Quaver In Fear!

Cast Your Mind Back, If You Will -
To that mad scientist's lab, you know, the one that would never get passed by Health And Safety nowadays because of the large number of unshielded electrical devices, all arcing and sputtering away -

CAUTION!  Danger of Death!*

     I think they go out of their way to actually attract a lightning strike at one point, which is surely proof of possessing an - ahem - Different Mental State.
     Well, once his day job of creating monsters stitched together from the contents of a morgue is over, you can just see our Mad Genius shaking his fist at the world, and clutching a MacGuffin (a phial containing glowing green liquid, probably) in the other.
     "I'll show them!" he rants, frothing at the mouth a little.  "They said I was mad, did they?  Then let them cower before the awesome might of - TRAUTONIUM!"  and then in a rather quieter tone "A handkerchief, Igor, as I appear to have drooled in an unseemly manner."

CAUTION!  Explosive, toxic, radioactive and very expensive.

     Well, you might have a sustained train of thought like this, had you merely heard the word "Trautonium" with no context to it, hence today's title - quavering because all the sounds of fear work on a musical scale, apparently.
     You would, of course, be wrong.  Not quite utterly wrong, just mostly so.  Art?

Behold a Trautonium

     This is one of those bizarre electronic musical devices that were gimmicked up in the Twenties, in this instance by Herr Trautwein.  The player produced sounds by pressing a wire onto a metal plate, which varied with motion and the degree of pressure exerted.  The sound output was via 'Thyratrons' - this is beginning to sound like an episode of 'Doctor Who' - which were gas-filled tubes, often using mercury vapour - now sounding more like Colin Furze, as mercury vapour is b***** dangerous stuff!

The more modest home model

     Before today I'd never heard of this <ahem> 'musical device', even though I'm fairly up on exotic electronic musical kit.  I can post a link to a Youtube video clip which will give you an idea of that this thing sounds like in the raw - 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tQQEChMq1A

     Whilst here is proof that this bizarre beast is still somewhat relevant in today's world of MIDI and digital kit that practically plays itself -

Thus

     Let me nick a quote from Wiki about the composers and players of the Traut (and no, not just to up the word count) -

Since then Pichler has been making regular appearances with the Mixturtrautonium in various musical genres. The classical music composed for this instrument by Paul Hindemith, Harald Genzmer and Oskar Sala for instance is extremely challenging for even an experienced musician to play.

Pichler is one of the very few musicians in the world who has mastered this instrument and is also composing for it

     Having listened to the Youtube clip, I can tell you it sounds like a performance by Rick Wakeman, if he'd been born a Dalek.
     Motley!  We have a bet to test - you climb into this skip and crouch at the bottom, we'll fill it to the top with sand, and then we'll see if it's bulletproof.

The question on everyone's lips

     
Eavesdropping
Not in the way you were expecting, for we are back on the history of the 12th (Eastern) Division, and their first sojourn into the French town of Arras.  Art?

Arras, lookin' a bit 'arrassed.

     The town was used for assembling troops prior to the Battle of Arras, because it had been tunnelled out below ground to a vast extent, meaning you could sit safe from Teuton bombardment.  In fact, according to the History, it was possible to use the tunnels to get half-way across No Man's Land, enabling attacks to be delivered with a degree of safety and surprise that the Teuton's did not enjoy at all.
     That's not all.  Major-General Scott, the GOC of the 12th for years, also mentioned that sound-ranging equipment had been installed in Arras, which would have been top secret at the time: not only wouldn't he have known, if he had then he'd have had to keep his incautious piehole shut.  Art?

The kit

     This sound ranging unit in Arras would have been one of about half a dozen located at different locations behind the British front lines.  They used microphones of various types to pick up the sound of Teuton artillery firing, record it as a graph on a rotating drum, which was then cross-referenced, compared and plotted to give the location of the firing unit.  It might sound, and look, a bit Heath Robinson, but when working effectively it was deadly accurate and could pinpoint a gun to within 25 yards, which gun would then receive a generous dose of gas shell, or shrapnel, or high explosive or smoke - or all four at once if the Royal Artillery were feeling a bit liverish.

More phlegmatic than liverish, one feels.

     Enough of massed military misery!  Let us have something light and frothy. 
"Cheongsam"
Another of those words that rise, unbidden, from the fetid depths of Conrad's consciousness, and at 06:51 this morning, too.
     "Conrad's mind is a peculiar place to be," I mused, and I ought to know.  Being Conrad and all, that sort of thing.
     I didn't have time to consult my Collins Concise, so let us consult the oracle that is Google.
     Ah.
     So, it is an item of feminine figure-hugging Chinese dress.  Art?

Sic

     "Popularised by socialites in the Twenties and Thirties," informs Wikipedia.
     Well, now we are all better-educated than we were ten minutes ago, but the question still stands - why did it ever appear in my head?**

     Enough of ladies fashions! 

Finally -
Excuse me a moment, I am typing this at work and have just come across an article on the BBC's website - all that's fit to be writ! - about GCHQ's exhibition of spy gadgets, which I cannot resist playing.  This means plugging in my earphones, lest the whole office hear what I also listen to. 
     Whatever they came up with, it can never, ever challenge the sheer awesomeness of this artefact -

<Conrad has trouble typing, his palms are so sweaty>

     Conrad, ever one to ponder, wonders if the Sinister Union ever tried to come up with a challenge to 007?  Probably, and it seems to have gone the way of the dodo.  I may check up on this.***



*  Just not how you're expecting it.
**  I was reading spectacularly grim stuff about air warfare in the Second Unpleasantness; nothing whatsoever to do with the Orient or women's dress.
***  Or not.  Bound to be turgid ideological drivel.