Wow....... I had never seen a stove with a pilot flame under the top like that. Was that type common in the U.S? cause here in Aussie I am sure we never had them like that. Growing up all our gas stoves had to be lit by a match after the know was turned on.
SERIOUSLY dangerous I would have thought even in general use.
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Are they still like that? Here you turn the gas on the its lit by a small electric spark.
shareAll gas stoves used to be like that; it wasn't that dangerous as only a tiny flow of gas came out and you often wouldn't even smell it if it went out.
The method of assassination used here was absolutely ridiculous - there was far too much complexity, and too many opportunities for him to get identified/caught.
Like I said here they were never like that. In relation to being dangerous - I would have thought there were a myriad of ways that could be bad news.... from fingers in the wrong place, tea towels thrown casually upwards.
Also correct me..... but in the US back then gas was not scented like it is now - you guys had it odourless.
No, piped in natural gas has been odorized in the US for decades. Definitely since before the 70's. Actually, pilot jets aren't dangerous at all. I've lived in a place that had a stove with a stovetop pilot jet on one side that would frequently go out. All that would happen was that you'd get a woof! of flame when the gas trapped under the stovetop would light off. The amount of gas trickling out of the pilot jets is miniscule. You're not going to get a serious gas explosion from a pilot jet leak.
Later stoves with jets had a temperature probe that would automatically cut the gas to the pilot jet if it went out. Overkill, really.
The opening hit setup wasn't ludicrously overdone. A gas leak in an old tenement hotel like that was the perfect kill scenario, so going to some lengths to set one up was worthwhile. Everything Bishop did to rig the stove to explode was perfect, and all signs of the rigging would have been eradicated in the subsequent gas fire localized around the stove, including the extra dosed tea bags that, you will notice, were stored above the stove (within the flame footprint of the expected stove fire). However, gas explosions don't generally cause a whole room to catch on fire like that and there would have been plenty of evidence left from the book rigged for the trigger explosion that a careful arson investigator could have found.
It was ludicrous. Far too many variables to count, and far too many clues for even a half-witted policeman to follow e.g. what if he'd left the window open so no accumulation of gas (it was a nice sunny day)? And why go to all that trouble when he could have just coated a teacup with that special poison we saw later in the film that makes it look like you had a heart attack and dissipates without a trace?
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