An Outlook

A number of years ago, my parents had a small sign made to hang beneath the main sign at the bookstore. This small sign simply states, “Everyday Is An Occasion For Learning.” Though I thought it somewhat odd at the time, these few words engendered more comments than anything else on the outside of the store. More often than not, a parent will point the sign out to a child, presumably as a lesson they should take to heart. And every so often, there are smart aleck remarks, usually from a group passing by after patronizing the corner bar.

Long before the sign appeared, I made it a point to learn at least one new fact every day – facts that were usually classified as “Steve’s useless information” by my family, but are interesting to me, nonetheless.

And so, as July winds to an end, I will spend the rest of this column sharing a few things I recently learned and I will leave it to your judgment whether they are useful, or not.

Item #1: While everyone is familiar with the term “horsepower” not everyone is aware that the term was originated by the 18th century engineer, James Watt. You may recollect Watt as the man who made steam engines workable, but other than knowing the relative horsepower of your car, motorcycle, or lawn tractor, I’m betting you probably don’t know what horsepower actually represents.

Back when James Watts was wandering around this planet, horses were used to lift buckets of coal out of the mines. Like any good engineer in the 18th century, Watts calculated that a single horse could pull a 180 pound bucket and that the horse could pull this 180 pound bucket a total of 180 feet in one minute. And this became his (and our) definition of horsepower: moving 180 pounds 180 feet in one minute.

In today’s lexicon, power is more commonly measured in “watts” (notice how Watts’s term for power has been replaced with his own name) and one horsepower is 746 watts – so your 75-watt light bulb is approximately 1/10 horsepower.

Okay, I grant that referring to a light bulb in horsepower sounds odd, but think of it this way: a horse turning a wheel connected to a generator could light ten 75-watt light bulbs.

Item #2: Our national economy has a set amount of money in circulation at all times. The amount is controlled by the government through the minting of coins, printing of currency notes, and the issuing of bonds. Collectively, this is known as the Money Supply.

This Money Supply circulates and the sum of all our transactions – buying milk and eggs, paying the babysitter, purchasing insurance, buying a book (subliminal message here), paying for an ad in the highly regarded local independent newspaper (second subliminal message here), etc. – is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Okay, you probably knew that. But here’s what you might not know: the Money Supply and the speed at which the money circulates are linked by the following approximate formula –

Money speed(Money Supply) = GDP

Our country’s GDP is approximately $13 trillion dollars. The amount of ready cash in our economy (called the Narrow Money Supply) is $1.3 trillion. So if you plug these numbers into the formula above you find that the speed of our Money is 10.

So now you’re wondering “What in the world does that mean?” Well, folks, it means that each dollar is used in a transaction 10 times during the year. Put another way, each dollar changes hands once every 36 1/2 days.

Item #3: In an age where ethanol is a commonly accepted and understood word, it probably seems like eons ago that our gasoline contained lead. Indeed many drivers these days probably believe that gasoline has always been unleaded (of course, if you believed that you would probably wonder why they bothered to call it unleaded). But even if you can’t remember gasoline that contained lead I can assure you that you are still breathing that lead in our air, and drinking that lead in your water. It happens to be toxic, but it is simply one of those boo-boo’s from the past that we now must live with.

Lead tetraethyl was first added to gasoline in the 1921 to make gasoline burn more smoothly by a chemist named Thomas Midgley. Instead of improving our way of life, Midgley did the exact opposite. And that would probably be the end of the story except for the fact that Midgley was still on a mission to improve the world and our way of life.

Early refrigeration systems used ammonia as a coolant and ammonia – of course – is another toxic substance. So in 1928, Midgley invented something called cholorofluorocarbon as a replacement for ammonia in refrigeration systems.

That’s right, folks. As incredible as it may seem, the man who put lead in gasoline is also the man who gave us CFCs – now virtually universally recognized as the main culprit in the depletion of the ozone layer in addition to being one of the most potent greenhouse gases!

Next time you think you can change or save the world, remember Thomas Midgley and proceed very, very slowly.