| Visitors to Guernsey will be
familiar with the firm of Bucktrout & Co. whose large store running through
from the harbour to the High Street in St. Peter Port is a Mecca for wine buffs
and tobacco addicts. Before the war, they made their own brands of cigarettes
in association with the Guernsey Tobacco Company, an offshoot of B.A.T. and in
the 1920s they issued several series of cards, among them our set of the month
for April, 20 Inventors, dating from 1924. This was basically the same as R.
& J. Hill’s 1907 series of Inventors and Their Inventions, using the
same colour pictures and descriptive text, but with “Bucktrout & Co.
Ltd., manufacturers of all the famous Guernsey-made cigarettes” on the
backs, together with “Keep this card. The number on it may prove of
advantage to you” - a reference to numerals over-printed on some cards in
connection with a prize scheme. Among the worthies in the set are Pierre Curie
(radium), Samuel Morse (electric telegraph), Santos Dumont (airship), Humphry
Davy (safety lamp), Thomas Edison (phonograph), Robert Stephenson (engineer),
Hiram Maxim (maxim gun), George Stephenson (first locomotive) and Guglielmo
Marconi (wireless telegraph), but no women! If such a series were to
be compiled today I wonder how many of these pioneers would be
included. |
