WORLD NEWS
Still Steaming At 100
An Iowa man who turned 100 at the start of the month is still hard at work in his steam-cleaning job, despite health issues.
Holly Dickerson, a former insurance salesman, opened Des Moines’ Valley West Uniforms in 1981 at the age of 66 as a quasi retirement project, and he refuses to retire, saying that the work is what keeps him alive. Speaking to KCCI-TV, he said: “Well, I’ve always worked.”
Despite a stroke and multiple heart surgeries in the 34 years since opening his steam cleaning business, Dickerson still continues to work five days a week, spending
most of the time on his feet, steam cleaning clothes.
His daughter-in-law, Cathy Dickerson, said: “He can do what he darn well wants to when he’s 100 years old. He loves to be here, and that’s just the bottom line.”
While his 67-year old son, Terry, who now runs the store, said: “I go pick him up at about 11 o’clock and he steams here till about 3:30-4 o’clock in the afternoon.” He added that his father once passed down some pearls of wisdom to him, that “if you retire and sit in a rocking chair all day, you won’t survive.”
Xeros Continue To Expand With US Patent
Xeros Technology Group PLC has received approval from the US Patent Office for a patent covering its core polymer bead cleaning process.
The South Yorkshire-based company uses unique polymer beads in their washing machines that greatly reduce the amount of water needed in each cycle. The beads absorb stray dye, stains and soil, carrying them away from the fabrics, while using 75% less water, 50% less energy and 50% less detergent compared to conventional machines.
The company has said that the patent covers the use of its process of using these polymeric particles to clean textile or leather substrates.
The US patent comes after Xeros has already secured patent protection for their technology in Europe, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Canada.
Sticky Situation For King Tut’s Cleaners
Emergency repairs were needed for the burial mask of the world-famous pharaoh Tutankhamun after its blue and gold braided beard was knocked off during cleaning and had to be glued back on.
Housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the sarcophagus is more than 3,300 years old, and is considered one of the world’s most treasured exhibits.
After the cleaning mishap, which happened late last year according to allegations from an unnamed museum official, orders came from above to fix it as quickly as possible. But in the rush to mend the artefact, the wrong type of glue was used.
“Unfortunately, he used a very irreversible material – epoxy has a
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very high property for attaching and is used on metal or stone, but I think it wasn’t suitable for an outstanding
object like Tutankhamun’s golden mask,” said one conservator.
“The mask should have been taken to the conservation lab but they were in a rush to get it displayed quickly again and used this quick drying, irreversible material.”
The quick fix now means that the mask shows a gap between the face and the beard, with a ‘layer of transparent yellow’, where before it was directly attached.
Another conservator at the museum, who witnessed the botched repairs, said that some glue had also dried on the face of Tutankhamun’s mask, and that a colleague then tried to use a spatula to remove it, leaving scratches to the famed artefact.
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