ABC Wednesday Archives - Page 66 of 91

Z is for Zipper

Elias Howe, who invented the sewing machine received a patent in 1851 for an ‘Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure.’

Some inventions have been around so long that one tends to forget that, once upon a time, somebody actually created it, and there was a time when the item did not exist. So it is with the zipper. From Wikipedia: “A zipper, zip, or zip fastener, is a commonly used device for binding the edges of an opening of fabric or other flexible material, as on a garment or a bag… It was invented by Gideon Sundbäck circa 1917 based on prior less effective fasteners, but many others have made improvements and different versions of the device.”

However, as About.com notes: “Elias Howe, who invented the sewing machine received a patent in 1851 for an ‘Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure.’ Perhaps it was the success of the sewing machine, which caused Elias not to pursue marketing his clothing closure. As a result, Howe missed his chance to become the recognized ‘Father of the Zip.'”

Others developed alternates, but none were viable, commercially and mechanically, until the Sundback model.

Here’s an Amazon citation to Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty by Robert D. Friedel.

I remember watching the June 20, 2010 episode of CBS Sunday Morning, which had a piece about the zipper.

My wife, if I should have my pants zipper, not all the way closed, will say to me, “XYZ,” which means eXamine Your Zipper.

The word zipper does have alternative references, to meanings in transportation, entertainment, and other uses. My personal favorite is Zipper Harris, the nephew of Zonker, in the Doonesbury cartoon newspaper strip.
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Apropos of not much: this is is my 3000th blogpost to Ramblin’ with Roger. I’m much more into chronological thresholds than numerical ones. But there it is.

ABC Wednesday – Round 11

X is for eXcitement

Even though the Christmas eve service is pretty much the “same” every year, it always manages to feel brand new.

eXude eXcitement

I think that, as I’ve gotten older, the thing about Christmas that excites me has changed. For one thing, “stuff” doesn’t have the same impact; not that I don’t love my Hess trucks, or whatever else I get. What I’ve discovered, though, that the more items you have, the more you have to deal with.

eXpectation

What I DO love, though, is the Daughter’s feeling of anticipation about the holiday. Watching her enthusiasm is actually better than my own feelings.

eXplore

That said, I appreciate the opportunity to sing music of the season, mostly familiar, but some not.

eXplanation

And even though the Christmas eve service is pretty much the “same” every year, it always manages to feel brand new.

eXtra special day

So I wish for you and yours, a happy/merry/joyous holiday.

eXtreme eXhaustion

And I hope you leave the wrapping paper on the floor, or the dirty dishes in the sink, a little longer today.
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The Bells of Christmas by Julie Andrews, from an old Firestone Presents album that I still own. My first favorite popular Christmas song. (And my album pretty much sounds like this one!)

Getting Ready For Christmas Day by Paul Simon. Most recent favorite pop Christmas song. Built around a sample of pastor J.M. Gates preaching in 1941,

A film: The Night Before Christmas 1913 – Ladislas Starewitch

ABC Wednesday – Round 11

W is for When was the Earth born?

James Ussher “was a prolific scholar, who most famously published a chronology that purported to establish the time and date of the creation as the night preceding Sunday, 23 October 4004 BC

I had this rather awkward time recently. One of my nieces was over, and she and my daughter were reading a book about this young girl in England in the 19th century who had discovered some fossilized items. The book mentioned that the items were millions of years old. This didn’t make any sense to the niece, who believes the age of the earth can be measured in thousands of years.

There is a philosophy called Young Earth creationism, which is “the religious belief that the Universe, Earth, and all life on Earth were created by direct acts of the Abrahamic God during a relatively short period, sometime between 5,700 and 10,000 years ago.” The article notes that, as early as 160 A.D., this theory was established. The key basis of this theory is a literal interpretation of the Bible, and the dates therein.

What I find interesting is that while “support for a young Earth declined from the eighteenth century onwards with the development of the scientific revolution, and scientific paradigm shifts…the rise of fundamentalist Christianity at the start of the twentieth century saw a revival of interest in Young Earth creationism, as a part of the movement’s rejection of the explanation of evolution.” So the concept all but went away, then came back. I did not realize this philosophy had such deep roots.

Possibly the best known historical proponent of YEC was James Ussher (1581–1656), who was an Archbishop in Ireland for the last 30 years of his life. “He was a prolific scholar, who most famously published a chronology that purported to establish the time and date of the creation as the night preceding Sunday, 23 October 4004 BC, according to the proleptic Julian calendar.” Even I don’t agree with his results, I admire the hard work that had to have been necessary to compile it by hand.

I invite you, at your leisure, to read David E. Matson’s refutation of YEC in How Good Are Those Young-Earth Arguments? Plus this piece on the Big Bang Theory (no, not the comedy on CBS-TV). Generally, scientists believe the earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and the universe thrice that.

There is this struggle between biblical and scientific thought, something I just don’t understand. Any number of scientists feel that their study of the universe strengthens their belief in a Supreme Being, not diminishes it. While I believe in God, I don’t think it conflicts with a scientific explanation of Creation. Something along the lines of “God created the Big Bang.”

ABC Wednesday – Round 11

V is for The Dick Van Dyke Show

The Dick Van Dyke Show was a critical success but hardly a ratings bonanza, mired in 80th place.

According to Vince Waldron’s book (pictured), which I read this past summer (I recommend it), when asked to play the part of comedy writer Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show in 1961, longtime actress Rose Marie asked “What’s a Dick Van Dyke?” The 35-year-old actor had been a pantomimist, radio DJ, and local talk show host. He was even the anchor of the CBS Morning Show, but like many before and after him, that program was a failure, even with Walter Cronkite as his newsreader.

Whatever real success he had had up to that point was on Broadway in Bye Bye Birdie. Producer Sheldon Leonard caught the show and signed Van Dyke. Impressively, and fortunately for him, the actor was also a partner in the show’s production company, named Calvada for creator Carl Reiner, Leonard, Van Dyke, and financial backer Danny Thomas.

Carl Reiner, after he left working with TV skit show legend Sid Caesar in the mid-1950s, was offered a number of sitcoms; he said most were terrible. His wife Estelle said, “Why don’t you write something yourself?” So he did. Not satisfied with writing one script, he penned 13 as a bible for the show. He then starred in a pilot called Head of the Family, about a head comedy writer named Rob Petrie, a pair of co-workers and his wife and son, which failed to be picked up by the networks. Reiner thought his work was in vain until Leonard suggested that the big problem with the pilot was…the star.

The show was recast with Van Dyke, Rose Marie, and her suggestion of jokester Morey Amsterdam as writer Buddy Sorell. For his wife, that “girl with three names,” as Danny Thomas referred to Mary Tyler Moore was cast, after Thomas had rejected her for his own show, primarily over her too-perfect nose. Van Dyke was skeptical; she was a decade younger than he was and he wasn’t sure the audience would accept them as a couple.

The show was a critical success but hardly a ratings bonanza, mired in 80th place. I’ve read that the show survived due to the persuasive nature of producer Sheldon Leonard with potential sponsors, or that the wife of CBS honcho William Paley really liked the show. Maybe both were true. Also, fans seemed to find the show in the summer reruns.

In any case, the cast was surprised to be picked up for a second go-around. Between seasons, Van Dyke squeezed in making the film version of Bye Bye Birdie.

By the fourth episode of the second season, The Dick Van Dyke Show had made it to ninth place, in part because of a new time slot, right after the phenomenon that was The Beverly Hillbillies. That second season also had a new opening sequence replacing the photo montage. Rob Petrie comes into the living room and trips over an ottoman, deftly dances around it, or rarely, gets around it but stumbles; this opening became as legendary as the TV theme by Earle Hagan; here’s Dick Van Dyke and the Vantasticks singing the theme a couple of years ago.

Despite changing writers (which would include Garry Marshall, later of Happy Days fame) and directors, the show ran five successful seasons, the perfect blend of work and home life. It is one of only two complete series I own on DVD, the other being The Twilight Zone. Interestingly each show has someone from Binghamton, TZ host/creator Rod Serling, of course; and Richard Deacon, who played put-upon brother-in-law of Alan Brady/producer of his TV show, Mel Cooley. Reiner himself would have the occasional role of Brady.

Notable episodes in season 2 included the one I remember the best, What’s In A Middle Name, when young Ritchie Petrie (Larry Mathews) discovers why his middle name is Rosebud; and It May Look Like a Walnut, which involves Laura body surfing on a wave of walnuts, discussed in In Praise Of Laura Petrie’s… capri pants. Walnut was ranked at #8 on TV Guide’s 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time. After that season, Van Dyke costarred in the movie Mary Poppins with Julie Andrews.

One of the funniest episodes of the whole series was “That’s My Boy?”, the season opener for season three; the full script appears in the book The Dick Van Dyke Show: Anatomy of a Classic by Weissman and Sanders (1983). Also, read what Ken Levine wrote about the episode 100 Terrible Hours.

Hope you can watch all the shows here. I’m in the midst of rewatching them at home, but I’ve only gotten through the first six episodes of Season 1 plus Head of the Family.

Dick Van Dyke went on to do other television (notably Diagnosis: Murder, with his son Barry) and movies, but the Dick Van Dyke Show is certainly a highlight in his long career, in which he has received a Tony, a Grammy, and five Emmys. He will receive the Screen Actors Guild’s Life Achievement Award on January 27, 2013. Van Dyke is the artist of the cast drawing above, which appears in the DVDS DVD set.

ABC Wednesday – Round 11

U is for UHF

UHF managed to stick, in no small part because of the All-Channel Receiver Act in the early 1960s, requiring UHF capacity on TVs.

While researching a book about local television that I will almost certainly never write, I discovered that, after World War II, there was a great demand for having local television stations in the United States. TV in those days was limited to what was called VHF (very high frequency) of channels 1 to 13; eventually, channel 1 was reassigned. But with only 12 individual choices of TV stations, there were, inevitably, issues of station signals interfering with other broadcasts.

By 1949, there were just over 100 local stations in the country. While some large cities, such as New York and Los Angeles had four or more stations, other places had only one or two, and some places such as Denver, CO and Austin, TX had none.

So the Federal Communications Commission, the government body in charge of these things, instituted was called the Freeze of 1948, with over 700 applications waiting to be addressed, and only some already in the pipeline getting approved. The freeze was only supposed to have lasted a few months; it ended up taking four years.

By this time, the FCC had offered the stations the opportunity to broadcast on a different set of frequencies known as UHF, ultra high frequency, initially channels 14 through 83. There was only one little problem; most sets were not designed to access the UHF signal! As in any hardware/software balance issues of today, TV manufacturers didn’t want to make sets with UHF capacity unless there were enough stations broadcasting in UHF. And broadcasters didn’t want to invest in a UHF station unless there were enough sets that could air their signal.

There was one workaround: buying a converter. But would people pay for a device to get greater television access when they had been getting it for free? Eventually, UHF managed to stick, in no small part because of the All-Channel Receiver Act (ACRA) in the early 1960s, requiring UHF capacity on TVs. Unfortunately, before that happened, a wager by the Dumont network on the UHF technology eventually led to the network’s demise.

UHF was also clunky, even after the passage of the ACRA. While the set would click to each station between 2 and 13, the UHF dial was like a radio dial of that era, and tuning it to a given setting was a sometimes thing. This meant that getting an outside antenna was pretty much imperative.

Since UHF was less than prime viewing, stations on that end of the dial often broadcast old movies or other inexpensive productions. That was, more or less, the premise of the 1989 movie UHF, starring ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic. You can read the reviews and see the trailer and, at least for the time being, watch the whole movie.

One of the great successes of a UHF station was when entrepreneur Ted Turner bought the struggling television station in Atlanta on Channel 17 and eventually turned it into cable network TBS.

Of course, nowadays, people often DO pay for TV via cable, a dish, or other technologies. TV stations are broadcast digitally, so a given station can have 2 or more different signals. The technology is SO much sophisticated now.

ABC Wednesday – Round 11