Back
in 1896, Henry Ford attended the convention of the Association of
Edison Illuminating Companies, held at the Oriental Hotel on Manhattan
Beach in Brooklyn, New York.
This is where he met his boyhood hero, Thomas Edison. Henry Ford
worked as an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company from 1891 to
1899 but he never had the chance to met him in person until 1896. Later
they became good friends.
They camped together, and they even owned houses immediately adjacent to each other.
In 1896 when Henry Ford for the first time drove his Quadricycle on
the streets of Detroit, he worked for Edison at Detroit Edison
Illuminating Company. A few months later, when they finally met, Edison
encouraged Ford to pursue his plans for a gasoline automobile. Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ford in his first car, the Ford Quadricycle
Later Edison and Ford decided to put their minds together to conceive
a low-priced electric car. In fact, Edison held a number of patents
related to the electric vehicle, including Electric Generator or Motor
(1884), a Means for Propelling Electric Cars (1891), a Reversible
Galvanic Battery (1900), an Electrode for Batteries (1901), an Alkaline
Battery (1904), and an Electrical System for Automobiles (1912).
At that time Ford founded his eponymous automobile company. The only
problem that they were facing was to invent the longest lasting battery
in the world. As we mention it before Edison had already invented the
alkaline storage battery in 1901 and he spent many years perfecting it
before placing it in the 1912 Edison electric car. Thomas Edison and an electric car in 1913
The downside of the Edison battery was the cost, which led to the
dominance of the inferior lead acid battery still in common use today
and eventually to the development of several other nickel battery
chemistries. Nonetheless, the Edison battery became Thomas Edison’s
most profitable invention, gaining wide adoption in mining lamps and
railway signaling.
Edison managed to build three cars, one of which he drove from
Scotland to London, charging it up along the way. The inventor had said
that electricity was the future since “all the oil would be pumped out
of the ground.” His electric car with two 15-volt batteries and a
30-volt electric motor could reach speeds of 25 miles per hour, which is
impressive for the time. Henry Ford with Thomas Edison and Harvey Firestone
In early 1914 Henry Ford started working on a low-priced electric car. On January 11, 1914, issue of the New York Times, Ford confirmed that he was working on electric car: “Within a year, I hope, we shall begin the manufacture of an
electric automobile. I don’t like to talk about things which are a year
ahead, but I am willing to tell you something of my plans. The fact is that Mr. Edison and I have been working for some
years on an electric automobile which would be cheap and practicable.
Cars have been built for experimental purposes, and we are satisfied now
that the way is clear to success. The problem so far has been to build a
storage battery of light weight which would operate for long distances
without recharging. Mr. Edison has been experimenting with such a
battery for some time.” From Left to Right: Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone. Photo Credit
The Edison-Ford car would cost between $500 and $750, and it would
range somewhere between 50 miles and 100 miles on a charge. But it
wasn’t easy to design and construct the car and in an interview with Automobile Topics in May 1914 Edison said: “Mr. Henry Ford is making plans for the tools, special machinery,
factory buildings and equipment for the production of this new
electric. There is so much special work to be done that no date can be
fixed now as to when the new electric can be put on the market. But Mr.
Ford is working steadily on the details, and he knows his business so it
will not be long.” 1912 Detroit Electric advertisement.
It’s believed that the oil cartels got to Ford and Edison and caused
them to abandon the project. Edison’s workshops in West Orange was
destroyed by fire in December 1914 and the project fell apart.
We wonder what the pair would have thought about the electric cars of today?!
Freed slave wrote sarcastic letter to his former master after he asked him to come back to his plantation.
Jordan Anderson was born around 1825 somewhere in Tennessee. When he
was around 7-years-old he was sold as a slave to General Paulding
Anderson.
He was a personal servant and also a playmate of general’s son Patrick Henry Anderson since they were both around the same age.
As years passed by he became one of the most reliable and able
workers on the Anderson family plantation in Big Spring, Tennessee.
He married Amanda McGregor in 1848 and in 1864 and they would
eventually have eleven children together, after 32 long years in the
service of his master, Jordan Anderson and his wife, Amanda, escaped a
life of slavery when Union Army soldiers freed them from the plantation. Image of freed slave: Jordan Anderson
When his freedom was granted he left the plantation immediately. His
master Patrick Henry Anderson was so angry that Jordan was leaving the
plantation that he tried to shoot him, but a neighbor managed to grab
Patrick’s pistol from him. He vowed to kill Jordan if he ever set foot
on his property again.
Jordan started working in a hospital where he became close friends
with a surgeon called Dr. Clarke McDermont. In 1865 when the Civil War
ended, Dr. Clarke McDermont helped Jordan and his family move to Dayton,
Ohio where his father-in-law, Valentine Winters, was living and could
help Jordan to secure work in the town.
Jordan was living a quiet life with his large family but in July of
1865, he received an urgent letter from his former master. Since he
couldn’t read he took the letter to Valentine Winters and asked him to
read it to him.
As it was written in the letter the Anderson’s plantation had fallen
into complete disrepair and Anderson found that he could not keep up his
holdings after losing his captive labor force so he decided to ask help
from Jordan.
Apparently, Jordan’s former master was in total financial ruin.
He promised that Jordan would be paid and be treated as a free man if
he returned. Newspaper print of Jordan Anderson’s letter
After few days Jordan decided to write back to his former master. You can read the full letter which appeared at Letters of Note below.
Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir:
I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon,
and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising
to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy
about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this,
for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard
about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was
left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice
before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt,
and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the
dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen,
Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope
we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back
to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of
the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a
chance. I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose
to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a
month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for
Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane,
and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy
has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them
colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt
when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace
in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have
been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write
and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide
whether it would be to my advantage to move back again. As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to
be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the
Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she
would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to
treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your
sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you.
This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your
justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty
years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for
Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and
eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have
been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three
doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance
will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams’s Express, in care of V.
Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors
in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which
you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil
for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee
there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the
horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who
defraud the laborer of his hire. In answering this letter, please state if there would be any
safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both
good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine.
I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools
opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire
of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits. Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson.
Jordan asked Winters to sent the letter to Patrick with the informal
title “Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master.” The letter was later
published in an edition of the Cincinnati Commercial with the same
title. The letter was very popular because of the eloquence and the
sarcasm used by Jordan in it. The letter became so popular that was
published everywhere across the country and even made it to Europe.
The next time someone asks you for your cellphone number, you may want to think twice about giving it.
The
cellphone number is more than just a bunch of digits. It is
increasingly used as a link to private information maintained by all
sorts of companies, including money lenders and social networks. It can
be used to monitor and predict what you buy, look for online or even
watch on television.
It
has become “kind of a key into the room of your life and information
about you,” said Edward M. Stroz, a former high-tech crime agent for the
F.B.I. who is co-president of Stroz Friedberg, a private investigator.
Yet the cellphone number is not a legally regulated piece of information like a Social Security
number, which companies are required to keep private. And we are told
to hide and protect our Social Security numbers while most of us don’t
hesitate when asked to write a cellphone number on a form or share it
with someone we barely know.
That
is a growing issue for young people, since two sets of digits may well
be with them for life: their Social Security number and their cellphone
number.
Nearly
half of all American households have given up their landlines and have
only wireless phone service — a figure that has risen more than 10
percentage points in just three years. Among people ages 25 to 29, the
share of homes that have only wireless phone service stands at 73
percent, according to government statistics.
Taylor
Gallanter, a 23-year-old hair stylist in San Francisco, has had her
cellphone number since she was 15. She has never had a landline and
doubts she ever will.
She
knows how valuable her cellphone number is. She does not provide it on
online forms unless it is required. Using her email address as contact
information, she said, seems less invasive and risky.
“With just your cellphone number and name, I know they can get all sorts of information about you,” Ms. Gallanter said.
In
fact, investigators find that a cellphone number is often even more
useful than a Social Security number because it is tied to so many
databases and is connected to a device you almost always have with you,
said Austin Berglas, a former F.B.I. agent who is senior managing
director of K2 Intelligence, a private investigator.
“The
point is the cellphone number can be a gateway to all sorts of other
information,” said Robert Schoshinski, the assistant director for
privacy and identity protection at the Federal Trade Commission. “People
should think about it.”
The use of the cellphone number in new, unanticipated ways has echoes in the history of the Social Security number,
which was created in 1936. Its original purpose was to enable the
nation’s nascent social insurance system to maintain accurate records of
workers covered under the program. It was never meant as a
general-purpose identification number.
Gradually,
the simplicity of using a unique number to identify people encouraged
the widespread use by other government agencies and corporations. That
took off starting in the 1960s, when mainframe computers made it
possible to create huge digital files on citizens and customers.
The
spread of the Social Security number as a quick and easy identifier,
found in all kinds of corporate and government databases, has smoothed
the way for commerce. But there have been unintended consequences.
“That Social Security numbers are so broadly used and often so poorly protected is a major cause of the current epidemic of identity theft,” said Alessandro Acquisti, a computer scientist and privacy expert at Carnegie Mellon University.
The total losses in the United States from stolen identities used in crimes like credit card and loan fraud were $15 billion last year,
Javelin, a research and consulting firm, estimated. And 11 percent of
American adults say they lost money last year in a telephone swindle, according to a Harris Poll survey sponsored by Truecaller, a Swedish maker of a cellphone app with features like caller ID and spam blocking.
But
if a cellphone number and the intimate computer behind it open a door
to new risks, technology, as is so often the case, can also be employed
to combat those risks.
Take
fraud prevention. When shoppers use Affirm, a start-up that offers an
alternative to credit cards for online purchases, the company’s software
mines many data sources and approves or rejects a loan within a minute
or so.
To
perform that feat of technical wizardry, Affirm asks borrowers for a
few pieces of personal information, including their names and dates of
birth.
But
the strongest identifier and conduit to useful information is the
cellphone number, which acts like “the digital equivalent of the Social
Security number,” said Max Levchin, chief executive of Affirm.
When
a customer of Affirm wants to get an installment loan to buy, say, an
$850 mattress or a $3,000 mountain bike, the company sends the person a
temporary personal identification number in a text message.
The
same form of authentication is widely used by banks, payment systems
like PayPal and other companies before certain transactions are
approved. The temporary ID numbers typically remain valid for only 30
seconds to 180 seconds, increasing the odds that the person trying to
borrow or buy is indeed the same person who owns the phone with that
number.
It’s
not foolproof, but if a cellphone is lost or stolen, it is typically
locked. It can be hacked into, but that takes a separate set of skills.
By contrast, a stolen Social Security number is a permanent pathway to
identity theft.
“What
you can do with the cellphone number and mobile technology represents a
pretty substantial advantage in the ongoing war against fraud and
identity theft,” said Rajeev Date, a venture investor and former banker,
who was previously deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau.
But
a cellphone-only life presents problems for many independent
professionals and workers at start-ups and small businesses, who make
business calls on their personal cellphones. So Ms. Gallanter, a partner
in a mobile barbershop in a van, became one of the five million people who have installed the new app Sideline this year to add a second number to their cellphones.
The
service is free for individuals and $10 a month a number for groups of
workers in a business, who get extra features like a company directory
and voice mail transcription. One of Sideline’s ad mottos is: “Keep your
personal number private. Add a second number to your smartphone.”
“This
gives you a second mobile identity, which more and more people need
today,” said Greg Woock, chief executive of Pinger, a start-up in San
Jose, Calif., that created the Sideline software and service.
The Better Business Bureau is warning shoppers about holiday-themed scams.
"When consumers let their guard down they become
the perfect target for fly-by-night Internet merchants, phishers and
charitable imposters," says Dennis Horton, director of the Rockford
Regional Office of the Better Business Bureau. "Each year at Christmas
consumers lose millions of dollars to scam artists who rip them off."
Here is the list of scams the BBB is telling us to watch out for as we do our Christmas shopping:
1. Secret Sister Exchange: A social media scam
that claims if you buy a $10 gift and send it to a "secret sister," you
will receive anywhere from six to 36 in return. This is a variation on
"pyramid schemes" and it's illegal.
2. Help Scams: Calls to unsuspecting relatives or
friends from imposters who claim to be a grandchild, niece, nephew or
friend, who is traveling, and they need emergency financial help to
cover medical or legal expenses.
3. Seasonal Travel Scams: Whether it's a promise
of a free or discounted trip, phony rental listings, or con men telling
timeshare sellers they've got a buyer lined up, scammers are working to
rip you off. Check out any offers of great travel deals.
4. Point of sale Malware:is malicious software
expressly written to steal customer payment data -- especially credit
card data -- from retail checkout systems. Check your credit card
statements to make sure you don't have unwanted charges as a result of a
point-of-sale breach of your credit security.
5. Phony charities: 'Tis the season to donate,
but be wary of fake charities. Do your research and double check the
site URL. Check out charities at http://ask.bbb.org/.
6. Fake coupons: Avoid the unwanted gift of
malware and always verify that e-cards or coupons are from someone you
know and are from a trustworthy site.
7. Fake shipping notifications: Think twice
before clicking links in shipping notification emails. Always verify the
shipping company before giving out your personal information.
8. ATM Skimmers: The typical ATM skimmer is a
device smaller than a deck of cards that fits over the existing card
reader. It is essentially a malicious card reader that grabs the data
off the card's magnetic stripe so that the thief can harvest data from
every person that swipes their cards.
9. Fake Romance: Scammers create fake online
profiles using photos of other people - even stolen pictures of real
military personnel. They profess their love quickly. And they tug at
your heartstrings with made-up stories about how they need money - for
emergencies, hospital bills, or travel.
10. Fake Apps/phony e-tailers: Today, smartphones
act not only as a phone but also a credit card, house key, camera and
more. Malware can access your device via apps. Do your research and
stick to official app stores when downloading.
11. Free gift cards: Pop-up ads or emails
offering free gift cards are often just a ploy to get your personal
information that can later be used for identity theft.
12. Phishing emails: Be wary unexpected deals or
product promotions from stores or sellers you have never dealt with.
There will be people trying to take advantage of buyers where the victim
could be subject to phishing tactics or just stolen money for an order
that will never come in.
“Something, something, part of your
world!” Okay, so that’s me trying to sing Part Of Your World from
Disney’s The Little Mermaid without the lyrics in front of me. As it
turns out, not only do I not remember 99% of the words, the lyrics are
actually “part of that world.” Whoops. Fortunately, 3-year-old
Claire knows the song much better than I do. Indeed, it’s Part Of Your
World is her favourite song (pre-Frozen era, that is). So what happens
Dad happens to be a music producer with a home studio? Well, you record
your little girl and make the most adorable music video ever that she
will no doubt cherish for the rest of her life!
A flat tire is a thing that can ruin even the best bike trip.
However, riders can forget dragging around their patch kits and pumps,
because Nexo created an airless tire to ensure they keep pedaling.
Flat-free
tires aren’t new, however they weren’t widely used because of poor
stiffness and shock absorption, compared to the conventional ones. But
this Utah-based company claims to have found a solution to these
problems. The tires are made from polymeter blends that are said to
offer not only a perfect balance of cushion and resilience, but
durability as well. The product comes in two different shapes – tires to
be mounted on existing wheels with a lifespan of up to 3,100 miles, and
others, which replace the entire wheel set and last for up to 5,000
miles.
If that’s not enough, Nexo made their products from a
single material, which makes recyclability really easy. Considering that
10,000,000 tons of bike tires and tubes are discarded every year,
that’s certainly a step in the right direction.
More info: Kickstarter (h/t: treehugger)
These innovative bike tires can’t get flat
They are made from polymeter blends that offer durability and a perfect balance of cushion and resilience
Users can mount them on their wheels or purchase entirely new wheel sets
Cyclists can ride these tires for up to 5,000 miles
Because they’re made from a single material, recycling becomes really easy
Are you ready to say goodbye to conventional tires?
Comparing something to a grain of sand
is usually supposed to mean that it’s small or insignificant, but Dr.
Gary Greenberg’s microscopic photography aims to turn this stereotype on
its head. His photographs of miniscule grains of sands magnified up to
300 times reveal that each grain of sand can be beautiful and unique.
Greenberg’s
story is a fascinating one. First of all, he invented the
high-definition 3D microscopes that he takes his pictures on, resulting
in 18 U.S. patents under his name. He was a photographer and filmmaker
until age 33, when he moved from LA to London and earned a Ph. D. in
biomedical research. This seems to have given him a unique appreciation
for biological and scientific curiosities and for the optical
technologies he would need to document them.
Sand
composition can vary drastically depending on where it’s located. The
coastal sands in Hawaii, where Dr. Greenberg is located, are very likely
the subjects of his amazing micro-photography. The sand in his images
is full of remnants from various tropical sea organisms large and small.
The sand on other coasts, depending on the temperature, surf conditions
and marine environment, may include a totally different set of rocks,
minerals and organic matter.
