Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (42 page)

Fact:
This idea has haunted Jockey shorts since they were introduced in the 1930s. They don't.

Myth:
The word
dinosaur
means “terrible lizard” in Latin.

Fact:
Richard Owen coined the term in 1842. He used the word
deinos
, which is Greek—not Latin. It means (“fearfully great.”)

Feast on a few fun forays from our fantastic phone files
.

“When someone stole his wife's purse early in 2002, Steve O'Brien decided to call her cell phone, which was inside the stolen purse. A woman answered the phone and said hello, at which point O'Brien demanded the purse and the phone back. The woman hung up. O'Brien dialed again—and again the thief answered, but this time said nothing. Then O'Brien heard someone ordering a Big Mac in the background, so he immediately headed for the nearest McDonald's. Standing inside the restaurant, he dialed and heard his wife's phone ringing and traced it to a woman who was calmly eating a burger. He called the police. She got arrested. Said O'Brien, ‘You should have seen her face.'”

—
Ananova.com

“In a town in Belgium, Caroline Lenaert became frustrated and frightened at the high number of prank phone calls she received on her cell phone over a two week period early in 2002. When she answered the calls, she heard nothing—only static. The calls came at all hours, even waking her in the middle of the night. She asked the telephone company for help, and they traced the calls…to a cow. It seems a farmer in a nearby town had rigged his cow's milking machine to automatically dial his cell phone whenever a malfunction occurred. Unfortunately, he accidentally programmed Ms. Lenaert's number into the machine.”

—Het Laatste Nieuws

“A Spokane contractor isn't humoring people with his cellphone prank. He registered his phone as Osama bin Laden, whose name pops up on caller ID when the man makes a call. The FBI said it's received complaints about the bin Laden impersonator, but there's no law prohibiting him from using the terrorist's name.”

—USA Today

In Part 1 of our story (page 93), we told you how Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in 1792 built the pre-Civil War
Gone-with-the-Wind
South. Here's the story of Whitney's other invention—the one that destroyed it
.

Even before Eli Whitney ginned his first handful of upland cotton, he believed that he was on his way to becoming a wealthy man. “Tis generally said by those who know anything about [the cotton gin], that I shall make a Fortune by it,” Whitney wrote in a letter to his father. His friend Phineas Miller certainly agreed—Miller became Whitney's business partner, providing money that Whitney would use to build the machines. They would both grow rich together…or so they thought.

Things didn't work out quite as planned. There were two problems with Whitney and Miller's dreams of grandeur:

First, just as Whitney had intended, his cotton gin was so simple and so easy to make that just about anyone who was good with tools could make one. So a lot of planters did, even though doing so violated Whitney's patent.

Second, Whitney and Miller were too greedy for their own good. They knew that even if they had enough cash to build a cotton gin for every planter who wanted one (they didn't), the planters didn't have enough cash to buy them. So rather than build gins for sale, Whitney and Miller planned to set up a network of gins around the South where
they
would do the ginning in exchange for a share of the cotton they ginned. A
big
share—40%, to be exact. That was more than the planters were willing to part with, least of all to a Yankee. The planters fought back by ginning their cotton in machines they made themselves or by buying illegal copycat machines made by competitors.

And there were rumors: that Whitney himself had stolen the idea for the cotton gin from a Southern inventor; that the copycat gins were actually “improved” models that didn't infringe on
Whitney's patents; and, worst of all, that Whitney's machines damaged cotton fibers during the ginning process. That last rumor stuck: By the end of 1795, the English were refusing to buy cotton ginned on Whitney & Miller machines; only cotton ginned on illegal (and usually inferior) machines would do. “Everyone is afraid of the cotton,” Miller wrote in the fall of 1795. “Not a purchaser in Savannah will pay full price for it.”

Whitney and Miller spent years battling the copycats in court and convincing the English textile mills that their cotton was still the best. The stress may have contributed to Miller's death from fever in 1803, when he was only 39. Whitney carried on, and finally won his last court fight in 1806. But the victory came too late to do any good, because the patent on the cotton gin expired the following year. Now copying Whitney's cotton gin wasn't just easy, it was also perfectly legal.

So how much money did Whitney make on the invention that created huge fortunes for Southern plantation owners? Almost none. In fact, some historians estimate that after his several years of legal expenses are taken into account, he actually
lost
money.

The cotton gin would clothe humanity, but in the process of inventing it, Whitney had lost his shirt. “An invention can be so valuable as to be worthless to the inventor,” he groused.

But Whitney was already working on another invention—one that would establish his fortune and transform the world again…even more than the cotton gin had.

In March of 1798, relations between France and the United States had deteriorated to the point that it seemed a war might be just around the corner. This presented a problem, because France was the primary supplier of arms to the United States. Where would the country get muskets now?

Congress had established two national armories beginning in 1794, but they had produced only 1,000 muskets in four years, and the government estimated that 50,000 would be needed if a war with France did come. Private contractors would have to supply the rest. Whitney, facing bankruptcy, was determined to be one of them.

Until then, all firearms were made by highly skilled artisans who made the entire weapon, crafting each part from scratch and filing and fitting them by hand. Each part, and by extension each musket, was one of a kind—the trigger made for one gun wouldn't work on any other because it fit only that musket. Broken muskets could only be repaired by expert craftsmen. If the weapon broke in the middle of a military campaign, you were out of luck. Armorers capable of such skill were scarce, and new ones took forever to train, which was why the U.S. arsenals were having such a hard time making muskets.

Whitney proposed a new method of making muskets, one he'd been thinking about since trying to speed up production of his cotton gins:

• Instead of using one expert craftsman to make an entire gun, he would divide the tasks among several workers of average skill. They'd be easier to train, and easier to replace if they quit.

• Each worker would be taught how to make one part. They would use special, high-precision machine tools, designed by Whitney.

• The tools would be so precise that the parts would be virtually identical to each other. Each part would fit interchangably in any of the muskets made in Whitney's factory.

• Once the pieces for a musket had been made, assembling them into the finished weapon would be—literally—a snap. • Ready-made interchangeable spare parts would make it possible for any soldier to fix his musket himself.

On June 14, 1798, Whitney signed a contract with the U.S. government to deliver 10,000 muskets within two years. But the war with France never came. Good thing, too, because Whitney missed his deadline by eight years. Supply shortages and yellow fever epidemics disrupted the schedule, so it took him longer to make his machine tools than he originally thought.

Whitney's reputation as a genius helped him to get extensions
and advances against his government contract. But more than anything, what gave Whitney freedom to take the time necessary to perfect his new system was a demonstration he gave to President-elect Thomas Jefferson and other high officials in 1801. Dumping a huge pile of interchangable musket parts onto a table, Whitney invited them to pick pieces from the pile at random and assemble them into complete muskets. For the first time in history, they could.

It may not sound like a big deal, but it was. Whitney had devised a method of manufacturing more muskets of higher quaility, in less time and for less money, than had ever been possible before. And he did it without the use of highly skilled labor. Once again, Whitney had invented something that would change the world.

What worked with muskets would also work with clothing, farm equipment, furniture, tools, bicycles, and just about anything else people could manufacture. Whitney called his process “the American system.” Today it's known as
mass production
. In time it would overshadow even the cotton gin itself in the way it would transform the American economy.

Only this time, the transformation would be felt most in the North…and it would bring the South to its knees.

For Part III of the Eli Whitney story, turn to page 456
.

Q:
How do those luminous light sticks work?

A:
“You mean those plastic rods full of liquid chemicals that are sold at festivals and concerts, and that start glowing with green, yellow, or blue light when you bend them, and that gradually lose their light after an hour or so? When you bend the stick, you break a thin glass capsule containing a chemical, usually hydrogen peroxide, that reacts with another chemical in the tube. The reaction gives off energy, which is absorbed by a fluorescent dye and reemitted as light. As the chemical reaction gradually plays itself out because the chemicals are used up, the light fades.” (From
What Einstein Told His Barber
, by Robert L. Wolke)

Palindromes are words or phrases that are spelled the same way backward and forward. Here are some of the best we've found
.

Oozy rat in a sanitary zoo.

Rats paraded a rap star.

Too hot to hoot.

No. It is opposition.

Won't I panic in a pit now?

Panic in a
Titanic
? I nap.

Damn! I, Agassi, miss again! Mad!

O, Geronimo—no minor ego!

Boston ode: Do not sob.

Gateman sees name, garageman sees name tag.

Wonton? Not now.

“Red?” “No.” “Who is it?” “'Tis I.” “Oh, wonder!”

Todd erases a red dot.

I saw a Santa—at NASA was I.

Mad, a detail of Eden: one defoliated Adam.

Amy, must I jujitsu my ma?

Trapeze part.

No, sir! Away! A papaya war is on!

Men, I'm Eminem.

Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas!

Snot or protons?

On a clover, if alive, erupts a vast, pure evil: a fire volcano.