Opinion | When Fame Is the Recreation of the Title

American businessman Henry Frank Phillips (1889-1958) didn’t invent the screwdriver that bears his identify. That honor went to

John P. Thompson,

who patented the recessed cruciform screw in 1932 and the screwdriver that turns it in 1933. Unable to curiosity producers in his invention, nevertheless, Thompson offered the idea to Phillips, who tirelessly canvassed U.S. producers to undertake the brand new expertise.

Basic Motors

signed on in 1936, opening the floodgates to widespread industrial acceptance. It could be piggyback fame, however there’s a cause it isn’t referred to as the Thompson screwdriver.

Born in 1891 in Manhattan, Jack Foley (1891-1967) started his movie profession as a stuntman and director within the early Nineteen Twenties when films have been nonetheless silent. Few folks can be as instrumental as Foley within the transition to movies that includes recorded music, sound and speech. He made a reputation for himself utilizing synchronized sound recorded after filming to boost the realism of movies resembling “The Jazz Singer” (1927) and “Present Boat” (1929). For the following 30 years, ending with “Spartacus” (1960), Foley developed and perfected the artwork of cinematic sound results—footsteps, door slams, thunderclaps, chook chirps, and many others.—within the course of giving his identify to a brand new cinematic expertise often called “foley arts.”

For many years, foley artists have been an indispensable factor of filmmaking. With out the believability that Jack Foley’s improvements in sound expertise gave them, films can be unwatchable.

Music lovers swooned over Nellie Melba (1861-1931), born

Helen Porter Mitchell,

from the second she took the European opera world by storm within the late nineteenth century. In 1897, to take care of her svelte determine, the Australian soprano—who cribbed her stage identify from her hometown of Melbourne—commissioned famend Parisian chef

Georges Auguste Escoffier

to design a thinner type of bread. (4 years earlier Escoffier had created peach Melba, a dessert consisting of peaches, raspberry sauce and vanilla ice cream, within the diva’s honor.) Voilà! The twice-baked concoction recognized ceaselessly after as Melba toast was born. Nellie Melba discovered fame twice, first deliberately in beautiful cadenzas, later by accident in unique delicacies. As we speak she is best recognized for her cracker than her crackling excessive notes.

The mountain referred to as fame is big and accommodates each method of traveler: these hellbent on reaching the head in any respect prices, these content material to cease midway up, and even those that simply occur to come across an undiscovered crag with an exquisite view. A specialised instrument, an uncommon sort of bread, and people eerie footsteps on moist pavement in that thriller you like are all merchandise of the quieter facet of fame.

Mr. Opelka is a musical-theater composer-lyricist.