Interesting! Had no idea about the kohl connection.
Thought folk might be interested to know where the word dollar comes from,
seeing as all the Americans and Antipodeans have so many of them tied up in
their gear. In the 16th century, particularly fin silver was mined in the
valley of Saint Joachim, or Sankt Joachimsthal, in the present day Czech
Republic. Coins minted there were known as Sankt Joachimsthalers.
Shortened to 'Thaler' and exported through Low German and Dutch to English,
this became the word 'dollar'. So basically dollar means 'of the valley'.
I'm a diehard dinosaur on the focussing front. I've seen these cameras that
know where you're looking and focus appropriately, but apart from finding
that really quite unnerving and vaguely threatening, I just prefer to do the
job myself. No coincidence, I suppose, that my favourite photographic
subject is landscapes, which generally don't move anywhere fast.
Roger
-----Original Message-----
>The word "alcohol" has a strange and tortured derivation.
>
>As the "al" indicates, alcohol is an Arabic word meaning "the kohl." Kohl
was
>the powder Egyptians colored their eyelids with. As it was ground extremely
>fine, "kohl" gradually came to be applied to any finely ground substance.
>
>Going one step further in abstraction, alcohol came to mean "the fine part
of."
>With respect to intoxicating spirits, the term was originally "the alcohol
of
>wine" -- that is, the "fine" part that evaporated and then condensed when
the
>wine was heated. The "of wine" was gradually dropped, leaving the current
>usage.
>
-snip-
>One other thing. I don't know that it's been proven the eye focuses better
than
>a passive TTL system. But several cameras (such as Canon and Contax) have
>multiple focusing points that are activated simply by looking at them. Such
a
>system has tremendous advantages for wildlife and sports photography.
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