Tidbits of Bismarck, Volume 2, Issue 2

of Bismarck January 7, 2015

Volume 2, Issue 2

Enterprise Publications, LLC

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OFFICE SUPPLIES

by Janet Spencer

Many people will be returning to their job following the holiday break, so come along with Tidbits as we look at office supplies!

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• The word “pen” comes from the Latin word “pinna” meaning feather, because the first pens were quill pens made from feathers.

• When people wrote with quill pens, it was customary to carry a small knife in order to cut new pens— called a penknife.

• Today ballpoint ink is dye dissolved in vegetable oils and/or castor oil.

• When the first ballpoint pens went on sale on in 1945 at Gimbels in New York City, 5,000 people jammed the store to get a chance to buy one for $12.50 which was equal to a day’s pay.

Fifty extra police officers were called and 47 people fainted in the crush. 10,000 pens were sold in six hours, and an average of 6,000 pens were sold daily for four months after that. This in spite of the fact that the pens did not work very well.

• A good pen can write 50 thousand words before running out of ink.

• Every second, about 125 ballpoint pens are sold around the world.

• Bic owns one-third of the ballpoint market in the U.S. • In 95% of cases, if a person is given a new pen, the first word that they write will be their name.

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OFFICE SUPPLIES (continued): STAPLERS • Before the invention of staples, people would bind papers using ribbons strung through holes, or drops of wax to seal them together.

Mon-Fri 6:00 am-5:30 pm

Sat 6:00 am-3:00 pm

• The first stapler was invented in the 1700s for the benefit of King Louis XV of France. Every single staple was made by hand and inscribed with his insignia.  

• George McGill patented the modern stapler in 1866, but his contraption weighed 2.5 lbs (1.1 kg) and was not very portable. Each staple had to be inserted individually. McGill showcased his invention at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.

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• McGill’s design was improved in 1905, but the stapler had to be smacked with a mallet to secure the staple because the staples were connected to each other with a thin bit of metal.

• At first the stapler was such a rare contraption that firms would buy a single stapler and the entire company had to share it.

• In the 1920s Swingline invented a stapler that used a row of staplers that were connected by glue instead of by metal. This made stapling easy and quick, and mallets were no longer required.

• The world’s most expensive stapler was an antique Remington model manufactured in 1919. It sold for $760 on eBay. • In 2012, $80 million worth of staplers were sold in the U.S., and Swingline remains the major manufacturer.

PENCILS • When an oak tree tipped over in Cumbria, England, in the mid-1500s, a deposit of extremely pure graphite was discovered underneath it.

Graphite is a form of carbon. Other graphite deposits are soft, but this deposit was solid. Bits could be sawn off into sticks. The locals used these sticks for marking sheep. Today it remains the only graphite deposit found in solid form.

• Because solid graphite had never been heard of, people mistook it for a form of lead, giving us what we now call “pencil lead” even though pencils have no lead in them.

• The news of these writing sticks spread around the world, and England held a monopoly on pencils for centuries.

• The first pencils made from these graphite sticks were wrapped in string or leather. Around 1560, an Italian couple invented the prototype for the modern-day pencil by encasing a stick of graphite inside a hollowed-out stick of wood.

This prevented the pencil lead from breaking and prevented the black carbon from rubbing off on the fingers. Later, this method was improved by splitting a stick in half, hollowing out the center, inserting the graphite, and then gluing the two halves of the stick together. This is how pencils are still made today.

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1. TELEVISION: What was the opening theme song from “Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour”?

2. MOVIES: Who played the role of Boo Radley in the movie “To Kill a Mockingbird”?

3. MEDICAL: What is the more common diagnosis for rhinorrhea?

4. GEOGRAPHY: What four U.S. states meet borders at one point?

5. COMICS: What is the name of Snoopy’s yellow bird friend in “Peanuts”?

6. RELIGION: Who was the first pope of the Catholic Church?

7. ENTERTAINERS: Who was the first actress to receive $1 million for a single movie?

8. INVENTIONS: In what year was Velcro patented?

9. AD SLOGANS: What cereal is known as the “Breakfast of Champions”?

10. GAMES: What is a flush in a poker hand? (c) 2014 King Features Synd., Inc.

For Advertising Call: (701) 391-2076 OFFICE SUPPLIES (continued): STAPLERS (continued):

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• During the Napoleonic wars, England refused to export any graphite to France, and Napoleon was desperate for pencils. In 1795, officer Nicholas Jacques Conte ground soft graphite into powder, mixed it with clay, pressed it into sticks, and baked them in a kiln. The success of this formula broke the English monopoly on pencils because soft graphite is widely available.

The recipe Conte concocted is used by pencil manufacturers today.

PENCIL FACTS • 14 billion pencils are manufactured each year.

• A tree can make around 300,000 pencils.

• Hexagonal pencils outsell round by 10 to 1.

• You can make pencil marks permanent by washing them in skimmed milk.

• Carpenters’ pencils are rectangular so they don’t roll away during work.

• John Steinbeck is said to have used more than 300 pencils to write his novel “East of Eden.”

• During World War II rotary pencil sharpeners were outlawed in Britain because they wasted so much scarce graphite and wood, so pencils had to be sharpened with knives.

ERASERS • Until the 1770s, the only way of erasing pencil marks was to take a bit of bread, moisten it, ball it up, and rub it on the paper. Then one day British engineer Edward Nairne absentmindedly picked up a piece of rubber instead of breadcrumbs, and discovered it erased the pencil marks even better.

• Pencils leave a mark on paper because the graphite mixes with the fiber in the paper.

Erasers work because their polymers are stickier than the paper, so graphite particles stick to the eraser instead of the paper.

• Teachers originally resisted the idea of having pencils equipped with erasers because they felt it encouraged students to make mistakes.

• Pink rubber erasers usually are mixed with powdered pumice to increase abrasiveness.

1. In 2014, the Angels’ Albert Pujols became the third-youngest player (34) to reach 500 home runs in a major-league career. Who was younger?

2. Who was the first pitcher to start a game as a designated hitter?

• Today the typical pink eraser on the tip of a pencil is made from vinyl instead of rubber.

• Johnny Carson regularly played with pencils at his “Tonight Show” desk. These pencils were specially made with erasers at both ends to avoid on-set accidents.

3. In 2013, DeMarcus Ware became the Dallas Cowboys’ all-time leader in sacks.

Who had held the record?

4. Who was the last men’s basketball player to lead the nation in blocks per game and reach the Final Four before Kentucky’s Anthony Davis did it in 2012?

5. The Los Angeles Kings set an NHL record in 2014 for most playoff games en route to winning a Stanley Cup. How many was it?

6. Which was the only Olympics in the past six in which Finland’s men’s hockey team did not win a medal?

7. Who was the last American golfer before Michelle Wie in 2014 to win the U.S. Women’s Open? (c) 2014 King Features Synd., Inc.

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Tidbits® of Bismarck NOTEWORTHY INVENTIONS:

THE TABULATOR

• On January 8, 1889, the first tabulating machine was patented by Herman Hollerith. The invention heralded the modern era of machine data processing.

• Born in Buffalo, NY, Hollerith received a Ph.D. in engineering from Columbia University in 1890, and taught mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology before going to work for the Census Bureau.

• Hollerith’s job with the Census Bureau involved compiling statistics. Back then, it took 8 years to tabulate the census information— and the census was taken once every 10 years.

Hollerith knew there must be a better way. He worked on the problem even after leaving the Census Office for a better job with an engineering firm.

• Then one day he took a train trip. The railroad had been plagued with robbers who posed as passengers. To help catch them, the engineers kept track of everybody on board.

They had a card for every person on board, and would punch holes in it to record descriptions of the passengers: punch here for light hair; there for dark hair. Punch out A, B, or C for blue eyes, brown eyes, or green eyes. Punch this corner for short people, or that corner for tall people. This gave Hollerith an idea.

• Several weeks later his invention was ready: an electric tabulator. Wherever there was a hole in a card, an electrical connection would be made and a counter would register it.

Continued on the next page!

by Samantha Weaver • It was 19th-century German philosopher, poet and composer Friedrich Nietzsche who made the following sage observation: “He who has a ‘why’ to live can bear with almost any ‘how.’”

• The beer can was introduced in 1935 by the now-defunct Kreuger Brewery.

• The first Rambo movie originally was shot with two different endings. The one that made it into the final cut, of course, left the title character spent, but alive. In the ending that was cut, Rambo was shot and killed by his nemesis. Just think of all the sequels that would never have been ...

• In China, farmers often use colonies of ants to control the population of insects that are detrimental to their crops.

• Just 150 years ago, New York City was home to 10,000 free-range hogs.

• According to the Talmud, a central text of Judaism, if someone is bitten by a rabid dog, the victim should write on the skin of a male hyena, strip naked and bury the clothes for a year, then burn the clothes and scatter the ashes. Of course, early medical treatment for the bites wasn’t much better. Some doctors recommended pouring boiling oil on the wound or cauterizing it with a red-hot iron.

Some went as far as packing the bite with gunpowder, then igniting it. Greek doctors suggested that victims bathe in the juice of crawfish. Castration and massive doses of asparagus also were suggested as cures for rabies.

• On average, 56,000 pounds of ore must be mined in order to find one karat’s worth of diamond.

• A man by the name of Walter Cavanaugh once possessed 1,196 different credit cards in his name -- all of them valid. He was also known as “Mr. Plastic Fantastic.” *** • Thought for the Day: “Who overcomes by force hath overcome but half his foe.” -- John Milton (c) 2014 King Features Synd., Inc.

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THE TABULATOR (continued):

• On Jan. 9, 1768, in London, Englishman Philip Astley stages the first modern circus.

Astley, a former cavalry sergeant major, found that if he galloped in a tight circle, centrifugal force allowed him to perform seemingly impossible feats on a horse’s back.

• On Jan. 6, 1838, Samuel Morse’s telegraph system is demonstrated for the first time in New Jersey. The telegraph, a device that used electric impulses to transmit encoded messages over a wire, would eventually revolutionize long-distance communication.

• On Jan. 11, 1908, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt declares the massive Grand Canyon in northwestern Arizona a national monument.

Congress did not officially outlaw private development in the Grand Canyon until 1919, when President Woodrow Wilson signed the Grand Canyon National Park Act. • On Jan. 7, 1929, Walter Chrysler, the founder of the Chrysler Corporation, one of America’s Big Three automakers, is featured on the cover of Time magazine as its Man of the Year. In 1928, his company had acquired the Dodge Brothers Company, thereby becoming the world’s third-largest automaker.

• On Jan. 5, 1933, construction begins on the Golden Gate Bridge, as workers start excavating 3.25 million cubic feet of dirt for the structure’s huge anchorages. The Golden Gate Bridge officially opened on May 27, 1937, the longest bridge span in the world at the time.

• On Jan. 8, 1946, Elvis Presley receives his first guitar. Competing versions of the story say that what Presley really wanted for his birthday was a rifle or a bicycle. Instead, his mother took him to the Tupelo Hardware Store and bought a $6.95 guitar.

• On Jan. 10, 1976, “Convoy,” by C.W. McCall, is the No. 1 song on the U.S. pop charts. “Convoy” fueled the trucking/CB-radio craze that had millions of Americans creating “handles” for themselves -- Rubber Duck, Pink Lady, Scooter Pie, etc. -- and daydreaming about the glamorous life of the long-haul trucker. Hollywood responded with a parade of related works, including “Smokey and the Bandit” (1977). (c) 2014 King Features Synd., Inc.

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• He subsequently set up the Tabulating Machine Company and began to improve the design of an automatic card-feed system, a keypunch, and punch cards, which formed the foundation of the modern information processing industry.

• Hollerith fought an uphill battle to get the notice he deserved. For three years he tried unsuccessfully to get financial backing and corporate interest. Finally, he asked Boston city officials to let him tabulate the town’s death records. In just a few days, he tabulated data that would have kept many clerks busy for weeks.

People were finally impressed, and the Army hired him to tabulate some statistics. Next he took his invention to the Paris Exposition, where he won a gold medal.

• Then he applied for the job of tabulating the 1890 census. The Bureau of the Census set up a competition between all people who were interested in the contract. Herman and his electric tabulator were finished before the others were half through. He got the job. When the census was taken, it took Herman and 30 electric tabulators only six weeks to compile most of the information that had previously required eight years to accomplish.

• His tabulator machines rapidly spread across the world. Countries around the world used them for their census taking, and insurance companies used them as well. Even today, his method of keeping track of information is used everywhere extensively.

• In 1910, Hollerith sold his Tabulating Machine Company for a few million dollars, but he never liked the new president. In fact, he refused to buy any stock in the company.

Perhaps he came to regret that, for if Herman Hollerith had invested $200,000 in that business in 1910, it would have been worth about a billion dollars by 1970. The new owners changed the name of the company and eventually became one of the world’s largest corporations, selling computer hardware and software. Can you name the company? (Find the answer on page seven.)

1. Who had a hit with “Chain Gang” and when?

2. Name the group that wrote and released “Let’s Go, Let’s Go, Let’s Go.” 3. The group: REO Speedwagon. The song: Guy falls in love with an old friend. Name the song.

4. Who originally released “Sharing The Night Together”?

5. Name the song that contains this lyric: “Friday night and the lights are low, Looking out for the place to go, Where they play the right music, getting in the swing, You come in to look for a king, Anybody could be that guy.” (c) 2014 King Features Synd., Inc.

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Tidbits® of Bismarck could be a tyrant and a monster consumed by drugs and ego, but a completely different vision comes out when he’s breaking himself down on stage. The wild use of flashbacks and uneven pacing can be difficult, but Boseman’s performance keeps you watching and caring.

EDITOR’S NOTE: DVDs reviewed in this column will be available in stores the week of January 5, 2015.

PICKS OF THE WEEK Boyhood (R) -- Over the course of 12 years, director Richard Linklater made a film about growing up in which we get to see an actor age. Mason (Ellar Coltrane) lives with his mom (Patricia Arquette) and his spastic older sister (Lorelei Linklater). Every so often, their rolling-stone dad (Ethan Hawke) comes back around to teach the kid a lesson about being a man or voicing his feelings. It’s a big story told in a series of small moments.

Starting when he was just 7 years old, Ellar Coltrane worked on the film shoot with Linklater for a little while each summer. The result is Mason’s coming-of-age story, in which we see how a contemplative boy caught between his estranged parents changes over years. It may not be the most life-altering story, but it truly is a unique movie-watching experience.

Get On Up (PG-13) -- James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, lived one of those lives made for musical biopics. He grew up impoverished in a dusty part of Georgia with an abusive father (Lennie James) and a mother who walked out (Viola Davis). Chadwick Boseman (the lead in last year’s Jackie Robinson biopic, “42”), brings Brown to life with a crackling energy and fervent commitment.

Director Tate Taylor (“The Help”) shows the highs, lows and explosive performances that defined the man. Behind the scenes, Brown

Horns (R) -- Ig Parrish (Daniel Radcliffe) and Meri Williams (Juno Temple) are two little lovebirds, until Meri’s body is found brutalized in the woods. Ig, even with his boy-next-door looks, becomes the prime suspect and the most hated guy in town. Depressed and reviled over a crime he didn’t commit, Ig starts to grow horns, literally. As Ig’s visage becomes more devilish, people around him feel compelled to spill their darkest desires to him, seeking permission to do the bad things they really want to do. It’s a dark fantasy thriller comedy with a new twist, but it’s so distracted that it can’t settle on a tone. A lack of tonal clarity makes it hard to laugh at jokes or gasp at drama.

Left Behind (PG-13) -- This is a religious disaster flick that goes light on the religion and comes out as an overall disaster. Nicolas Cage (oh yes) stars as Rayford Steele (cool name, bro), a morally impure airline pilot who gets left behind when the biblical rapture takes all of the good people to heaven. He’s flying a commercial jet over the Atlantic ocean when a bunch of people disappear, leaving only empty clothes behind. Rayford has to safely land the plane -- which seems pretty difficult, even though he’s a pilot -- while his collegeage daughter wanders a partially emptied New York City.

COMPUTERS: QUIZ (Find the answers on page seven.)

• Michael was born in Texas in 1965. He was interested in computers from the moment they began appearing. At 15 he disassembled and reassembled an Apple II computer for fun.

• While attending the University of Texas, he started his own computer company out of his dorm room, calling it PCs Limited. With a thousand dollars start-up capital, he began manufacturing his own kind of computer with the revolutionary idea that he could sell them directly to the customers instead of going through a third party. This kept his prices much lower than his competitors and also kept him in close contact with consumers.

• At 19, Michael quit college to run his computer company, re-naming the company after himself. By 1992 his firm was listed on the Fortune 500 list of the largest companies in the world, making him the youngest CEO ever to head a Fortune 500 company.

• Today his company is the most profitable PC manufacturer in the world, and he ranks high on the “Forbes” list of America’s richest people. The company is based in Texas and employs nearly 83,000 people worldwide. What’s Michael’s last name, now carried on personal computers worldwide?

COMPUTER FACTS • It took the radio 38 years to reach 50 million users, television only 13 years, but the internet reached 50 million users in only 4 years.

TV RELEASES “Glee: Season 5” “Archer: Season 5” “Black Sails: Season 1” “The Cosby Show: Seasons 5 & 6” “Girls: Season 3” “The Bridge Season 2”

• Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, the first female admiral in the US Navy, came up with the term ‘debugging’ after removing a moth from a computer.

(c) 2014 King Features Synd., Inc.

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COMPUTERS: QUIZ (continued): A VERY LARGE NUMBER • Edward Kasner was a mathematician. In 1938 he was asked to come up with a name for a very large number: the numeral one, followed by a hundred zeros. He asked his two young nephews what name they would suggest.

• Nine-year-old Milton suggested a name out of the funnies. A cartoon strip character named Barney was very popular. Milton chose Barney’s last name for the number.

• Kasner announced the new name for the big number in his next book, altering the spelling.

• Sixty years later, Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed a new internet search engine.

Other search engines searched each webpage and ranked them according to how many times a specific term appeared on them, but Page and Brin designed their search engine to search for the specific term and then find out how many links there were that led back to that page, which resulted in a better search engine.

• They decided they needed a name that reflected how many websites the search engine was searching. They took the name of Edward Kasner’s very large number, only they misspelled it slightly, so it ended up being spelled exactly the same way the cartoon character Barney spelled his last name. What’s it called?

COMPUTER FACTS • In 1981 Bill Gates said, “640 kb of memory ought to be enough for anybody.”

• Moore’s Law states that computer performance doubles every 18 to 24 months, and ever since 1971, this has been true.

• HP, Google, Microsoft, and Apple were all started in garages.

Trivia Test Answers 1. “The Beat Goes On” 2. Robert Duvall 3. Runny nose 4. Colorado, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico 5. Woodstock 6. St. Peter 7. Elizabeth Taylor, “Cleopatra” 8. 1955 9. Wheaties 10. Five cards of the same suit Flash Back Trivia Answers 1. Sam Cooke, in 1960. It’s said that the song came about after Cooke had an encounter with a chain gang working on a highway.

2. Hank Ballard and The Midnighters, in 1960. The song was No. 1 on the R&B charts for three alternating weeks, vying for first with Jerry Butler’s “He Will Break Your Heart.”

3. “Can’t Fight This Feeling,” in 1985.

4. Soul singer Arthur Alexander, in 1977.

5. “Dancing Queen,” by ABBA in 1976.

During recording, half of the second verse was rewritten. The only place it can be found is in a video of an early recording session.

Sports Quiz Answers 1. Alex Rodriguez and Jimmie Foxx, both 32 years old.

2. Rick Rhoden of the New York Yankees, in 1988.

3. Harvey Martin, with 114.

4. Akeem Olajuwon of the University of Houston in 1984.

5. Twenty-six games.

6. It was 2002.

7. Paula Creamer, in 2010.

Computers: Quiz Michael’s last name is Dell.

The search engine is Google, from googol.

The Tabulator The company is called International Business Machines, or IBM.

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Enterprise Publications, LLC, owned and operated by James and Nikki Wiese of Bismarck, recently acquired the rights to publish Tidbits® in the

Bismarck/Mandan area. Tidbits® is a light and interesting paper dedicated to publishing things you didn’t know. A “tidbit” is defined as “a tasty morsel to be devoured before the meal,” and that’s exactly what Tidbits® is.....a morsel for the mind. Tidbits® is published weekly, so look out! Tidbits® has arrived! Distributed at area restaurants, Tidbits® is meant to be picked up when entering and read while dining. Tidbits® provides food for thought, so Bon Appetit! Tidbits® can also be found wherever people are waiting. Whether you are waiting for your vehicle to have its oil changed or get new tires, or waiting for your doctor, chiropractor, optomistrist, or dentist, rest assured that Tidbits® will be there to keep you entertained! Once you are done waiting, either take it home for further enjoyment or leave it for the next person! Don’t worry about running out, because we will publish more each week. If you actually have a week where you are not waiting for something, rest assured that Tidbits® will still be there. Find and read each week’s edition online at our website, www.bismarcktidbits.com. Tidbits® is here for you.

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