We have more from Editions S.E.G.’s Espionnage Service-Secret collection today, this time Paul Berg’s 1964 thriller Ça chauffe,,, en Calédonie, which translates to “Things Are Getting Hot… in Caledonia.” This one was issued twice by S.E.G., and you see both covers above, one of considerably higher artistic quality than the other, but both by unknowns. Berg was a pseudonym used by French writer André Jammet, who also wrote twenty years later under the name Celine Jammet for Fleuve Noir’s Femme Viva collection. We’ll have more from S.E.G. a bit later.
1937—Carothers Patents Nylon
Wallace H. Carothers, an American chemist, inventor and the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont Corporation, receives a patent for a silk substitute fabric called nylon. Carothers was a depressive who for years carried a cyanide capsule on a watch chain in case he wanted to commit suicide, but his genius helped produce other polymers such as neoprene and polyester. He eventually did take cyanide—not in pill form, but dissolved in lemon juice—resulting in his death in late 1937.