100 years ago

DETAILS were becoming known of some remarkable experiments with a new method of illumination for naval operations at night that had recently been carried out by a German warship in the North Sea.

A great drawback to the effectiveness of modern searchlights was the fact that they disclosed their source of ignition and it was in the hope of discovering a substitute minus this fault that had prompted the experiments. The best results, it appeared, had been obtained with tubes filled with calcium carbide that were fired into the sea from a special gun, which on rising to the surface generated acetylene gas through the carbide coming into contact with the water.

The gas was automatically lit and gave a tremendous flare of several thousand candlepower. A number of these projectiles thrown around an enemy would place him at a terrible disadvantage for a considerable time.

 

50 years ago

TODAY’S hairstyle was almost a badge of office among young men, for whom the fashion was no more short back and sides but “long back and sides,” said Mr Wallace Scowcroft, the president, at the annual conference of the National Hairdressers’ Federation.

Mr Scowcroft, of Manchester, said hairdressers had had to adapt their techniques to provide young men with different styles to suit the particular cult which they followed — the Mods, the Rockers, the Beatles followers. “Men’s hairdressers do not object to youth wanting to wear its hair long, providing it is shaped. It would be out of step with modern times to oppose long hair because the hairdresser fears that it would lead to fewer visits to his salon. We will get all the business we want by ensuring that the Mods, the Rockers and the Beatles fans are well groomed.”

Mr Scowcroft said, however, that their tolerance did not ex-tend to the “slovenly, the dirty and the downright ragged hair-dos of which there were too many about.”

 

25 years ago

ONE of Europe’s most advanced rail production lines was to be built at York. The multimillion-pound investment in the latest robotic engineering techniques at York Carriageworks would come after another huge contract.

A £44 million order for 77 vehicles for Network South-East was being officially announced. British Rail Engineering was expected to give the go-ahead for a high-tech, automated robotic production line at the Holgate Road workshops where the 23 metre-long aluminium trains would be built. The news was greeted with delight by rail unions in the city.

The 165 diesel turbo units would be the very first aluminium trains to be built in York. The new production line would be of the high-tech automated kind already operating in many car factories.