Your article on a new design of incandescent lightbulb (G2, 13 January) perpetuates the common myth that the original was invented by Thomas Edison. While a number of people were working on this at the time, it was the British scientist Joseph Swan who demonstrated the first viable incandescent electric bulb in 1878, some 18 months before Edison did. Edison, however, had the perspicacity to file his patents before Swan (and before he’d produced a working example).
Dr Ian West
Jackfield, Shropshire
• Successive governments in the 1990s cut the English to Speakers of Other Languages (Esol) courses that were run at local further education colleges. The courses were very successful. They were open to people of all faiths and nationalities who were refugees or to those with exceptional leave to remain status. Theymade a significant contribution to integration, harmony and eventual entry into the workforce. Once again an intelligent and cost-effective programme is being replaced by a short-term fix which is not properly funded and is quite divisive, offensive and in my opinion downright dangerous (Muslim women to be taught English in £20m plan to beat ‘backward attitudes’, 18 January).
Kathleen O’Neill
Hayling Island, Hampshire
• What a great idea to restore the cuts in language classes and make them compulsory. I can’t wait for the authorities on the Costa Brava to do the same.
Neil Hanson
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
• If Derrick Cameron and Chris Rogers (Letters, 18 January) want to know the arch-exponent of “ay” and “thee”, they only have to look at the other Mr Cameron, who does it all the time – especially when he is in his default patronising mode.
Alan Ablewhite
Brentwood, Essex
• More prescriptive nonsense is written about language, pronunciation in particular, than about any other subject.
Seumas Simpson
(Former head of department of linguistics and phonetics, University of Glasgow), Aberdeen
• Further to Allan Jones’s letter (18 January) on Boulez and the guitar, there is also a guitar part in three out of the five movements that comprise “Pli selon pli”. Also, Boulez played the ondes martenot, which is far cooler than the guitar.
James Erber
London
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