SEEDS AND ACORNS

From small beginnings, great changes occur. A few seeds planted on the 6^th April, grew, branched out and bore a multiplicity of fruits, some of which could be regarded as toxic, but interesting nonetheless. The advents of some have created momentous social changes that have greatly affected our lives.

In the 1860s, an American, John Wesley Hyatt, acquired Alexander Parkes' patent for Parkesine,  the first celluloid bulk material. The introduction of Parkesine is generally regarded as the birth of the plastics industry. 

Parkes

Hyatt

Hyatt began experimenting with cellulose nitrate with the intention of manufacturing billiard balls, which until that time were made from ivory. He used cloth, ivory dust, and shellac, and on 6^th April, 1869, patented a method of covering billiard balls with the addition of collodion, and formed the Albany Billiard Ball Company in Albany, New York, to manufacture the product. In 1870, John and his brother Isaiah patented a process of making a "horn-like material" with the inclusion of cellulose nitrate and camphor. Alexander Parkes and Spill listed camphor during their earlier experiments, calling the resultant mix "xylonite", but it was the Hyatt brothers who recognized the value of camphor and its use as a plasticizer for cellulose nitrate. Isaiah Hyatt dubbed his material "celluloid" in 1872.

English photographer John Carbutt (whose photographs are well worth seeking out) founded the Keystone Dry Plate Works in 1879 with the intention of producing gelatine dry plates. The Celluloid Manufacturing Company was contracted for this work by means of thinly slicing layers out of celluloid blocks and then removing the slice marks with heated pressure plates. After this, the celluloid strips were coated with a photosensitive gelatine emulsion. It is not certain exactly how long it took for Carbutt to standardize his process, but it occurred no later than 1888. A 15-inch-wide (380 mm) sheet of Carbutt's film was used by William Dickson for the early Edison motion picture experiments on a cylinder drum Kinetograph. However, the celluloid film base produced by this means was still considered too stiff for the needs of motion picture photography.

By 1889, more flexible celluloids for photographic film were developed, and both Hannibal Goodwin and the Eastman Kodak Company obtained patents for a film product (Ansco, which purchased Goodwin's patent when he died, was eventually successful in an infringement suit against Kodak). This ability to produce photographic images on a flexible material (as opposed to a glass or metal plate) was a crucial step toward the advent of motion pictures.

Celluloid was useful for creating cheaper jewellery, jewellery boxes, hair accessories and many items that would earlier have been manufactured from ivory, horn or other expensive animal products. It was often referred to as "Ivorine" or "French Ivory". It was also used for dressing table sets, dolls, picture frames, charms, hat pins, buttons, buckles, stringed instrument parts, accordions, fountain pens, cutlery handles and kitchen items. The main disadvantages the material had were that it was flammable and fragile. Items made in celluloid are collectible today and increasingly rare in good condition. Celluloid remains in use for decorative borders and inlays on Indian Sitars. Table tennis balls are also made from celluloid.

Varney Air Lines was an airline company that started service on 6^th April 1926 as an air-mail carrier. Formed by Walter Varney, the airline was based in Boise, Idaho, United States.

Varney

CAM-5

In 1925, the Congress passed HR 7064 entitled "An Act to encourage commercial aviation and to authorize the Postmaster General to contract for Air Mail Service" (aka "The Kelly Act") which directed the U.S. Post Office Department to contract with private airlines to carry the mail over designated routes many of which connected with the Government operated Transcontinental Air Mail route between New York and San Francisco. Varney won the contract for CAM-5 as the only bidder. Boise Postmaster L.W. Thrailkill had the vision that brought the city into the aerial age. He heard about the proposed northwest route and Varney’s plan and quickly drew up a petition and got signatures from three dozen postmasters from the towns surrounding Boise. Its first flight under contract with the USPOD was from Pasco, Washington to Elko, Nevada with an intermediate stop in Boise. That airfreight contract grew into the birth of one of the world’s biggest airlines.

In May 1934, Varney, Pacific Air Transport, Boeing Air Transport and National Air Transport merged to form United Airlines. United started jet service to Boise on 26^th October, 1964 and is the only airline to serve Boise continuously since 1933. With the Beeson terminal remodelling at the airport, the last Varney building was torn down in 2002.

On March 12, 1930, Gandhi and 78 satyagrahis set out on foot for the coastal village of Dandi, Gujarat, over 390 kilometres (240 mi) from their starting point at Sabarmati Ashram. This was the start of the salt march. Upon arriving at the seashore on 5^th April, Gandhi was interviewed by an Associated Press reporter. He stated:

“I cannot withhold my compliments from the government for the policy of complete non interference adopted by them throughout the march .... I wish I could believe this non-interference was due to any real change of heart or policy. The wanton disregard shown by them to popular feeling in the Legislative Assembly and their high-handed action leave no room for doubt that the policy of heartless exploitation of India is to be persisted in at any cost, and so the only interpretation I can put upon this non-interference is that the British Government, powerful though it is, is sensitive to world opinion which will not tolerate repression of extreme political agitation which civil disobedience undoubtedly is, so long as disobedience remains civil and therefore necessarily non-violent .... It remains to be seen whether the Government will tolerate as they have tolerated the march, the actual breach of the salt laws by countless people from tomorrow.”

The following morning, after a prayer, at 6:30 am on the 6^th April 1930, Gandhi raised a lump of salty mud and declared:

 "With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire."

He then boiled it in seawater, producing illegal salt. He implored his thousands of followers to likewise begin making salt along the seashore, "wherever it is convenient" and to instruct villagers in making illegal, but necessary, salt. This single gesture sparked large scale acts of civil disobedience against the British Raj salt laws by millions of Indians. The campaign had a significant effect on changing world and British attitudes toward Indian independence and caused large numbers of Indians to join the fight for the first time.

Intelsat I (nicknamed Early Bird for the proverb "The early bird catches the worm") was the first (commercial) communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit, on 6^th April 1965. The Early Bird satellite was the first to provide direct and nearly instantaneous contact between Europe and North America, handling television, telephone and telefacsimile transmissions. It was fairly small, measuring nearly 76 × 61 cm (2.5 × 2.0 feet) and weighing 34.5 kg (76 pounds). Early Bird was one of the satellites used in the then record-breaking broadcast of Our World, which broadcast this little number in 1967.