Dog on It is from Chet the dog's perspective, and he is a charmer. Chet isn't a very good dog, but he's a great dog especially for the almost down and out Bernie owner of The Little Detective Agency. As far as Chet is concerned Bernie can do no wrong, and that's what makes this such a charmer. Spencer Quinn jumps into the heart and mind of a dog.
Once upon a time, companies had real personalities.
While the Apple of today is a gleaming white wall of corporate press releases and carefully-timed keynotes, long-time fans of the company can remember a time when the company had far more personality.
- Mac–I swear to you–looked both ways just before he was slammed into. Out comes the little sports car. Next thing I know, Mac’s lying in a small puddle of his own blood in the middle of the road. Mac was a Black Lab and he’d accompanied my young teenage self on my bike to the Post Office, a short jaunt down the way. We were returning home.
- Did you scroll all this way to get facts about dog gone it? Well you're in luck, because here they come. There are 1535 dog gone it for sale on Etsy, and they cost $22.44 on average. The most common dog gone it material is ceramic. The most popular color? You guessed it: blue.
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While there are obvious signs of this — like the old six-color logo — there are lesser-known relics of the Apple of old. Clarus the dogcow is one of them. This is her story.
It Started with a Typeface
Every good hero has a good origin story, and Clarus the Dogcow is no different.
During the design and development of the original Macintosh, Steve Jobs harped the importance of typefaces in the computer’s user interface. Jobs had audited a calligraphy course at Reed College — after dropping out, no less — and insisted that the Macintosh have multiple, proportionally-space fonts at launch.
To help create these typefaces, Jobs turned to Susan Kare, the graphic designer working on the Macintosh’s user interface elements.
Kare created several fonts for the system, all given names for world-class cities.
The original fonts by Susan Kare included:
- Athens: This slab-serif typeface characterized by bold, clean lines.
- Chicago: This heavy san-serif was the default system font up to System 7.6 and later appear on iPods, as it renders well on black and white displays. Chicago was the first font designed for the Macintosh and was originally named Elefont by Susan Kare.
- Geneva: This sans-serif font should look familiar to the modern computer user, due to its similarity to the ubiquitous typeface Helvetica. An offshoot of Geneva named Simple was used in Apple’s Newton OS.
- Monaco: This monospaced, sans-serif typeface is one of the very few old-world Mac fonts to survive in the modern era. Up until Mac OS X Snow Leopard, it was the default font in Xcode.
- New York: Inspired by Times New Roman, this bitmap font was the default serif typeface on the original Macintosh.
- San Francisco: Originally dubbed Ransom, San Francisco was designed to mimic a note created out of magazine clippings by a crazy person. Yikes.
One Kare font, however, was vasty different that the others: Cairo.
Cairo was the original dingbat font and would probably have been forgotten by history — like most of the other original Macintosh fonts — if it hadn’t been for two things: a game that used the font’s elements and the character in the z position.
Dog Gone It Agility
A small creature named “Clarus.”
Printers and Dogcow Documentation
In the days of the original Macintosh, Apple turned to making printers.
LaserWriter was the umbrella term used by Apple to label a line of over 30 printers and the supporting software in MacOS. Launched in 1985 and powered by PostScript and applications like PageMaker, the LaserWriter printers helped propel Apple to the forefront of the desktop publishing revolution.
Starting in the late 80s, millions of pages were designed on 512×342 1-bit monochrome screens. Starting in 1987, Apple started shipping external monitors alongside the Macintosh II.
In this world, Clarus enjoyed great prominence — being present on the page setup dialog box for many versions of the system’s printer software, reminding users which orientation their print job would be using:
Apple was still performing well at this point, with the dark days of the mid-90s still several years off, and the company had a sense of humor about itself.
Apple employee Mark “The Red” Harlan took to his Mac in the spring of 1989 to write Technote 31 in the now-defunct Developer Technical Support collection of documents. Harlan wanted to clarify the small animal found on the Page Setup dialog box. The title of his entry? Simply “The Dogcow.”
Harlan opened his document by explaining what a dogcow is:
Dogcows, by their nature, are not all dog, nor are they all cow, but they are a special genetic hybrid. They are rarely seen in the wild. Since dogcows are two dimensional, they will stand facing a viewer “on edge” to avoid being seen.
(Another common cause of death? Falling off of cliffs while eating. Yikes.)
Scott “ZZ” Zimmerman is given credit for coining the term “dogcow,” and Harlan gave her a name — Clarus. He also gave readers directions on how to draw the character:
So, if the animal’s name is Clarus, where does the word moof come from?
Well, as it turns out, that’s the sound a dogcow makes:
http://512pixels.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/moof.m4aIn an email to me, Zimmerman explained how he created this sound:
I remember doing it one night in my apartment. I used a cow sound from a sound effect CD I had and then recorded myself going “oof” over and over again using a MacRecorder. I eventually blended the two samples into the sound you have on the site.
The Golden Era of Dogcow
In the early and mid 1990s, Clarus was at the height of power.
In 1991, the Dogcow was spotted in early versions of QuickTime, in these projects created by Zimmerman. At the time, he was working in Developer Technical Support helping Pixar with MacRenderman, and he told me the render for each video took over 24 hours on a Mac IIfx.
Clarus’ move into multimedia was outlined in Technote 1031:
This Technote attempts to document the Dogcow’s various and sundry exploits — most recently, in the world of QuickTime VR. Indeed, some might say that the Dogcow has “gone VR.” In any case, this Note looks at some of the Dogcow’s history and peregrinations and then explains the technique for creating a QuickTime VR object movie with the Dogcow as star. Could a part in the next Babe movie be far behind? Stay tuned for details.
In addition to these QuickTime demos, Clarus showed up all across Apple, in everything from documents about how to render on-screen graphics to mousepads and shirts.
Not content to be part of a brand-new media platform and run a growing branding empire, Clarus installed as part as the long-gone Icon Garden on Apple’s then-new campus on Infinite Loop.
image via James Thomson.
In June of 1994, Apple’s developers were allowed access to a two-part series on the history of the Dogcow, written by our friend Mark Harlan:
The dogcow was originally a character in the Cairo font that used to ship with the Macintosh; it was designed by Susan Kare. I had always been interested in this critter ever since I first saw it in the LaserWriter Page Setup Options dialog, sometime during my stint in Apple’s Developer Technical Support (DTS) group in 1987. To me it showed perfection in human interface design. With one picture it was very easy to explain concepts like an inverted image or larger print area that otherwise would be nearly impossible to communicate.
Interest became an obsession when one day I was talking to Scott (“ZZ”) Zimmerman about the dialog and suddenly thought, “Just what is that animal supposed to be, anyway?” Since ZZ was the Printing Guy in DTS (now in the Newton group), and my favorite pastime was to bother him endlessly anyway, I started pressing him on whether the animal was a dog or a cow.
In an act of desperation he said, “It’s both, OK? It’s called a ‘dogcow.’ Now will you get out of my office?” The date was October 15, 1987, and I consider this to be the first use of the term. It should be noted that since then a few people (including Ginger herself) have told me that actually the phrase was coined by Ginger Jernigan (ex-DTS, now ROM software) at a meeting of Apple’s Print Shop sometime shortly before that, which very well could be the case. Nevertheless it was ZZ who pressed it into common usage, and he certainly was the first person I ever heard use the term.
Moof Bräu & Disney’s 101 Dalmatians Print Studio
Dog Gone It Mac Os Catalina
At WWDC 1996, Apple featured beer brewed in California, and one of the examples was dubbed “Moof Bräu.” A photo of the bottle can be seen here, pulled from an old QuickTime VR document:
On the other end of the spectrum, the 101 Dalmatians Print Studio that shipped with the Apple Magic Collection software on some Macs in the mid to late 1990s included an Easter Egg that when activated, would add Clarus to a user’s certificate-making project:
You can learn more about this Easter Egg and many others in this talk by the aforementioned James Thomson.
Clarus Today
While it’s hard to pin the Dogcow’s decline directly on Steve Jobs, Clarus became harder and harder to spot after his return to Apple. The Icon Garden came down, and Mac OS X used a less-fun image on the Page Setup screen. While Clarus made a brief appearance with OS X’s Address Book, it was hardly a comeback.
While Apple may not officially recognize the glory of the Dogcow, Clarus lives on. Clarus is present in some of Apple’s Swift documentation:
The dogcow is also present in Apple’s Classic Mac iMessage Sticker Pack:
Some hardcore fans — myself included — have chosen to honor Clarus with permanent ink.
For a while, it was rumored that the dogcow was still present in a very specific way at Apple’s new HQ in Cupertino. In fact, the video I made on this subject includes the story, which says that in the Visitor Center’s AR model of the campus, users can remove the roof of a small barn on the site to reveal a small version of Clarus.
When I visited that Apple Store during WWDC 2019, I busted the myth myself; sadly the barn houses a regular, boring cow.
Documentation
For some additional reading, I’ve rounded up as many documents as I can about Clarus. Happy exploring.
- Adventures with Clarus (2000)
- Develop 17 – History of the Dogcow, Part 1 (1994)
- Develop 17 – History of the Dogcow, Part 2 (1994)
- Technical Note PR510 – Printer Driver Q&As (1990)
- Technical Note PT35 – Stand-Alone Code, ad nauseam (1989)
- Technical Note TN1019 – Plotting Small Icons – The ‘SICN’ Resource (1996)
- Technote 31 – The Dogcow (1989)
- Technote 1031 – The Dogcow Goes QuickTime VR (1996)
Septimus Winner (11 May 1827 – 22 November 1905)[citation needed] was an American songwriter of the 19th century. He used his own name, and also the pseudonymsAlice Hawthorne, Percy Guyer, Mark Mason, Apsley Street, and Paul Stenton. He was also a teacher, performer, and music publisher.
Biography[edit]
Winner was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the seventh child to Joseph E. Winner (an instrument maker specializing in violins) and wife Mary Ann. Mary Ann Winner was a relative of Nathaniel Hawthorne, hence Septimus' use of the Hawthorne name as part of his pseudonym Alice Hawthorne.
Winner attended Philadelphia Central High School. Although largely self-taught in the area of music, he did take lessons from Leopold Meignen around 1853, but by that time he was already an established instrumental teacher, and performed locally with various ensembles.
From around 1845 to 1854, Septimus Winner partnered with his brother Joseph Eastburn Winner (1837–1918) as music publishers. Septimus continued in the business with various partners and names until 1902.
Winner was especially popular for his ballads published under the pseudonym of Alice Hawthorne, which became known generically as 'Hawthorne's Ballads'. His brother was also a composer, publishing under the alias Eastburn. Septimus Winner was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.[1]
In addition to composing popular songs, Winner also produced more than 200 instruction method books for more than twenty-three instruments. He wrote more than 1,500 easy arrangements for various instruments and almost 2,000 arrangements for violin and piano.
Songs[edit]
In 1855, Winner published the song 'Listen to the Mockingbird' under the Alice Hawthorne name. He had arranged and added words to a tune by local singer/guitarist Richard Milburn, an employee, whom he credited. Later he sold the rights, reputedly for five dollars, and subsequent publications omitted Milburn's name from the credits. The song was indeed a winner, selling about 15 million copies in the United States alone.
Another of his successes, and still familiar, is 'Der Deitcher's Dog', or 'Oh Where, oh Where Ish Mine Little Dog Gone', a text that Winner set to the German folk tune 'In Lauterbach hab' ich mein' Strumpf verlor'n'[2] in 1864, which recorded massive sales during Winner's lifetime.
The first verse of 'Der Deitcher's Dog' is particularly noteworthy as its first verse has become a popular nursery rhyme:
Oh where, oh where has my little dog gone?
Oh where, oh where can it be?
With its ears cut short, and its tail cut long,
Oh where, oh where is it?
Modern versions occasionally change 'cut' to 'so'.
The original song is written in German dialect, and subsequent verses praise lager but lament the fact that 'mit no money' it is not possible to drink, and praise sausages and thence to speculate on the fate of the missing dog:
Dey makes un mit dog und dey makes em mit horse,
I guess dey makes em mit he
Another of Winner's best-remembered songs, 'Ten Little Injuns', was originally published in 1864. This was adapted, possibly by Frank J. Green in 1868 as 'Ten Little Niggers' and became a standard of the blackface minstrel shows.[3] It was sung by Christy's Minstrels and became widely known in Europe, where it was used by Agatha Christie in her novel And Then There Were None, about ten killings on a remote island.[4] In 2005, film historian Richard Finegan identified Winner as the composer of The Three Stooges song 'Swingin' the Alphabet' featured in their 1938 film Violent Is the Word for Curly. Winner had originally published it in 1875 as 'The Spelling Bee'.[5]
In 1862, Winner was court-martialed and briefly jailed, accused of treason, because he wrote and published a song entitled 'Give Us Back Our Old Commander: Little Mac, the People's Pride'. It concerned General George B. McClellan, whom President Abraham Lincoln had just fired from the command of the Army of the Potomac.[6] McClellan was a popular man, and his supporters bought more than 80,000 copies of the song in its first two days of publication.[citation needed] He was released from arrest after promising to destroy all of the remaining copies. Shortly after his release is when he wrote, 'Oh Where, oh Where Ish Mine Little Dog Gone'.[6] The song reappeared in 1864 when McClellan was a presidential candidate. In 1880 the words were rewritten as a campaign ditty on behalf of Ulysses S. Grant.[1]
Winner's 1865 love song of the American Civil War, Sweet Ellie Rhee (or 'Carry me back to Tennessee'), is widely considered to have been introduced to South Africa by Americans working in the Transvaal gold mines, and to have greatly influenced the well-known Afrikaans song Sarie Marais.
Sweet Ellie Rhee, so dear to me
Is lost forever more
Our home was down in Tennessee
Before this cruel war
Then carry me back to Tennessee
Back where I long to be
Amid the fields of yellow corn
To my darling Ellie Rhee
Personal life[edit]
Artist Margaret F. Winner was his youngest daughter.[7]
Songs[edit]
The most popular Septimus Winner songs include:
- 'How Sweet Are the Roses' (1850)
- 'I Set My Heart Upon a Flower' (1854)
- 'What Is Home Without a Mother' (1854)
- 'Listen to the Mockingbird' (1855)
- 'Abraham's Daughter' or 'Raw Recruits' (1861)
- 'Der Deitcher's Dog' (1864)
- 'Ellie Rhee' or 'Carry Me Back to Tennessee' (1865)
- 'What Care I?' (1866)
- 'Whispering Hope' (1868)
- 'Ten Little Injuns' (1868)
- 'The Birdies' Ball' (1869)
- 'Come Where the Woodbine Twineth' (1870)
- 'Love Once Gone Is Lost Forever' (1870)
Notes[edit]
- ^ ab'Songwriter's Hall of Fame'. Septimus Winner. Archived from the original on April 15, 2013. Retrieved January 2, 2021.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
- ^German wikipedia article: Lauterbacher Strumpflied.
- ^P. V. Bohlman and O. Holzapfel, The folk songs of Ashkenaz (A-R Editions, 2001), p. 34.
- ^A. Light, Forever England: femininity, literature, and conservatism between the wars (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 243.
- ^'Violent Is the Word for Curly at threestooges.net'. Archived from the original on 2010-03-24. Retrieved 2010-04-03.
- ^ abLibrary of Congress, Biographies. https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200185362/Archived 2018-11-25 at the Wayback Machine
- ^'Archived copy'. Archived from the original on 2021-03-29. Retrieved 2020-05-15.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
Sources[edit]
- Opie, Iona & Opie, Peter (editors): The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes Oxford University Press, 1951 (rhyme 139, page 151)
All other sources are from online digital archives or publications of the original sheet music which are in the public domain. Sources include:
- Library of Congress' American Memories' website
- Dover Publications'Popular Songs of Nineteenth Century America
- Material from Duke University
- Material from UNC-Chapel Hill Music Library
External links[edit]
- Winner Septimus Winner at the Songwriters Hall of Fame
- Free scores by Septimus Winner at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
Sheet Music
Streaming audio
- Septimus Winner on Edison Records.
- Septimus Winner 01 on Victor Records.
- Septimus Winner 02 on Victor Records.
- [1] Translated into Russian by Leonid Zuborev Леонид Зуборев (Зубарев)