Monkey about with weird art
QUESTION Was the surrealist movement in the 1920s inspired by Victorian fantasy postcards?
At the end of the 19th century, picture postcards were popular. Many took on extraordinary flights of the imagination, such as men dressed as giant babies, dancing moons, animals mimicking human behaviour and damsels in distress being attacked by giant fish.
there is no doubt that they influenced the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Indeed, surrealist poets Paul eluard and Andre Breton were serious collectors of these postcards, as was Salvador Dali.
Photographer Man Ray incorporated examples into his work.
In the 1860s, illustration had become an affordable luxury. Mass production and a connected postal service saw the picture postcard becoming a popular form of communication.
the small canvas was appealing to jobbing artists and it proved an easy way to make money while giving free rein to self-expression.
As collector William Ouellette stated: ‘It is a world where tiny people sail in seashell boats, whole families fly through the air on a sausage and snowmen drive automobiles; where ladies emerge as butterflies, sleep with lobsters and get imprisoned in snow bubbles; where mountains have faces, pigs wear clothes and babies sprout from cabbages.’
Surrealist artists grew up with fantasy postcards and recognised the dream-like plausibility and unconscious symbolism of many of its images.
Sandra Boyer, Hereford.
QUESTION What was the first recorded team sport?
the ball game Pitz, or pok-ta-pok, was played from 1,400 BC by the Olmecs, the earliest known Mesoamerican civilisation. It was later adopted by the Mayans.
two teams of two to four players tried to keep a large rubber ball in motion by means of their hips. the games were played in large I-shaped stone ball courts with substantial public galleries.
the oldest surviving team game is polo, which was first played in Persia in 500 BC. Unlike the modern version developed in India during the time of the Raj, these games were huge. elite training matches with the king’s cavalry could see up to 100 mounted players per side.
A case has been made for an early football game called cuju. Chinese legend has it that the game emerged in the third millennium BC during the reign of huangdi, the Yellow emperor.
After winning the battle for the control of China, huangdi is said to have had his enemy Chiyou’s stomach stuffed with hair or straw and made into a ball.
the first genuine references to cuju in Chinese literature is in the 3rd century BC, during the Warring States period. two sides of six played with the aim of kicking a ball through the fengliu yan, a raised banner with a circle in the middle, in the centre of the court.
Mrs J. Hutchins, London N14.
QUESTION How is liquid nitrogen made?
PURE nitrogen is the gas that makes up 78 per cent of the atmosphere. It was first liquidised in 1883 by Polish professors Karol Olszewski and Zygmunt Wroblewski.
they achieved this by compressing and refrigerating nitrogen, doing the same thing with oxygen and carbon monoxide.
the gases were compressed by a force pump with mercury as an intermediate. the pump consisted of a piston in a barrel, actuated by a screw that was driven by a huge wheel.
Liquid ethylene, pre-cooled by a mixture of solid carbonic acid and ether, was used as a refrigerant. Nitrogen has to be cooled as low as between minus 210c and minus 195.8c before showing up in a glass capillary as a colourless, odourless liquid.
It looks like boiling water and evaporates incredibly quickly. the Scottish scientist James Dewar solved this problem in the 1890s by developing an insulating container that is the basis for the liquid nitrogen containers used in research laboratories today.
the Dewar flask is a double-walled flask with a vacuum between the silvered layers of steel or glass. the vacuum layer is so efficient at preventing transferring of heat to nitrogen that it can be preserved in liquid form.
Modern liquid nitrogen plants compress air to a higher pressure and purify it to remove water, carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons.
the nitrogen gas is cooled until it reaches a liquid state and is then stored in a giant double-walled tank.
It is transported in vehicles that have to use officially approved impactresistant containers that can withstand extremely low temperatures.
Liquid nitrogen is used in scientific research, the medical field and food industry. Its coldness means it is dangerous if mishandled or ingested.
even brief exposure can cause severe permanent tissue damage. Accidental leakages in research labs and industrial plants have killed people.