Chemi-Luminescent Vim

Apart from a relatively short detour, painting a toilet, Martin's first job after graduating was as Computer Programmer for Unilever Research. So much for all that Biology. While there he was peripheral to some interesting product development.

Unilever Research, where I worked after graduating, was full of interesting and engaging things. I liked working at Unilever, even though the money was relatively crap, made worse by the double-digit inflation that we had back then. Your career path wasn't that impressive either, but it was full of interesting things.

This Vim wasn't Chemi-luminescent

Sadly, of the interesting things, and unlike working for an academic institution, one could not boast of them. They were secrets of the Concern. Telling of them, even of the most pedestrian, would get you into trouble, if not the intellectual equivalent of a short walk to a pock-marked wall and a final cigarette. But I think I'm relatively safe now.

Back then there was a large market for Scouring Powder. This stuff contained an abrasive powder, soap and bleach. It came in round stiff cardboard tubes and was guaranteed to get the tea stains off anything. In time it was replaced by creams of various descriptions which promised to be less aggressively scratchy. They were still big sellers back then, Unilever had Vim and a rival had its big competition, Ajax.

Some marketing wonks had come up with a wheeze. Small amounts of blue dye, which was colourless when dry, was put in the powder. When the powder was wetted, as in being used, the dye appeared as blue specks in the otherwise white powder. The user, inevitably the housewife, in the adverts, anyhow, would be assured that the scouring powder was working. Even more so when the dye was slowly bleached and the specks faded from view. Both Ajax and Vim has this technology, and so it fell to industrial research to come up with something better. Something better seemed to mean something more entertaining.

Chemi-Luminescence is a rare-ish chemical phenomenon where light emitted as part of some chemical process. It it probably most familiar in biological systems where it provides the underlying mechanism for the light produced by Fireflies and the like. The idea, in the case of Vim, was that the two components of a chemi-luminescent reaction were kept in close proximity but dry, mixed on a single particle. When these particles got wet, when the Vim was being used, then the two components reacted and flashes of light could be seen. At the level of the user, the used Vim would sparkle, to show that it was working.

So what happened? Why isn't the world full of sparkly Vim? Well, the reaction wasn't that strong, so the lights needed to be out when you did your sparkle inspired scouring. It was also incredibly expensive. Various figures were banded about. But the ridiculous expense seems to have done for it.

And then there was the detergent that made pans non-stick by coating them with some chemical or other. That didn't get very far either.

Cockermouth, 28th August 2010.

~Z~

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Gormless Anecdotes

Martin is known for his long-winded e-mails and has decided to inflict them on the Internet like this, suitably cleaned up and formatted. There's the starting page with some explanation, and then, so far:

• Hunting the Flush Bug
• Chemi-Luminescent Vim
• Helping With an Enquiry
• Light From Under the Door
• I Write Like David Foster Wallace
• The Origami Artist
• Pattern Matching Randomness
• The Indole Chemistry of Bananas
• Volunteer Projectionist

Also of Interest

Jucy morsels from the rest of the site:

• General papers on On-line Transaction Processing (OLTP). It's still the main topic of the web-site.
• Some site news; it's a sort of infrequently updated journal for Martin too.
• Rather specific Technical Notes, Martin can still bore people in the Third-person past tense.
• Of the little hacks that he's done recently, the Unofficial Jobcentre Plus Mirror is the one thing that seems to have gained traction.
• Other ephemeral, eclectic stuff. Mostly photographs.