Steaming to disaster
QUESTION Does anyone recall a toy train nicknamed the Birmingham Dribbler? StevenS Model Dockyard, established in 1843, in Aldgate, east London, took advantage of the craze for steam-powered engineering by producing models of locomotives, boats and boilers.
the company was the first to produce steam-powered toy trains. they were 2-2-0 wheel configuration and moved on the floor rather than a track. By the mid-19th century, such toys were mainly made in the Black Country by a variety of companies.
to get a Birmingham Dribbler on the move, the young engineer would half-fill the brass boiler with water. Beneath the boiler was cotton wadding soaked in methylated spirit held in place by a steel clip. When the water boiled, it circulated through a pair of oscillating cylinders that turned the wheels and off it went.
Dribblers (or Piddlers) were so called because they left a trail of water (and methylated spirit!). Later models were fitted with safety valves after some blew up. they also had a piercing whistle. When the Dribbler got up steam, the whistle and safety valve got extremely hot.
With its fuel and a naked flame, any Dribbler tipping over out of reach could have started a house fire. these toys had to be handled with great care.
Birmingham Dribblers were produced until the Fifties. In the late Seventies, Maxwell Hemmens produced a replica Dribbler with a solid fuel tablet.
Archie Murray, Rishworth, W. Yorks.
QUESTION What is the origin of the phrase ‘cat got your tongue’?
SeverAL theories have been forwarded as to its origin, including being flogged by the navy’s barbed whip called the cat-o’-nine-tails. the pain was said to be so intense that it caused the victim to stay quiet for a long time afterwards. In ancient egypt, liars and blasphemers had their tongues cut out and fed to cats.
the earliest use of the phrase is found in an American illustrated paper, Ballou’s Monthly Magazine in 1881, where it is described as a taunt used by children: ‘Has the cat got your tongue, as the children say.’
Like the blackbird that ‘pecked off his nose’, the phrase is probably an example of the light-hearted imagery that is, or was, directed at children rather than having any more elaborate origin.
Mrs J. Alleyne, Durham.
QUESTION Why is air invisible? What is the molecular reason?
AIr is invisible because, as we are immersed in it, we do not normally recognise any optical information to tell us it is there.
However, the atmosphere from space is visible. We recognise a body of water by seeing the reflection from the surface; a diver would see the division with the air as visible by the reverse process.
For anything to appear ‘visible’ requires that some stray light is reflected into our eyes — and with a still atmosphere this is unlikely. However, if there is heated air from a hot flue or hot sands, then the air will be made visible as a mirage or by the rippling of the light.
this is because the refractive index, the measure of the amount light bends or is slowed, changes with temperature. Air is transparent to the visible light that we use for our vision; there are no absorption mechanisms with these wavelengths. It is why we have evolved with vision in this range. It is not transparent to many other wavelengths, though. Ultraviolet light and shorter wavelengths are stopped quickly by air, and oxygen molecules in particular, due to ionisation. Infrared light is absorbed selectively by water vapour, carbon dioxide and other contaminants because the wavelengths resonate with the vibration frequencies of these molecules and are converted to heat. that is why the levels of these ‘greenhouse’ gases are important. Keith Matthews M.Inst.P., Ferndown, Dorset.
QUESTION What is the strangest thing found by Customs at a UK airport or port?
FUrtHer to the earlier answer, I was working in security at Heathrow when, on one X-ray scanner screen, a perfect image of a revolver showed up in a passenger’s bag.
the well-rehearsed process to deal with such events then swung into action: the machine was stopped with the bag inside, a supervisor was called followed by the police, who attended with an armed officer with a loaded weapon.
the bemused lady passenger who owned the bag was taken aside by the police and questioned about the contents as she was shown the image on screen.
the passenger, trying to keep a straight face, then began to chuckle when the bag was opened by security staff, who found a very expensive Swarovski, lead crystal full- sized model of a Smith & Wesson snub-nosed .38 revolver she had bought in London for her family in the U.S.
the passenger had no idea that though lead crystal is transparent, because of its lead content it shows up as black on X-ray screens, as would a real gun.
the passenger was given a mild tickingoff by the smiling policeman and the item travelled in the aircraft hold.
Peter Smith, Hertford.
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