TV’s down the drain!
QUESTION Is Sir Peter Bazalgette, chairman of ITV, a descendant of Joseph Bazalgette, who installed London’s 19th-century sewers?
Sir Joseph William Bazalgette (18191891) was chief engineer of London’s Metropolitan Board of Works. His great and lasting achievement was the creation of a sewer network for Central London.
This was in response to the Great Stink of 1858, when the rapidly increasing population and the use of water closets, rather than cesspits, saw raw sewage enter the Thames.
The hot weather of July and August exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent.
The smell emanating from the Thames was so overpowering that the curtains of the House of Commons were soaked in chloride of lime in a vain attempt to protect the sensitivities of MPs.
Peter Bazalgette is the great-greatgrandson of Sir Joseph Bazalgette. His TV company Bazal pioneered the creation of formats that could be sold internationally, including early forays into reality TV.
He was behind hit shows such as Food And Drink, ready Steady Cook, Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook, Ground Force and Changing rooms.
Bazalgette joined Endemol in 1998 when he sold Bazal to the Dutch group. He took a small Dutch reality show called Big Brother and turned it into a worldwide phenomenon.
He also created Deal Or No Deal, earning him a place in Quentin Letts’s 50 People Who Buggered Up Britain. Thus arose the joke that, where Joseph Bazalgette was responsible for removing crap from Londoners’ homes, his descendant was responsible for bringing it back in.
Jo Graham, York.
QUESTION Why do some people say ‘white rabbits’ on the first day of each month?
WHITE rabbits is something of a mystery. The term was popular with RAF bomber aircrew during World War ii due to the superstition that saying it upon waking would protect you from harm.
The phrase is thought to be a euphemism used instead of an expletive, and is perhaps a survival of the ancient belief in swearing as a means of avoiding evil.
The use of just the word rabbits predates this. The earliest known reference is in 1909 Notes & Queries: ‘My two daughters are in the habit of saying “rabbits!” on the first day of each month. The word must be spoken aloud, and be the first word said in the month. it brings luck for that month. Other children, i find, use the same formula.’
Just why this superstition arose is uncertain, but rabbits have long been a symbol of fertility and prosperity.
‘White rabbits’ or ‘rabbit, rabbit, rabbit’ can be used to ward off the expression ‘pinch, punch first of the month’.
This phrase is thought to date back to when people believed in the existence of witches. Pinch refers to a pinch of salt, which was believed to weaken witches if thrown at them. Punch refers to the banishing of a witch, weakened by salt, once and for all. George Smith, Haywards Heath, W. Sussex.
QUESTION During the rapper Kanye West’s meeting with Donald Trump, he mentioned hydrogen-powered aircraft. Do they exist?
THErE are several experimental hydrogen-powered aircraft, but they are not in commercial use. The object is to reduce pollution. Conventionally fuelled aircraft engines emit pollutants including carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, unburnt fuel and particles including soot.
if hydrogen is used in place of kerosene in a conventional jet engine, the only pollutant emitted is nitrous oxide. The exhaust is mainly water vapour.
A better way is to supply the hydrogen to a fuel cell, where the hydrogen is combined with oxygen from the atmosphere to produce electricity.
The exhaust is water vapour, which is so clean it can be drunk.
The direct current produced by the fuel cell is converted to alternating current electronically and used to power one or more brushless electric motors to drive a propeller or ducted fan.
The output of the fuel cell may be supplemented by a rechargeable lithiumion battery to provide additional power when needed, for example, during take-off.
However, there are a number of problems. Hydrogen is a gas at everyday temperatures, so to carry enough on an aircraft to give a reasonable range you have to compress it and store it in heavy pressure vessels or cool it to below minus 253c to convert it into a liquid.
You can store much more by liquefying it than by compressing it. When liquefied, hydrogen is only a third of the weight of conventional fuel, but it occupies four times the volume.
The fuel tanks for liquefied hydrogen have to be slightly pressurised, which makes them spherical or cylindrical. These can’t be carried in the wings as in conventionally fuelled aircraft and must be stored in the fuselage or external streamlined tanks.
A liquid hydrogen fuel tank has to be well insulated to slow the rate at which the hydrogen boils off and to prevent ice forming on the tank.
Hydrogen as a gas is not available in significant quantities so has to be manufactured. Most of it is made by a chemical process from natural gas or charcoal.
The first produces carbon dioxide as a by-product and the second results in carbon monoxide, so neither can be considered green. Hydrogen can also be produced by running an electric current through water, but this is much more expensive than other methods.
researchers are working on nonpolluting methods of producing low-cost hydrogen, together with a means of storage that does not involve low temperatures or high pressures.
Biofuels produced from organic matter may prove to be a better alternative.
Denis Sharp, Hailsham, E. Sussex.