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In the run up to the White Paper on science and technology, the Department
of Trade and Industry has made itself look pretty silly by posting its deep-laid
plans – sorry, junior discussion document – to the research councils by
mistake. It is hard to imagine even the research councils doing something
so inept. Or is it?

On receiving the document, one of the horcs (heads of research councils)
phoned the DTI. ‘Ummm, I’ve received this document,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure
I should have it. Shall I send it back?’

‘Yes, please,’ came the reply, and the horc presumably congratulated
himself on his scrupulous honesty. Until, that is, he went to the next meeting
with his fellow horcs. Top of the agenda was that document the DTI had sent
to everyone.

After an unusually low-profile presence at the meeting, our honest horc
was back on the phone to the DTI. ‘Ummm, you know that document I sent back
to you. Do you think I could have another copy, please? Pretty please. Pretty
pretty . . . ‘

* * *

Some people harbour suspicions about ingredients labels on food. No
doubt such suspicions are unwarranted. Just the same, Feedback admits to
being sincerely perplexed by the brain-teaser on the Peperami sausage label.

‘Ingredients: Pork, beef, salt, sugar, spices, flavouring, flavour enhancer:
621, preservative: sodium nitrate.’

Everything seems fine until you read the next sentence: ‘Not less than
100 per cent meat.’

* * *

A feedback contributor in the Far East saw a new kind of digital watch.
Like some previous watches, it stores 50 telephone numbers. But as well
as displaying a selected number, this watch ‘plays’ it, in telephone tones
out of a tiny loudspeaker. To dial a number you simply hold the watch close
to a telephone mouthpiece.

Our man decided not to buy one then but regretted it the moment he got
on the plane home. A month or so later in London, he spotted the same watch
in the window of a jewellery shop in London’s West End. The sign gave only
a vague clue to the clever trick the watch plays. Our man had to tell the
salesman where to find the watch in the window, and then explain what it
could do and why he was prepared to pay £35 for something that looked
just like much cheaper models. Eventually, he left with the watch.

The jewellery shop was one of the Ratners chain. Perhaps the salesman
considered the watch to be like the sherry decanter set sold by Ratners
a couple of years ago, which company chairman Gerald Ratner described as
‘total crap’. Whereas in fact, the watch is a real gem.

* * *

There may be an awful lot of coffee in Brazil, but there aren’t so many
tele-phones – only 10 million, in fact, for the country’s 150 million population.
Getting a phone line can take five years and requires a $6000 deposit, so
the Yellow Pages are rather thin. ‘The quickest way to get a plumber is
to take a taxi to his house,’ says Doug Chance, an entrepreneur who was
there for the recent Earth Summit.

Chance’s solution could be a nice little earner for him. His company
Octel now makes ‘virtual phones’. This means that the phone book shows a
(peculiarly long) number for the plumber, but when you ring it there’s only
a message asking you to leave a message. However, it’s not an answerphone,
it’s a ‘voice mailbox’. Just one phone line can serve hundreds of plumbers:
the extra digits on the number route your call into a computer system, which
digitises your shouts about the broken toilet and stores them. The plumber
then calls the ‘virtual phone’ from a callbox, picks up the messages, and
decides who to help out.

Meanwhile, there is a flourishing black market in telephone numbers
in Rio. First you pay your $6000 to order your number from the phone company,
then, after an appropriate interval, you offer your place in the five-year
queue to someone else. If they buy it, you tell the phone company your address
has changed – to the buyer’s.

The numbers are a good investment: numbers ‘bought’ at the beginning
of 1991 were selling for $9000 a year later.

* * *

Britain’s Institution of Electrical Engineers recently staged a seminar
to commemorate Alan Blumlein, who died in an air crash in 1942, testing
the radar he had invented after his seminal work on stereo sound and electronic
television. Blumlein’s old employer, now Thorn EMI, hosted a buffet after
the event. The invitation noted the ‘surprising lack of public awareness
surrounding him’ and referred to his achievements as including ’78 patents’.

Actually, one of the few things quite widely known about Alan Blumlein
is that he won 128 patents, an average of one for every six weeks of his
brief working life.

* * *

Computer data storage is like a cupboard: the data expands to fill the
space available. Thus the growing popularity of CD-ROM, which stores 600
megabytes of data on a 12-centimetre disc in almost the same format as an
audio compact disc.

Of course, much of the accumulated data is about as useful as the stuff
at the bottom of the cupboard, but American ingenuity is finding a way to
deal with that problem. Among the booths showing new CD-ROM drives and discs
at a recent exhibition in Boston was a display of jewellery. A company called
Ceedeez of Somerville, Massachusetts cuts up old CD-ROMs to make earrings,
tie clasps, and other baubles, which glitter with rainbow colours as the
useless data diffracts light.

* * *

While investigating the story of the London Ambulance Service debacle
the other week, when computer problems led to call out delays of up to 11
hours, a New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ journalist was speaking on the phone to a contact
based in London. Suddenly the sound of a siren rose above the noise of traffic
at the other end.

‘Bloody hell!’ exclaimed the contact. ‘It’s an ambulance!’ Then, after
a pause (to look out of the window): ‘It’s all right. It’s one of yesterday’s’