Byzantine Blackwood convention Byzantine Blackwood convention Byzantine Blackwood is a bidding in the game of bridge. Devised by Jack Marx, it is a complex version of the (by which a four notrump (4NT) asks about 's holdings). Its premise is that both aces and kings may safely be shown in response to a Blackwood-type 4NT enquiry; provided that such kings are in well-defined "key" or "half-key" suits, there being no more than two such suits. The name was chosen to express the idea that Byzantine Blackwood is a development from Roman Blackwood, by analogy with the Byzantine Empire and the Roman Empire; rather
E-M-F Company E-M-F Company The E-M-F Company was an early American automobile manufacturer that produced automobiles from 1909 to 1912. The name E-M-F was gleaned from the initials of the three company founders: Barney Everitt (a custom auto-body builder from Detroit), William Metzger (formerly of Cadillac), and Walter Flanders (who had served as Henry Ford's production manager). Byron F. "Barney" Everitt was born in 1872 at Ridgetown, Ontario, and learned wagon-building in Chatham, Ontario. In the early 1890s he worked for carriage-maker Hugh Johnson in Detroit. In 1899 he started his own bodybuilding company, with orders from Ransom Olds, and then Henry