Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (16 page)

By the time Edison began experimenting with lightbulbs in 1878, scientists around the world had already spent 55 years trying to perfect them. Edison wasn’t trying to invent the lightbulb; he was trying to find a long-lasting
filament
that would make the lightbulb practical for the first time.

Incandescent lightbulbs operate on the principle of electrically heating a tiny filament until it glows white hot with energy, creating light in the process. The main problem at the time: most substances either melted or burned up when heated to such a high temperature, causing the bulb to burn out after only a few seconds.

Vacuum bulbs, which had some of their air removed, solved part of the problem; by reducing the amount of oxygen in the bulb, they lengthened the time it took for the filament to burn up. Even so, in 1878 even the best bulbs only only lasted a short time...and
that’s
where Edison came in.

Riding hazard: 40% of people killed from falling off a horse are drunk.

THE MYTH:
He perfected the incandescent bulb by himself.

THE TRUTH:
He failed on his own, and had to bring in experts. Edison thought the secret to building a better light bulb was to design a switch inside the bulb that would function like a heater thermostat, turning off the electricity when the filament got too hot, and turning it on again as soon as the filament cooled off—a process that would take only a fraction of a second.

Edison thought (and announced) that he could develop the switch in a few weeks—but he guessed wrong. It didn’t work at all.

More a scientific tinkerer than a scientist, his strategy had always been to blindly build prototype after prototype. He ignored work that other researchers had done and, as a result, often unwittingly repeated their failed experiments. That’s what happened with the lightbulb. After a month of trying on his own, he threw in the towel and hired Francis Upton, a Princeton physicist, to help him.

As soon as Upton signed on, he had the lab’s researchers study old patents, electrical journals, and the work of competing inventors to see what progress they had made. He also shifted the focus of the work from testing prototypes to methodically experimenting with raw materials (in order to understand their scientific properties and see which ones made the best filaments). Without this important shift in strategy, Edison’s lab might never have developed a practical bulb at all...and certainly would have fallen behind competing labs.

THE MYTH:
Edison made his critical breakthrough on October 21, 1879—known for many years as “Electric Light Day”—when he had kept a lightbulb lit for more than 40 hours.

THE TRUTH:
The story is a fake. According to lab notes, nothing important happened on October 21—and it took another full year to produce a 40-hour bulb. The October 21 date was made up in late December 1879 by a newspaper reporter who needed a good story for the Christmas season.

Couch potato fact: 80% of people who own VCRs don’t know how to program them.

You probably have some of these products around the house. Here’s how they were created.

C
OPPERTONE SUNTAN LOTION

Background:
In the early part of the 20th century, suntans were the mark of the lower classes—only laborers who worked in the sun, like field hands, had them. But as beaches became more popular and bathing suits began revealing more skin, styles changed. Suntans became a status symbol that subtly demonstrated that a person was part of the leisure class.

Innovation:
The first suntan lotion was invented in the 1940s by Dr. Benjamin Green, a physician who’d helped develop a petroleum-based sunblock for the military to protect soldiers from the sun. After the war, Green became convinced civilians would buy a milder version of his product—one that protected them from the sun while letting them tan. He called his lotion Coppertone, because it produced a copper-colored tan on the people who used it.

RUNNING SHOES WITH “WAFFLE” SOLES

Background:
In the late 1950s, Phil Knight was a track star at the University of Oregon. His coach, Bill Bowerman, was obsessed with designing lightweight shoes for his runners. “He figured carrying one extra ounce for a mile,” Knight recalls, “was equivalent to carrying an extra thousand pounds in the last 50 yards.”

When Knight began his graduate work at the Stanford Business School, he wrote a research paper arguing that lightweight running shoes could be manufactured cheaply in Japan and sold at a low price in the United States. Then he actually went to Japan and signed a distribution deal with a Japanese shoe company called Tiger. He and Bowerman each invested $500 to buy merchandise, and the Blue Ribbon Sports Company (later Nike) was founded.

Innovation:
Bowerman developed Nike shoes to meet runners’ needs.
Swoosh: The Story of Nike
describes the origin of the celebrated “waffle” shoe: “It occurred to Bowerman to make spikes out of rubber....One morning while his wife was at church, Bowerman sat at the kitchen table staring at an open waffle iron he had seen hundreds of times. But now, for some reason, what he saw in the familiar pattern was square spikes. Square spikes could give traction to cross-country runners sliding down wet, muddy hills.

The phrase “It’s Greek to me” first appeared in Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar
.

“Excited, Bowerman took out a mixture of liquid urethane... poured it into about every other hole of the waffle iron in...just the right pattern, and closed the lid to let it cook. Legend had it that he opened the waffle iron and there was the waffle sole that became Nike’s first signature shoe. But what really happened that morning is that when he went to open the smelly mess, the waffle iron was bonded shut....[He] switched to a plaster mold after that.”

THERMOS JUGS

Background:
In the 1890s, British physicist Sir James Dewar invented a glass, vacuum-walled flask that kept liquids hot longer than any other container in existence. Dewar never patented his invention, however; he considered it his gift to the scientific world.

Innovation:
Reinhold Burger, a German glassblower whose company manufactured the flasks, saw their potential as a consumer product. Dewar’s creations were too fragile for home use, so Burger built a sturdier version, with a shock-resistent metal exterior. He patented his design in 1903 and held a contest to find a name for the product. The contest was more of a publicity stunt than anything else, but Burger liked one entry so much that he used it: “Thermos,” after the Greek word for heat.

S.O.S. SOAP PADS

Background:
In 1917 Edwin W. Cox was peddling aluminum cook-ware door to door in San Francisco. He wasn’t making many sales, though; aluminum cookware was a new invention, and few housewives would even look at it.

Innovation:
In desperation, Cox began offering a free gift to any housewife who’d listen to his presentation—a steel-wool soap pad he made in his own kitchen by repeatedly soaking plain steel-wool pads in soapy water. (His wife used them in their own kitchen and loved them; she called them “S.O.S.” pads, meaning Save Our Saucepans.) The gimmick worked—sort of. Housewives still weren’t interested in the cookware, but they loved the soap pads. Eventually he dropped pots and pans and began selling soap pads full-time.

American chickens are direct descendants of the ones brought over by Columbus.

“I think we’ve hit the jackpot.”—Ronald Reagan to assembled S&L executives, as he signed the Garn-St. Germaine Act deregulating the savings and loan industry.

You, your children and your grandchildren are going to be paying for the savings & loan scandal for years, but how much do you know about it? See if you can tell which of the following statements are true:

1.
The S&L scandal is the second-largest theft in the history of the world.

2.
Deregulation eased restrictions so much that S&L owners could lend money to themselves.

3.
The Garn Institute of Finance, named after Senator Jake Garn—who co-authored the S&L deregulation bill—received $2.2 million from S&L industry executives.

4.
For his part in running an S&L into the ground, Neil Bush, George’s son, served time in jail and was banned from future S&L involvement.

5.
Rep. Fernand St. Germain, House banking chairman and co-author of the S&L deregulation bill, was voted out of office after some questionable financial dealings were reported. The S&L industry immediately sent him back to Washington...as its lobbyist.

6.
When asked whether his massive lobbying of government officials had influenced their conduct, Lincoln Savings president Charles Keating said, “Of course not. These are honorable men.”

7.
The S&L rip-off began in 1980, when Congress raised federal insurance on S&L deposits from $40,000 to $100,000, even though the average depositor’s savings account was only $20,000.

8.
Assets seized from failed S&Ls included a buffalo sperm bank, a racehorse with syphilis, and a kitty-litter mine.

Benito Mussolini was a schoolteacher before he went into politics.

9.
Working with the government in a bailout deal, James Fail invested $1 million of his own money to purchase 15 failing S&Ls. In return, the government gave him $1.8 billion in federal subsidies.

10.
Federal regulators sometimes stalled as long as seven years before closing hopelessly insolvent thrifts.

11.
When S&L owners who stole millions went to jail, their jail sentences averaged about five times the average sentence for bank robbers.

12.
The government S&L bailout will ultimately cost taxpayers as much as $500 billion.

13.
If the White House had admitted the problem and bailed out failing thrifts in 1986, instead of waiting until after the 1988 election, the bailout might have cost only $20 billion.

14.
With the money lost in the S&L rip-off, the federal government could provide prenatal care for every American child born in the next 2,300 years.

15.
With the money lost in the S&L rip-off, the federal government could have bought 5 million average houses.

16.
The authors of
Inside Job
, a bestselling exposé of the S&L scandal, found evidence of criminal activity in 50% of the thrifts they investigated.

ANSWERS

(1) F; it’s the
largest
.
(2) T
(3) T
(4) F
(5) T
(6) F; actually he said: “I certainly hope so.”
(7) F; all true, except the average savings account was only $6,000.
(8) T
(9) F; it was only $1,000 of his own money.
(10) T; partly because of politics, partly because Reagan’s people had fired 2/3 of the bank examiners needed to investigate S&L management.
(11) F; they served only a fifth of the time.
(12) F; it may hit $1.4
trillion
.
(13) T
(14) T
(15) T
(16) F; they found criminal activity in
all
of the S&Ls they researched.

SCORING

13-16 right:
Sadder, but wiser.

6-12 right:
Just sadder.

0-5 right:
Charlie Keating would like to talk to you about buying some bonds.

This quiz is from
It’s a Conspiracy!
by the National Insecurity Council. Thanks to
The Nation
and
Inside Job
for the facts cited.

Most earthworms like to eat ice cream.

Why should politicians have all the fun? You can pull off some dirty tricks, too. This “dirty dozen” should inspire you to new lows.

P
OUND FOOLISH

Pay a visit to the local dog pound or SPCA, wearing a chefs hat and an apron. Ask to see one of the kittens or puppies that are available for adoption. Pick it up and act as if you’re weighing it, then set it down and ask to see one that’s “a little more plump.”

SOCK IT TO ’EM

Tired of looking for that one sock you lost in the laundry? Pass on your anxieties: Stick the leftover sock in with someone else’s washload. Let them look for the missing sock for awhile.

SOMETHING FISHY

If you have a (clean) aquarium, toss some thin carrot slices into the tank. Later when you have guests over, grab the slices out of the tank and eat them quickly. If you do it quick enough, your victims will assume you’re eating a goldfish. (If you accidentally grab a
real
goldfish, toss it back in, grab the carrot slice, and complain to your victims that the first fish was “too small.”)

LOST YOUR MARBLES?

Pry the hubcap off a friend’s car, drop two or three steel ball bearings inside, and replace the hubcap. Then watch them drive off. The ball bearings will make an enormous racket for a few seconds, until they become held in place by centrifugal force. They’ll stay silent until the victim applies the brakes, and then they’ll shake loose again.

TV GUIDE

Got a friend who’s a couch potato? Carefully remove the cover of their
TV Guide
(or weekly newspaper TV schedule), then glue it to an older schedule, so the TV listings are wrong. It’ll drive a true TV fanatic crazy.

Stamp of approval: more than 13 countries have issued Elvis Presley postage stamps.

RETURN TO SENDER

Embarrass a coworker by buying a magazine they would
never
read (
High Times, Guns & Ammo
, and
Easy Rider
work well), and glue the mailing label from one of their regular magazines to the cover. Then stick it in the cafeteria or restroom where other coworkers can see it.

PRACTICE DRILLS

The next time you visit the dentist, scream really loud the minute you get seated in the dentist’s chair. You’ll send the patients in the waiting room running for cover.