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Trevanian
Some people avoid publicity, but Trevanian took it to an extreme. Trevanian was a best selling writer — at least five of his books sold over a million copies — and he also published as Nicholas Seare, Beñat Le Cagot, and Edoard Moran. He even published one nonfiction book, The Language of Film, under the Continue reading
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That’s what it’s all about
The June 18 edition of the New York Daily News in 1896, did a bit of hoity-toity publishing hocus-pocus that could affect you two ways: either you think everything is still hunky-dory or you might get the heebie-jeebies. The line itself was the seemingly innocent: “Instead of humdrum you..have got harum scarum,” but upon closer examination, Continue reading
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Julia Margaret Cameron
One of the most important photographers of the 1800s was born June 11,1815, in Calcutta, which is now in India and known as Kolkata. There are a number of surprising things about this particular birthday bio. First, the important photographer we’re talking about is a woman, Julia Margaret Cameron. She was born into a British Continue reading
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Another round, barkeep!
“Haiffand ilk werk day ane half hour afor nyne houris afor none to his disjone, and ane othir half hour afor four houris eftyr none to his nunschankis.” That’s a sentence written in Scotland in 1529. Besides being a sort of dreamlike window into the world five hundred years ago, the sentence includes a very Continue reading
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Head in the clouds
Being on cloud nine means great happiness, euphoria, the very pinnacle of joy, accomplishment, satisfaction, or gratification. But there are other clouds too. In 1955, Tony Bennett recorded an album called Cloud 7. There must have been something about that particular cloud around that time, because a 1954 article in the US Army’s Stars and Continue reading
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Nicolaus Otto
The most common way to power an automobile at the moment, at least, is with an Otto-cycle engine. The Otto cycle is a description of a repetitive thermodynamic process where a flammable gas is compressed inside a chamber (say, a cylinder), ignited, forcing the chamber to expand and producing heat, then the chamber contracts again, Continue reading
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Putting the Caret before the Hedera
It’s a somewhat puzzling state of affairs. There are quite a few characters and symbols we routinely use in addition to the regular alphabet; things like “@“, “#”, and even the common “*”. These commonly used symbols don’t have consistent names. But there are also many other characters and symbols that are only in use Continue reading
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Tim Berners-Lee
You’re reading this thanks to the work of Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, HTML, HTTP, and the URL addressing system you use to open web pages. He was born June 8, 1955, in London. Berners-Lee had an early start in math and technology; his mother was a mathematician and his father was Continue reading
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It is my wont to want what I wont
It’s not in very common use nowadays, but at one time it was pretty common to see or hear phrases like “he’ll be at the race track on Thursday, as is his wont.” That doesn’t mean he “wants” to visit the race track. Even though obviously he does want to, “wont” and “want” are completely Continue reading
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With great facility
“He was positive, facile, amiable,” wrote Josiah Gilbert Holland in The Story of Sevenoaks in 1876. The question is, what did he mean? “Facile” is a word that’s had quite a number of subtly different meanings over the years. For instance, in 1576 it meant lenient or mild: “he shewed hym selfe gentle and facyle.” Generally a good Continue reading
About Me
I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate Bossypaws. I shouldn’t be surprised, but she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.
Check out my other blog, Techlimitics, where I’m grappling with the nature of simplicity.
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peterharbeson@me.com