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The Reverend Guppy's Aquarium
Philip Dodd
From Joseph Frisbie to Roy Jacuzzi, How Everyday Itemswere Named for Extraordinary People
Gotham
January 2008
On Sale: December 27, 2007
272 pages
ISBN: 1592403476
EAN: 9781592403479
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
What’s in a name? For Philip Dodd, this question led to an
international hunt for the best stories of eponymous
heroes-- an extraordinarily diverse group of people with
just one thing in common: by chance or deliberately, they
have left their names deeply embedded in the language and
consciousness of future generations. A few, such as instrument-maker Adolphe Sax, set out to
achieve immortality. A handful – Joseph-Ignace Guillotin,
for example – positively shunned the prospect. But the
majority, like Joseph P. Frisbie or Ernst Gräfenberg (the G
in G- spot), simply had no idea that some strange quirk of
their lives, work, or personalities would catapult them to
fame, or that one day their family name would become a
household word. Tracing their varied paths to glory has taken Philip Dodd on
a worldwide quest. He has voyaged to the desolate Matagorda
peninsula on the Gulf Coast of Texas to find out the truth
about the notorious cattle rancher Samuel Maverick. He has
been to Happy Valley, California, to find Roy Jacuzzi, alive
and well and still bubbling with ideas. He has followed the
story of Joseph P. Frisbie from a former pie factory in
Bridgeport, Connecticut, to the headquarters of Wham-O,
trying the fledgling sport of ‘Frisbie golf’ and taking home
a rather strange and macabre memento… And, of course, he has
ventured to the St Ann’s River in Trinidad to see for
himself the spot where Robert Lechmere Guppy, naturalist
extraordinaire, first collected a certain small freshwater
fish. His discoveries breathe life back into words that we
too readily take for granted. Philip Dodd’s globetrotting, personal approach brings these
idiosyncratic, occasionally bizarre stories to vivid life—
armchair travel at its best. In this marvelous tribute to
the forgotten people who changed our language, we learn that
the prospect of immortality is only a fluke away. In an age
of instant 15-minute celebrity, that's a reassuring thought.
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