Timex had nothing on Jai Singh II. After building this 90-foot sundial, the Indian maharaja always knew the correct time to within half a second — and this was in the early 1700s.
Ben Franklin wrote, “Energy and persistence conquer all things.”
Technology
The Quick Brown Fox …
In 1984, British engineer Lee Sallows built a dedicated computer to compose a self-enumerating pangram — a sentence that inventories its own letters. It succeeded:
This pangram contains four a’s, one b, two c’s, one d, thirty e’s, six f’s, five g’s, seven h’s, eleven i’s, one j, one k, two l’s, two m’s, eighteen n’s, fifteen o’s, two p’s, one q, five r’s, twenty-seven s’s, eighteen t’s, two u’s, seven v’s, eight w’s, two x’s, three y’s, & one z.
Black Gold
Barrels per day of oil consumption, as of 2003:
- United States: 20,033,504
- Japan: 5,578,386
- China: 5,550,000
- Germany: 2,677,443
- Russia: 2,675,000
- India: 2,320,000
- Canada: 2,193,263
- South Korea: 2,168,128
- Brazil: 2,100,000
- France: 2,059,843
- Mexico: 2,015,232
- Italy: 1,874,380
- Saudi Arabia: 1,775,000
- United Kingdom: 1,722,419
- Spain: 1,544,260
- Iran: 1,425,000
- Indonesia: 1,155,000
Pencils Down
Bill Gates scored 1590 on his SATs.
Falling Fortunes
Franz Reichelt dreamed big. In 1911 the Austrian tailor designed a garment that he hoped would serve as a combination overcoat/parachute. Never one for half measures, he tested it by leaping from the Eiffel Tower.
The sad/romantic results were caught on film, including Reichelt’s long hesitation on the brink, his fatal fall and a measurement of the hole he left behind.
“If you’re not failing every now and again,” said Woody Allen, “it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.”
Graduated Rulers
Stretch out this image by Erhard Schön …
… and you’ll see images of Charles V, Ferdinand I, Pope Paul III, and Francis I:
Big deal, you say, anyone with a computer can make a compressed image.
Well, Schön made this one 1535, as a wood carving. Beat that.
Gold Star
Bill Gates has not missed a day of work since 1975.
Rods to the Hogshead
Only three nations have not switched officially to the metric system: Liberia, Myanmar, and the United States.
Creative Uses of Company Time
Charles Osmond Frederick was a mild-mannered British engineer at the British Railway Technical Centre in Derby in the 1970s.
Or so everyone thought. Earlier this year, patent researchers discovered that in 1973 Frederick had designed a nuclear-powered space vehicle for intergalactic travel, and even got the British Railways Board to patent it. Apparently no one was paying attention.
When the plans resurfaced, a group of nuclear scientists examined them and declared them to be unworkable; Michel van Baal of the European Space Agency said, “I have had a look at the plans, and they don’t look very serious to me at all.”
But if you like, you can try them out yourself — the patent lapsed when the Railways Board neglected to renew it.
Hope Springs Eternal
Too much optimism is a bad thing. In 1897, Swedish engineer S.A. Andrée planned to reach the North Pole in a leaky and untested balloon, steering only by dragging ropes. He and two companions lifted off from Svalbard in July, drifted north and disappeared for 33 years.
It wasn’t until 1930 that their last camp was discovered — they had crashed after only two days and spent three freezing months trying to walk home.
“Morale remains good,” Andrée had written before his diary became incoherent. “With such comrades as these, one ought to be able to manage under practically any circumstances whatsoever.”