Six degrees of fascination
QUESTION Who came up with the idea that we are all six degrees of separation away from any other person?
The six degrees of separation theory states that everyone on earth can be connected to any other person through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries.
The concept was proposed in Chains, a 1929 short story by hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy: ‘One of us suggested the following experiment . . . We should select any person from the 1.5 billion inhabitants of the earth . . . Using no more than five individuals, one of whom is a personal acquaintance, he could contact the individual using nothing except the network of personal acquaintances.’
Applications of the theory include power grid and disease transmission mapping, computer circuitry design and internet search engine ranking.
in 1967, American sociologist stanley Milgram attempted to test the theory: he sent a package to 160 random people in Omaha, Nebraska, asking them to forward it to someone they thought would bring it closer to a set final individual, a stockbroker in Boston.
Though the participants expected the chain to include at least 100 people, on average it took only six friends of a friend for each package to be delivered to its final destination.
Milgram’s findings inspired the phrase six degrees of separation, also the title of a 1990 play and a 1993 film starring Donald sutherland, stockard Channing and Will smith (pictured above).
Three students from Albright College in Pennsylvania invented the parlour game six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon, the hollywood actor who has appeared in Footloose and Tremors. Players suggest a random actor or actress’s name and try to figure out how to connect that person to Bacon in six degrees or fewer.
L. D. Hartley, Sheffield.
QUESTION Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison were born in the same year in west Texas. Did they ever meet?
BUDDY hOllY and Roy Orbison were born in 1936 and met on only a handful of occasions.
The first time was when holly’s band The Crickets trooped backstage to pay their respects when Roy’s ‘Oooby Dooby’ tour in 1956 stopped at holly’s birthplace in lubbock, Texas.
Orbison did likewise when Buddy played Odessa, Texas, where Roy was living with his girlfriend Claudette.
Though Orbison was making records at sun Records in Memphis, he also used Norman Petty’s studio in Clovis, Texas, where Buddy recorded his songs.
Buddy’s first lP, The Chirping Crickets, included two compositions co-written by Orbison: You’ve Got love and An empty Cup. he also recorded one of Orbison’s early sun tracks Go! Go! Go!, which was released after holly’s death at the age of 22 in a plane crash.
Simon Myers, Stockport, Cheshire.