Ré Zozo (né de Fresnel)

Hi Hughes,

I did a little bit of additional research on ze translation proposed by Christophe:
            "réseau zôné de Fresnel"
Oeuf corse, you should take ze results with a grain of salt...
(Note to my friends who don't speak any french at all: most of the following is based on a play of words starting from Christophe's translation of the term Zone Plate (Fresnel) to Hughes's interpretation and which is impossible to retranslate into English. Nonetheless, the play of word is just the starting point for a little story around pinhole and zone plates and is not absolutely essnetial to catch)

You quite correctly rewrote Christophe's words as
            "ré zozo né de Fresnel"
no doubt refering to ze obscure XIXth-Century inventor known as
             Ré Zozo (né de Fresnel).

Perhaps you'll be interested in ze following bits of gossip that I was able to find after considerable reseach.

Ze "de Fresnel" family was a very old French nobility family (ancestors going back at least to ze Cruisades) which - out of financial necessity - found it necessary to get maritally involved with a wealthy but very smallish and uneducated Parisian mobster, known as "Ré Le Zozo".

Born from unknown parents and afflicted with a speech impediment, René got quickly known in Pigalle as "Ré Le Zozo". No one survived who dared to call him that name in public. All were found lying in their blood in an obscure chamber with a pin hole in the chest.

Ré's reputation - or should we say that of his growing wealth - began to spread in circles...! It eventually reached the attention of the aging Monsieur de Fresnel, whose only wealth was a particle and an unmarried, slightly myopic, daughter.

Since this was a time when royal and noble heads would easily separate from their bodies, Monsieur de F. was quite amenable to trading both the family particle and the family daughter in exchange of hard bullion...

The parties met and quickly came to a mutual understanding (Hmmm... Sorry, Ré! Paper money just won't work on this deal). The marriage was celebrated privately in a remote village, to avoid unnecessary embarrassments to Mr. Fresnel's last few remaining particled friends.

Actually, when they subsequently heard about the deal, they called it the greatest reciprocity error in history! (The term was coined! It layed dormant until film makers picked it up again as they tried to explain their failure to come up with an emulsion that could fit the most simple camera system of all.)

A son was born nine month after, officially named René after his father. But he was nicknamed "Ré Zozo (né de Fresnel)" to tell him apart from his father. His life was short but he kept inventing bewildering contraptions of dubious usefulness, the most confounding being a series of concentric rings on a piece of transparent film. (Amazing what goes on through the human mind...)

You are unlikely to find any reference to this obscure inventor in any dictionnary. But if you look carefully at the reflections in a glass of half-decent wine, you might see him wink at you behind your shoulder! -:)

Bonsoir à tous,

Guy

>
> De: Hugues <asveyou@skynet.be>
> Date: 2004/03/18 jeu. AM 10:29:11 GMT-05:00
> À: pinhole-discussion@spitbite.org
> Objet: Re: [pinhole-discussion] Zone plate question
>
> How strange, I've never heard about that before.
> Not very practical to pronounce I'm afraid: ré zozo né de Fresnel
> Just kidding ;-)
>
> Merci,
>

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Received on Thu Mar 18 21:26:26 2004