€51m gems – fancy that!
QUESTION What are the most expensive earrings ever sold?
BY FAR the most expensive earrings are a mis-matched coloured, or fancy, diamond pair called Apollo and Artemis, which were sold at Sotheby’s, Geneva, on May 16, 2017.
The 16-carat, pear-shaped Artemis Pink sold for over $15 million and the 14.54 carat, pearshaped Apollo Blue went for a whopping $42million – $57.4million (€50.5million) in total – to a single anonymous buyer.
Most diamonds are colourless, so fancy colour diamonds are the most valuable. Pinks excepted, the colour comes from trace elements. In the case of blue diamonds, this is boron, and they come mainly from South Africa’s Cullinan mine.
For pink diamonds, which mainly come from the Argyle mine in Australia, the colour is due to a distortion of the crystal structure when it is being formed. Sophie Ridgewell, Birmingham.
QUESTION During the early era of computer gaming, when the likes of Atari and Commodore 64 were in their pomp, were there any successful Irish game designers?
IN the 1980s, when computer gaming was starting to develop in Ireland, a number of computer programmers and graphic artists were designing games, many of them working for the Emerald Software company in Waterford.
The first big name in computer gaming to hit the market in Ireland, during the 1970s, was a company called Atari, which opened its first plant at Ardfinnan, Co. Tipperary, in 1974, followed by another, in Tipperary town, in 1978.
Atari designed and made computer games for arcades and pubs, but by the mid-1980s, the company was in decline, as home computers gained in popularity.
In 1989, it closed its plant in Ardfinnan, followed by the sale in 1995 of its Tipperary town factory to a Japanese company, Namco.
As the market for computer games for arcades and pubs declined, and people switched to home computers, the Commodore 64 became the biggest-selling console in the Irish market during the 1980s.
The number of Irish game designers was very limited at that stage, but one brave attempt to set up a company to create computer games in Ireland was the Emerald Software company, which began in Waterford city in 1988.
It was set up by two executives from the UK entertainment industry, David Martin and Mike Dixon, with the latter becoming the ceo.
Emerald Software started creating games for Amstrad, Atari, Commodore and Spectrum systems and it employed 17 programmers and five graphic artists.
The company developed some original game concepts, like Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker in 1989 and Fallen Angel in that same year.
The company’s efforts, in making amended versions of existing games and creating brand new concepts, received mixed reviews from end users.
In the end, the company lasted a mere three years. For the last few months of its existence, the remaining staff were working without pay to try and keep Emerald Software going, but their efforts were to no avail and it closed down in 1991.
The people working for Emerald Software were all graduates or placement students from what was then the Waterford regional technical college and also from University College, Dublin.
After the company closed, most of its employees found alternative work in the computer industry, but some went on to develop fresh aspects of computer gaming.
Jer O’Carroll, one of the artists in the firm, went on to animate Lara Croft for Eidos. Another artist, Paul McLaughlin, moved to the UK where he began a long association with Peter Molyneux and became head of art at Bullfrog Productions, then Lionhead Studios and more recently, 22cans.
Billy Newport, one of the developers, went on to create Trackpedia, a website for driving enthusiasts. Subsequently, he moved to IBM to work as an architect on Java middleware.
Damian Scatterwood, another developer, went on to become a freelance programmer developing other computer games before working as a localisation manager.
Yet another Waterford-based developer, Niall Whelan, joined Claris, a subsidiary of Apple, before going on to work in localisation roles for a number of other US companies.
In the first 18 years of the 21st century, many more games designers have emerged in Ireland, but in one respect, Ireland hasn’t followed the progressive lead set in the industry in the US. There, many women game designers have emerged but that hasn’t been the case here in Ireland.
Rather ironically, in recent times, there’s been a surge in support for retro gaming in Ireland and in March, 2018, a new version of the Commodore 64, the c 64 mini, was launched to meet market needs. Eilis Byrne, Laois.
QUESTION Do helicopters have ejector seats?
THE Kamov Ka-50, nicknamed the Chernaya Akula (Black Shark), was a Soviet attack helicopter in the early Eighties. It was fitted with an unconventional K-37-800M ejection and shockabsorbing system.
Before the pilot could be ejected, the rotor blades were blown away by explosive charges and the glass canopy jettisoned.
Less than a second later, the ejection seat would be launched using extraction rockets tied to cables to drag it clear of the airframe.
An unusual feature of the Ka-50 was that it had a single pilot. In 2000, a pair of production Ka-50 helicopters were used during the Second Chechen War, but the night combat capability was poor and the weaponry underpowered, so this model wasn’t widely adopted.
It did pave the way for the twoseater Ka-52 Alligator, with an ejection system and improved day/night capability. By 2017, the Russian military were operating 90 of these attack helicopters.