the pinkerton national detective agency was founded by allan pinkerton in 1850. encyclopedia.com has this to say about him:
Pinkerton, Allan 1819-84, American detective; b. Scotland. In Chicago he founded (1850) what became the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. During the Civil War he directed an espionage system behind the Confederate lines. His agency, which solved numerous railroad robberies, also gathered the evidence that broke up the MOLLY MAGUIRES in the 1870s. It subsequently became notorious as a private police force for hire to management as strikebreakers.
this company is still in existence - "Pinkertons, Inc. is the World Class Enterprise Security Solution for the 21st Century". visit them at www.pinkertons.com.
they still have an eye logo.
Private Eye is a rather uncommon Atari 2600 game. You control a detective, on a search for evidence. You are equipped with only a 1937 Ford Model A (that can jump about 20 feet in the air). You have 3 minutes from the time you leave the precinct to find the "evidence", return the stolen goods, and nab the crook.
This game all boils down to knowing which way to turn at the beginning. You can start out by going either left or right on each level. If you pick the correct direction, then you will win. Otherwise you will run out of time. This game has decent graphics (well at least they are better than Breakout). It is a side scroller, (but you can change direction at any time). Besides collecting the "evidence" and "stolen goods" (which are always right out in the open), you also must avoid such enemies as, potholes, rats, and birds.
You could get a patch from the Activision Club by solving round 3 of this game (this was one of the easier patches to get).
"Sacre bleu! I am the great French private eye Pierre Touche and I need your help. I've been summoned to capture the ringleader, Henri Le Fiend, and turn him over to the police. But wait -- we first must find evidence against him and the stolen property. There are five cases pending, each with its own statute of limitation. A case is closed when Le Fiend is apprehended and booked. So hurry! Study the files below, grab your trenchcoat and meet me at Precinct 2600 -- I'll be waiting for you." Sleuth wanted! Help Private Eye Touche navigate the city streets, parks, secret passages, dead-ends and one-ways in search of Henri Le Fiend and his gang. Evidence and stolen goods are scattered about -- you'll need to find these, too. Let the map and your memory be your guide. And let nothing go unnoticed.
"Sacre bleu! I am the great French private eye Pierre Touche and I need your help. I've been summoned to capture the ringleader, Henri Le Fiend, and turn him over to the police. But wait -- we first must find evidence against him and the stolen property. There are five cases pending, each with its own statute of limitation. A case is closed when Le Fiend is apprehended and booked. So hurry! Study the files below, grab your trenchcoat and meet me at Precinct 2600 -- I'll be waiting for you."
Sleuth wanted! Help Private Eye Touche navigate the city streets, parks, secret passages, dead-ends and one-ways in search of Henri Le Fiend and his gang. Evidence and stolen goods are scattered about -- you'll need to find these, too. Let the map and your memory be your guide. And let nothing go unnoticed.
This game is valued at around $20 USD. Games with boxes and manuals are worth more.
Famed for its bitingly funny satire, as well as its propensity for getting sued by the famous figures who receive the magazines attention, Private Eye has become a British institution since it's first issue, which was released in the autumn of 1961.
Private Eye has it's roots further back in history than the Oxford contingent of the early 'Satire Boom' which began at the Edinburgh Festival of 1960, and can probably be traced back to the Shrewsbury School, which was attended by Richard Ingrams and Willie Rushton. During their time there the pair contributed both verse and drawings to the school magazine, 'The Salopian'. Both went their separate ways after they passed their A-Levels, but the idea of a writing for a magazine must have stayed with them and was rekindled when Ingrams and another Old Salopian, Paul Foot, arrived at University College, Oxford in 1958.
The year prior to the pair's arrival at Oxford, Adrian Berry, the son of Lord Hartwell the then owner of The Telegraph started sending in contributions to the collge magazine, but after finding that the regular college press were unwilling to publish such 'close to the bone' material, and the local W H Smith wouldn't stock it, he had started a small humorous magazine, entitled Parson's Pleasure to give his work an outlet. Berry was approaching his finals, and wanting to hand the editorship over to someone, he became an acquaintance of Paul Foot, who wrote in the Parson's Pleasure gossip columns. Foot saw the opportunity to revive some of the ideas that he and Ingrams had had at Shrewsbury.
Upon Foot taking over as editor, the style of the magazine changed quite radically. It became a fortnightly paper, in came the letters from fictional correspondents, such as Hubert Drivel, and more cartoons were published all drawn by Rushton, including the now legendary doodle which showed a giraffe standing at a bar, with the caption, 'No, no, I insist - the high-balls are on me'. Despite the new format, Parson's Pleasure was running out of money, and the majority of the writers and illustrators, including Ingrams, Rushton and Foot left to the Balliol publication, Mesopotamia. The Parson's Pleasure team joined up with John Wells, Peter Cook and Christopher Booker, who was to become the first editor of the Eye, and launched the first issue of Private Eye, which soon reached a circulation of 80,000 copies, if you happen to find one of these original copies, they can now be worth up to £1000.
It wasn't a lasting success however, and by 1962, Private Eye found itself in financial difficulties, and had to be bailed out by Peter Cook. Many of its competitors fell by the wayside. The magazine's financial position wasn't aided by the fact that the victims of many of The Eye's send ups were rich industrialists, who often sued them to within an inch of their lives. Of course anyone suing them automatically received even more attention from the wags who wrote the paper, leading to many feuds, most notably, James Goldsmith throughout the 1970's, Robert Maxwell during the 1980's, and Mohammed al-Fayed though the 1990's. The staff seemed to enjoy winding up the rich and powerful, a point highlighted by Richard Ingrams, who claimed that ' My own motto is publish and be sued.'
The structure of the paper has settled down over time, and there are an almost endless supply of 'in-jokes', many of which exist to prevent libel actions. Examples include Rupert Murdoch being constantly labelled as 'The Dirty Digger', and Mohammed al-Fayed being lampooned as 'The Phoney Pharaoh'. Those who haven't attempted to sue the Eye often come in for a little bashing as well, with fellow newsmen and publications such as the Grauniad as the typo ridden Guardian is known, Piers Morgan a.k.a Moron, editor of the Mirror and Max Hastings or as he is affectionately known 'Hitler' , ex-itor of the Daily Torygraph, ahem, Telegraph (shurely shome mishtake - Ed) currently of the London Evening Standard, all featuring prominently.
The Eye is currently entering its fifth decade of existence, under the stewardship of Ian Hislop, who is also a team captain on Have I Got News For You, and is still the home of contemporary British satire.
For more of the same, see www.private-eye.co.uk
http://www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk/archive/0001/13_2/01.shtml. http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/tate/cruikshank/satire2.shtml http://64.154.21.227/news1999/july99/news5712.html.
It was the kind of night that wraps around you like a dark fog, that whirls your coat and hair like an arial whirlpool and dances around the amber streetlamps like mist, the kind that wraps you in its tentacles and goes inside you and fills you up like a milkshake maker fills his glass. It was the kind of night that projects every light and sound and thought through the New York air, the kind of night that sounds like a lone taxi and smells like cheap cigars and tastes like cold hard steel. It was the kind of night I like best.
My name's Tlogmer. Charlie Tlogmer, private eye. At least, that's what it says on my door. I stepped out of the elevator with a bit of the air still in me and the doors closed. At my own door was a dame.
She stood like a marionette, a hand on the doorframe, her back to me. Cheap perfume reached my nostrils. I tried to sound professional. "Whaddaya want?"
She heard the elevator's ding three seconds late and turned. "Mr. Tlogmer?"
I looked back without blinking. "That depends. Who are you?"
Her eyes shone like twin Coca-Cola bottles: Beautiful and empty. "Mr. Tlogmer, I need your help."
"Come back when I'm awake." I unlocked the door, stepped inside, managed to find my way through the office to my bedroom, and went to sleep.
I woke to the sun, slicing through the curtains, dancing the cha-cha across my eyelids, and rolled out of bed. The remains of an ancient pastrami sandwich greeted my yet-unfocoused eyes like a bad-breathed Taiwaneese politician greets a small lizard slipping into his sandal. I pulled myself to my feet and wandered off to the bathroom.
I had just finished squeezing the last drops of toothpaste from the tube when an ear-splitting shave-and-a-haircut knock ricocheted off the walls of my apartment. I opened the door.
The lizard slipped out of my Taiwaneese sandal to reveal an extremely wide wad of bills. A wad of bills that looked exactly like the dame I'd politely dissmissed 8 hours before. My smile probably made me look like I was going for her thoat.
She stood there like a rabbit in headlights, nose twitching slightly.
"Come on in", I said too loudly, with a grand motion that swept my desk clear. "Charlie Tlogmer, Private Eye. No case too small, no case too large, except those involving the federal government. What can I do for you?" I belatedly extended my hand.
She looked the office over. She looked me over. "Quite a piece you got there," she murmered, glacing at my midsection.
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
"Glock .22, I see. Classic." She smiled. I realized that my handgun was indeed at my side.
"Oh yeah, that." I leaned an elbow on the desk. "So what brings you here? There've gotta be two-hundred other private dicks in San Fran just waiting for a broad like you."
"You were the cheapest dick I could find." She found a chair and sat, legs crossed.
I smiled sauvely and sat down myself, behind the desk. "So?"
"What?" She glanced away from the window.
"Well, you came to a PI. You must be after something."
"Someone," she said. "What's the pay?"
"How much you got?"
"I asked you first."
"And I asked you second." I sighed. "Two hundred a day, plus expenses. So who're you looking for?"
She smiled again, teeth like the daughter of a Taiwaneese politican married to an orthodontist, who enjoys long walks on the beach. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
"You."
I stood up. I sat down and felt the chair start to give. I stood up again. "Sorry?"
She gestured to what I thought had been a card. "Your ad? I make a great cup of coffee."
Oh, yeah. Secretary. "Right, right, yeah. Well. . ." I looked at her. "You're hired."
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