STRATEGIC PARLOUR

The man on the left was called Will West, while the one on the right was called William West, and they were both sentenced to jail at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas over 100 years ago. Will West arrived at the same prison in 1903, two years after William West was imprisoned. His arrival caused the records clerk at the prison considerable confusion, because he was convinced he’d processed him two years previously. The clerk, M.W. McClaughry, asked Will West if he’d ever been to the prison before. West said he hadn’t. McClaughry then set about taking his Bertillon measurements – named after the French policeman Alphonse Bertillon – which was the usual method of identifying people and involved recording the dimensions of key physical features. McClaughry, still convinced the man before him had already been to the prison, looked up his name in his filing system and found one William West – who looked identical to Will West in the photographs in every respect. They even shared t...

Does the name Alexander Graham Bell ring a bell? It sure does. But have you ever heard of the name Elisha Gray? No doubt, that name must sound grey and bland to you. Gray was no less an inventor than Bell. In the 1870s, both men independently designed devices that could transmit speech electrically (the telephone). Both men rushed their respective designs to the patent office within hours of each other. But Alexander Graham Bell patented his telephone first (in 1876). A legal battle ensued between the two over the invention of the telephone. Fortunately for Bell but unfortunately for Gray, Bell won. But that is not the end of the story about the invention of the telephone. If you asked an Italian, who invented the telephone, you would most likely not hear Bell but Antonio Meucci. That Italian brother or sister is not talking without reason because the Enciclopedia Italiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (Italian Encyclopedia of Science, Literature and Art) calls Antonio Meucci the “inven...

If we move away from human beings to animals, there is something to emulate from the cheetah. Everybody knows that the cheetah is the fastest of all land animals. It can reach speeds between 112 kilometres per hour (70 mph) and 120 kilometres per hour (75 mph) in short bursts up to 460 metres (500 yd). It has the ability to accelerate from 0 to 110 kilometres per hour (68 mph) in three seconds, faster than most super cars. Yet, if the cheetah goes hunting 100 times, on the average, it succeeds in catching its prey only 50 out of those 100 times. Why does such a speed machine have such a low (50 per cent) success rate? The cheetah is made in such a way that when it runs so fast, its body temperature rises so high that the cheetah could die if it continues. So it knows that its ability to feed depends on its speed. The cheetah cannot start a chase unless it has stalked its prey to within 10 metres, and must end the chase within a minute, whether successful or unsuccessful. If it fails to...