n Eponym of the week: Oregonian Henry F. Phillips, for whom the Phillips-head screw and screwdriver were named. The self-centering design became especially useful on automated assembly lines that used electric-powered screwdrivers. Though Phillips received three U.S. patents for his design in 1936, it was so widely copied that by 1946 he had lost his patent protection.
You may be familiar with the sign “The buck stops here” that sat on the White House desk of Harry Truman. But there was a different message on the sign’s other side, which was:
A) “Call me Harry”
B) “I’m from Missouri”
C) “What’ll it cost?”
D) “This meeting is over”
Wednesday’s answer: A resident of Cape Cod, Mass., is called a Cape Codder. (Thanks to Paul Dickson, author of “Labels for Locals: What to Call People from Abilene to Zimbabwe.”)
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