Do Elephants Jump? (3 page)
Read Do Elephants Jump? Online
Authors: David Feldman
Our pianos have a peculiar configuration, with 52 white keys and 36 black keys, ranging from A, 3½ octaves below middle C, to C, four octaves above middle C. Why not 64 keys? Why not 128?
Before there were pianos, there were pipe organs. In medieval times, some pipe organs included only a few keys, which were so hard to depress that players had to don leather gloves to do the job. According to piano historian and registered piano technician Stephen H. Brady, medieval stringed instruments originally included only the white keys of the modern keyboard, with the raised black keys added gradually: “The first fully chromatic keyboards [including all the white and black keys] are believed to have appeared in the fourteenth century.”
Clavichords and harpsichords were the vogue in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but they kept changing in size and configuration — none had more than four octaves’ range. Octave inflation continued along, as the ever more popular harpsichord went up as high as a five-octave range in the eighteenth century.
In 1709, a Florentine harpsichord builder named Bartolomeo Cristofori invented the pianoforte, an instrument that trumped the harpsichord by its ability to play soft (
piano
) or loud (
forte
) depending upon the force applied on the keys by the player. Brady notes that the first pianos looked very much like the harpsichord but
were fitted with an ingenious escapement mechanism which allowed the tones to be produced by tiny hammers hitting the strings [the mechanism attached the hammers to the keys], rather than by quills plucking the strings as was the case in the harpsichord.
Others soon created pianos, but there was little uniformity in the number of keys or even in the size of the piano itself.
Michael Moore, of Steinway & Sons, theorizes that it was a combination of artistic expression and capitalism that gave rise to the 88-key piano. Great composers such as Mozart were demanding instruments capable of expressing the range of the music they were creating. Other composers piggybacked on the expanded range provided by the bigger, “modern” pianos. Piano makers knew they would have a competitive advantage if they could manufacture bigger and better instruments for ambitious composers, and great changes were in store between 1790 and 1890, as Stephen Brady explains:
By the end of the eighteenth century, toward the end of Mozart’s career and near the beginning of Beethoven’s, piano keyboards had reached six full octaves, and a keyboard compass of six and a half octaves was not uncommon in early nineteenth-century grands. For much of the middle to late nineteenth century, seven full octaves (from lowest A to highest A) was the norm. A few builders in the mid-nineteenth century experimented with the seven - and - a - quarter - octave keyboard, which is in common use today, but it did not become the de facto standard until about the 1890s.
Steinway’s grand pianos had 85 or fewer keys until the mid-1880s, but Steinway then took the plunge to the 88 we see today, and other manufacturers rushed to meet the specifications of their rival. But why stop at 88? Why not a nice, round 100? Michael Moore explains:
Expansion into still greater numbers of keys was restrained by practical considerations. There is a limit to the number of tones that a string can be made to reproduce, especially on the bass end, where low notes can rattle, as well as a limit to the tones that the ear can hear, especially on the treble end. There is a type of piano, a Boesendorfer Concert Grand, which has 94 different keys, [and a full eight-octave range, with all six of the extra keys added to the bass end], but by and large our 88 keys represent the extent to which pianos can be made to faithfully reproduce tones that our ears can hear.
Even if more keys would gain the slightest advantage in tones, there is also the consideration of size and weight. The Boesendorf is almost ten feet in length, exceeded only by the ten-feet, two-inch Fazioli Concert Grand. Only a handful of compositions ever ask to use these extra keys, not enough reason to motivate Boesendorfer to add the keys in the first place. According to Brady, “The Boesendorfer company says the extra strings are really there to add sympathetic resonance and richness to the regular notes of the piano’s range.”
| Submitted by Guy Washburn of La Jolla, California. |
Our correspondent, duly reading the ingredient list on his package of rice cakes, notes that only rice and salt are listed. He rightfully wonders how rice cake makers manage to keep together what would seem to be fragile rice. Is there a secret binding ingredient in the mix?
We’re sure the rice cake producers would say that the secret ingredient is love, but emotion has nothing to do with it. We contacted several rice cake producers and received the same explanation from all of them (a rarity in the Imponderables business) about how rice cakes are formed.
First, uncooked rice is soaked in water and then mixed with a little salt (and in some cases, with a bit of oil). This soaking is important, because the moisture from the rice is going to help puff it up when it is heated in the grain-popping machine, as Quaker Foods and Beverages explains:
A rice cake is formed when heat and pressure are added to the grain, causing it to expand abruptly. A portion of grain is set onto a round, metal pan — like a mini–baking pan. As a hot cylinder presses down onto the pan, sizzling pressure is released. The heat is so intense that after only a few seconds, the grain makes a loud popping noise as it bursts. This process causes the grains to “pop” and interweave. There are no oils, additives, or binding ingredients used during this process.
If the rice cake is flavored, the seasonings are applied after the popping process, and doesn’t affect the sticking together of the rice itself.
Rice cakes date back to 3000
B.C.
in Southeast Asia, and home cooks have never been privy to the specialized equipment that modern commercial rice cake makers enjoy. Home cooks in Asia make rice cakes by soaking glutinous rice overnight, steaming the rice until it is soft, grinding the heck out of it with a mortar and pestle, and then pounding the mashed rice with a mallet. Then they knead the rice like bread dough and cook it, resulting in a rice cake (or rice ball) with a smoother consistency than that of Western cakes.
Whether using the traditional methods or specialized metal molds designed only for rice cake production, bakers seem to have no trouble getting rice cakes to hold together — now if only they could manage to produce some taste!
| Submitted by Dane Bowerman of Muir, Pennsylvania. |
There may be no such thing as a dumb question, but there are certainly ones that are based on false assumptions. The water doesn’t freeze in hydrants for the same reason that the water in empty ice cube trays doesn’t form cubes. You can’t freeze what’s not there!
Bob Ward, former president of the SPFAAMFAA (Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of Antique Motor Fire Apparatus in America), told
Imponderables
that there is a nut at the top of a hydrant that controls the flow of water to the hydrant. When a firefighter wants to open the hydrant, a wrench is used to open the nut. Attached to the shut-off nut is a long stem that goes to the valve at the bottom of the hydrant, underground, that controls the flow of water. When the water flow is closed, the standing water above the valve is drained automatically. As Ward succinctly puts it, “There is no water to freeze.”
When a firefighter is finished with the hydrant, he or she closes the nut and the water drains below the shut-off valve automatically. The shut-off valve is located well below the frost line, so fire hydrants rarely encounter any freezing problems, even in lovely climes like Chicago’s or Oslo’s.
| Submitted by Todd Sanders of Holmdel, New Jersey |
We spare no financial expense, no mental duress, in order to plumb the depths of Imponderability. To research this question, we tore ourselves away from the plush confines of Imponderables Central to visit many taverns. Risking inebriation and worse, we confirmed that the “Yes, we have a TV on; no, we don’t have the sound on” phenomenon is alive and well in North America. What’s the deal?
Somewhat to our surprise, we found bartenders uniformly negative about the boob tube and its role in their establishments. Why does management bother installing televisions? The thinking seems to run on the order of:
Where there are bars, there are men.
Where there are men, there is an interest in sports.
Sports is televised.
Sports on television equals male butts on our stools.
If we don’t have televisions at our bar, men will go to the sports bar down the street instead.
But the bartenders we spoke to analyzed this Imponderable more deeply. Televisions are important because they provide patrons with what Dan Sullivan, a Kiwi now living and bartending in Greece, calls “something to do with their eyes.” Single patrons are often uncomfortable and tense when alone. They may be lonely, or worried about looking like losers, or anxious about meeting potential mates. The television “makes it easier for them to be by themselves at the bar,” concludes Roger Herr, owner of South’s Bar in downtown Manhattan.
Some bars and nightclubs also use televisions to run closed-circuit programming, anything from old Tom and Jerry cartoons to 1960s-style light shows to help set the appropriate mood for their establishments. One bartender compared this use of the television to installing fish tanks, a form of visual Muzak.
Every bar employee we talked to indicated that as soon as the audio on a television goes on, some patrons are turned off. As Deven Black, former manager of the North Star Pub in New York City, put it,
No matter how quietly the sound is on, it will offend someone, and you can never have it loud enough so everyone who wants to can hear it.
Even manly men might not want to accompany their scotch-and-sodas with the mellifluous tones of NASCAR engines backfiring. And bartenders reported that most sports fans are perfectly content with the audio of their sports programs on mute, happily shedding commercials and colorless color commentators.
All nightclubs and most bars feature music, whether a humble jukebox, live bands, or expensive sound systems. If the TV is going to interfere with the music, why pump dollars into the jukebox? If customers are going to listen to Marv Albert instead of Bruce Springsteen, what owner is going to be happy about installing a $20,000 sound system?
But most of the bar industry folks we consulted make a more spiritual point. As bartender and beer columnist Christopher Halleron put it,
People go to bars for conversation and socializing. When you turn up the boob tube, that element is taken away as people become fixated on whatever it spews and stop talking to each other. The same phenomenon occurs in the living room of the average American family.
Exactly! If we wanted to sit sullenly and watch blinking images while avoiding human contact, we’d stay at home with our families.
Liquor flows more freely when patrons feel festive, and music and dancing set the mood more easily than
Wheel of Fortune
or
Everybody Loves Raymond.
A blaring television sucks the energy out of a room.
Some bars have used modern technology to solve the television-audio problem in a Solomon-like way: they turn on the closed-captioning option on their TVs. CC might not be the solution if patrons are trying to hear the New York Philharmonic on PBS, but then, they never are.
| Submitted by Fred Beeman of Las Vegas, Nevada. |
No doubt, many tavern owners install mirrors in the back of their bars for the same reason most businesses do anything — because their competitors are doing the same thing. We were surprised that some bar owners couldn’t explain why they have mirrors behind their bars, but most of the same folks who weighed in on the last Imponderable had plenty of opinions about this one, too.
Like a television, a mirror provides patrons something to look at when they might feel lonely, tense, or bored. And there can be more practical advantages, as Deven Black notes: “It allows patrons to check each other out discreetly.”
Sometimes, the view might not be so pleasant (“Uh-oh, here comes my girlfriend! And I told her I’d be home at eight.”), but more than a century ago, some bars ensured that the view would be more pleasing to their clientele, as Gary Regan reveals,
In the late 1800s, a “naughty” painting of [William Bouguereau’s]
Nymphs and Satyr
hung in New York’s Hoffman House bar. It was situated so that customers could stare at it through the mirror, therefore not blatantly looking at a naughty painting. Presume, therefore, that mirrors were and are used [by customers] to observe the scene without being obvious.
Bartenders are not impervious to using the mirror for less than professional purposes, as an honest but lascivious bartender and beer columnist Christopher Halleron explains:
| Mirrors provide an excellent, indirect way to check out the cleavage on the girl who just ordered a Cosmo. |
Although it may be a surprise to some libidinous patrons, there are things to look at in a bar other than beef- or cheesecake, and mirrors are an inexpensive accent piece in a tavern’s interior decoration. For one, mirrors bounce light around the room, and can also be attractive themselves. Many beer and liquor companies provide free mirrors with their name and logos emblazoned on them. Some bars prefer to use the mirrors to advertise themselves. Tom Hailand, design engineer at Cabinet Tree Design, believes that mirrors add “glitz,” and even point-of-purchase advertising on the mirrors can yield practical benefits to the bar:
And where else would you put your sandblasted logo just in case the customers are so hammered they need the name of the bar in front of them to call a cab?
Heiland also mentions an advantage to the placement of the mirror that was echoed by many experts — the mirror makes the liquor display look fuller. Mirrors have long been used by decorators to make rooms look bigger and displays more enticing. As one bartender told us,
The idea is to make the liquor more appealing by spicing up the presentation of the bottles as well as making it appear that there are more bottles than there really are. It’s impressive when you walk into a bar and see a huge shelf full of liquor bottles behind the bar — the mirror provides the same effect with fewer bottles. The same trick is used in the catering business for veggie trays and other food presentations.”
But the predominant reason for mirrors in bars, and probably the precipitating factor in the tradition’s beginning, was for security. Think back to the Old West, and it’s easy to see why a saloon owner would want advance warning before a gunslinger, with pistol packed, entered the establishment. There were times when it was unavoidable for the bartender to turn his or her back to patrons, as bartender “Baudtender” wrote:
Many of the old bars had the bartenders’ “make station” (where they prepared mixed drinks) right below the liquor storage shelves. With the mirrors, they could keep an eye on the customers while their back was turned — before Dram Shop laws [which made bartenders legally liable for harm inflicted by intoxicated or underage patrons], it was a common thing to give a customer an entire bottle of liquor and charge by measurement or eyeball estimation for what was consumed. Contrary to popular opinion, bar owners weren’t the only rogues to water down the liquor, if you see what I mean.
Most cash registers at bars are located in back of the bar, so bartenders must turn their back on patrons on a regular basis.
Today, there are other dangers, large and small, that prompt a bartender to use the mirror. Without the mirror, the bartender might ignore the quiet patron who would otherwise go unnoticed, or miss the guy trying to steal the bartender’s tip while the bartender’s back was turned, or fail to assist the woman about to be harassed. What’s especially appealing about using the mirror for security purposes, according to Roger Herr, owner of South’s Bar in Manhattan, is that the bartender can scan the area without being obvious.
And just in case the bar brawl should erupt, bartender Dan Morrison sings the praise of mirrors for providing the élan that their manufacturers wouldn’t trumpet but movie stunt coordinators are well aware of:
Mirrors smash really good when you throw a chair at them.
| Submitted by Charlie Chiarolanza of Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania. |