Bayou History Center

12/31/2025

What a wonderful evening at the President’s Rose Celebration Reception at the beautiful Langham Huntington in Pasadena 🌹✨

We were proud to represent Louisiana and to sponsor the event by showcasing one of the things we do best, our incredible Louisiana seafood. Sharing our culture, cuisine, and hospitality with guests from across the country is always an honor.

A special night celebrating tradition, collaboration, and the excitement building ahead of the Rose Parade. Louisiana is proud to be part of it all. 💛⚜️

Explore Louisiana Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board Rose Parade

12/30/2025

I learned COBOL during my freshman year at LSU. It was much easier to learn than Assembly or FORTRAN. Many years later, I still remember getting calls from headhunters looking for anyone who knew COBOL. Now I know the rest of the story and who I have to thank for COBOL and of equal importance the saying "It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission" Remarkable Person.

The room was full of men in suits. It was 1952, and Grace Hopper—a Navy lieutenant commander barely over five feet tall—was about to tell them they'd been programming computers wrong.
Every computer scientist in the room was older, more senior, more established. And they were all certain of one thing: computers could only understand numbers. Ones and zeros. Machine code.
You wanted to make a computer add two numbers? You wrote something like:
0010 1101 0011 1001
That's not a typo. That's actual programming in the early 1950s. Binary code. Machine language. The only language computers spoke.
It was brutal work. One wrong digit—one zero where there should be a one—and the entire program crashed. Finding the error meant checking thousands of numbers by hand.
Grace Hopper looked at this system and thought: This is insane.
She had an idea. A revolutionary, supposedly impossible idea: What if we could write instructions in something resembling English, and let the computer translate it into machine code?
The men in the room told her it couldn't be done. Computers weren't smart enough. The translation would be too complex. It was theoretically interesting but practically impossible.
Grace Hopper didn't care. She built it anyway.
But to understand why this mattered, you need to understand Grace Hopper.
Born in 1906, Grace Murray grew up taking apart alarm clocks to see how they worked. She earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale in 1934—one of the first women to do so—at a time when most universities didn't even admit women to graduate programs.
When WWII started, she tried to join the Navy. They rejected her: too old (37), too light (105 pounds), and her work as a math professor was classified as essential civilian service.
She didn't ask permission twice. She quit her tenured professorship and joined the Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). If they wouldn't take her the easy way, she'd make them take her the hard way.
The Navy assigned her to Harvard's computation project, where she met the Mark I—a 51-foot-long, 8-foot-high computer that weighed five tons and sounded like a room full of clicking knitting needles.
Grace Hopper fell in love.
She learned to program the Mark I using paper tape punched with holes. It was tedious, unforgiving work. But she was good at it. Better than good—brilliant.
By 1949, she'd left Harvard to work for the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (later part of Re*****on Rand), where they were building UNIVAC I—one of the first commercial computers.
And that's where she had her impossible idea: the compiler.
Here's what a compiler does: You write instructions in something humans can read—like "ADD SALARY TO TOTAL"—and the compiler automatically translates it into the machine code the computer understands.
Today, every programmer uses compilers. They're so fundamental to computing that we don't even think about them. But in 1952, the idea was radical.
Grace Hopper's colleagues told her it couldn't work. Computers weren't sophisticated enough to translate human-readable commands. The processing overhead would be too expensive. It was a fantasy.
She later joked: "I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic; they could not do programs."
So Grace Hopper did what she always did when people told her something was impossible: she proved them wrong.
In 1952, she completed the A-0 System—the world's first working compiler. You could write instructions in a relatively readable format, and the compiler would translate them into machine code automatically.
It worked. It was faster. It made programming accessible to people who weren't machine code wizards.
And slowly, reluctantly, the computer science world began to realize: Grace Hopper had changed everything.
But she didn't stop there. The A-0 was a proof of concept. Grace Hopper wanted something more ambitious: a programming language that used actual English words.
In 1957, she developed FLOW-MATIC—the first programming language to use English-like syntax. Instead of cryptic codes, you could write:
INPUT INVENTORY FILE-A PRICE FILE-B
COMPARE PRODUCT-NO IN A WITH PRODUCT-NO IN B
It looked like instructions a human could read. Because that was the point.
Her colleagues were still skeptical. Business executives would never trust a programming language that looked like English, they said. It was too simple. Too informal. Real programming required complex mathematical notation.
Grace Hopper disagreed. She believed programming should be accessible to business analysts, not just mathematics Ph.D.s. She wanted secretaries and accountants to be able to program computers, not just engineers.
So she pushed forward. FLOW-MATIC became the foundation for COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language), developed in 1959 with Hopper as a key contributor and technical consultant.
COBOL used English words. It was designed for business applications. It was readable, maintainable, and accessible.
The computer science establishment hated it. Real programmers didn't need English words. Real programming was mathematical, elegant, pure.
Grace Hopper didn't care. She'd built COBOL for the people who would actually use it: businesses, banks, government agencies. People who needed to process payroll, track inventory, manage accounts.
And it worked. Within a decade, COBOL was running the majority of business computing in the world.
Here's the thing people forget: COBOL is still running the world.
Today—right now—COBOL processes 95% of ATM transactions. It handles 80% of in-person financial transactions. The IRS tax system runs on COBOL. Social Security. Major banks. Government systems.
During the Y2K crisis, the world suddenly remembered: everything runs on COBOL. And there weren't enough programmers who knew it. Grace Hopper's 1959 language was so successful, so embedded in critical infrastructure, that we literally cannot replace it.
That's not just impact. That's building the invisible foundation of modern civilization.
But here's what made Grace Hopper extraordinary beyond her technical brilliance: her personality.
She was irreverent, funny, and utterly unconcerned with hierarchy. She'd call admirals "young man" when she was in her 70s. She kept a clock on her wall that ran backwards because "humans are too bound by arbitrary rules."
She famously carried pieces of wire in her pockets—each one exactly 11.8 inches long, the distance light travels in one nanosecond. When officers didn't understand why satellite communication had delays, she'd pull out her nanoseconds and show them: "See? This is how far light travels in a billionth of a second. That's why your signal is delayed."
She made complex concepts tactile, real, understandable.
Her most famous quote became a mantra for innovators: "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission."
She lived by that. When bureaucracy told her something was impossible or required approval, she'd do it first and apologize later. The compiler? Built it without permission. COBOL? Pushed it through despite institutional resistance.
The Navy kept trying to retire her. She kept refusing. They retired her in 1966—and recalled her in 1967 because they needed her expertise. They tried again in 1971. Again in 1972. Each time, they'd bring her back because nobody else could do what she did.
She finally retired—permanently—in 1986 at age 79, the oldest serving officer in the U.S. Navy. She'd spent 43 years in naval service, most of it teaching computers and people to understand each other.
Grace Hopper died on January 1, 1992, at age 85. She was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
But her legacy didn't die. Every time you use a computer, you're using Grace Hopper's vision. Every compiler. Every high-level programming language. Every business system running on readable code instead of binary.
She didn't just make programming more efficient. She made it democratic. She opened computing to people who weren't mathematics Ph.D.s or machine code specialists.
Before Grace Hopper, programming was an elite skill for specialists. After Grace Hopper, programming was a tool anyone could learn.
She built the bridge between human thought and machine processing. She made computers speak our language instead of forcing us to speak theirs.
And she did it over the objections of nearly everyone in her field, who told her it was impossible until she proved them wrong.
Think about the audacity required. A woman in her 40s in the 1950s, telling male computer scientists they were wrong about the fundamental nature of programming. Telling the Navy she knew better than their regulations. Telling business leaders that English-language code would work even when they insisted on mathematical purity.
And being right. Every single time.
Grace Hopper wasn't just brilliant. She was stubbornly, irreverently, joyfully right in the face of institutional certainty that she was wrong.
She taught computers to understand English. She taught programmers to think differently. She taught the Navy that a 79-year-old woman could be their most valuable officer.
And she taught everyone who came after her that "impossible" usually just means "nobody's done it yet."
The next time you use an ATM, thank Grace Hopper. When you file your taxes online, thank Grace Hopper. When you write code in Python or Java or any language more readable than binary—thank Grace Hopper.
Because she's the reason computers learned to speak human. And that simple, supposedly impossible idea changed the world.
She was 5'6", carried nanoseconds in her pockets, and refused to retire until the Navy literally forced her out at 79.
And she built the invisible foundation of everything you're reading this on.
Grace Hopper: Rear Admiral, mathematician, teacher, and the woman who taught computers how to listen.
"It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission."
She lived it. And we're all programming in the world she built.

12/30/2025

She received her authority from the Lord God Almighty....

A surgeon demanded General Sherman remove this 44-year-old widow from his camp. Sherman's response: "She outranks me. I can't do a thing in the world."
Her name was Mary Ann Bickerdyke.
In 1861, she was a widow living in Galesburg, Illinois, supporting her two sons by practicing "botanic medicine" — herbal remedies for the sick. She had no military connections. No official authority. No formal training.
Then her pastor read a letter aloud in church.
A young doctor from their town had written from Cairo, Illinois, where Union soldiers were stationed. The conditions were horrific. Men were dying not from battle wounds, but from disease, neglect, and filth. They desperately needed medical supplies — and someone who knew how to care for the sick.
The congregation collected $500 in donations. They needed a volunteer to deliver them.
Mary Ann Bickerdyke raised her hand.
She thought she would drop off the supplies and return home.
She stayed for four years.
What she found at Cairo made her furious.
Wounded soldiers lying on filthy straw. No clean water. No proper food. Incompetent medical staff. Men dying from infections that basic hygiene could have prevented.
Mary Ann didn't ask permission to fix things.
She just started fixing them.
She scrubbed hospital floors herself. She set up kitchens and cooked nutritious meals. She organized laundries. She assisted in surgeries, held dying men, wrote letters home for those who couldn't hold a pen.
And when military bureaucracy got in her way, she demolished it.
Medical supplies locked in a warehouse while men suffered? She broke the locks.
Incompetent surgeons refusing to treat wounded men? She got them dismissed.
When an officer challenged her authority, she replied: "I have received my authority from the Lord God Almighty. Have you anything that outranks that?"
He did not.
Stories about "Mother Bickerdyke" spread through every Union camp.
She searched battlefields after dark with a lantern, looking for wounded soldiers that recovery teams had missed. She was often the only woman on the battlefield, walking through carnage and chaos, organizing field hospitals, confronting officers who stood in her way.
The soldiers worshipped her. Thousands credited her with saving their lives — not just through medical care, but through her absolute refusal to let them die from bureaucratic neglect.
General Ulysses S. Grant gave her his full support and a pass for free transportation anywhere in his command. General William T. Sherman became one of her fiercest defenders.
When a surgeon, fed up with this middle-aged widow who kept ignoring military protocol, complained to General Sherman and demanded she be removed from camp, Sherman reportedly threw up his hands and said:
"She outranks me. I can't do a thing in the world."
He later called her "one of his best generals."
She served at nineteen major battles — Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and Sherman's March to the Sea. Under her supervision, more than 300 field hospitals were built.
The war ended in 1865. Mary Ann had served four years without rest.
But she didn't stop.
For the rest of her life, she helped Union veterans navigate the pension system. She advocated for disabled soldiers. She moved to Kansas to establish homesteading communities. She worked with the Salvation Army. She kept serving until the day she died.
Mary Ann Bickerdyke passed away on November 8, 1901, at age 84. She had outlived the war by 36 years and spent every one of them in service to others.
A statue stands in Galesburg, Illinois today — a woman kneeling beside a wounded soldier, offering him a cup of water.
Think about what she did.
No medical degree. No military rank. No official authority. A widowed mother in her forties, expected to quietly deliver some supplies and go home.
Instead, she became the most powerful medical advocate in the Union Army — simply by refusing to let soldiers die when she could save them.
She didn't politely request better conditions. She created them.
She didn't ask permission to take supplies. She broke the locks.
She didn't accept incompetent surgeons. She got them removed.
And when the most powerful generals in the Union Army were asked to stop her, they said: "She outranks us."
Because Mary Ann Bickerdyke had proven something crucial: sometimes the most effective authority isn't the kind you're given.
It's the kind you take when lives are at stake and no one else is doing what needs to be done.

~Old Photo Club

12/29/2025

The power of the human spirit.

In 1998, a 24-year-old woman became the most famous person in America for the worst possible reason.
Her name was Monica Lewinsky. Two years earlier, at just 22, she'd been a White House intern. He was 49 and the President of the United States.
When the story broke, something unprecedented happened. Before social media existed, before anyone understood what viral humiliation could do to a human soul, Monica Lewinsky became the first person destroyed by the internet at scale.
Late-night hosts made her the punchline night after night. Jay Leno alone told over 300 jokes at her expense. Newspapers dissected her body, her clothes, her character. Strangers who had never met her felt entitled to judge everything about her.
The President's career survived. His reputation recovered. He continued giving speeches, writing books, commanding respect.
Monica couldn't get a job. Couldn't leave her home without being photographed. Couldn't exist without being reduced to a joke.
She later revealed she battled severe depression. She had thoughts of ending her life. Her mother stayed by her side constantly, afraid of what might happen if she looked away.
At 24 years old, Monica Lewinsky wanted to disappear forever because the entire world hated her for something that happened when she was barely out of college, with a man who held all the power.
So she did disappear. She moved to London. Stopped giving interviews. Refused to cash in on the fame everyone assumed she would exploit.
Instead, she did something quiet and profound. She enrolled at the London School of Economics. She earned a Master's degree in Social Psychology. She studied trauma. She studied shame. She tried to understand what had nearly killed her.
For years, she stayed silent.
Then in 2010, an 18-year-old college student named Tyler Clementi died by su***de after being publicly humiliated online. Monica saw the story and recognized something heartbreaking. She had survived what Tyler couldn't.
And she realized her survival had to mean something.
In 2014, she returned to public life on her own terms. She published an essay in Vanity Fair telling her story herself. Not the tabloid version. Her version. The response was different this time. People finally saw her humanity.
In 2015, she stood on the TED stage and delivered a talk called "The Price of Shame." She spoke about being "Patient Zero" of internet humiliation. She called for compassion over clicks, empathy over entertainment.
That talk has been viewed over 20 million times. It became one of the most-watched TED Talks in history.
Today, Monica Lewinsky is one of the most powerful voices against cyberbullying in America. She speaks at schools and conferences. She mentors young people facing online harassment. She produced a television series telling her own story on her own terms.
She was 22 when the world decided it knew exactly who she was.
She spent the next 25 years proving everyone wrong.
Not by defending herself. Not by erasing her past. But by transforming her pain into purpose, becoming the voice for everyone who has ever been publicly shamed, mocked online, or reduced to a punchline by strangers who never bothered to see their humanity.
The world wanted her story to end in disgrace.
She rewrote it as survival.
She is 51 years old now. Still here. Still speaking. Still fighting for the young person facing what she once faced, hoping they might receive the compassion she was denied.
Shame does not have to be the end of your story.
Monica Lewinsky proved it can be the beginning.

~Old Photo Club

12/24/2025

Priceless Tradition for Louisiana! Awesome concepts, designs, and community!

12/21/2025

This is a very interesting post. Although I was not aware of this event or the works of Luc Montagnier, I believe it merits further investigation and study. Stay tuned (pardon the unintended pun).

On October 2019, a controversial idea surfaced at the edge of biophysics: DNA may not simply store genetic information ~ it may receive it. The proposal suggested that DNA behaves like a biological antenna, resonating with Earth’s electromagnetic background and remaining in constant interaction with surrounding fields.

According to accounts tied to the research, isolated DNA fragments responded to external electromagnetic changes even outside the body, stopping instantly when the signal source was removed. Within days of the presentation, the lab was reportedly “closed for renovation.” Research access ended. Publications quietly disappeared.

The implications are unsettling. If DNA responds to fields, biology may be less self-contained than assumed ~ life operating as a tuned system rather than a closed code.

Similar ideas were explored by Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier, who published controversial work describing electromagnetic signals associated with DNA interacting with water:

One surviving line attributed to the vanished research reads:

“If DNA is an antenna, then all living beings are connected through one field. We are not born, we are switched on.”

Suppressed science or misunderstood frontier, the question remains:

What if DNA isn’t just inherited code, but a signal you’re always receiving?

12/20/2025

"The question implies that you really only measure people's value by their net worth. People are what they've done, what they say, what they stand for, rather than what they happen to have in the bank." Sir Tim Berners-Lee

In 1993, Tim Berners-Lee fundamentally changed humanity by convincing CERN to release the World Wide Web into the public domain—completely free, with no patents or fees. While working at the European particle physics laboratory, he had developed the essential foundations of what we now call the Web: HTML, HTTP, URLs, and the first web browser—all to solve the problem of disconnected computer systems used by scientists around the world.
What made his decision so remarkable was the timing.
Just two months earlier, the University of Minnesota had announced licensing fees for Gopher, the Web's main competitor. Users were outraged. They saw it as a betrayal of the internet's open culture. Gopher, which had been more popular than the Web at the time, never recovered. The licensing decision "socially killed" the platform, according to one of its own developers.
Berners-Lee saw what happened—and chose the opposite path.
He advocated to ensure CERN would release his invention royalty-free forever. No patents. No restrictions. Anyone could build on it. CERN, understanding both the web's potential and the cautionary tale of Gopher, agreed. On April 30, 1993, they signed a document relinquishing all intellectual property rights.
"Had the technology been proprietary, and in my total control, it would probably not have taken off," Berners-Lee later explained. "You can't propose that something be a universal space and at the same time keep control of it."
Within months, web traffic exploded. Mosaic launched, followed by Netscape. Then Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Google. The entire modern knowledge economy grew from code that Berners-Lee refused to own.
He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2004 and received the Turing Award—computing's Nobel Prize—in 2016. But he never became a billionaire from his invention. When asked why, he said: "The question implies that you really only measure people's value by their net worth. People are what they've done, what they say, what they stand for, rather than what they happen to have in the bank."
His legacy serves as a profound example: sometimes the greatest impact comes not from owning what you create, but from setting it free.

~Old Photo Club

12/19/2025

Sugar, Seafood, and Oil have had a major definitive impact in the formative history of our area and the whole United States as we know it today. With Sugar came Plantations. With Plantations came Slavery. With Slavery came the Civil War. With the Civil War came division, death and destruction to the South and the North. As the nation celebrates its 250th Anniversary in 2026, please take a moment of silence to reflect on the impact Sugar has had on our Nation. After all of that history, we still love the sweetness of Sugar!

The first sugar cane was planted in what is now Louisiana in the 1750s, marking the beginning of a long and rich agricultural history in the region. This milestone laid the foundation for generations of farming families and helped shape local economies and traditions that continue to this day.

12/14/2025

Truth transcends man-made barriers, time and death. A normal woman (in all of the good virtues) and a very remarkable human being!

She was called a "hyena in petticoats." She changed history anyway.
In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote seven words that still echo through time: "I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves."
It was a revolutionary idea. And she lived every scandalous, brilliant, dangerous moment of it.
Mary was born in London in 1759 to a family falling apart. Her father drank away their money and beat her mother. Young Mary would sleep outside her mother's bedroom door to protect her from his rages.
She saw firsthand what happened when women had no education, no money, no legal rights. They were trapped. Dependent. Powerless.
Most women in her position accepted this as simply how the world worked. Mary refused.
At nineteen, she left home with nothing. She worked as a governess, opened a school, and eventually did something almost unthinkable for a woman of her time: she decided to earn her living by writing.
In 18th-century England, respectable women didn't support themselves. They belonged to fathers, then husbands, then sons. Independent women were assumed to be either eccentric or immoral.
Mary didn't care.
She entered London's intellectual circles, debating philosophers and revolutionaries as an equal. When the French Revolution erupted in 1789, she was electrified.
But she noticed something troubling. Even the most radical men, the ones declaring "all men are created equal," meant it literally. Only men. Women were still expected to be silent and obedient.
So in 1792, she published "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman."
The book was a philosophical earthquake.
Mary dismantled every argument for women's inferiority. Society claimed women were naturally irrational and weak-minded. Mary showed this was nonsense.
Women appeared inferior because they were deliberately kept ignorant. Denied education. Denied opportunity. Then society pointed to their ignorance as proof they were naturally inferior.
It was a perfect trap. And Mary exposed it completely.
The response was vicious. Critics called her a "hyena in petticoats." They said she was dangerous, unwomanly, trying to destroy the natural order.
She didn't back down.
She traveled alone to Paris during the Revolution's most dangerous days. She fell in love with an American adventurer who abandoned her and their daughter. She nearly died by su***de. She recovered and kept writing.
In 1797, she married the philosopher William Godwin. Not because she believed women needed husbands, but because she was pregnant and wanted to protect her child.
On August 30, 1797, she gave birth to a daughter.
Eleven days later, Mary Wollstonecraft died from complications of childbirth. She was 38 years old.
After her death, her heartbroken husband published her complete biography, including her unconventional relationships and her su***de attempts. He meant to honor her humanity. Instead, he destroyed her reputation.
For nearly a century, her name became synonymous with scandal. Her brilliant arguments were dismissed because she had loved the wrong men, had a child outside marriage, and refused to perform feminine obedience.
But ideas don't die just because people want them to.
Throughout the 19th century, women secretly read her book. They passed copies to each other. Suffragists fighting for voting rights drew on her arguments. Reformers demanding women's education cited her philosophy.
And that daughter Mary gave birth to before she died? She grew up to write Frankenstein, carrying forward her mother's legacy of unconventional genius.
Today, Mary Wollstonecraft is recognized as the founding mother of feminism. Her book is taught in universities worldwide. Her question remains as urgent now as it was in 1792:
Why should anyone's potential be limited by their gender?
She wrote: "I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves."
She lived scandalously. She died condemned.
But her ideas survived. They spread. They transformed the world.
Every woman who controls her own life, who receives education, who makes her own choices, is living proof that Mary Wollstonecraft was right.


~Old Photo Club

12/12/2025

Join us in-person or virtually tomorrow at the New Orleans Jazz Museum for full day of expert talks on Spanish Colonial Louisiana and the Revolutionary War on the Gulf Coast, from Baton Rouge to Pensacola. This is a great educational opportunity for families and history buffs alike!

This event will also feature a preview of the Louisiana State Museum’s upcoming exhibition on Louisiana in the American Revolution that will be opening at the Cabildo in 2026!

📍 New Orleans Jazz Museum
📆 Saturday, December 13, 9:45 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
🔗 Register at https://friendsofthecabildo4.ticketing.veevartapp.com/

Louisiana State Museums | New Orleans Jazz Museum | Friends of the Cabildo

12/10/2025

This post brought a warm smile to my face this morning. I would definitely classify Mr. Bingle as an historical figure in our area!

Jingle jangle jingle
Who remembers Mr. Bingle
From New Orleans
He was friends with Kris Kringle

They enjoyed some fun and cheer
When Kris came to visit with Bingle each year
The two would celebrate with all the reindeer

All the kids would come and play
With Bingle and Kris in his red sleigh
Celebrating friendship the New Orleans way

Time to launch your Christmas season
Bingle and Kris make the holidays pleasin'
Let’s all celebrate within reason

Jingle jangle jingle
Merry Christmas, Mr. Bingle
It’s Christmas in New Orleans
Merry Christmas!

© 2025 Jeffrey Pipes Guice

Mr. Bingle was originally a regular snowman sitting near Santa's sleigh, when Santa used his magical powers to make him his helper. He gained the ability to walk and talk, was given holly wings and eyes soon after, as well as his iconic hat and candy cane. Santa gave him the name "Mr. Bingle", and he would help Santa from that day forward.

Originating as a mascot of the Maison Blanche department store in New Orleans, Louisiana, Mr. Bingle has become an important part of the popular culture of the Greater New Orleans area, and even across the United States.

Mr. Bingle was originally conceived by Emile Alline, a window display manager of Maison Blanche, in 1947. Though conceived in 1947, Mr. Bingle was not introduced to the public until the Christmas season of 1948. Alline became aware that other department stores had mascots around Christmastime, particularly Marshall Field's Uncle Mistletoe, and pitched the concept of a similar mascot to Maison Blanche executives Lewis and Herbert Schuartz as an advertising strategy. Originally referred to as "Snow Doll", his name would quickly be changed to Mr. Bingle following a naming contest held among the employees of Maison Blanche, with the name being chosen by Lewis as it shared the initials of the store. Mr. Bingle and his home could both be abbreviated as "M.B.", and Maison Blanche was often referred to by its initials long before the creation of Mr. Bingle. This naming similarity was used heavily in marketing the character, even being referenced in his iconic theme song. Before his formal introduction to the public, his design was revised to include his iconic hat and candy cane.