JF Ptak Science Books Post 2329
It may or may no be the case, but this large, flaking book that is balanced on top of a petulant pile of paper, Registered Beverage Trade Marks Covering the Period from 1881 to 1939 Compiled from the records in the United States Patent Office (Distilled Alcoholic Liquors) may be the keys to the kingdom of names of booze(s) trademarked in this country. 15″ tall, and inch thick, and 296 sheets big, this work (copyrighted y the Trade Mark records Bureau (in the National Press Club Building in DC, the one with the problematic parking garage) lists some 7,500 names of whiskey, cordials, gin, rye, bourbon and who knows what else. I cannot find the book in any online database, big or small, and I’m not sure where this info might be housed and housed in one spot. I have no doubt that people somewhere need this data, unwieldy and unusable as it might be–you see, it is organized only according to a six/seven digit number which I guess is the trademark filing number, or something; there is nothing else useful about the thing, the data floating around without regard to year or place or liquor type.
So I sat down with the book for an hour pulling out interesting, odd, out-of-place, from-another time and bizarre names, inlcuding all manner of expected animal names like bull and elk, and then unicorn; and lots of sunny this-and-that, sloping/sunny/grassy hills, mountains, clubs; and of course the Old _____ category seem fairly filled up. [If you’d like to own this just visit the blog’s bookstore, here, and have a look.]
If I spent a little more time on this entire alphabets could be produced relating to nothing but names from the animal kingdom, flora, the sciences, professions, religion, states of mind, altered states, literature, and the labels that suggest a possible medical benefit. One of my favorite categories is the “conversational liquor label”, the label that speaks to you, invites you, tells you what to do with the bottle of booze: Hava Cocktail and Uneeda Whiskey are good examples of that, as are You’re Lookin Good, Uvanta and Yugeta whiskeys. Another is the liquor name ending in “o”, like the beautiful Famo, from St. Jo, MO, which unfortunately wasn’t trademarked in ’00. The label of suggested promise and outcome is another good one: Kentucky Courage, Pleasant Dreams, Invincible Rye, Solace Whiskey and Ready Moneyare all good examples of the implied end-of-bottle pillow-fluffer…maybe, espcially, The Old Solution whiskey.
And then of course, there are those where the (creative) spirit has just flown away, like the lumpily-named Standard Spirits Whiskey, its hometown of New Orleans embarrassed by the lack of effort–especially in the light of some many hundreds of imaginative creations, like the fabulous Bone Factor Whiskey (1903), which like som many other great names (Yellow Hammer Whiskey) comes from Louisville, Kentucky.
Antediluvium Whiskey, NYC, 1898; Anti-Grippine Whiskey, Philadelphia, 1906; Ash Cake Whiskey, Lynchburg, VA. 1899, Auto Crat Whiskey (St. Louis, MO), 1905
Bank Check Whiskey, Boston, 1900; Bone Factor, 1903;
In the occasionally speedy and occasionally not world of chess, it may sometimes be necessary to take speedy-or-not notes. Chess notation–like algebraic notation (in different iterations), English notation, ICCF notation, and so on–=can reach back hundreds of years. Even the shorthand approach tried out here in mathematician Salzer’s short work dips back into the 19th century (‘Shorthand Notation” by M. Barnard, a short entry in Chess Player’s Annual and Club Directory, 1893-94 by Mr and Mrs T.B. Rowland (London, 1893)). But the Salzer work is really pretty interesting, and so I thought to at least surface the work. 
