See the world by peep show

QUESTION A Daily Mail from 1929 carried an advert for Army Club cigarettes that featured a collection of cards with ‘an ever-changing series of fascinating travel scenes from every corner of the globe’. They had to be viewed through a device called a Camerascope. Does anyone still own one of these? Army Club was a brand of cigarette distributed by Cavanders Ltd of London, and after World War I advertising campaigns for it adopted wartime themes recalling military camaraderie. It was dubbed ‘The Front Line Cigarette’.

The box f eatured ‘ The major’, a moustachioed veteran with a monocle and the slogan: ‘This is a cigarette for the fellow with a full-size man’s job to do. When you’re feeling all “hit up”, it steadies the nerves.’

In 1927, Cavanders Ltd produced the Camerascope, a stereoscopic viewer given away with packets of Army Club. It was a device for viewing two separate images as a single three-dimensional image.

The Camerascope was made from black painted steel. When unfolded, the front

and back were held in place by two pairs of springs. Two images were slotted into the back, and the viewer peered through two lenses to make a combined image

come to life. Cavanders issued nine blackand-white sets and two coloured sets (with between 24 to 36 images in each set).

The sets, mainly photographed between 1915 and 1925, were issued between 1927 and 1931, and had names such as Peeps I nto many Lands and Peeps I nto Prehistoric Times. J. Dearden Holmes was the London photographer who produced Peeps Into many Lands.

The American cards included depictions of stagecoaches in Colorado, particularly Colorado Springs, as well as views of the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Indian cards featured an opium shop, native craftsmen, Indian elephants and boys shoeing a bullock.

Camerascopes and sets of cards can still be picked up at antiques shops or on eBay. They sell for between £20 and £50.

Jim Begg, Ludlow, Shropshire. I HAve a Camerascope and many real sets of photographs entitled Peeps Into many Lands (the whole first series covering Australia, New Zealand, India, egypt, New Guinea and China) and Glorious Britain.

Early tech: Camerascope with images They appear to have been posted in response to the Daily mail advert as with them is the remnants of packaging from Cavanders Ltd, London, the producers of Army Club cigarettes.

Colin Johnson, Potters Bar, Herts.

QUESTION

Did Robert FitzRoy, who captained HMS Beagle on Charles Darwin’s famous voyage, coin the word ‘forecast’? vICe-ADmIrAL robert Fitzroy rN (1805–65) was a pioneering meteorologist who i ntroduced to t he world t he i nsti t uti on of t he dail y weather predictions. He is routinely credited with having invented the word ‘forecast’, but this is not actually the case.

The word forecast i n the sense of ‘forethought and prudence’ dates from at least the 15th century. The meaning ‘conjectured estimate of a future course’ is from the 1670s.

Neither did Fitzroy invent the idea of weather forecasting. Around 650 BC, the Babylonians tried to predict short-term weather changes based on the appearance of clouds and optical phenomena such as haloes. A middle english word for weather forecasting was aeromancy.

However, Fitzroy can be credited with i nventing the modern, science- based weather report and standardising the word ‘ f orecast’ as one r el ated to weather: ‘ prophesies and predictions they are not — the term f orecast is strictly applicable to such an opinion as is the result of scientific combination and calculation,’ he wrote.

In 1854, Fitzroy was appointed chief of a new department to deal with the collection of weather data at sea with the title meteorological Statist (statistician) to the Board of Trade.

His department’s agents found ships’ captains willing to gather weather observations while at sea and supplied them with a set of instruments that had been tested for standardisation at Kew Observatory. Fitzroy also worked on development of a barometer that was rugged, reliable and simple. These were eventually distributed to every British port so that they could be consulted by seamen before embarkation. The stone huts t hat housed t hese mercury barometers can still be found in many fishing harbours.

The violent storm of 1859, which caused t he l oss of t he ship royal Charter, i nspired Fitzroy to develop r e gular weather f orecasts to ai d shipping. His first official storm warning was issued on February 6, 1861.

The first daily — and public — weather forecast was published in The Times on August 1, 1861. It read: general weather for the next two days in the North — moderate westerly wind; fine. West — moderate south westerly; fine. South — Fresh westerly; fine.’

This was considered quite audacious. As there was no settled theoretical framework f or devising the prediction and no predecessor as benchmark, some viewed these forecasts with the same incredulity as they greeted Charles Darwin’s work.

yet their remarkable accuracy and lifesaving potential soon made t hem invaluable to seafarers and began what has since become a national obsession.

R. P. Mills, Sandwich, Kent.

QUESTION

In the famous photograph of the German surrender at Luneburg Heath, who is the general standing behind Field Marshal Montgomery as he signs the document? FurTHer to the earlier answer, as a friend of Derek Knee for more than 20 years, we had many lengthy discussions about the events at Luneburg Heath. While the information regarding Derek’s life is correct, he was not the man standing behind the Field marshal.

Its was, in fact, Joe ewart. James O. ewart (b. 1917 edinburgh) gained an mA with First Class Honours from edinburgh in Classics in 1939. enlisting in the 9th Battalion, The royal Scots, he was gazetted second lieutenant.

During his student days he became proficient in many languages and was later attached to the Intelligence Corps.

At 25 he was a lieutenant-colonel; at 28 he had been appointed and OBe and CBe, and had attained the rank of colonel, attached successively to the staffs of Generals Wavell, Auchinleck montgomery and eisenhower.

Tragically he was killed in a road accident near the castle of Ostenwalde, Germany, on July 1, 1945, just a week after the surrender was signed.

Rowland Edwards, Cardiff.

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, Scottish Daily Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB. You can also fax them to 0141 331 4739 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.