Countdown

Could it have been the imminence of the celebrations of Neil Armstrong's epic footstep which inspired the organisers of the FIFA Women's World Cup just concluded? Before each match, the spectators were encouraged to count down to the moment of kick-off, in English it should be noted. In the days of my youth, that would have raised tempers across the Channel. I seem to recall a prominent politician being slated across the French media for daring to give a TV interview to an anglophone station in English. The French have matured since then, while we seem to become more chauvinist.

Who invented the countdown? It appears that the honour should go to a George Chetwynd Griffith-Jones, writing as George Griffith in the late Victorian and early Edwardian ages. According to his wikipedia entry, his "short story The Great Crellin Comet, published in 1897, was the first story to not only include a 10-second countdown for a space launch (though a countdown of sorts is included in Jules Verne's 1887 novel, The Purchase of the North Pole), but also the first story to suggest that a cometary collision with the earth could be stopped by human intervention.".