The Gad About Town

Although the program ran for “only” two seasons in the 1960s on American television, F Troop developed one of the most remarkable second lives in television history: re-run episodes started to appear on local television stations across the country that same decade, and by the 1970s, a little boy in Poughkeepsie, New York, thought the show was brand-new and hilarious. Much of the hilarious part came from the mugging of Larry Storch, “Corporal Randolph Agarn,” who turns 94 today.

(The youngster, also named me, was truly perplexed at what appeared to be an equal number of color and black-and-white episodes, randomly distributed on his family’s new color TV. It was because the show’s two seasons straddled the proliferation of color production: one season was shot in black-and-white and the next was filmed in glorious small screen color.)

Mr. Storch will be celebrating his 94th in grand style: with a show (a surprise guest not yet announced) at the Metropolitan Room in New York City. Tickets range in price from $15 to $115. His family maintains an active Facebook account for the actor to keep in touch with his fans, and he has been performing live stand-up in New York, Florida, and California in recent years.
Read More

The typewriter is one of those devices whose need had been obvious for decades, even a century before a practical one was produced. On this date in 1714, one Henry Mill of England was awarded patent number 395 for a device whose description sounds like nothing less than a typewriter, even though that particular word had not yet been coined. The 1714 English patent reads in part:

He hath by his great study and paines & expence invented and brought to perfection an artificial machine or method for impressing or transcribing of letters, one after another, as in writing, whereby all writing whatsoever may be engrossed in paper or parchment so neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print; that the said machine or method may be of great use in settlements and publick records, the impression being deeper and more lasting than any other writing, and not to be erased or counterfeited without manifest discovery. (Emphasis mine.)

Read More