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32 The Toronto Sun, Monday May 28, 1979
Lifestyle
HERO OF ENTEBBE
To us it's a mess, to Sid i
By SANDRA NAJMAN
Staff Writer
Sid Hurwich loves his basement. .
l'ir him it's a dungeon of glory, a laboratory, a repaira-
f. : ) and a sanctuary.
It's also an amazing mess. But out of this mess he
in: ented the device that was responsible for the success
if the Entebbe raid, a device that wiped out radar and
frozr the detection, reception and transmission instru-
monty af Entebbe allowing the Israeli planes to land.
F'er h'm, this mass of messiness is paradise. It's his
therapy and he'll tell you repeatedly, "My work has kept
r:r alive."
There are miles of wires. Dozens of vacuum cleaner
hoses seem to crawl over the doors like headless snakes,
boites on boxes of parts and numbered bits and metal
pleins are piled against the walls: Plastic shopping bags
Bae the Door filled with unretrieved and occasionally
errepaired booty.
Anything broken, old, outdated, the "grief jobs" that
a't ot won't be repaired elsewhere, the appliances that
impaire parts that are no longer manufactured are
''they' around fid's basement. And remarkably, he
I nous where ru rything Is.
W!sie a curious museum of modern technology, slightly
Mwat and deridedly out of order. And there is a steady
O ww of customers who creak down those stairs, carefully
( radling their toasters that no longer toast and irons that
longer iron.
I'tom the time he ran a hardware and appliance repair
shop to the golden days of his Shock Electric Company on
Breadalbane Street, he's been Canada's self-taught king
of electromice.
"I was always a mechanical kid," he says. "Taking
things apart and putting them together was my kind of
fun When I was 10 years old I' used to work for a
tags and errap pedlar, Out of five old bikes I could make
there for 50 cen's a bike."
1. .. . it ime Into electricity. He could wire a
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K
.... who bulup mads Out of live old bikes I could make
three for 50 cents a bike."
At 12, Sid got into electricity. He could wire a
house, converting it from gas light to electricity in a few
days. "Mind you, In those days, a house had one plug and
a single light bulb In the ceiling."
In the 30s, electrical appliances consisted of toasters,
waffle irons, irons, coffee percolators and vacuum
cleaners. If something broke, you went back to the place
of purchase for repairs.
In 1935, Sld opened up a hardware and electric store on
Bloor, between Christie and Clinton Streets. He and his
young wife - they were married when they were 17 -
lived behind the store.
"My wife worked in the store, and people could see the
repair shop where I worked," he says. "I was the only
man in the city doing repair work, and it grew. i took in
help and eventually it became the largest part of my
business. Toward the beginning of the war, the govern-
ment prohibited metals, so I started making my own
parts. Soon I had all the major manufacturers, General
Electric, Silex, Sunbeam, sending me their repairs.
Eaton's and Simpsons sent trucks of stuff over every day.
CN and CP sent me truck loads of repairs. Even Hydro
SID HURWICH - glorying in the mass of wires and old appliances that have made him the king of electro
had notified all public utilities of my work."
"During the war, I got deferments because I was
doing work for the army, In the civil defence department,
and working with the police."
His business became too big for the Bloor Street
shop, so in 1942 he sold his hardware business and moved
into his electronics business down the street. People were
so shocked that he sold out, be named his new company
"Shock Electric." People never forgot it.
.
He was training mechanics and working on the war
effort at the same time, and repairing appliances from
every province in the dominion, including the Yukon.
Five years later, he moved again, this time to a large four
storey building he bought on Breadalbane Street. He
eventually employed 60 workers and took the most
challenging Jobs home to play with and experiment with
In his basement.
Two years after Shock Electric moved to Breadalbane.
If WH/T
= Y, where is X?
Erma Bombeck
(This is the second in a three-part series on what
happens to missing socks. Today's column deals
with "The Cause.")
According to a woman from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.,
the answer to disappearing socks is mathemati-
cally figured in subsets.
If you wash a pair of blue socks with a red stripe
. (BL/RD)2 and a pair of green angoras (GR/A)2
and a pair of white tennis socks (WHI/T)2, all three
pairs would be called X.
.
If Y had (GR/A)2 and (WH/T)2, then every
element in Y Is an element of X. Hence Y Is a subset
of X or X CY.
--
If there is a boldness in BL/RD2 somewhere
between fill and spin dry, BL/RD2 spilts.
That answer made more sense than most of the
others sent In to determine what happens to socks in
the washer.
Most of the writers zeroed in on sex. Like coat
hangers and paper clips, socks were believed to
have an active sex life - but only In water. Some
belleved they married, but they fooled around and
often divorced in the dryer. No alimony was
Involved. Some stayed together through two or
three washings, but suddenly turned Into a swinging
single. One writer believed that socks went through
a sex change, coming out another color.
A large number embraced the Planned Obsoles-
: cence theory, that is a conspiracy between sock and
- washer manufacturers who incorporate sock disin-
. tegratots (right next to the button crusher) and
.
A great number believed socks to be a migratory
species, activated by simply adding water .. ..
And finally, one writer blamed the United States
government for programming washers to eat socks
and keep the economy alive. One blamed the
Russians for undermining American women's sta-
bility. I'd have been disappointed if someone hadn't
said that.
he had his first heart attack, at 36 years of age. "
been sick a day in my life and I nearly went cra
to stay In bed for three months."
The following year he had another head attac
time he was told to retire, to give up his business
think I'll make the old age pension? Che re
asking his doctors. "If you live six months.
miracle. Go home and enjoy." he was told
"For three years, I did practically nuth!
in my basement. I read. I invented a ma@
.e th
colls that I eventually sold," he says. SThen
doing repairs for charity. It got me back o men
and back to work on the newer appliances.
:
Still, his heart wasn't strong, even
Sher he
business. In 1961, he couldn't walk without exp
extreme pain and he was advised to beve of
surgery. At that time, it wasn't being done he
went to Boston. But the surgery was unsuccess
"As a result, I've learned to take care of my
says, at 65; a dapper gent, with bright bige eye:
skin and a good head of hair.
Millie, his full-time housekeeper, has become
sable since his wife died three years ago. HI
who's also his cousin, visits him twice auweek
often if he's at all under the weather. Tito lars
tanks guard his bed and his night tableGà filled
bottles, including painkillers that he carries with
" can administer himself."
"Work's the best medicine in the work." he
Once, in hospital, a nurse came to gise him
cardiogram, but the machine wasn't working.
"It had just been repaired and she war fluster
in an oxygen tent, but I took a look andasked !
could get me a screwdriver, a pair ofcallers s
wire. In 20 minutes I had it working and @s a res
offered the job of managing the service and mai
departments of the Mount Sinai Hospitg. My
furious. Here I was, so sick I was being spoon
was fixing hospital equipment through am oxyg
9001/03/07
His biggest coup has been called The Secret of
He's been called the Hero of Entebbe ans an el
genius, for his invention, dubbed the Hurwich
or Ray or Beam, that is based on a simple
used in every household, every day. he @alms.
It paralysed the Entebbe airport surveillance
and enabled the Israelis to fly in undete Red.
For the device, which Sid gave to Isracm thous
Invented it originally to stop thefts of night dep
here, he won the Israeli Medal of Honor and the
nity to continue his work with the Canadian gov
on devices that he will only describe as ha
capacity to save hundreds of lives.
"The most important thing is to learn your li
capabilities. I'm proud that doctors use m
example for other patients. It's so simple to be ar
to lay down and die."
Sid Hurwich simply won't.
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sock sensors which grind up a sock and spit it out as
lint. The newer models even have a reconstructed
sock cycle which returns a sock lost five years
ago.
There was a Sock Fairy theory for those of you
who believe in Peter Pan, the Cloning theory where
for every pair of socks an extra one is cloned
driving you crazy with three socks of one color, and
the Best Friend theory where your friend is secretly
after your husband and both are trying to drive you
whacko. There is the Reincarnation theory where it
is believed that a sock returns in another form.
(One woman swore that after five years of losing
socks, they all came back one day as a sweater.)
Some believed socks had an identity crisis and
split. Others leaned toward cannibalism. One
writer went for the Steve Martin theory where
socks, instead of getting high on detergent, got
small and disappeared.