A green light for shoppers
QUESTION In the Seventies, is it true that a man bought a brand new Ford Cortina with Green Shield Stamps? What other unusual prizes have been obtained via loyalty schemes?
In 1973, my husband and I worked at the Ford garage in Bedford, which was owned by Green Shield Stamps.
We were contacted by a missionary from Belfast — their community had somehow managed to collect enough of the stamps to buy a car. Goodness knows how they did that.
My husband and I drove the car to Heysham in Lancashire and went over to Belfast on the freight ferry.
We didn’t realise how bad the situation was in Belfast. However, we were met by a lovely family who chaperoned us around the safe areas and took us to see the Mountains of Mourne.
Viv Croot, Oakley, Beds. Green Shield Stamps was a sales promotion scheme that rewarded shoppers with gifts from a catalogue or affiliated retailer.
The scheme was introduced in 1958 by richard Tompkins, who had noticed the success of Sperry & Hutchinson Green Stamps, which had been popular in America from the Thirties.
Tompkins’s scheme got a huge boost when Sir Jack Cohen, the founder of Tesco, signed up to the Green Shield Stamps scheme in 1963.
The tie-up proved mutually beneficial — Tesco became one of the biggest retailers in the country, while Green Shield Stamps became a national obsession.
The Green Shield Trading Stamp Company produced a glossy catalogue that left consumers poring over the latest homeware. You got one stamp for each 6d spent in various stores, and these would be pasted into stamp books that could hold 1,280 stamps.
Families across the country would spend hours fastidiously gumming into their booklets.
Some of the top gifts from the 1965 catalogue were: regentone 19in TV (88 books), Longines 9ct gold watch (39½ books), Kodak Brownie 8mm movie camera (13¼ books) and Kenwood Chef (33¼ books).
To get hold of a Silver Cloud motorboat, without the outboard motor, you would need 170 books. This would require a whopping 217,600 stamps, which meant spending £5,440 on groceries and petrol — this was the price of a large detached house at the time.
The car was introduced in the Seventies and there were reports of people turning up at showrooms with suitcases full of Green Shield Stamp books.
In our household, the finest purchases were the miracle that was the Goblin Teasmade and a shiny Swan regal kettle. The catalogue also featured canteens of cutlery, crockery, tools and paint brushes, as well as carriage clocks, candelabras, camping gear and toys.
You could be forgiven for thinking that this was all a bit like the Argos catalogue — and you’d be right.
In 1973, Tompkins began rebranding Green Shield Stamps as Argos, named after the Greek city and because it would feature high up in alphabetical listings.
In 1977, Tesco pulled out of the Green Shield Stamps scheme and Tompkins set about converting the business to Argos and cash purchases.
Adam Bennett, Milton Keynes, Bucks.
QUESTION Did the Chinese once use rice as mortar?
THe mortar used to bind some sections of the Great Wall Of China, various ancient bridges, residential buildings and pagodas has long been recognised for its extreme durability and ability to withstand earthquakes.
In 2010, it was established the secret ingredient was, indeed, Chinese sticky rice. Lime has been used as masonry mortar in europe since 2,450BC. The romans added ground volcanic ash, brick powder and ceramic chips to lime mortar to improve performance. In ancient China, they used rice.
Fuwei Yang, Bingjian Zhang and Qinglin Ma, in their Study Of Sticky rice — Lime Mortar Technology For The restoration Of Historical Masonry Construction, established that workers developed the mortar 1,500 years ago by mixing lime with sticky rice soup.
They further identified amylopectin — a type of polysaccharide, or complex carbohydrate — as the chemical responsible for the mortar’s strength. This discovery has important implications for the restoration of historic buildings.
T. E. Russell, Sheffield.
QUESTION Is it true that American heavy diesel train engines are rarely, if ever, turned off?
THe earlier answer claimed it typically took 20 to 30 minutes to start a diesel engine. This is not correct. It can, however, take that length of time to warm up.
I am a retired UK railway engineer and know that the most significant facet of this issue is the reliability of the traction unit, given the potential remoteness from its maintaining depot (probably in a passing loop/yard or cross- over point) and the importance of the operational flexibility of an engine that has to be ready to go at short notice.
U.S. rail routes are often only single tracks, thus trains run in both directions on the route. If a locomotive fails to start when it is required to haul a train and there is no assistance available — particularly in remote locations — it can quickly jam up the railway operation.
In my view, to guarantee locomotive availability, the cost benefit of keeping the engines idling far outweighs the cost of not doing it. It even has long-term benefits of reduced wear and tear.
I doubt the cost of the fuel used is seen as significant — and we all know how the Americans view the air pollution risk. IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London, W8 5TT. You can also fax them to 01952 780111 or you can email them to charles. legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.