10 Nov /14

Domino

The children’s game of dominoes forms the basis of a political theory and has become a mass television spectacle showing a series of very small events making something spectacular.

They were first mentioned in English by Joseph Strutt who was the first person who studied the history of customs and fashion in England. But he had a sideline interest – games. In 1801, he published a book on the subject Sports and Pastimes of the People of England. This is the first time dominoes are mentioned. Strutt states that “Dominoes seems to have been little known in England till towards the end of the eighteenth century, when it was imported from France.” This is followed by a relatively long description of the pieces and how to play.

The domino principle

It was only in the 1950s that the falling domino principle was proposed. President Eisenhower (who also introduced to English counter-productive, proficiency pay and killing ground) propounded the idea of related political cause and effect in a 1954 news conference 1954 with the words “You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.” The idea was that if one state went communist others, would follow.

The domino effect is a series of small events which taken together result in a huge catastrophe. This is shown clearly in a domino show where hundreds, thousands, even millions of dominoes are arranged and then knocked down. The record is some 4 million dominoes.