THE GREAT MULLARD MAGIC BLOG — rheostat

How we smiled when we saw this 1924 advert for a Graphite Pile Rheostat.  With it's connotations of 'pile' and near onomatopoeic sound of Oooyah, a classic expression of pain, I am sure may callow schoolboys as well as middle aged chaps like me smiled......  but where did the term Oojah come from?   Well, Oojah was an elephant  and an invention of a children’s book illustrator known as  Thomas Maybank.  Uncle Oojah began life as a comic strip character in the Daily Sketch Newspaper in 1919. By the early 1920s, the newspaper was issuing a four-page supplement called 'The Oojah...