A folly good time for all
QUESTION In Fifties Llandudno, all the trams carried adverts for Catlin’s Follies. What or who were they?
Will Catlin, a theatrical entrepreneur, started out as a Pierrot clown, before hosting Pierrot shows on Scarborough’s South Bay at the end of the 19th century and in llandudno and Colwyn Bay in Wales at the start of the 20th.
He was born William Fox in leicester in 1871 and changed his name when he teamed up with the music hall performer Charlie Carson.
in 1894, he formed Catlin’s Favourite Pierrots, who performed on Scarborough sands. later, they became known nationally as Catlin’s Royal Pierrots.
His performers were all male. to add allure for the female audiences, he presented them as available bachelors. the artists were even forbidden to be seen in public arm-in-arm with a lady.
Catlin came to llandudno in 1915 when he bought the 1,150-seat Victoria Palace theatre on the seafront. He renamed it the arcadia and it became the home for Will Catlin’s Pierrots, subsequently Catlin’s Follies. He also established Catlin’s arcadia in Colwyn Bay.
a master of promotion, Catlin would send his Pierrots to llandudno station to entertain the holidaymakers coming off the train. He’d greet the audience at the entrance of the theatre with his trademark cigar in hand.
Catlin provided year-round employment for his cast by touring inland towns and cities during the winter.
When he died in 1953, aged 82, his coffin was topped with a Pierrot hat, made from white flowers, and the inscription: ‘King of the Pierrots’ final curtain.’
the show survived until 1968, when the local council took over the arcadia.
Annie Corston, Conwy, Clwyd.
QUESTION Why does iron kill stars?
a StaR uses nuclear fusion to release energy but, once it starts to fuse iron, it is doomed, because this takes more energy than it releases.
For most of a star’s life, hydrogen nuclei join to form helium nuclei. as the star runs out of hydrogen, other fusion reactions take place, forming the nuclei of heavier elements. Supermassive stars continue this process, until they begin fusing silicon to a solid core of iron.
in the mid-Fifties, astronomers realised that the stars are where all elements are forged in the universe.
Stellar nucleosynthesis was explained in the famous 1957 scientific paper Synthesis Of the Elements in Stars ( known as B2FH after its authors Geoffrey Burbidge, Margaret Burbidge, William Fowler and Fred Hoyle).
the paper explained how stars evolve because of changes in their composition. they first burn hydrogen but, over aeons, this is used up and the star begins to burn helium in its core. Scientists refer to this as a red giant.
lithium, boron, beryllium and especially carbon accumulate inside the stars.
Burning helium releases less energy than burning hydrogen, so stars run through their helium faster — in just a few hundred million years.
Smaller stars die at this point, creating molten masses of carbon known as white dwarfs.
Heavy stars (eight to ten times the size of the Sun) burn on, crushing carbon into more elements up to magnesium, which buys them a few hundred years.
the largest stars continue this process until they reach silicon and, finally, iron. However, fusing iron’s 26 protons costs energy. thus post-ferric fusion will not make enough energy to sustain the star.
Under these conditions, the burned-out stars implode under their own gravity, collapsing thousands of miles in seconds. they then rebound from this collapse in a spectacular release of energy called a supernova.
it is under these extreme conditions that elements heavier than iron form.
What is left behind is a neutron star or a black hole, depending on the final mass of the core. K. B. Stuart, Perth.
QUESTION What sort of beer was served in Wild West saloons and who supplied it? How was it kept?
in tHE 19th century, american brewers were producing beer, pale ale and stock ale stored in kegs and drunk quickly before it spoiled.
this was a well-known process. Beers and ales had been served for centuries as a safe alternative to water. Most were fermented with a particular strain of yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Sometimes referred to as a topfermenting yeast, S. cerevisiae ferments when warm and quickly produces an estery — a fruity flavour and aroma — beer that is referred to as ale.
Pioneer beer was warm, served at 55-65F. it had a wispy head and patrons had to knock it back in a hurry before it got too flat.
With waves of German immigration, cold beer arrived in the West in the late19th century. ice plants began cropping up in Western towns from the 1870s.
German brewers had a long history of producing lagers. these were fermented with Saccharomyces pastorianus, which brews at a slower rate at cooler temperatures and is called bottomfermenting. Cool fermentation requires cellar storage.
in the 1880s, adolphus Busch introduced artificial refrigeration and pasteurisation to the U.S. brewing process, launching Budweiser as a national brand.
Alan Finch, Droitwich Spa, Worcs.
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