending it over phone lines to restaurants, hotels, and other paying subscribers—even individuals—miles away.

  HOW IT WORKED

  The telharmonium (or the dynamophone, as Cahill sometimes called it) was basically a gigantic electric organ. It had two keyboards—one on top of the other—and hundreds of wires running to generators, transformers, and various other electrical parts that sent current down the line. And to magnify the sound, he called for large paper cones that could be fixed to the earpieces of telephones (the precursor to the loudspeaker).

  • When the telharmonium was turned on, an electric motor turned the shafts of the 12 dynamos, known as “tone shafts.”

  Bats, like cats, groom themselves.

  • Each dynamo had a four-foot-long metal shaft packed with metal disks (picture a barbell packed with weights). The disks, or “tone wheels,” had different numbers of differently-sized teeth on their edges. As they rotated past the coil, the teeth would produce varying frequencies of electricity, which would, in turn, produce different notes.

  • Pressing a key moved a magnetic coil—the pickup—toward one of the tone wheels, creating an electrical charge—and a tone—that would then be sent down a phone line.

  • Those tone wheels, 145 of them on the 12 tone shafts, gave the telharmonium a five-octave range with 36 notes in each octave. But that’s not all they did.

  THE FIRST SYNTHESIZER

  A quick music lesson: When an oboe, a piano, and a trumpet each play the same note, the fundamental note is the same, but the sound is very different. That’s because the physical nature of each instrument creates different overtones, or “harmonics,” along with the note, giving it a unique sound. The telharmonium—using all of those different tone wheels—was designed to add those harmonics to the fundamental notes in order to mimic different instruments, making it the world’s first synthesizer. (Cahill even used the word “synthesize” in his patent.) A row of draw bars above the keyboard could be pulled out to different “stops” affecting what harmonics would be added; for example, you could set it to play “oboe.” The result of all this was an incredibly flexible machine that could mimic woodwind, brass, and even stringed instruments. Two skilled players—it was meant to be played by two at once—could virtually play a symphony on the telharmonium.

  BIG DEBUT

  Cahill built his first test model in Washington in 1901 and then got some investors to finance building a larger one. In those days, generators had to be big to create a lot of current, so Cahill’s machine was huge—more than 60 feet long and weighing over 200 tons. He had it shipped to “Telharmonic Hall” at Broadway and 39th Street in downtown Manhattan (it took 12 train cars to carry it), and started the New York Electric Music Company. He then got the New York City telephone company to agree to lay lines for the “telharmony” transmissions.

  The human eye can distinguish about 500 different shades of gray.

  The telharmonium’s big debut was on September 29, 1906—and it was a huge success. Before long Cahill had sold subscriptions to such venues as Louis Sherry’s restaurant, the Casino Theatre, and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. One of the best reviews came from the first private subscriber, Mark Twain. “Every time I see a new wonder like this,” he said, “I have to postpone my death. I couldn’t possibly leave this world until I have heard it again and again.”

  BEGINNING OF THE END

  But there were many problems with the newfangled instrument, and these would soon prove to be insurmountable. The most obvious one was the cost. Cahill built a third telharmonium in 1911, for an unbelievable $200,000 (the equivalent of $4 million today) and his investors were unhappy with the rate of return.

  Another problem was the sound quality. When it was good, witnesses said, it was pure and very beautiful, but inconsistent signals over the phone lines resulted in volume fluctuations and static. The New York Telephone Company wasn’t happy, either: The telharmony lines were laid right next to phone lines, and so much power was used to pump the music that it bled over, causing numerous complaints from telephone users.

  FINALE

  The telharmonium played its last concert in 1916. There are no surviving models of the device and no recordings are known to exist. But Cahill had ushered in the era of electronically produced music, and the world would never be the same. Decades later, a former watchmaker took Cahill’s design, miniaturized it with the help of new technology, and came up with his own electronic organ. Complete with tone wheels, draw stops, and foot pedals for shaping sounds, the Hammond organ, invented in 1935 by Laurens Hammond, would become an American classic.

  * * *

  “My take on relationships? Get in, get out—everybody gets hurt.”

  —Rick Overton

  If every star in the Milky Way were a grain of salt, they’d fill an Olympic-size swimming pool.

  HELLO, 911?

  Another installment of some of our favorite emergency-call stories. Believe it or not, they’re all real.

  NINE-ONE-YAWN

  In August 2004, an unidentified person called 911 in Millersville, Maryland, and was asked the nature of their emergency. The caller explained the situation, and the dispatcher responded…by snoring. It was the middle of the night and the dispatcher had fallen asleep. For the next two minutes the caller tried to wake up the dispatcher but couldn’t. Police captain Kim Bowman told reporters that, luckily, the call wasn’t a dire emergency and nothing bad had come of it (but added that the department was implementing a program to teach employees how to stay awake during the night shift).

  IT’S A LOVE EMERGENCY

  In July 2006, a sheriff’s deputy in Aloha, Oregon, responded to a noise complaint at the home of Lorna Jeanne Dudash. He spoke with the woman for just a moment and then left. A short time later Ms. Dudash called 911—and asked if that “cutie-pie” officer could return. “
He’s the cutest cop I’ve seen in a long time. I just want to know his name,” she said. The confused dispatcher asked again what her emergency was and Dudash responded, “Honey, I’m just going to be honest with you, I’m 45 years old and I’d just like to meet him again.” So the dispatcher sent the officer to Dudash’s home—and he promptly arrested her for abuse of the emergency-dispatch system. She faces several thousand dollars in fines and up to a year in prison.

  GIMME A NINE…GIMME A ONE…

  In 1999 a 911 dispatcher in Fayetteville, Arkansas, received a call, but there was nobody on the line—all she could hear was a football game in the background. She hung up and called the number back, but nobody answered. A short time later it happened again, and again there was nobody on the line. A few minutes later it happened again…and again…and again. Dispatchers were called 35 times before police finally traced the call…to a football fan who had his cell phone set to speed-dial 911. It was in his pocket and had been going off every time he stood up to cheer.

  Geography quiz: How many countries have land that lies within the Arctic Circle? Eight.

  PIZZA ’N’ NUTS

  In May 2005, 86-year-old Dorothy Densmore of Charlotte, North Carolina, called 911 and complained to the dispatcher that she had called a nearby pizza shop, and they had refused to deliver a pizza to her. The dispatcher advised Densmore that calling 911 for non-emergencies was a crime and hung up on her. Densmore called back, and kept calling back. She called more than 20 times. An officer was finally sent out to her home to arrest her…but not before being kicked, punched, and bitten on the hand by Densmore. (She had also complained to the dispatcher that someone in the pizza parlor had called her a “crazy old coot.”)

  GAS LEAK

  Officers in Janesville, Wisconsin, responded to a 911 call about a domestic disturbance after a husband and wife got into an argument. When they arrived at the couple’s home, the wife explained to the officers that the argument had started after the husband had “inappropriately passed gas” while they were tucking their son into bed. (The man was not charged with a crime.)

  * * *

  DIAL “M” FOR MURDERER

  “Murderers and Mafia mobsters have been employed by Italy’s state telephone company to run a call center from prison. Telecom Italia has opened a new directory assistance service inside the notorious Rebibbia prison, which is Rome’s largest jail, with 1,600 inmates. Twenty-six prisoners in the program work from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and are paid the equivalent of 20 cents for every call they answer. ‘It is good because people do not know who we are, so we do not feel like we are in a ghetto anymore,’ said a man serving 13 years for murder. There are plans to open another call center at Poggioreale prison in Naples. Although inmates have access to a nationwide database of phone numbers, they are unable to dial out.”

  —Sydney Morning Herald

  Einstein first became interested in science when he was given a magnetic compass as a boy.

  CB radio slang was pretty popular back in the 1970s, so these expressions may stir up some memories. If not, happy reading. We gone!

  Black water: coffee.

  Greasy side up: a truck that has flipped over.

  Flop box: motel room.

  Travel agent: dispatcher—the person in a trucking company who gives the truckers their driving assignments.

  Deadheading: hauling an empty trailer (since there’s no cargo, you’re not getting paid).

  Hauling dispatcher brains: deadheading.

  Flip-flop: the return trip, as in, “Catch you on the flip-flop.”

  You are wall to wall and treetop tall: I read you loud and clear.

  10-4: message received and understood.

  Fer sure, fer sure: 10-4.

  10-100: bathroom break.

  Salt shaker: a snow plow (they salt roads when it snows).

  Running on rags: driving a vehicle with bald tires.

  Ground clouds: fog.

  Scrub brush: street cleaner.

  Motion lotion: diesel fuel.

  What’s your 20?: What’s your location?

  Shoveling coal: speeding up.

  Get-em-on/Get-em-off: the highway entrance/exit ramp.

  Chew-’n’-choke: truck stop.

  Lane flipper: a car or truck that keeps changing lanes.

  Portrait painter: radar gun.

  Muck truck: cement truck.

  Peanut butter in your ears: not listening to the CB.

  Money bus: armored car.

  Thermos bottle: tanker truck.

  Keep the bugs off your glass and trouble off your @##: Take it easy (signing off).

  Good investment: The Nike company was founded with $1,000.

  THE 1¢ MAGENTA

  Here’s the strange story of a little piece of paper that grew up to be the world’s rarest stamp—and then disappeared in the wake of a notorious crime.

  LUCKY FIND

  In 1873, while searching around his uncle’s attic in Demerara, British Guiana (a British colony in South America), a 12-year-old Scottish boy named Vernon Vaughn noticed an unusual stamp stuck to the outside of an old newspaper. It was octagonal and printed on thin magenta-colored paper. Vernon had just started to collect stamps and thought this new stamp would make a sharp addition to his collection. But on further inspection, he noticed that it seemed to be in poor condition—it was smudged and had the hand-written initials “E.D.W.” across the center. Vernon was disappointed but decided to soak off the stamp and keep it in his album, with the hope that he could sell it to buy other stamps. A few weeks later, he sold it to a local collector named N.R. McKinnon for six shillings—the equivalent of about $1.50 today.

  Vernon had no way of knowing that he had just discovered—and sold—the rarest, most valuable stamp of all time.

  “THE UGLIEST EVER ISSUED”

  The stamp that Vernon discovered, known as the “British Guiana 1¢ Magenta,” was the last survivor of a crude batch of stamps ordered in 1856 by the postmaster of British Guiana, E.T. E. Dalton. After a shipment of state-issued English postage stamps was lost at sea, Dalton, desperate for postage but hampered by limited resources, had to act quickly. He went to businessmen William Dallas and Joseph Baum, publishers of a local newspaper called the Official Gazette, and commissioned them to print a set of one-cent and four-cent stamps. The one-centers were postage for newspapers, the four-centers for letters.

  Dalton gave the newspaper printers some guidelines regarding the stamp’s design. He asked them to produce a stamp that displayed a British naval vessel alongside the colony’s imperial motto, Damus Petimus Que Vicissim (Latin for “We Give and We Seek in Return”). The printers disregarded the postmaster’s instructions and created a small sailing ship of their own design. In addition, to the further dismay of the postmaster, they printed them on unrefined magenta-colored paper and hand cut the corners to an uneven octagonal shape.

  The lantern fish produces light—enough to read by (if fish could read).

  Unhappy with the print job and fearful that the crude new postage would be an easy target for counterfeiters, Dalton ordered that the center of each stamp be initialed by British Guiana’s postal clerks. The 1¢ Magentas were widely thought to be the ugliest ever issued, and their already limited production was halted as soon as a new batch of stamps arrived from England.

  BUYER #2

  While the stamp’s beginnings were humble, its life as a collectible was spectacular. N.R. McKinnon, the stamp’s first buyer in 1873, recognized its unique qualities, but had no idea that he possessed the world’s only copy. He sold his entire collection—including the British Guiana 1¢ Magenta—in 1877 to Thomas Ridpath, a stamp dealer in Liverpool, for £120 (about $10,000 today).

  The stamp remained with Ridpath for the next 25 years. Then, at the turn of the century, the philatelic world’s most famous collector, Philippe la Renotière von Ferrary, the Austrian Duke of Genoa, approached him about selling it. Ridpath sold the 1¢ Magenta to him for £150—a remarkable s
um for a single stamp. But Ferrary was used to paying large sums for stamps: After inheriting a fortune from his parents as a child, he had dedicated his life to his stamp collection and spent most of his adult years traveling the world searching for the best and rarest stamps.

  BUYER #3

  Ferrary wrote in his will that upon his death, his valuable collection was to go to the Postmuseum in Berlin, Germany, in hopes that it would bring the public the same joy that it brought him. But his dream of sharing his collection with the world was interrupted by the start of World War I, when his Austrian heritage forced him to flee his home in France and move to the safety of Switzerland. Unable to take his stamps with him, he left his entire collection, consisting of hundreds of albums, in the Austrian Embassy for safekeeping. Ferrary died in Switzerland in 1917 at the age of 67. Seeking reparations at the war’s end a year later, the French government seized his collection from the embassy and designated the most valuable stamps to be sold in 14 separate auctions between 1921 and 1926. The highly publicized auctions raised more than 25 million francs for the French government and sent the British Guiana 1¢ Magenta to a new owner, a new country, and a new level of celebrity.

  Does your teacher know? May 6 is No Homework Day.

  BUYER #4

  Automobile upholstery magnate Arthur Hind of Utica, New York, bought the stamp at auction in 1922 for £7,343—the equivalent of more than $300,000 today. To get it, Hind outbid many wealthy collectors—including the king of England—and set a new record for the price of an individual stamp.

  The purchase attracted a flurry of publicity in the United States. Unlike the British Guiana 1¢ Magenta’s previous owner, Hind was obsessed with his stamp and not interested in displaying it. This gave birth to several rumors, including a story that Hind had somehow obtained another British Guiana 1¢ Magenta and burned it with a cigar so that his first purchase would retain its value as the world’s rarest stamp.