Peter Rhodes on bicycles, bifocals and the passing of a veteran actor

BBC4 marked the passing of Robert Redford with a screening of the 1969 western, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. How many of us thought we had spotted a glaring anachronism when Butch (Paul Newman) announced: “Boy, I got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals”?

Bifocals in 19th century America? Come off it. But a couple of clicks on Google's deeply impressive new Artificial Intelligence function reveals that bifocals were invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1784. Forty years later one John Isaac Hawkins coined the b-word. Given AI's wicked appetite for electrical power, goodness knows how much it costs to bring you this snippet.