Thoughts of my friend Captain Bob Brooks, KB6VAT

Thoughts of my friend Captain Bob Brooks, KB6VAT

I would say, I could count on the fingers of my hands some friends that I have met that have had a great influence on me.  One of the more colorful personalities is my friend Bob, who is probably sailing the high seas in his home-built catamaran, as I write this. I was searching for letter in my yahoo inbox when I came upon this one written in 2011 from old Captain Bob!

"MON, I'M WRITING AN AMERICAN HISTORY LESSON. A COURSE OF LEARNING VIRTUALLY FORGOTTEN IN THIS ERA OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS. I WORK ON IT IN WHEN I GET AN IDEA, I'VE BEEN AT IT FOR 3 YEARS.

WOULD YOU  READ IT AND PLEASE COMMENT. I'D PRINT IT, I CAN'T READ WELL OFF SCREEN.

MANY TNX, PROMISE YOU WON'T GET BORED.

PS, I'VE NOTICED MOST PEOPLE HERE IN PI WEAR MOUTH JEWLERY, WIRE DENTAL RETAINERS, EVEN ON FALSE TEETH. GREAT BUSINESS FOR DENTISTRY. BUT I SURFED PAST THE GOLDEN GLOBES,  BOOB WATCHING, AND EVEN THERE WERE WIRE RETAINERS.  IS THIS A NEW FAD?

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IS THIS REALLY THE WORST OF TIMES?

An American perspective

A work in progress                                                                                                                  Bob Brooks rev: h

INTRODUCTION 

I started writing this during the early days of the 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign.  There were promises made for hope and change. Change what?  Except for spiking fuel prices, that strangely  changed after election, life has never been better. That is until you turn on your TV, the modern molder of popular opinion, telling you that your life sucks. Here are talking heads with coiffed hair, fat injected lips, reading a script written by backroom academics motivated less by facts than by an agenda.  On your screen they quickly produce polls to show that most Americans support this agenda. Do you actually know anyone who has been polled? They have never asked my opinion; apparently a pointy nose white guy with unhyphenated ethnicity does not fit their demographic criteria.

Furthermore, public schools have all but eliminated history and geography from their curriculum. If taught at all, history is usually from a ‘politically correct’ text book giving equal exposure; regardless of sexual orientation, or ethnicity, in all events of American history. Seems that those pointy nose white guys, like George Washington and Ben Franklyn, had little influence on American history. My son’s 5^th grade American history book, authored by a committee of left wing academics, has no mention of Ronald Reagan yet 4 mentions of Gorbachev. Few graduates can tell you when the war of 1812 was fought, or who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb. History in today’s schools is not being taught as the adventure story it really is. The kind of story, where you just can’t wait for tomorrow’s exciting episode in history class.  Historical adventure for today’s student is a Hollywood sanitized version with pre 20^th century clean streets (apparently horses then were all potty trained). Or a beautifully made up warrior queen of the arctic north, every hair in place, a mouth of even white teeth, waving a spear, wearing fur trimmed armor with zipper closure, and displaying spectacular bare cleavage from armored push-up bra.

It was George Santayana who wrote, “Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them”.  Well, be prepared to be doomed, because only the politically correct lessons of history are being taught in our schools today.  And those lessons are now part of a course called ‘Social Studies’. Apparently social/political conformity is far more important than learning events of the past.

Geography: just ask any college student to find Afghanistan.  Typically they will start at about North America and work around the globe reading labels.

In that summer of 2008 we toured the numerous historical sites in Philadelphia. There I had the opportunity to ask a college student about a significant event in America’s history, Paul Revere’s midnight ride to warn of British invasion.  Her response, “Why drive that far, why didn’t he just use his cell phone?”  Would you believe this young lady was working the summer as a guide where the 13 British colonies declared independence? Apparently her dawn of history was that blessed year cellular went digital and phones became a size you could actually pocket.

At another time, in another part of the world, I was in the Philippines during Easter Week when all Manila radio stations were playing ‘Holy Rock’. I asked a high school graduate if the apostles brought their CD’s to the last supper? “Oh no, they only had tape then”.

So here is old Bob’s contribution, a different historical perspective of things, not your typical chronology of celebrities punctuated by wars.

HEALTH CARE

THE BEST OF TIME IS NOW (2009)

Medical advances have improved both life expectancy and the quality of life for the elderly.  Today the average American male will live to be 78 and 83 for the female. It was only 1900 that 25% of all American babies died in infancy.  This is why families of 10 to 15 kids was not uncommon; to guarantee their offspring surviving.  I always thought this was due to the lack of effective contraception.  Yes there was an effective, though somewhat inconvenient, contraceptive used by young studs since the orgies of ancient Rome.  A condom of sheep intestine knotted at the business end. 

Here are just some of the highlights of medical advancement since 1900: antibiotics, blood typing, insulin, DNA structure, and organ transplants. Yep, every body part short of your brain can be transplanted. Recently the human genome 2003 and stem cell therapy is just beginning a new science called ‘regenerative medicine’ with a potential of growing replacement body parts. Then there are the things so commonplace that we just accept but are true milestones of medical history: non-addictive anesthetics, antiseptics, x-rays.  Then, in the 1960’s, came the marriage of medicine with electronics and later, computers to give us the monitors that go ‘ping’, cat scan, ultra sound, MRI, EKG, EEG, plus lots of other acronyms . Just 40 years ago doctors had to cut you open to find your problem. Today, diagnosis is non-invasive.  If your doctor has needs to look inside, he no longer cuts you open. He now has imaging systems that can look anywhere inside you. There are even miniature TV cameras that can look inside your plumbing thru a convenient body orifice.  Or, you can swallow a capsule containing a TV camera for a tour of your digestive system. Yesterday’s science fiction is truly tomorrow’s science fact.

Prior to the 1870’s surgeons had no understanding of bacterial infection and did not bother washing their hands, when wiping on an old rag would do, before performing surgery, and surgery usually meant amputation. Preventive medicine was a regular visit to your doctor for bleeding with leaches. Before penicillin, the very first antibiotic that came along during WWII; an infection a pill would fix today, was then sure death. The lucky ones had an infected limb that could be amputated. Before WWII, the badge of the returning war veteran was a missing limb.

Now we have pharmaceutical advances like analgesics, antibiotics, serum anti-toxins, vitamins, and vaccines against smallpox, diphtheria, tuberculosis, tetanus, polio, and virus’ yet to be discovered. Let’s not forget that rejuvenator of youth, Viagra. Prior to 1900, the medicines doctors gave you only relieved symptoms using narcotics.  You felt good, but were still sick and died with a smile.  Addictive drugs were readily available to anyone of age. Unlike today, it wasn’t teenage kids stoned on drugs.  Those comatose in the gutters were grandma and grandpa. Most, so called, patent medicines were narcotic based to ‘cure’ any problem, be it toothache, cough, headache, emotional distress, or obesity.  Over the counter of any drug store were narcotic based medicines that made you feel good.  An advertisement in a 1909 drug store: “Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, the perfect guardian of your health”. Grandma and grandpa probably became addicted as a result of surgery in a hospital where morphine was freely administered. A comatose patient stoned on drugs was a resting patient getting well. Even the ‘Coca-Cola’ we know today was then laced with an addictive drug.  The coke in Coca-Cola was cocaine.

SETBACKS ON THE ROAD TO EXCELLENCE

Yes, there have been setbacks to these fantastic advances conquering disease. Many of these setbacks involve environmentalists in their militant quest to save ‘mother earth’. Its bugs, birds, and other creatures that play absolutely no part in human progress.  One example, among many, was Rachel Carson and her book ‘Silent Spring’, credited for the 1972 world ban of DDT. The National Academy of Sciences credits DDT with having prevented 500 million deaths worldwide in 2 decades of distribution. Tragically, now up to 2.7 million in Africa alone die every year, 90% are children under 5, from diseases DDT prevented. This insecticide proved amazingly affective eliminating insect transmitted diseases like malaria, dengue, yellow fever, bubonic plague, sleeping sickness, encephalitis, West Nile virus, typhus, among other diseases unknown at the time.  Yet DDT was tested as safe for human ingestion by the U.S. National Health Service. In WWI typhus killed more soldiers than bullets.  Distribution of DDT started in WWII, then typhus was no longer a problem, and by the 1960s DDT had almost eliminated malaria. Now, thanks to Ms Carson, the lovable mosquito and body lice have been saved from extinction.

Another setback was the increasing cost of health care. This occurred when attorneys discovered medical malpractice litigation as an untapped source of wealth: THEIRS.

THE WORST OF TIME WAS 1348

This was the year the Black Death, starting in China, wiped out an estimated 30 to 45% of the earth’s population. The best data available is from England; it depopulated the country by about half. The plague lasted about 4 years. It took about 150 years to return to the 1347 population level. Influenza was equally catastrophic, killing millions in the 16^th, 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th centuries.  I’ve often wondered why WWI ended without Germany being neither invaded nor surrendering. The root cause ending the war in 1918 was a flu pandemic that killed 40 to 50 million worldwide within a space of only 8 weeks. Some so rapidly that some victims went to sleep healthy and failed to wake up the next morning. WWI ended with nothing more than a cease fire agreement (the politicians called it an armistice) because soldiers on both sides were just too sick to continue fighting.  Why was this not mentioned in our history class?  Probably because there’s no flag waving military glory, while vomiting with uncontrolled diarrhea, to attack an enemy that was also suffering from the same disease.

The greatest invention promoting public health was soap in the 17^th century. But this was a luxury, taxed so that only the rich could afford to be free of body lice without shaving all body hair and wearing a wig.  Ever wonder why the boss is called “The Big Wig”? Those of wealth and position had the bigger, more elaborate wigs. Wig styles soon evolved to indicate office or profession. For example; visit a king’s court in present day U.K., or just look at the one dollar bill, that’s not George’s real hair. How about all that hair on pre 18^th century statues and paintings going back to ancient Egypt? Sorry to burst your bubble, but even Jesus kept his hair and beard as short as possible with the Friday anoint and scrape.  This was the fashion throughout the health conscious Roman Empire.  Facial hair on men, then an expression of wealth, manhood, and power was as false as the wig on his head.  Be aware that all those images were artistic impressions; the person paying the artist got what they wanted. That standard of beauty, Queen Nefertiti, probably had a double chin and a face full of zits.  The honesty of the camera wasn’t invented until the mid 19^th century.

It was the 18^th century when the American colonies developed home manufacture of soap so everybody could be free of disease such as plague and typhus carried by body lice.  Now men and women could toss out those wigs, let their own hair grow, and real beards on men soon became the fashion.  Shaving was, at best, a once a week visit to a barber. The now popular disposable safety razor appeared 1908 so men could look clean all week.

After reading the above you may wonder how people bathed before soap.  Few bothered, after the fall of Rome, until the 19^th century.  Many cultures considered bathing bad for health, once a year seemed enough. The ancient Romans soaked in communal pools of heated water then scraped their skin with a wooden device curved to fit the body contours.  In Biblical lands, water was precious and not wasted on bathing. Instead, plentiful olive oil was rubbed on the skin (anoint) then scraped off with a blade.  Did ‘anointing with oil’ gain its religious connotation because they simply bathed on Friday before the beginning of Sabbath worship at sundown? 

When I was a young boy in the 1930’s the common practice was to bathe and change your underwear once a week on Saturday night before Sunday church. The underwear, then called a ‘union suit’, was worn all week, day and night. This was a full body covering from wrists and ankles to the neck with a handy 2 button rear flap for sitting the toilet. During the week you washed only the visibly dirty parts like hands and face.  My school teacher checked behind our ears, a place usually missed. Also common was a lice check of our hair. On Saturday nights water was heated to fill the tub. Since fuel to heat water was expensive, the entire family took a bath in the same water. Grandpa was first, then after the rest of the family, I was last. Looking back, that water must have been disgusting. But, at that time I didn’t know any better, and besides Mom said I had too. I never saw a shower until high school gym class.

Ever wonder why the acolyte walks the isles of a Catholic Church waving that incense burner? Obviously, to mask the odor of a room full of unwashed worshipers. These days of soaps and deodorants, this practice is retained as a part of catholic ceremony with few worshipers knowing why.

DENTAL HEALTH

Again, Hollywood movies are not an honest window on history.   Those actor’s with beautiful white teeth are only an honest portrayal of the pre 20^th century young.  Common for the courting young was to wash their mouth with urine to bleach their teeth with the ammonia in urine; then chew on mint leaves.   The result was a mouth full of beautiful white teeth and a minty fresh breath. But continued use of this disgusting practice dissolved the enamel, the teeth turned black, and soon rotted away with considerable pain.  Preventive dentistry was a late 19^th century profession.  Tooth pulling was usually performed by the village barber.  The poor had dentures made of wood; the rich had theirs made of bone and the super rich of ivory. Some did brush; the rich used a brush made with a wood or bone handle and a boar’s hair bristle using salt as the abrasive. This was the dental hygiene standard until the late 1930’s when nylon replaced the boars hair.  Every night my grandpa would cut a small tree branch, fray the end with a knife then dip it in salt to brush his teeth. Grandpa died at age 75 with most all of his beautiful teeth.

My first visit to a dentist was in the 1940’s for a filling. The drill was not the high speed painless experience of today, but vintage equipment of the 1920’s powered by a foot treadle, vibrating your entire head. An experience I remember to this day. I can well understand the reluctance of folks in those times to visit a dentist, until driven by pain; by then extraction was the only solution.  

SANITATION

Consider public sanitation. Today’s sewer is under the street and the effluent is treated to kill bacteria before disposal. Prior to 1900, unlike those clean streets in period Hollywood movies, in small towns and villages the sewer was the street. Remember, this was a time before the clean automobile when every urban household had at least 2 horses.  After a day of horses, numbering in the hundreds, each defecating at a rate of 18 pounds, and urinating 20 gallons a day in the street, then add every household dumping their nightjar and garbage out the second floor window.  Men usually did not bother with the nightjar; they just urinated out the window. That street was rather disgusting with a powerful odor, until the ‘Honey Dipper’ came along with shovel and cart for disposal in the local river.  Now you know why women wore those huge elaborate hats and men wore hats with a broad brim. My grandpa would never think of leaving the house without his hat.  You’ve seen those sepia photos of pre 1900 fashionable women’s footwear, yes those are boots. And those long floor length dresses women wear in period movies were certainly not everyday wear when crossing the street.  Hollywood bases the fashions of 19^th century movies on best evidence, available photos of the time. Wilber Wright sitting in his 1903 flyer wearing a clean suit, white shirt, tie, and bowler hat was certainly not his flying uniform, nor did the gangsters and G-men of the 1920’s all wear suit and tie. Photography then was expensive and only posed in their Sunday best.  The professional photographer of the time even supplied the elegant clothing for the pose.  A Hollywood ‘Billy the Kid’ with white shirt and tie being chased by the sheriff also in white shirt and tie was our image of the old west until Clint Eastwood broke the mold.   

Ever wonder about that netting that was part of women’s hat fashion in pre WWII movies? That net has evolved from a full face covering, a woman of fashion looked like a bee keeper; yep, there had to be lots of flies. I’m wondering if the burkh, women’s wear in Arabic lands, wasn’t worn for the same purpose, simply as protection from the flies attracted by lots of defecating camels.  It’s not the religious wear of Islam, the Koran only recommends decent apparel, the burkh has evolved as required tribal wear to establish male dominance. In today’s Arabic countries, she wears a burkh while he wears Armani.  

Large cities, before 1900, did have sewers but little different than sanitation in ancient Rome where water wagons roamed the streets flushing horse shit into sewers that piped raw sewage directly into the local river.  The family toilet was a small outbuilding with a bench seat with two holes. Those two holes were not for socializing on the seat of ease, but due to one filling before the weekly honey dipper visit, to cleanout thru a rear trap door.  Along about 1870’s came the idea of an indoor toilet. Probably by some poor guy using the outhouse in the freeze of winter.  Those rich enough to afford a warm throne of ease had one built into their existing house. Everybody soon learned who these lucky folks were, with a warm toilet seat, because that large drain pipe was exposed on the outside wall.  Remember this was a time when most folks lived on the 2^ndfloor (Brit 1^st floor), keeping family animals on the ground floor.  The family horse refused to climb steps.   Homes built after this time still had the exposed plumbing, putting this status symbol on display.  Inevitably, fake pipes were being attached to exterior walls so the poor could also bask in this glory. It was well into the 1930’s before drain pipes were hidden in walls.

Considering the pollution of ground water, rivers and streams: Ever wonder where people got water to drink?  Other than personal rainwater collection (usually runoff from a bird littered roof) nobody drank water without fear of cholera.  Ancient Rome solved this problem by building aqueducts to transport safe water from remote mountain springs and distributing thru lead pipes to neighborhood fountains throughout Rome. Why the fountain? The spraying water was to discourage birds. Here, housewives would congregate for gossip and fill their water jugs. This was one ingredient that made Rome a great empire for 1000 years. After the fall of Rome’s political structure there was no will to police or keep the sanitation systems in repair. Soon, people were using fountains as toilets, resulting in cholera epidemics. The once mighty Rome soon became a ghost town.

Throughout Europe it wasn’t until the dawn of the 20^th Century that cities stopped the disposing of sewage in their water supply. Before then cholera epidemics were commonplace, and the dead overwhelmed grave disposal. In London the cadavers of the poor were not buried, but simply tossed in the Thames, the source of London’s water.

WHAT WAS SAFE TO DRINK?

There was a source of safe, portable, and storable liquid that’s been around since ancient times: alcohol in the form of wines and beers made from fermentation of fruits and grains.  So little was understood about bacteria, a pot of boiled water did not remain safe very long with shared drinking cups and dipping a rag to wash ones face. Far safer was a pocket flask or a shoulder bag, made from a goat’s stomach, of wine. This was as commonplace as the plastic water bottles of today.

Were there not religious laws against the drinking of alcohol?  No, not when the drinking alcohol was a necessity for healthy life. What both the Koran and the Torah condemned was drunkenness.  Until the 20^th century alcoholism was commonplace. Famous personalities in your history books were usually in a state of inebriation by nightfall, yet tolerated because this was normal. The typical American male drank more than 7 gallons of distilled hard liquor and 75 gallons of beer a year.

Fear of cholera from drinking water remains in Europe today.  Go to a McDonalds in France and you’re served wine with your big mac.  Maybe in Germany you’ll get a beer n’ mac.

How did children survive once weaned from mothers milk? In Europe they put a nipple on a beer or wine bottle. In America, common was the family goat. I was fed boiled milk bought daily from local farmer. The rich hired a wet nurse.  This was a woman who made a business of her production of breast milk.  There was even a ‘rent-a-goat’ business. Until the late 1940’s food preservation was the daily ice delivery. Rare was the home refrigerator.  

THE DOWN SIDE OF CLEAN

When American communities built sewers and treatment facilities and Americans began living a sanitary lifestyle; free of all those nasty waterborne diseases. Americans started getting sick from infectious diseases because they were no longer developing immunities from exposure.  The very worst of these was polio that targeted mostly children. 

In the 1940’s I lived in a small Ohio town, population 144.  Upon our return to school, after summer vacation, some classmates never returned; they died from polio.  This occurred every year until Dr. Salk discovered the vaccine in the 1960’s.  All along you thought polio only crippled.  That’s the visual evidence you remember. What you don’t remember are those who never survived to sit the wheelchair.

Fear of polio equaled that of nuclear holocaust. Families with an infected child were isolated. Though only one family member was infected, the entire household was quarantined. They could not even go into the local grocery store to purchase food. Their needs were delivered to their doorstep in a box.  The father was even denied entry into his place of employment driving the family into poverty.  They could not even sell their house to pay the bills; nobody would buy the infected house.

CLIMATE CHANGE

A recent segue from the scientifically flawed, but media popular, ‘Global Warming’. The worst of time was 1740; but this 2010-11 winter season may even surpass 1740.  The northern hemisphere experienced the worst of recorded winter storms and the southern hemisphere devastating floods.

Just what happened in 1740? After 40 years of an exceptionally warm climate bringing plentiful harvests, summer temperatures plunged 30 degrees Celsius below the normal. Crops failed, then famine throughout the northern hemisphere. Be aware that in those times food preservation could only sustain life until the next year’s harvest. One failed harvest year was catastrophic.  When Mount Tambora erupted in Indonesia in 1815, it triggered a year (1816) without summer. Temperatures plunged and crops failed. More than 70,000 died in Europe alone, of resulting starvation and disease.

Don’t buy into the, now popular, scare of ‘Global Warming’.  We are warned of coming disasters of biblical proportions. Raising seas flooding coastal cities, and expanding deserts by environmental experts, politicians, media, and Hollywood disaster movies.  This fear is all based on a World Metrological Organization computer model using atmospheric data measured since 1998 to extrapolate atmospheric changes since before the industrial revolution, and telling us that greenhouse gasses are now at an all time high.  Wow; with this kind of technology, and data of only the last 10 years, we can learn what dinosaurs ate by the gasses from their farts lingering in our atmosphere to this dayJ  The facts are, these scientists have been caught twisting data to get results that fits their theories, and ignoring data their theory can’t explain. Global Warming is a scam, just like the ozone hole scare of the 1980’s that cost Americans billions replacing refrigeration compressors conforming to the environmentalist demands that the rest of the world ignored.  Today, outside U.S.A, Freon R12 is cheap and readily available. Meanwhile, Americans are forced to use an inferior refrigerant consuming more electricity.   As with the ozone scare, the environmental experts and politicians see a pot of gold at the end of the global warming rainbow. And that pot of gold is, at present, called ‘Cap and Trade’.

Just who are these environmental experts who seem to be in control of our lives?  You won’t be far off to imagine a California surfer who wants that good feeling of being part of a noble cause like mom and dad marching at Berkley for a communist victory in Vietnam. So, off he goes for environmental studies at Hawaii U to study arctic ice and polar bear habitat from professors that have been no closer to the arctic than Discovery Channel.

I grew up in Ohio. In the 1930’s a new fallen snow would be black within the hour from coal burning for building heat and cho-cho trains.  Our local river was so polluted we called it hog creek.  We moved to Southern California in 1947 where pollution (then called smog) was so bad the air was brown and a finger in your nose came out black. Today, man’s industry has cleaned the American environment, Ohio snows are now white, and hog creek is now a park land called the Ottawa River. Southern California air can now be described as visibility unlimited.  What industry brought us clean snow and air? Well it wasn’t the environmental expert or politicians with hand out, palm up. By far the largest contributor were the energy companies that built pipelines bringing clean burning natural gas coast to coast into America’s industry and home.

The decades from the 1960’s to the eruption of Pinatubo, in the Philippines, was a time of exceptional world wide volcanic activity that spewed tons of ash into the upper atmosphere, circling the globe attenuating sunlight to create an era of global cooling.  In 1975 Newsweek carried a story of a coming ‘Ice Age’ due to ‘Global Cooling’ and expanding polar ice caps unbalancing earth rotation to wobble on its axis, causing disasters of biblical proportion.  The Antarctic is still cooling not warming, the Discovery Channel stories about dying polar bears is just not true. There are now 4 times as many polar bears as in 1960. Plus, heat radiating from the Alaska oil pipeline has caused an explosion of the caribou population by altering seasonal mating.

The horror stories on TV that global disasters are caused by CO2 from man’s polluting industries are simply not true.  Just what has been man’s contribution?

Man conquered the wilderness killing for food, sport, and hides the vast herds of huge animals that once roamed the plains on 6 continents. For example: consider the North American bison (buffalo), or huge animals from other continents like the hippopotamus, camel, elephant, giraffe, and wildebeest herds in their millions producing vast amounts of methane and CO2 gasses. All that remains of these once vast herds are now zoo displays and tourist attractions. Then as man began to settle the wilderness, building farms and towns, heating and lighting with carbon producing flame, he began breeding horses for work and transportation plus herds of cattle for food.  Then along came the wood and later coal burning railroad. These animals, fires, and flames produced the gasses helping to keep natures CO2 balance. Also at work were forest and grass fires, started by lightning, burning vast tracts until stopped by a river the flames could not jump.

Then came the 20^th century when man’s industry and invention really started to screw up our environment by replacing illuminating flames with electricity and defecating, flatulent horses with clean automobiles, farm tractors, and fighting forest fires to further reduce nature’s life giving CO2 to less than 1% of dry air at sea level..  

In the later half of the 20^th century, media, politicians, and environment experts complained about the pollution of man’s smoke stack industry causing acid rain. As a result, industry replaced the carbon intensive burning of wood and coal with natural gas and diesel.   Industry continues to bow to the demands of environmentalists and politicians, with the help of Hollywood disaster movies to condition public acceptance of the need to change our way of life ‘to save mother earth’ by further reducing CO2.

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Whoa, something’s wrong here. Politicians, media, and environmentalists are telling us that CO2 is a pollutant and the cause of coming disasters. Far from being a pollutant, CO2 is a natural and necessary component of the air all creatures living on earth breathe and exhale. Without CO2 to feed all earth’s plant life, the oxygen that all animals (that includes you) walking on earth need; will no longer be generated by photosynthesis. Remove CO2, and plants will no longer green, they just slowly die, then when the earth runs out of oxygen, we evolve gills and live in the backyard pool or die. Wonder how future environmentalist and politicians will cash-in on this?  Maybe marketing canned oxygen or the home air oxidizer.

‘SAVE THE RAINFOREST’, why? Is the rainforest really a benefit to human progress? Only the forest canopy exposed to direct sunlight is busy converting CO2 to oxygen. That jungle under the canopy does nothing but waste a valuable resource, arable land. The canopy of a palm oil plantation does an equal job of oxygen production plus providing clean bio-diesel (that’s a vegetable oil just like in your kitchen).  

Today we see on Discovery Channel pictures of floating ice in arctic seas, and are told this is due to the melting of glaciers. Well when ice melts it’s called water. Not great video to support global warming claims, hard to see water floating on water. Now be aware that when temperatures get colder, ice expands causing glaciers to flow and chunks of ice break off into the sea.  Some ice chunks can be big enough to sink the Titanic. We are also told that the melting ice caps will raise sea levels until coastal cities flood.  Be aware that most of the polar ice caps are floating ice.  Now you can test this global warming claim, drop an ice cube in your glass of tea, does it overflow the glass when it melts?

The real experts in the field of climatology tell us there is no scientific proof that CO2 is the cause of ‘global warming’ and that the temperatures increase, during the entire 20^th century, was only 1.8 deg. Celsius. Will this trend continue? Well I hope so. Is global warming all that bad when it means milder winters, needing less fuel to heat buildings? It also means warmer and longer summers for greater crop yields.  Did you know that ice capped Greenland, during the 11^th century, was a land of lush farms and happy cows? Greenland did not get that name from an explorer with a bent for sick humor.

PROSPERITY

The worst time was 1930 to 1939; the best of time was 2008 when I started writing this.

The 1930’s were times of an economic depression that hurt the world’s industrial economies: banks going broke, factories shutting down, workers standing in soup lines.  A falling stock market drove investors into an infectious panic selling of investments, bank withdrawals, and executive suicides.  Instead of promoting economic recovery of America’s industry, congress made the situation even worse by passing the Smoot-Hawley act in 1930 that taxed a rate of 60% on imported goods. As a result, foreign countries retaliated with a boycott of American products; driving the GDP down 50%.  This protectionism was for the farm vote, yet the farmer was little affected by the depression. Don’t confuse the depression with the miseries of the ‘dust bowl’ in America’s plains states that occurred at about this same time. This was wind blown dust caused by soil erosion from deep plowing of prairie grass land and years of single crop farming.

The root cause of the Wall Street panic was radio.  This was the beginning of the era of instant information.  Prior to radio, market information distribution was limited to ticker machines located in gentlemen’s clubs or from newspapers involving a delay of a day or more in the city for newspaper writing, typesetting, printing, and delivery.  Rural investors got their information from newspapers distributed by railroad and then hand delivered by horseback to their farm.  Market anomalies would be corrected long before investors had the information to panic.  The other cause of panic was due to investors cashing in on the post war business boom by buying stock on margin. Margin, is buying stock from your broker on credit with as little as 10% down. All was well as long as the stock maintained its value as loan collateral. Panic ensued when the stock started losing value and the brokers began demanding cash payment. 

The depression was made worse by President Roosevelt’s socialist/progressive “New Deal”. This misery actually lasted until WWII industrial expansion from military spending restored jobs and prosperity.

It was modern information technology that caused the panic of October 1987.  This was the beginning of stock portfolio management on personal computers with dial-up modems, no internet existed in 1987.  This time the panic was not human but a panic of machines.  During a period of prosperity, program selling drove down some key Dow Jones 30 industrial stocks causing a domino effect.  The NYSE managers turned off their computer, and within a couple of weeks all was back to normal.

2008, the year of economic gloom and doom  on American TV, was actually a time of unprecedented world prosperity due to the demise of socialist planned economies of Eastern Europe and the expansion of market driven economic policies (like China and India).

 WARS

The worst time was 1914 to 1918; the best time is 1975 to now.

1914 began the era of killing machines.  Prior to WWI, battle was essentially a one on one fight between individual soldiers and mobility was by horse. Except for gun powder, little had changed  since the time of the Roman Empire.  WWI coincided with leaps in the advance of technology; metallurgy, steam, chemicals, and electricity were harnessed for the war effort.  

The killing machines started with the Maxim machine gun, permitting one man to kill hundreds. The inevitable countermeasure to the machine gun, now called the tank, did not enter battle until 1918.  Of interest, they were called tanks because they were shipped to the front in crates marked water tanks to preserve the secret of this new weapon.

The two world wars of organized violence during the first half of the 20^th century killed 167 to 188 million people.  Then along came the greatest killing machine of all, the nuclear bomb. America’s huge investment of wealth was to get the bomb first. Germany was processing uranium, and Japan had actually detonated a test bomb in early 1945, well before America’s first test, but lacked enough material to build another.  This is why America had to drop two bombs on Japan to overcome the Japanese culture of death before surrender; because Japanese military leaders, well aware of their own nuclear test, did not believe America could possibly have two bombs. Fear of this scientific achievement alone has given us an era of limited wars and unprecedented peace for the last 60 years.

The fear was real, during the 1950’s and 60’s Americans were being conditioned by Hollywood disaster movies, the news media, and a daily government testing of an emergency warning system on local radio. This gave the American public a 20 minute warning of impending nuclear holocaust (in 20 minutes you die).  In those days, building the backyard fallout shelter, then stocking it with 6 months of food and water, became a popular weekend project. Of course, this project had to be secret, even from friends and neighbors. The prudent American, concerned about his family’s survival, armed himself to fight off, the fear crazed, raiding neighbors who lacked the foresight to build their own shelter.  America thought this was all coming true in 1962, when the Soviets installed nuclear tipped missiles in Cuba, only 90 miles from Florida.

EDUCATION

19^th century education on the American frontier, west of the original 13 states with a well established system of British style elitist universities were, for the most part, mom home-educating using ‘hand me down’ family books bought from a traveling salesman.  By the late 1800’s the more established rural mid-west did have one room schools with one teacher teaching all 8 primary grades.  For high school, due to the distance limitation of the family horse for transportation, the student had to attend a boarding school in the city.  Few farm families could afford to lose neither a son’s labor, nor the cost of boarding.

While a boy in Ohio, I attended a 4 room village school, 2 grades per room. During the years 1942 thru 1945, while all able bodied young men over the age of 16 were off fighting WWII, 5^th grade and older boys were taken from school to work farms during the spring planting season then again during the fall harvest season.  This required us to catch-up on our lessons through the heat of summer. Needless to say, school was not the fun social life we see on TV today. But, I did learn how to drive a two-up team of horses.

Until the late 1800’s few adults could read or write.  For this you hired a professional scribe who was usually the town lawyer and notary.  Period movies show western towns with neatly painted signs, not unlike today; identifying the saloon, tobacco shop, barber shop, etc.  A sign didn’t do much good in the real 19^th century American West when most folks could not read.  In front of the real 19^th century business establishments were standardized symbols. Growing up in 1930’s Ohio I can remember some of these that remained from that earlier age.  A giant tooth at the dentist, of course the red and white spiraled barber pole that’s still around, the tobacco shop had a large Indian statue holding cigars, mortar and pestle with RX at the drug store, the boarding stable had a horse image, the plumber a large faucet, the optometrist giant eye glasses, the jewelry store a giant pocket watch. 

How did people vote without reading or writing? Political parties had their own symbols and most folks then voted a party and those symbols are still with us. Ever wonder why the Democrats have a donkey and the Republicans an elephant? Well that symbol was next to the candidates name on the printed ballot where you made your choice with ‘X’.  Now you understand why the ‘bull moose’ of Teddy Roosevelt’s 3^rd party attempt in 1912.  How did politicians campaign outside big city auditoriums?  Mostly by speaking from the rear platform of a private rail car at whistle stops throughout the country. What’s a whistle stop? At small towns, where stops were not scheduled, the engineer would blow the train whistle upon approach and if a need to stop for passenger or freight, the station master would rush out and flag the train.  Every town had a post office. How was mail sent or received if the train did not stop?  Out-going mail was placed in a canvas bag that was attached to a special elevated track side fixture.  The passing train simply hooked this bag while passing at high speeds. The in-coming mail bag was simply thrown off the passing train.

By the 1860’s a system of state universities were developing but limited to the kids of elite families, all were boarding schools. The community college system developed after WWI and the automobile. No need for student housing, only a parking lot. Within my family, one of my grandfather’s brothers graduated from a school of agriculture and I had an aunt that graduated from a teachers college and that was it until my generation.

Where did the engineers come from, responsible for the late 19^th and early 20^th century leap of technology?  Academics didn’t contribute much until WWII money put profit in technology. Until then, an engineer was the guy who operated the giant steam engines of the era. The creative greats were men with a natural curiosity and mechanical talent, and their school was hands-on in a local shop.

Here are just a few examples, there were many more:

    Those pioneers of aviation, the Wright brothers, dropped out of high school to open a print shop, start a newspaper, then a bicycle shop. 

    Automobile pioneer, Walter Chrysler did complete high school and then worked in the Union Pacific locomotive repair shops.

    The father of modern mass production, Henry Ford, was a home-schooled farm boy with a hobby of watch repair. As a teenager he worked as an apprentice machinist to service the steam engines that powered Tom Edison’s Detroit Electric Works.

    Tom Edison, I hope you’ve heard of Tom because a list of his inventions would fill a couple of page in fine print. Tom was expelled from school as a daydreaming idiot. Then home-schooled by his mom. His first job was as a railroad telegrapher. Deciding there must be a better way, he invented the Teleprinter that converted the dots and dashes of Morse code into printed words on continuous paper tape. Then, instead of hand written, your Western Union telegram had printed tapes glued to the form. Tom went on to earn 1,093 patients and found 14 companies including today’s giant General Electric Co.

     The father of modern broadcasting, David Sarnoff a 9 yr old Russian immigrant, attended public school until his father died and he had to work at age 14 to support the family. David worked in early wireless telegraphy, a self promoter and lucky enough to be on-duty, staying at his key for 72 hours during the sinking of the titanic, launched him into media prominence. David was RCA, then NBC, a television pioneer, then the first to broadcast in color.

    Glenn Curtis completed the 8^th grade then raced and built bicycles and motorcycles before developing an interest in aviation, and developing the aileron that replaced the wing warp of the Wrights and is still in use on planes today.

    Eddie Rickenbacker: a self-taught school drop-out, race car driver, who went on to manufacture automobiles. A WWI pilot hero, owned and operated the Indianapolis 500 race track, then Eastern Airlines, the very first airline to show consistent profits without government subsidy.

    King Gillette: The inventor of the disposable safety razor.  There’s no record of formal school attendance.  He was probable home schooled or self taught; this was common in the American Midwest during the mid 19^th century. Even President Lincoln was a self taught Midwesterner.

    There was one academic during this period. Due to his impressive credentials, though he never actually built anything, leaving those lowly pursuits to the worker class.  Professor S. Pierpont Langley received a government grant of $70,000 (a whopping amount in those days) to build a heavier-than-air craft capable of controlled, powered flight. Thought a complete failure, his name will forever be remembered as an aviation pioneer because the name ‘Langley’ is everywhere, from public schools, U.S. Air Force base, several U.S. Navy ships, including two aircraft carriers, plus NASA research center and CIA headquarters.

Except for that last guy, the lives of all the above pioneers of American industry make fascinating reading.

What happened after WWII that created an explosion of technology? In prior wars, returning veterans were given a cash bonus by state governments to help them restart their life.  Of course that money was soon spent, making up for lost time on liquor and wild women.   After WWII this was changed; the bonus came in the form of low interest home and business loans, a free college education, and free health care for war related problems.  Overnight colleges were profitable and sprouting everywhere, offering degrees in the new technologies developed in the war.

TECHNOLOGY

The worst of times was yesterday, the best of time is tomorrow.

About 1800 began an age of miracles. Before 1800, energy was muscle, wind, and water. Wind powered ships at sea, pumping water, milling grain. The water wheel powered the looms weaving cloth. Everything else depended on muscles. For example, traction was performed by horses, oxen, goats, even dogs. Of course human power was also part of the pre 1800 energy equation.  The age of miracles started with steam power, or better described as external combustion.  What steam provided was portable power. All that was needed was the machinery to convert the heat energy of burning wood to rotating energy and a factory could be sited virtually anywhere, preferably close to a source of labor. During the 19^th century, steam power evolved from simple water pumps at mine sites to powering an intercontinental rail system and ships at sea. By the 1880’s, George Westinghouse financed the genius of Nicola Tesla to developed electrical transmission systems that permitted energy, electricity generated at a remote site, to be transmitted 100’s of miles to power all kinds of machinery at a factory in a city. By the 20^th century this electrical machinery included all kinds of powered appliances in American life including the miracle of miracles, sliced bread in 1927.

Following are some highlights of this age of miracles:

Illumination

How did you light your candle or whale oil lamp before the invention of the safety match in 1827?  Well you carried what was called a tinderbox. This was a box you could pocket that contained a flammable material like wood shavings or paper, a piece of flint, and a piece of steel to strike a spark to light the wood shavings (not very easy in a wind).  Beginning in 1792, cities were being plumbed for gas lights using a gas manufactured from coal.  The open flame was the sole source of light and heat until 1878, when along came Tom Edison to begin the era of electricity we enjoy today.  The same light produced by Tom’s 60 watt wire filament lamp is now produced by a far more efficient 9 watt fluorescent; soon that will be replaced by the even more efficient light emitting diode (LED).

Communications

With one exception before the 1800’s, high tech communications was the speed of a horse on land and the speed of sail across the seas.  Then in Western Europe came the semaphore machine. Giant waving arms on hilltops relayed visual messages between major cities.  Then in the 1840’s came Samuel Morse and the wired land telegraph. Steam power replaced sail at sea.  In 1858, telegraph cables were being laid under the Atlantic. Before the century ended, all the major cities of the world had wire communication and news services were truly international.  Strangely, the terminology of this era is still with us today, like ‘wire service’,’ cable me’, or ‘just off the wire’.  By 1901, communications by radio was crossing oceans and a common battery telephone was a big wood box with a hand crank that hung on your wall.  By the 1940’s we were able to dial our telephone instead of interfacing with ‘central’ the switchboard operator. This was such a leap in technology that many were unable to understand the dialed number concept, so entry of the digit 0 enabled you to reach a human operator. 

A giant leap came in 1947 with the invention of the transistor, without which, we would not have the electronic devices we take for granted today, your TV would still be a huge piece of polished wood furniture consuming 800 watts or more.  In the 1960’s we got the push button phone, and reliable international communications via artificial geosynchronous satellites. Then the 1980’s brought us high speed fiber optics and the internet. Terrestrial fiber eliminated that irritable voice delay of signals traveling the 48,000 miles to a satellite and back.  That same decade the analog cell phone became the status symbol of the rich.  Then in 1995 came the digital cell phone, a phone so small you could actually pocket, at a price everybody can afford.

Remember, before the launch of America’s gift to the world, the NOAA weather satellites in the 1970’s, the only warning of approaching typhoons and hurricanes was from a ship caught in its path or upon landfall. Before the invention of radio, there was no warning.

Today’s advances in technology are not limited to human communication.  Now machines communicating with other machines give us access to our bank account from the ATM, the super market checkout, the gas pump, plus many other terminals I have yet to find.  The cash register will soon be in the museum as well as the cashier.  Self-checkout is already here.  This access to our money is not limited to the ATM outside the bank, the drive up kiosk, or the local supermarket. Thanks to the Internet, this technology instantly taps my bank account to give me the equivalent in local currency virtually anywhere in the civilized world.

Now what was that one exception of high speed communication before the 1800’s? Well, have you ever wondered how catholic angels (angel= the biblical word for messenger) got wings; or the Greek god Mercury (the winged messenger) got that winged helmet and boots?  Wings became synonymous with messenger from the use of a homing pigeon with a message attached to its leg. From the invention of writing on paper (pigeons refused to carry clay tablets) to the 20^th century, the carrier pigeon was used for rapid secure communications. Before the age of wired telegraphy pioneering news services, like Reuters, sent their reporters on assignment with a cage of pigeons.

Recording

Recording of ideas more than cave drawings started in Sumer, about 3500 BC, developing a system of writing script with a stylus on clay tablets.  The next improvement was ink on papyrus in Egypt about 1800 BC.  Then the Chinese invented paper. About the only improvement recording information, until the printing press in 1454, was book binding instead of scrolling.  

In 1877 Tom Edison (the light bulb guy) gave us recorded sound that evolved to a 12 inch mechanical disc recording six minutes of your favorite music.   Then in the late 1940’s came magnetic tape with improved quality, recording hours of audio, by 1960’s video, then by the 1970’s digital data.  Now with laser technology we can enjoy hours of TV, with unbelievable resolution, recorded on a 5 inch plastic disc.

In the early days of radio, a drama had to be repeated live three times for telephone transmission to broadcast outlets in each of the U.S.A. time zones.  Then in the late 1930’s came the 16 inch micro groove disc that could mechanically record 15 minutes on each side. Flip the disc during the commercial. Video tape recording did not appear until the 1960’s. Before tape, TV dramas were recorded on movie film, and then distributed by post to the various TV broadcasting stations across the country, to be aired at a scheduled time, days later.   Breaking news was filmed, caned, taxied to airport for air delivery. That was the origin of ‘News at 11’ in California when you saw the 6 o’clock news from New York.

The movies

This new form of public entertainment originated with Tom Edison in the late 1880’s. The first movie that told a story was ‘The Great Train Robbery’ in 1903. The following years brought the viewing public some great classic movies but without sound.  The actors dialog had to be read on the screen with the mood created by live music from a piano, organ, or a symphony orchestra for a DeMille classic.

Then in 1927 come the ‘talkies’. The first of this new era, ‘The Jazz Singer’, opened a floodgate.  Within a short time Hollywood was producing up to 500 movies a year.

Television

By the late 1920’s the television picture was created by a large mechanical spinning disc with spiraled holes (nipkow) to produce a 3-4 inch picture.  My first TV, in 1949, was a 7 inch black and white screen.  If you wanted a bigger picture you bought a giant magnifying glass, called the ‘bubble’, to place before your little screen while the family watched the larger picture cheek to cheek. Then in the 60’s television went color. Through the years, using vacuum tube technology, screens got bigger, power consumption increased, and the cabinet consumed more and more floor space.  The analog broadcasting technology remained the same, like looking through an open venetian blind, until the digital age of the 21^st century. Now digital TV is a power efficient giant flat screen suitable to hang on the wall with stereo sound, fantastic color, and unbelievable picture resolution.

Transportation

The horse started to be replaced by the interurban steam railway in 1830’s, and the sailing ship was being replaced by steam power by the 1850’s. The motor car was becoming a common sight on city streets by 1910, steam and electric being most popular.  The Wright brothers demonstrated controlled flight in 1905. Then, only 10 years later, these ‘aeronautical appliances’ were flying combat in WWI. Add another 4 years and planes were crossing the Atlantic. Then add another 50 years and a 747 is carrying over 400 passengers non-stop half way around the world at just under the speed of sound while passengers enjoy a selection of movies and a glass of wine with dinner.

Could this late 19^th century advance in human mobility be a contributor to later advances in human progress?  Consider the young stud courting during the 18^th century; at best his courtship was with a young lady within the same village to get her home before sundown, a very limited gene pool. Then Edison changed courtship rules with his electric light.  Then along came trains and cars, then courtships expanded to a much larger distances and the human gene pool expanded well beyond cousins.  Conception in the back seat of a model ‘T’ Ford was not uncommon. The 1930’s courtship of my mom and dad was 6 miles.  Even then there were very strict racial and religious barriers. Today all the barriers of distance, race, and religion are no more.  Now we are entering a totally new era; the internet courtship.

The Ford model ‘T’ was the people’s car of the early ‘horseless carriage’ era. Delivered crated to your nearest rail station where you could load it on your horse drawn wagon to take home for assembly. Even the crate lumber was used for flooring. To keep the price affordable, Ford never embraced many of the luxuries found on cars of other manufacturer’s, like the electric starter. The hand cranked starter developed drivers with a right arm of a Swartzenegar on a body of a Woody Allen. Shirt manufacturers even marketed special shirts for Ford drivers with the huge right arm. 

Marketing

Along with advances in transportation came changes in marketing. For example, consider the farmer before 1825; they owned excellent farm land but no way to get the crop to market. Those that prospered, beyond subsistence, located near rivers like the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys. They transported their crop to market on log rafts down stream to a sea port.  There the crop was sold for shipping to European markets and the raft to a sawmill.  The farmer then bought a horse to ride the hundreds of miles home taking only what he could carry in manufactured goods, usually bolts of European manufactured cloth.  Soon the rivers were extended by man made canals like the Erie Canal that expanding market access to the entire Great Lakes basin.   How did these farmers buy the products they could not make at home? Traveling the dirt roads and trails of rural America were salesmen, with wagon or pack animal, announcing their approach by beating a drum or tooting a horn, selling everything from ironware (pots and pans) to ladies fashions.  Now you know why traveling salesmen became known as ‘drummers’. ‘Johnny Appleseed’ was not the hippie environmentalist pictured in your school book. Yes Johnny did exist; he was an ironware salesman traveling the roads of early 19^th century Ohio/Indiana giving a bag of hybrid apple seed as the sales come-on.

By the 1850’s, railroads revolutionized rural marketing, greatly expanding the geography of market access to sell crops and livestock, and Chicago became the hub of America’s rail system.  Anything the farmer wanted could be delivered by post or to the nearest rail station.  This began the era of catalog sales. One of the pioneers was Sears and Roebuck in Chicago that sold everything from women’s underwear, erotically modeled in catalog pictures, to a new plow.  It was a great day in their life when the new Sears catalog came in the mail with new modeled underwear pictures while last years catalog pages supplied the outhouse with toilet paper.  By 1910 you could buy a new car from Sears delivered crated to the nearest rail station.  Villages that had rail stations usually had a general store that sold items not suited for catalog sales.  These villages evolved into urban centers and the department store came into being. The mom and pop grocery became the super market. The very first paved interurban highway did not exist until the late 1920’s. After WWII pioneered truck delivery in the European war, and the expansion of paved roads, interurban trucking extended marketing beyond rail centers.  After the war, there began a new era of creative marketing, no longer were you forced to pay $2 for an item, now with serious shopping you can get that very same item at the bargain price of $1.99. Creative marketing also brought us lower fuel prices by metering in increments of 9/10 of a cent, no longer were we cheated paying $2.00 a gallon. Now we only pay the bargain price of $1.99 9/10.

 By the 1960’s the suburban housewife was now a member of the workforce and no longer had the time to do the daily shopping to feed her family. This began a revolution in food marketing, the prepared frozen dinner, a complete nutritious meal in a frozen box, and once a week shopping.  Then in the 1970’s the working housewife was using a microwave oven. Now preparation of that frozen meal was only a matter of minutes.  Also by the 1960’s,  the shoppers paradise was no longer downtown but a suburban giant building called the ‘mall’ with shops of all kinds under one roof, some with interior parking.  Then along came the shopping plaza, independent shops surrounding a giant parking lot.  Today, marketing is going back to a form of catalog sales but instead of the huge catalog, buying is done on the home computer and the purchase is delivered to your door.

Great moments in marketing

In the early part of the 20^th century, the Alaska salmon fishing industry showed great promise but for one problem, salmon caught in the open sea had white meat. Heretofore folks were used to eating spawning salmon with pink meat.  Canned white meat salmon just did not sell until the can’s label included, “Guaranteed not to turn pink in the can”. Be aware this was long before caned foods had the safety of plastic liners. In those days, there was real fear of salmonella poisoning from dented or swollen cans.

Those huge cathedral radios of the 1940’s had a push button marked ‘television’. Indicating to the buyer that this instrument is equipped to receive television, when it becomes available. Then along came commercial, black and white, television in the 1950’s. Some brands featured a big connector on the back labeled ‘for color adaptor’ when color TV becomes available. This feature, put your new TV on the leading edge of technology, this color TV connector had no wires on the back side, a fake.

In the 1950’s the TV display was on a giant round faced glass cathode ray vacuum tube, but the cabinetry cropped the picture displayed to a rectangle. One manufacturer convinced the buying public that you were not seeing the entire picture. This brand marketed a TV cropped only the top and bottom, leaving the sides rounded. Then another brand did one better, selling a TV with a round picture, ‘see the entire picture’. In truth, a TV picture is transmitted rectangular; anything other than a rectangular picture you lost a part of the image. 

Real men in the 19^th century chewed tobacco or smoked a pipe. Then the typical American male consumed 20 pounds of tobacco a year. Every public place had receptacles called ‘spittoons’ located within easy spitting distance; I recall the marksmanship as being excellent. The manufactured or ‘ready made’ cigarette was considered the choice of limp wrist dandies. Truly, here was a marketing challenge.

When I was a boy in the 1930’s, real men hand made their cigarettes rolling between their fingers while sitting atop their John Deere tractor in a gale force wind. Like a modern version of the Marlboro cowboy. The manufactured cigarette was still not widely accepted.  Then along came WWII when the tobacco companies went to war, advertising their patriotism by giving free cigarettes to our troops overseas. Every returning veteran was hooked on the drug nicotine.  Every actor in a Hollywood movie had a manufactured cigarette hanging on his lips with the pack’s label prominently displayed. After the war, every man worthy of the title, smoked.  Plus the advertising was everywhere promoting the health benefits of smoking; ‘it’s good for you’, ‘calms your nerves relieving stress’.  One TV ad, well into the 1960’s, showed a guy in white lab coat, with stethoscope around his neck, saying, “9 out of 10 doctors smoke Camels”.

The giveaway during the war boosted tobacco into the Dow Jones 30 companies, this marketing technique was so successful it just had to continue. The very first effort was to develop the entry or starter cigarette.  The result was the ‘Viceroy’, just the name suggested class.  This miracle product had a ‘corked’ tip so the paper would not stick to the lip, ‘not cool’. A filter designed to reduce the tar induced cough, plus other innovations I’m not aware.

When I graduated from high school in 1951, in the diploma line was a guy in a white lab coat giving, to each graduating boy, two cartons of Viceroy.  This was a few years before smoking was socially acceptable for women.  When that happened, Viceroy became ‘the choice of sophisticated women everywhere’.

I didn’t smoke my high school cigarettes, gave them to my dad. But when I entered the Navy in 1953, and received my two free cartons of Chesterfield, I smoked every one. I really needed that blessed relief from boot camp stress; I was hooked for the next 17 years.

Interesting that when the truth of the health risks of smoking became known, (by the U.S. Surgeon General that couldn’t be bought off) and smoking in restaurants prohibited. There, under the ‘no smoking’ sign, was the ashtray, a fixture at every table.  It was many years before the ashtray went the way of the spittoon.

Navigation

Until the invention of the magnetic compass by Arabs about 800 AD, navigation at sea was confined to keeping land in sight. Then in the 15^th century the Arabs began exploring the world using the ancient Greek astrolabe.  The astrolabe and the more accurate sextant (Brit 1730) permitted sailors to determine latitude but not longitude until the invention of the chronometer by a Brit in 1759.  This was the standard of accuracy, well into the age of electronic navigation systems that only added simplicity of operation.  It was America’s gift to the world in the 1990’s, the global positioning system (GPS), a system of polar satellites that gives navigational accuracy to within 3 meters, on an affordable pocket sized instrument, anywhere in the world.  GPS has not only revolutionized navigation at sea but is now the standard of land survey and a talking GPS navigator has now replaced road maps in your car and, just like your wife, a commanding female voice is telling you what to do. 

Agriculture

Biotechnology and harvesting machines are multiplying crop yields.  This new science of genetic engineering is creating strains that improve yield and quality, yet resist disease and insect infestation with a goal of eliminating the spraying of toxic chemicals.

How are machines increasing yield? Well, before 1910 the harvesting machines were drawn by a horse.  Therefore, crop rows were spaced to permit the horse to pass without trampling the crop.  Then came the motor tractor, again towing the harvest machine with rows spaced for tractor tires.  Today the harvesting machine is self propelled with the mowing blades well in front of the tires and crop row spacing can now be reduced to just enough space for rooting.  My last U.S.A. trip I saw crop densities increased by a factor of 6 or more.  These fantastic machines, operated by one man in air-conditioned comfort, can enter a field of ripe grain and out the back expel grain ready for market, while the non-edible waste parts of the crop (cellulous) are ground for processing into bio fuels using genetic engineered bacteria.

The modern American farmer plows his fields in the spring driving his air-conditioned tractor, setting rows by GPS and listening to music on his stereo.  While plowing, the modern American farmer is selling the crop; he has yet to plant, using his laptop computer connected by cell phone, via the internet, to the Chicago mercantile exchange.  Why sell before he plants? So he plants a crop that brings the best profit plus he now has money in hand to support expenses thru the summer months.  All this farmer has to do is deliver the agreed crop after the September/ October harvest.

The non-edible crop waste from these new technologies will easily support the emerging bio-fuel market.  The CNN stories of starvation of the world’s poor, due to evil Americans dumping food into their gas tanks, is just not true.  The American farmer will still be supplying food to the world’s poor.  Problem is that when you give free food to the poor, there is no incentive to fend for themselves and they now are well fed and have plenty of free time to make more babies.

Data processing

Until 1890 there was just no need to process information faster than the accountant with green eye shade, sleeve garter, ink well and quill.  What happened in 1890?  The root cause was the United States Constitution that required a census of U.S. population every 10 years.  By 1880 the U.S. population was expanding to where it was taking 10 years to process the data from the previous census. Clearly, more than elbow to elbow accountants were needed.  The U.S. Census Bureau contracted a guy named Holleruth to solve the problem.  His answer was what became known in later years as the IBM card.  This was to become the standard data processing interface, between men and machine, well into the 1970’s.   The 1960’s began the era of ‘main frames’, large computers at central locations communicating thru the existing telephone system to teletype machines, this was called teleprocessing.  In the 1970’s, what started as a hobby, the personal computer, was the beginning of a new era of data processing that has evolved to the laptops of today with computing power exceeding those giant main frames of only 30 years ago.

My introduction to digital data processing was in 1957: I hand wired a computer memory consisting of a wall of magnetic cores 8ft high and 16ft long.  The size of this memory was 1.2k.  Today your wrist watch probably has far greater memory. This computer used vacuum tube technology, thousands of glowing filaments, requiring a huge air conditioner, and its own power substation.

I don’t think I need go further with this chapter of technology.  Since that day in 1890 when a Washington bureaucrat first shoved a Holleruth card into the mechanical reader, digital technology has progressed exponentially, invading most other forms of modern technology Holleruth could never have dreamed.  For example, photography, machine tools, automobiles, movies, television, even processor controlled toilet flush. Digital technologies that did not exist last year are today’s necessity of life.

Materials

Consider life only 150 years ago. You had no car; your transportation to town was horseback or a wooden carriage, at best upholstered with animal hides. The ride, over rough dirt roads, was cushioned with springs of animal leather and powered by one or more horses leaving a street full of horseshit. Oh you had metals, used to shoe the horse, rim the wooden wheels, and fasteners on the carriage and leather harness that attached the horses to the carriage.

Now what materials were in your home 150 years ago?  Wood was the dominant material.  Your house was probably entirely of wood.  The rich and public buildings did use cut stone or molded brick.  Your furniture was of wood and if you were rich upholstered by animal hides with hair cushion and you told time on a big pendulum clock that was mostly constructed of wood.  Poorer folks could always listen for the town clock that tolled the time hourly.  If you were rich you ate off imported porcelain plates and used silver utensils.  Poor folks had wooden plates and cups; even the spoon was made of wood. You cooked using cast iron pots and pans and heated on a cast iron stove fueled by wood, coal, or cow dung. Floors were usually bare wood, but the rich had imported carpets. Your bedding was probably filled with straw or feathers and a haven for bedbugs.  Also, the bed corners had 4 posts to support the net to keep out flies during day and mosquitoes at night, there were lots of both.

Then, in the1840’s oil was discovered, first used to replace animal fats used to lubricate machinery, and distil kerosene to replace whale oil for lamps.  Without this discovery, there would be no whales left for Green Peace to protect. I wonder what would be sitting in your gravel driveway today with energy based on burning wood, until not a tree stands for an environmentalist to hug, coal, or the distillates of coal.   That car, in your driveway, would be a far different machine and the airplane only a dream. 

But our subject here is materials; today only 26% of a barrel of oil is used for fuels and lubricants.  The rest is used for petrochemicals to make lots of things we need for our modern life but don’t relate to oil.  Consider the pharmaceuticals to maintain our health, and all kinds of chemicals in your laundry or the cosmetics on a woman’s face.  Or just think of the plastics in your life like breast implants (thank you Dow), the PVC siding on your house, the paint on your walls, the carpet on your floor, the PVC plumbing, your garden hose, your shirt, pants, and shoes, food preservation/sanitation, the tires on your car, that dash board, the black paved roads everywhere, even this keyboard, the list goes on and on.  Just look around, have you ever stopped to think about your personal oil dependency other than fueling your car?

WHAT WAS SO GOOD ABOUT, “THE GOOD OLD DAYS”?

If you think the old days were all that good, you’d better read old Bob’s history lesson again.  This was a world without credit cards, debit cards, and ATM’s. If you needed money from your savings account; you went to the bank, filled out a withdrawal slip, then stood in line at a tellers window to get access to your own money. Imagine the supplication before the loan officer’s desk to get a loan.

I can think of only two things that were actually better than today. Those were the days when a lawyer was respected as a member of an honorable profession, not the overpopulated predators of today.  Also those days of old had music created by real talent with an understanding of composition and orchestration. Compared with today’s noise we call rock, rap, R&B, and hip hop, yesteryears music was great.  Seems like those memorable components of music like rhythm, melody, and words you can actually understand, are sadly in history’s dustbin.

WHAT WILL TOMORROW BRING?

Today we can instantly send sounds, pictures, and the printed word to anywhere in the world with internet access. Will tomorrow allow us to send tangible things?  Kind of like the Star Trek transporter.  Also I’m really hoping for better music and fewer attorneys."