Science and invention in Birmingham 1054 Mk XVIs) had been built. CBAF became the largest and most successful plant of its type during the 1939–45 conflict. As the largest Spitfire factory in the UK, by producing up to 320 aircraft per month, it built over half of the approximately 20,000 aircraft of this type. 1944: Anthony Ernest Pratt takes out his first patent for a board game named 'Murder', this is later to become the world-renowned murder mystery game 'Cluedo'. 1946: Chance Brothers produce the first all-glass syringe with interchangeable barrel and plunger, thereby allowing mass sterilisation of components without the need for matching them.
Crime fiction is Oedipus Rex, in which the search for the murderer of the previous king, leads to the downfall of the current one. Another early example of crime fiction is gong’ an fiction in China, which involved government magistrates who solved criminal court cases and first appeared in colloquial stories of the Song dynasty. The earliest known modern crime fiction is E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1819 novella Mademoiselle de Scudéri. There is also Thomas Skinner Sturr's anonymous "Richmond, or stories in the life of a Bow Street Officer" (1827); another early full-length short-story in the genre is "The Rector of Veilbye"