From Pencils on to pens

And so we look at pens today.  I thought the ballpoint pen was invented in the 1950's as we started to use them by 1960's in school.  What I remember is the Bic pen  - it was commercially successful by the 1960's. I find out that the first patent for a ballpoint pen was issued in 1888.  It was later with the Biro brothers, in 1938, who filed a British patent, and then an Argentinian patent, after fleeing the Germans, that commercial models were made - by 1943.   In terms of inventions, it is in our generation that the felt tip pen - the marker -  was invented and became a common tool.  It was developed by Yukio Horie, president of the Tokyo Stationery Company in the 1960s.  The company is now Pentel. We know that the timeline of the pen starts with the Egyptian reed pen around 2000 BC.  Bamboo is a hollow, tubular plant that functioned well as a pen. Remember Charles Dickens and the quill pen?  Quills were used as early as 600 AD, they continued for a long time. The fountain pen came in 1827, so Dickens would have switched over in his lifetime. Many advancements occurred in the 19th and 20th century.  And of course, the typewriter is the tool that has competed most successfully for dominance. We remain with pens for our signatures, though, a defining part of our identity. Here are some curiosities and interesting facts about pens: 95 percent of the time, when a person receives a new pen, the first thing they write is their own name. The average Bic Cristal ballpoint can produce a line of around 2km. That means that one single pen could draw a line over four times longer than the height of the Empire State Building. The world’s biggest ballpoint pen: 18 ft 0.53 in and weighing 82.08 lb 1.24 oz. On average, a pen can write approximately 45,000 words. The Aurora Diamante is the most expensive writing instrument till date. It retails at $1,470,600.  The pen contains over 30 carats of De Beerss diamonds on a solid platinum barrel. In the late 1990s, NASA decided to design a pen to be used in space. They used millions of dollars and lots of time do design this pen but still couldn’t come up with a concept. However the Russians decided to take up a pencil instead. This saved millions of dollars and lots of time. Former SIS officer Richard Tomlinson alleges that Pentel Rolling Writer rollerball pens were extensively used by agents to produce secret writing (invisible messages) while on missions. An agent would write the secret message on a piece of paper, then place a blank piece of paper over the message, pressing the two pages together for a moment. When they are separated, the second page looks completely blank but in fact, contains a latent (invisible) copy of the message. The agent then destroys the first piece of paper. Simply rubbing the blank-looking second piece of paper with an ink pen reveals the latent message. Our pictures today show the random scratch lines to be found on metal followed by the pencil writing on the wall at Kingston Penitentiary.

The Great Escape - Number 1!

Isn't the most interesting part of a prison tour finding out about the famous prison escapes? The top ten prison escapes of all time, are written up by oxfordcastleandprison.co.uk.  They are each a lengthy story, so I've included the top 3 from the article:   3. Ronnie Biggs Ronald Arthur Biggs, more commonly known as Ronnie Biggs, is infamous for his role in the Great Train Robbery of 1963, and for his 36 years living as a fugitive until his voluntary ‘surrender’ in 2001. Initially captured and sent to prison for his part in the Great Train Robbery, Biggs only served 19 months of his prison sentence before escaping from Wandsworth Prison on 8 July 1965 by scaling a wall with a rope ladder and dropping on to a waiting van. He fled to Brussels via boat and then onto Paris where he acquired a new identity and underwent plastic surgery. His 36 years on the run were spent predominantly in Australia and Brazil. On 7 May 2001, Ronnie voluntarily returned to the UK and was immediately arrested and imprisoned. He served 8 years in jail before being released on compassionate grounds in 2009. He died in December 2013. 2. Maze Prison HM Prison Maze was the location of the biggest prison escape in British history, when on 25 September 1983, 38 IRA prisoners smashed their way out of the maximum security prison, widely considered to be one of the most escape-proof prisons in Europe. Fifteen foot fences and Eighteen foot thick concrete walls topped with barbed wire encircled H-Block, and solid steel doors barred all exits from the prison complex. Prisoners planned the escape over several months. Two accomplices, Bobby Storey and Gerry Kelly, started work as orderlies to identify weaknesses in the system and six handguns were smuggled into the prison by exploiting these downfalls. Just after 2.30pm, prisoners seized control by simultaneously taking the prison officers hostage, and hijacking a lorry which was delivering food to the block. Officers in the gatehouse were also taken hostage and after several attempts, the main gate was opened. Abandoning the lorry after a makeshift road block was set up by two cars just outside the prison, the prisoners escaped over a fence. The prison was made secure by 4.18pm minus 38 prisoners. Twenty prison officers were injured and one died after suffering a heart attack during the escape. 1. The Great Escape Devised by Squadron Leader Roger Bushell in the Spring of 1943, the ‘Great Escape’ from prisoner of war camp Stalag Luft III occurred on the night of 24 March 1944. Bushell was in command of the Escape Committee in the North compound, where the British airmen were housed. His ‘Great Escape’ plan involved the building of three “bloody deep, bloody long tunnels” underneath the camp fences. The tunnels were nicknamed Tom, Dick and Harry. If one of the tunnels was discovered by the Germans, it was presumed that they would never suspect two more might be underway. More than 600 prisoners were involved in the tunnels’ construction, with Bushell aiming to get 200 prisoners to freedom. The tunnels descended 30 feet below the surface and were only 2 foot square. The walls were shored up with pieces of wood which were mainly scavenged from the prisoners’ beds. The prisoners were very inventive with their scavenged items. Tin cans became scoops and candle holders; candles were fashioned from the fat off the top of soup served in the camp whilst wicks were created from old clothing. The sand dug out of the tunnels was discreetly scattered while the prisoners walked around the camp. The 200 potential escapees were divided into two groups. The first group of 100, called “serial offenders”, were guaranteed a place and included prisoners who spoke German well or had a history of escapes. 70 of the men were chosen because they were considered to have contributed most to the tunnels. The second group was chosen by drawing lots. On Friday 24 March, the escape attempt began. At 10.30pm, the first man out emerged and discovered the tunnel had come up short. Rather than reaching into a nearby forest, the tunnel came out just short of the tree line and perilously close to a guard tower. Even so, 76 men crawled through the tunnel to freedom before the 77th was spotted by the guards at 4.55am on 25th March. Of 76 initial escapees, 73 were recaptured. Hitler order half of the escapees to be executed as an example. In keeping with the topic, here are more scenes from the interesting architecture of Kingston Penitentiary.

Going to Prison

Prison is unknown to the significant proportion of the population.  There are just over 40,000 adult offenders in prisoning  Canada.  That is 139 per 100,000 population. Would that be 1.39 percent?  Still, 40,000 people in prison is a town's worth. We are very curious about prisons even though we aren't likely to ever experience one.  But we did get to experience one vicariously this week. We visited friends in Kingston and had the tourist experience of the Kingston Penitentiary "Museum" (no longer a prison).   This was a tour of the historic architecture and the internal organization and logistics of a prison facility.  It has a long history - constructed in 1833-34.  It closed in 2013. So this explains how we got to tour through it.  Wikipedia's entry is the basic structure of the tour - when it was constructed, what the buildings' purposes were and all the facilities in them, what riots were there, famous escapes, and notable inmates.  We got the abbreviated notable inmates - no living persons (the privacy act protects them), and gruesome murderers were omitted. It was fascinating - yet it seemed like we were intruding on ghosts of the past.  Here are a few pictures of the limestone buildings, and a cell block. Here's the wikipedia entry HERE.