THE TORONTO STAR - LIFESTYLE - HERO OF ENTEBBE TO US IT'S A MESS, TO SID

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Inc Toronto Sun, Monday May, 28, 1979 
" 
.15-1,A 9 ,A.Z1,14 
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HERO OF EATTEIBE 
By SANDRA N ADM 
Staff Writer 
Ilorwich loves his basement. ? 
r him It's a dungeon of glory, a laboratory, a repaire-
r r) :!;u1 a sanctuary. 
Its 3151 an amazing ms. But out of this mess he 
ented the device that was responsible for the success 
t f the Entebbe raid, 3 device that wiped out radar and 
fr:,:e Or detection, reception and tratismission instru? 
elent.4 arrntebbe allowing the rsraell planes to land. 
i?or Wm, this mass of messiness is paradise. It's his 
tiler:Ivy and he'll tell you repeatedly, "My work has kept 
e!" ali?e." ? 
Tio.re are miles of wires. Dozens of vacuum cleaner 
hr', seem to crawl over the doors like headless snakes, 
lx.xes of parts and numbered bits and metal 
vie( -s are piled against the walls-, Plastic shopping bags 
the floor filled with unretrleved and occasionally 
r !Lel !red booty. 
'1/41; thing broken, old, outdated, the "grief Jobs" that 
vi't won't he repaired elsewhere, the appliances that 
7.11.irc part.; that are no longer manufactured are 
aroundbasement. And remarkably, he 
1 .! tore l'A'?rythIng Is. 
h a eurions museum of moderraechnology, slightly 
Th'it sod rut of order. And there is a steady 
wy if eoctomers who creak down those stairs, carefully 
ritt!Ing tht?Ir toa%trrs that no longer toast and irons that 
longor iron 
rtoto the Uor he ran a hardware and appliance repair 
p to the gehirn day, of his Shock Electric Company on 
lirradalhane Street, he's been Canada's self-taught king 
of e!ectrielica. 
-1 e always a Mechanical kid," be says. "Taking 
alloys apart and putting them together was my kind of 
tun When 1 wax 10 years old used to work for a 
tars and scrip pedlariput of five old bikes I could make 
t1are-e for SO cents a bike." 
k_iI electricity Ile could wire a 
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, a LI ",, 4 ta . ?Latli ?Out of 11% e old1,l'ir.t'S 1 coulu ?:;Lhe 
three for 50 cents a bike." ? 
At 12, Sidt into electricity. He could wire a 
rtrietin 
house, conve -41,from gas light to electricity Ina few 
days. "Mind you, lhose days, a house had one plug4ind 
a single light bulb in-the ceiling." 
In the 30s, electrical appliances consisted of toasters, 
waffle irons, irons, coffee percolators and vacuum 
,... cleaners. If something broke, you went back to the place 
'I' of purchase for repairs. 
l?-? In 1935, Sid opened up a hardware and electric store on 
a Bloor. between Christie and Clinton Streets. Ile and his 
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a young wife ? they were married when they were 17 ? 
'cr lived behind the store. 
CN1 "My wife worked in the store, and people could see the 
ci 
a repair shop where I worked," he says. "I was the only 
1.0 man in the city doing repair work, and It grew. I -took in 
a help and eventually it became the largest part of my 
CD 
a business. Toward the beginning of the war, the govern-
? ment prohibited metals, so I started making my own 
csi parts. Soon I had all the major manufacturers, Genetal 
co Electric. Silex, Sunbeam, sending me their repairs. 
e?-? 
aEaton's and Simpsons sent trucks of stuff over every day. 
9 CN and CP sent-me truck loads of repairs. Even Hydro 
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4,41, 
, SID HURWICH ? glorying in the mass of wires and old 
iid notified all public utilities of my work." 
"During the war, I got deferments because I was 
doing work for the army. In the civil defence department, 
and working with the police." 
His business became too big for the Bloor Street 
shop, so In 1942 he sold his hardware business and moved 
Into his electronics business down the stseet. People were 
so shocked that he sold out, be named his new compar4 
"Shock Electric." People never forgot it. 
He was training mechanics and working on the war 
efforrat the same time, and repairing appliances from 
every province in the dominion, including the Yukon. 
Five years later, he moved again, this time to a large four 
storey building he bought on Breadalbane Street. He 
eventually employed 60 workers and took the most 
challenging Jobs home to play with and experiment with , 
In his basement. 
Two years after Shock Electric moved to Breadalbane. 
(This is the second In a three-part series on what 
happens to missing socks. Today's column deals 
with "The Cause.") 
According to a woman from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., 
the answer to disappearing socks is mathemati-
cally figured in subsets. 
If you wash a pair of blue socks with a red stripe 
, (BL/RD)2 and a pair of green angoras (GR/A)2 
and a pair of white tennis socks (WII/T)2, all three 
pairs would be qiled X. . %. r 
If Y had (GR/A)2 and (WH/T)2, then every 
element in Y is an element of X. Hence y is a subset 
of X or X CY. 
If there-is a boldness In BL/RD2 somewhere 
. between fill and spin dry, BL/RD2 splits. 
That answer made more sense than most of the 
others sent in to determine what happens to socks in 
the washer. , 
Most of the writers zeroed in on sex. Like coat 
hangers and paper clips, socks were believed to 
have an active sex life ? but only in water. Some 
21 
believed they married, but they-fooled around and 
often divorced in the dryer. No alimony was 
< involved. Some stayed together through two or 
three washings, but suddenly turned into a' swinging 
single. One writer believed that socks went through 
a sex change, coming out another color. 
A large number embraced the Planned Obsoles-
oence theory, that is &conspiracy between sock and 
? - washer manufacturers who incorporate sock disin-
. tegraipta? (right next to the button crusher) and 
.. 
, 
Erma 
41104 
? 
ombeck 
'3VP*Pite.W.j, 
sock sensors which grind up a sock and spit it out as 
lint. The newer models even have a reconstructed 
sock cycle which returns a sock lost five years 
ago. 
There was a Sock Fairy theory for those of you 
who believe in Peter Pan, the Cloning theory where 
for every pair of socks an extra one is cloned 
driving you crazy with three socks of one color, and 
the Best Friend theory where your friend is secretly 
after your husband and both are trying to drive you 
whacko. There Is the Reincarnation theory where it 
Is believed that a sock returns in another form. 
(One woman swore that after five years of losing 
socks, they all came back one day as a sweater.) 
Some believed socks had an identity crisis and 
split. Others leaned toward cannibalism. One 
writer went for the Steve Martin theory where 
socks, Instead of getting high on detergent, got. 
small and disappeared. 
A great number believed socks to be a migratory 
species, activated by simply adding water.' ? 
And finally, one writer blamed the United States 
government for programming wiskers to eat socks 
and keep the economy alive. One blamed the 
Russians for undermining American wornen's sta-
bility. I'd have been disappointed if someone hadn't 
said that. 
? 
ti".^441.1 %Ika,zk 
ric 14 
appliances that have made him the king of sleetro 
he had his first heart attack, at 38 years of age " 
been sick a day in my life and I nearly went era 
to stay in bed for three months:: 
The following year be had another bermes attac 
time he was told to retire, to give up his 44.siness 
think I'll make the old age pension? he 
asking his doctors. "If you live six it9siths, 
miracle. Go home and enjoy," be was td 
"For three years, I did practically n I 
in my basement. I read. I invented a meg .e tl-
coils that I eventually sold." he says.,nwThen 
doing repairs for charity. It got me back men 
and back to work on the newer applian 
Still, his heart wasn't strong, even er hi 
business. In 1961, he couldn't walk wl t exp 
extreme pain and he was advised to ve 
surgery. At that time, it wasn't being done he 
was 
"As a result, I've learned to take cuanof 
went to Boston. But the surgery ccess 
14 
says, at 65; a dapper gent, with bright :e eye! 
skin and a good head of hair. 
Millie, his full-time housekeeper, has &come 
sable since his wife died three years wo. Iii 
who's also his cousin, visits him twice ,'eek 
often if he's at all under the weather.l'ao larg 
tanks guard his bed and his night table(il filled 
bottips, including painkillers that he carries will 
- can administer himself.- - - - - ? r?-? 
"Work's the best medicine in the wore," he 
Once, in hospital, a nurse came to gig' him 
cardiogram, but the machine wasn't wading. 
"It had just been repaired and she ward lister 
ln"an oxygen tent, but I took a look ands ked 
could get me a screwdriver, a pair oft:pliers s 
wire. In 20 minutes I had it working and s a re 
offered the job of managing the service eild mai 
departments of the Mount Sinai Hospi . My 
iurlous. Here I was, so sick I was beim peon 
was fixing hospital equipment through oxyg4 
His biggest coup has been called The Sret of 
He's been called the Hero of Entebbe ar an el, 
genius, for his invention, dubbed the Hurwich 
or Ray or Beam, that is based on a 47iple 
used in every household, every day, he Gaims. 
It paralysed the Entebbe airport survdttliance 
and enabled the Israelis to fly in undetted. 
For the device, which Sid gave to lsra thoug 
Invented it originally to stop thefts of night dep 
here, he won the Israeli Medal of Iionorlind the 
nity to continue his work with the Canadian go% 
on devices that he will only describe as ha 
capacity to save hundreds of lives. 
"The most important thing is to learn your II 
capabilities. I'm proud that doctors use m 
example for other patients. It's so simple to be ar 
to lay down and die." 
Sid Hurwich simply Won't. - -