Google

[tix]

'Google' could be interesting from a Blytonian point of view.

I think most fans (if not all) would have heard of 'Google Buns' and their place in Enid Blyton's story collection, but the question arises: Where did Google get 'Google?'

Had the person who named that particular search-engine read 'Magic Faraway Tree?'

Doubt it, because Google's a U.S. endeavour and Americans aren't all that big on Blyton.

Google could be allied to 'goggle' ..... in fact a connection could be made when an 'o' is added and a 'g' subtracted - seeing we all goggle at Google.

Comments from round the world:

"One of the magic goodies in Enid Blyton's Faraway tree stories published during 1939 - 1951. As far as I know this is the earliest use of the word 'Google.' They were sweet buns with a juicy interior. Other notable ones were: Pop Biscuits (Biscuits which turned to honey as they were chewed). Shock toffees (these got bigger and bigger as they were sucked and when they got too big for the mouth, suddenly exploded into nothing). Hot cold delights (they got hotter and hotter in the mouth and when unbearably hot, got colder and colder, and vice versa)."

(Pop biscuits get plenty of mention in the Faraway Tree books).

"I adored Enid Blyton books (although I’ve recently been pondering how dark and full of wickedness they are) and The Magic Faraway Tree was one of my favourites. I always wondered what google buns (I’ve just realised that I always read the word as goggle!) would taste like! I wonder if you could soak the raisins to make them swell up first?"

"Hi…I was re reading Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree and came across the term Google Buns - I thought that I was perhaps the 1st person to have discovered the 1st use of ‘Google”…. lol…"

(Not quite).

"I was always surprised nobody else ever noticed that Enid Blyton had invented the word GOOGLE. I always thought it was because her books are not widely read these days. Maybe I just didn’t hear from those who still read them. Vincent Cartwright Vickers wrote about a Google monster in a book of 1913 which was republished in the 1970s. So the Enid Blyton reference is not quite the first for the word. However, it is the most tasty!"

"Like most, I’d always believed the word Google originated with the mis-spelling of Googol by the company’s founders. Googol refers to the number represented by the digit one followed by a hundred zeros. I know this because I once read a Richie Rich comic where Richie identifies the enemy, who goes by the code name 'Googol,' as their associate who’d once been followed during war time by a hundred Japanese planes; these planes were called Zeros. Of course I recall all this perfectly, but always forget my ATM pin."

('Richie Rich' appeared round 1953).

*****************
> googol<

n. (Mathematics) the number represented as one followed by 100 zeros (10100).

>google<

To search something on the Google search engine. The domain 'google.com' was registered in 1997. According to the company, 'Google' is a play on 'googol.'

*****************

There are google bun recipes and the one I spotted contains sherbet (as it should), which might produce the frothing effect that Joe, Bessie, Fanny, Connie and Dick experienced. We can drift back to 1943 for these delicacies.

Another 'google' can be found in your Enid Blyton collection if 'Pippy and the Gnome' (Pitkin) is included. The title story includes the 'Google Gnome' who turns out to be a very nasty fellow indeed. It's dated 1951, but the tale in question also features in a 1930 'Sunny Stories' magazine.

Maybe there are even earlier references in the Blyton works, but for a primordial example one can hearken right back for what could possibly be the very 'first' google -

In 1856, 'Graham's Magazine' printed the following:

"A gradually modulating bowl - a squeak, a squall, a thrill, and a gutteral (that word seems to have been spelt oddly) google - google - google ... a deafening bawl like the hoarse whistle of a locomotive engine, when under full headway ..... "

'Nuff said

[pete9012S]

Most enjoyable Tix - as all of your posts are!

Many thanks

Pete

[Anita Bensoussane]

There's also a clown called Google in Circus Days Again (serialised in 1941 before being published in book form in 1942).

[tix]

Many thanks back, Pete. I think you'd be one of the most consistent and enthusiastic contributors to the forum.

Anita's encyclopedic knowledge of Blytonia has produced yet another 'Google' and my gosh, despite being a clown, he's an ill-tempered child-hater. Fortunately for Lotta and Jimmy he leaves - due to the fact there are simply too many kids around, thank you very much.

There's rather a nice wrapper on CDA, and here's another poser for Anita or Pete or anyone: Is there an EB book with more characters (including creatures and fairy folk) on its cover?

.... and not counting HFTC.

[FiveFanDownunder]

I love this topic.

Relating to the mathematical idea here, I remember being shown in high school a film featuring Carl Sagan trying to explain the extraordinarily large numbers such as Googles and Googleplexes to youths such as myself. I think at one point he wrote a number with an exceedingly large number of zeros after a ‘1’ on a roll of toilet paper and proceeded to run along outside with it throug what i assume was a university campus ... with a few bewildered onlookers looking on.

Fast forward 35 years; I’ve just found the clip, it looks like he filmed it in Cambridge, and I think what I thought was a loo roll back in the day is probably a cash register receipt roll.

I found and find his exposition captivating.

https://youtu.be/0lFQOmb6mVs" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Earlier on in that show, I remember him cutting a slice of apple pie in half and half again etc, discussing how many cuts would be needed to produce a slice of apple pie that was only the thickness of one atom. It’s not that many cuts. In that segment Sagan says,

“If you want to create an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.”