NEWS AND OPINIONS

Evening Star, Issue 22032, 18 May 1935, Page 2

NEWS AND OPINIONS

THE PIGTAIL. Mongolia is less up-to-date than’ China, and we learn from Mr Peter Fleming’s articles in ‘ The Times ’ that “ among the soldiers, if not yet among their families, the consternation caused by the regulation proscribing pigtails has almost completely died ou ? # . was in the early" century that Chum, itself began to reconsider the pigtail. The critical year was 1910, when six Chinese of wealth and influence publicly discarded their queues at Hongkong to the strains of a band playing Gilbert and Sullivan melodies. .This was partly, the result of an accident to a man whose pigtail got caught _ in. machinery; and it was computed that in two days ten thousand people had signed the anti-queue pledge—or whatever form the act of repudiation took. It is hardly a century since we ourselves abandoned the pigtail. Irafalgar was won by sailors- with queues, and the Blues would have ivom them at Watex-100 had they not been cut off by the barber at Dover. The pigtail even survived into the Reform Parliament on the head of Mr Sheppard, M.P. for Frome. But the Bill was a bad blow to the fashion. When the measure passed the Lords, Lord Bathurst solemnly cut off his pigtail, exclaiming, “ Ichabod, the glory is departed —• meaning the glory of England and not’ of his hyacinthine locks. —‘ Observer.* A DOWNRIGHT COMPOSER. That is what made him [the late Sir Charles Stanford, the composer], by the confession'of those ho taught, such a brilliant teacher. They have recorded with pride and affection l the way ho used, to tell them that their composition came “ from hell, H-E-double L, my boy;” or “ I’ll tell ye what I’d do. I’d burn it;’* or (passing an undertaker’s with the victim, after he hid had a whole afternoon to think over, liis lesson and wonder what Stanford, who had said nothing, really thought of his effort) “ Take it there, my boy.” In the forty-one years he was at the Royal College he had at least forty-one pupils, (probably twice that number) whose names are known by their work to all musicians, and a dozen of them to the world in general, as- representative of what is sometimes called the - English Renaissance.— ‘ Observer.’ CALCULATING MACHINES. ... A new calculating machine— the “ differential analyser of incredible complication and ingenuity, was exhibited during _ the week. It ’assists in the investigation of such problems as “atomic structure and’properties,” “ transients in electrical circuits,” and “ vibrations of systems with non-linear .restoring forces.” This seems getting dangerously near a robot Eddington—and we shall soon come to wonder, like the Erewhoniahs, whether machinery is not too formidable a' rival. We do not mind its ploughing fields and making boots, but when it comes to the higher mathematics what chance has the plain man with only a multiplication table? No wonder the calculating machines, Ifke the- ghosts in * Macbeth,’ “ push us off our stools.” Fortunately calculating machines, as a race, have a low birth rate. Wo shall before long be celebrating the tercentenary'- oftie first, inyefdqd by Pascal in 1642 V was only for, purposes of addition ; it was Liebnitz, thirty years' later, who extended its range to include multiplication. The first English iiame in Hie list is Babbage (1822), of whom it is told that he was once detected by his partner at dinner in an elementary mistake in arithmetic. “ You see,” he explained, “ I never could count. That’s how I came to invent my calculating machine.”—‘Observer.’ THE NATIONAL ANTHEM. It seems a mistake to offer a. prize for a new verse to the National Anthem, for experience has shown the problem to be insoluble.- Even if poetry is better than the old (and it well may be) .the - addition refuses to “join.” Even royal command has found the omens against it. In 1857,' on the. eve of the marriage of her eldest daughter, Queen Victoria desired Tennyson to supplement the. National Anthem for the occasion. The Laureate took his pen and wrote:— - ■ - / Let both the peoples say, God bless the marriage day: And of the union was born the last German Emperor.— ‘ Observer.’ COATING SANDPAPER. The minute grains forming the working surface of sandpaper are now individually put into place by electricity. Each particle—and in a “smooth” paper there are 250,000 to the square inch—is treated separately; the sharpest edges stand upwards and the grains are evenly spaced. This new method has been perfected by a Birmingham firm. > In the new process the paper or doth backing first passes between two rollers, where a thin coating of glue is applied. It then passes between two electrodes charged with 100,000 volts, the abrasive grain being fed between the two electrodes simultaneously. The grains become electrified, and, following certain electrical principles, are forfced into the glue in such a manner as to leave the sharpest points and edges standing upright. Further, the grains, being charged -with high-ten-sion electricity, repel each other with equal force, thereby becoming evenly spaced and providing a perfectly uniform coating to the paper or cloth backing. A process that would be almost impossible to accomplish by purely mechanical means is thu* effected, with comparative ease, through the medium of electricity.