The show must go on
QUESTION What became of Ford’s Theatre in Washington, where President Lincoln was assassinated?
On APRIL 14, 1865 — five days after Confederate States Army leader General Robert E. Lee’s surrender, which ended the Civil War — President Abraham Lincoln attended a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth, an actor with Confederate sympathies.
Following the assassination, the government appropriated the site, with Congress paying $88,000 in compensation. They prohibited it from being used as a place of public amusement and it was handed over to the War Department.
It witnessed a second disaster on June 9, 1893, when part of the building collapsed, killing 22 clerks. There were claims that the theatre was cursed.
The building fell into disuse until World War I when it took up War Department duties again. In 1933 it was transferred to the national Park Service.
Following lobbying by the Ford’s Theatre Society, in 1955 a Bill was passed through Congress to restore the building.
It reopened on January 30, 1968, with a gala of songs, readings and dances in memory of Lincoln, directed by John Houseman and featuring Henry Fonda, Harry Belafonte and Andy Williams.
President Lincoln was a great theatre lover. He once said: ‘Some think I do wrong to go the opera and the theatre, but it rests me…A hearty laugh relieves me; and I seem better able after it to bear my cross.’
Today, you can see musical comedies, classic American drama and new plays at Ford’s Theatre, but the presidential box is never occupied during a performance.
Jill Rey, Thame, Oxon.
QUESTION Who made the first quartz watch?
On CHRISTMAS Day 1969, Seiko released the world’s first quartz wristwatch, the Seiko Astron 35SQ.
In a limited edition of 200, with a solid 18- carat-gold casing, each watch cost 450,000 yen (£2,950), the price of a small car at the time. It marked a dramatic shift in the world’s watch industry.
Swiss neutrality during World War II had enabled its traditional watchmakers to acquire a virtual monopoly in time-keeping. But the Swiss fell behind commercially because they were wedded to the idea of mechanical, wind-up wristwatches.
Ironically, the first electronic wristwatches had been developed in Switzerland. In 1954, Max Hetzel came up with the Accutron wristwatch, which used an electrically charged tuning fork which resonated at 360 Hz to regulate the hands of the watch. Ignored by Swiss manufacturers, it was marketed by Bulova in new York from 1960.
Meanwhile, the time-keeping properties of quartz crystal were becoming apparent. A battery sends electricity to a quartz crystal in the watch through an integrated electronic circuit. The crystal oscillates at a precise frequency of 32,768 times each second. The circuit counts the number of vibrations and uses them to generate regular electric pulses — one per second. These pulses drive the gear train which spins the clock’s hands.
The technology was groundbreaking, eliminating the need for winding and improving accuracy to within one minute per year.
Swiss watch giants Patek Philippe, Piaget and Omega had attempted to develop the first quartz wristwatch, but they had pulled out of the race by 1967. It left the field open to the Japanese.
The Seiko Crystal Chronometer QC-951, a desktop quartz regulated clock, was used as a back-up timer for the marathon in the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
After Seiko produced the first Astron 35SQ in 1969, other Japanese companies such as Citizen and Casio flooded the market with accurate, well- priced quartz watches.
The impact was devastating to the Swiss watch industry, which declined from 1,600 watchmakers in 1970 to 600 in 1983, in a period called the quartz crisis.
In 1974 came the Omega Marine Chronometer, which incorporated a quartz circuit that oscillated at 2.4 million vibrations per second and was accurate to within 12 seconds a year.
Oliver Simonds, Truro, Cornwall.
QUESTION Why did Chairman Mao hate sparrows so much?
FuRTHER to the earlier answer, Chairman Mao’s campaign to rid China of flies, as well as sparrows, mosquitoes and rats, certainly worked.
Covering the Queen’s tour of China in 1986, I saw only one fly, inside the British Embassy in Beijing. With every citizen ordered to kill 20 flies each day, the last fly had identified the only refuge. Michael Cole, BBC TV News Court Correspondent 1985-88, Woodbridge, Suffolk.