History of The Term
Presumably, the idea behind the name is that any bridge player attempting the "coup" should be locked up in a maximum security facility. According to a 1961 article by Albert Morehead:
The classic hand for the Alcatraz Coup, which was not then so called, was the following one adduced in 1947 by Oswald Jacoby of Dallas, who was trying to persuade the laws committees to change the revoke law...
Thus, the name originates some time between 1947 and 1961. In a 1973 article in The Bridge World, Kit Woolsey, describes a fictitious visit by a bridge expert to a bridge tournament at Alcatraz, where he was subject to various tricks by the inmates by means of "gaming the system." Apparently, the coup's name inspired Woolsey to write the article.
Read more about this topic: Alcatraz Coup
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history and/or term:
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“A radical is one of whom people say “He goes too far.” A conservative, on the other hand, is one who “doesn’t go far enough.” Then there is the reactionary, “one who doesn’t go at all.” All these terms are more or less objectionable, wherefore we have coined the term “progressive.” I should say that a progressive is one who insists upon recognizing new facts as they present themselves—one who adjusts legislation to these new facts.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)