Part 30 (2/2)

At the time of his death from a heart attack in 1955, Einstein was one of the most famous men in the world. His casual attire, wild hair, and eccentric persona made him, in the words of one biographer, ”a cartoonist's dream,” and his very surname became a synonym for intelligence.By his own request, Einstein's body was cremated and his brain donated to scientific study. Like everything else, he wanted to find out what made himself tick.Good Things in Small Packages Next time an annoying telephone commercial has you on the brink of madness, you might take comfort in the fact that compet.i.tion between phone companies just might have given us the most important invention of the twentieth century.In 1906, as Alexander Graham Bell's telephone patents were expiring, different phone companies were looking for an edge. At America Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T), they decided to focus on development of a vacuum tube that would amplify phone signals and allow them to be transmitted long distances. The tubes worked, but they were expensive, short-lived, got hot, and needed vast amounts of electricity.Although some German scientists made strides in developing a viable subst.i.tute to the tubes, the real breakthrough came after World War II, at AT&T's Bell Laboratories. On December 23, 1947, three physicists-William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain-demonstrated a new device, called a transistor, that let weak electronic signals control much stronger signals, sort of like a faucet on a water line, without needing a vacuum tube.The invention wasn't made public until June 25, 1948, and didn't make much of an impression. Shockley, who later shared a 1956 n.o.bel Prize with Bardeen and Brattain, eventually developed an even better transistor. But while they were a vast improvement on tubes, individual transistors still had to be connected to other components such as resistors and capacitors, and there were still limits to circuit construction.In 1959, however, U.S. scientists came up with an ”integrated” circuit, which put multiple transistors and other components on a single chip of silicon (which, as a semi-conductor, both allows the flow of electrons and acts as insulation).Since the early 1960s, the number of circuits that can be placed on a single chip has doubled every eighteen months, leading to the development of microprocessors-so you can just blame your Internet addiction on phone companies trying to get an edge.

SOME OTHER ADDICTIVE INVENTIONS.

While in New York to attend a toy fair, in 1957, Southern California toy makers Richard Knerr and Arthur ”Spud” Merlin heard about a kids' craze in Australia that involved rotating a wooden hoop around the hips.In 1958, they began producing a three-foot-in-diameter plastic hoop. They couldn't patent the device, since kids had been playing with hoops since at least the days of ancient Egypt. But they did trademark the name: Hula Hoop.By the end of 1959, the Wham-O Company had sold more than 100 million of the $1.98 hoops around the world.And even when the craze ended, Knerr and Merlin doubtless found consolation in another plastic toy they had actually come up with the year before the Hula Hoop: a plastic disc called the Frisbee.

Cars for the ”Volks”

It was commissioned by a monster, designed for the common man, and became the single most popular car model in the history of automobiles.The lowly Volkswagen Beetle came about when in 1933 German dictator Adolf Hitler told auto designer Ferdinand Porsche that he wanted an affordable car for the average German, one that would seat five, get good gas mileage, and be capable of going sixty miles per hour on the system of freeways he was building, called the Autobahn.Porsche came up with a round-topped two-door auto with a four-cylinder, air-cooled, rear-mounted engine and a four-speed manual transmission. Hitler wanted to call the vehicle the Kraft durch Freude Wagen Kraft durch Freude Wagen, meaning ”Strength-through-Joy car,” or KdFwagen KdFwagen. But the name didn't catch on, and the vehicle eventually became known as ”the People's Car,” or ”Volkswagen.”The Volkswagen factory opened in 1938 and Germans were encouraged to make weekly deposits into a savings plan that would eventually be enough to buy a car. But the war kept car production to a minimum, and Allied bombing destroyed two thirds of the factory.After the war, British and U.S. automakers turned down the chance to take over the plant, and most of the few Beetles that were made went to the British Army and the German Post Office.By 1948, however, a British major named Ivan Hirst and a German engineer named Heinrich Nordhoff had rallied the factory into accelerating production. More than 500,000 had been built by 1953, and 5 million by 1961. In 1972, the Beetle pa.s.sed the Ford Model T as the most-built model, and by the time the last one rolled off a Mexican production line in 2003, more than 22 million had been sold in more than 140 countries.By the way, Hitler, who did not drive, most often rode around in a Mercedes-Benz.The Devil's Music It was a uniquely American sound, an amalgam of blues, folk, gospel, and country music, with roots that were decidedly African American. Its name came from an African American slang term for s.e.x. It was hated by adults and adored by teenagers, and by the end of the twentieth century, it could be reasonably argued that it was the most dominant form of popular music in the world.While rock 'n' roll's roots were many and varied, its rise after World War II had as much to do with postwar American affluence as with the music itself. White teenagers had an average of ten dollars a week to spend, and they increasingly spent it on what had been referred to first as ”race music” and then ”rhythm and blues.”In 1952, however, a savvy Cleveland disc jockey named Alan Freed began calling it ”rock 'n' roll,” a term that allowed whites to more comfortably embrace-and co-opt-the sound. By 1955, rock 'n' roll was beginning to have a major influence on popular culture, from dress and hairstyles to movies.It also inexorably, if inadvertently, blurred U.S. racial divisions. In fact, it's been argued that rock 'n' roll's ascension in the 1950s was a key ingredient in making integration efforts more acceptable to younger Americans.Ministers, educators, and parents decried it as immoral, disrespectful, and potentially anarchistic. Music critics sneered it as ephemeral: ”It has a clanking, socked-out beat, a braying, honking saxophone, a belted vocal, and, too often, suggestive lyrics,” a Time Time magazine critic sniffed in 1955. magazine critic sniffed in 1955.No matter. Led by a former truck driver from Memphis whose real name was Elvis Presley, rock 'n' roll musicians became demiG.o.ds to millions of teens. Presley alone had six major hits in 1956, and at one point was selling a staggering seventy-five thousand records a day.In 1957, rockers Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis toured Australia, and Bill Haley and the Comets toured Europe. Rock 'n' roll was here-and there-to stay.Dirty Books When Alfred Kinsey graduated from high school in New Jersey in 1910, they put a line from Hamlet Hamlet under his yearbook photo: ”Man delights not me; no, nor woman.” under his yearbook photo: ”Man delights not me; no, nor woman.”Boy, were they wrong.True, Kinsey initially went on to become a zoologist who specialized in the characteristics of gall wasps, not people. But in 1938, goaded by his students at the University of Indiana, Kinsey began a ten-year study of human s.e.xual behavior.In 1948, he published an 804-page work called s.e.xual Behavior in the Human Male s.e.xual Behavior in the Human Male. Based on 12,124 case histories, Kinsey's report stunned Americans with its findings: 85 percent of American males had s.e.x before marriage; 70 percent had visited a prost.i.tute; 33 percent had had a h.o.m.os.e.xual experience.Almost as stunning as Kinsey's conclusions were the book's sales. Despite its leaden, scholarly format, in just a few months it sold 250,000 copies-at $6.50 apiece. In 1953, Kinsey released a similar report on female s.e.xuality (50 percent of U.S. females had s.e.x before marriage; 26 percent fooled around after marriage), and that one sold even better.Kinsey's methodology was criticized for relying on samples that while large, were not randomly selected enough to ensure they were reflective of the entire population.The most virulent criticism, however, was on moral grounds. The Chicago Tribune Chicago Tribune, for example, labeled it ”a real menace to society” on the grounds it would lower moral standards. Others condemned it for dehumanizing human s.e.xuality by reducing it to a mere physical function.But history has since credited Kinsey with greatly contributing to an understanding of human s.e.xuality by dragging the subject from behind closed doors.”If I had any ulterior motive in making this study,” said Kinsey, who died in 1956 at the age of sixty-two, ”it was the hope that it would make people more tolerant.”

ITSY-BITSY.

Although tiny two-piece swimming attire had been around since the ancient Egyptians, the modern version can be traced to French designers Jacques Heim and Louis Reard. On July 5, 1946, they unveiled their creation at a Paris fas.h.i.+on show. The suit, known as a bikini, was named after a South Pacific atoll where the United States had conducted atomic weapons tests.

AND THANKS, BUT NO THANKS, FOR...

The 411 on Hitler's Naughty Bits [image]

Adolf Hitler was a s.e.xually repressed incestuous gay or bis.e.xual sadom.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t with an Oedipus complex and only one t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e and probably had syphilis. At least that's the amalgamated opinion about the German dictator propagated by amateur and professional head shrinkers. How much, if any, of this is true is unknown, but it hasn't stopped a vast herd of people from trying to find a s.e.xual explanation for Hitler's monstrous behavior.For example, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the CIA, speculated in 1943 that Hitler had ”possibly even a h.o.m.os.e.xual streak in him.” The report also stated Der Fuehrer liked to have women urinate on him.The famed psychoa.n.a.lyst Carl Jung speculated that Hitler had ”characteristics of a man...with female instincts.” The famed n.a.z.i hunter Simon Wiesenthal theorized that Hitler's hatred of Jews stemmed from his contracting syphilis from a Jewish prost.i.tute in Vienna before World War I.Other observers noted that most of the women Hitler hung out with looked at least a little like his mom. A 2001 book by German historian Lothar Machtan concluded that Hitler was gay. And a widely reported story is that Soviet medical examiners conducted an autopsy of Hitler's body after the war and found that he had only one t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e.While this is t.i.tillating historical fodder, there isn't a lot of evidence to support it. Hitler's contemporaries recalled more than anything that he was a loner, with no real interest in people as a species or individually. He is believed to have had an affair with a niece named Geli Raubal, who subsequently committed suicide. In 1935, his longtime mistress and very short-time wife, Eva Braun, wrote ”he needs me only for certain purposes,” but she didn't elaborate. (She did say that Hitler liked Valkyrie-proportioned women.)That Hitler had some kind of testicular abnormality, however, was probably true. Of course most any Allied soldier from World War II could have attested to the Fuehrer's lack of b.a.l.l.s.Backstabbing In-Laws Nothing like a brother-in-law to steer you wrong. At least that was U.S. Army sergeant David Greengla.s.s's story. A machinist at the top-secret Los Alamos nuclear laboratory, Greengla.s.s was busted in 1950 for pa.s.sing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.Greengla.s.s promptly ratted on his sister, Ethel Rosenberg, and her husband, Julius. The couple were arrested and charged with espionage. At their trial, Greengla.s.s testified that Julius had recruited him to steal secrets in 1944. He later also testified against his sister.Greengla.s.s got fifteen years in prison, and was released in 1960. The Rosenbergs, however, got the electric chair. Their execution at New York's Sing Sing prison, on June 19, 1953, made them the only American civilians to be executed for espionage during the cold war.”I consider your crime worse than murder,” Judge Irving Kaufman said in handing down the sentence. The judge blamed the Rosenbergs for encouraging Communist aggression in Korea. ”By your betrayal,” he charged, ”you undoubtedly have altered the course of history to the disadvantage of our country.”During the two years between their sentencing and their execution, supporters of the couple hollered long and loud that (1) the Rosenbergs had been railroaded because of the near-hysterical anticommunist fervor in the country at the time; (2) even if they were guilty, the stuff they pa.s.sed on wasn't worth much; and (3) their sentence was way too severe. But those arguments were lost in the uproar of anticommunist hysteria, which was fueled by the demagogic rants of Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy.Subsequent events-including the posthumously published memoirs of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1990 and security doc.u.ments decla.s.sified in 1995-seemed to indicate pretty conclusively that Julius was certainly guilty of helping to operate a Soviet spy ring. But it's also likely that Ethel, while cognizant of her husband's activities, did very little actual espionage. In 1996, in fact, Greengla.s.s admitted in a book that he had lied about his sister's involvement to protect his own wife and children.And with the aid of historical hindsight, the sentence of the Rosenbergs today seems like, well, overkill.BY THE NUMBERS [image]

3.

number of American soldiers in the famous photo depicting the raising of the U.S. flag on Mount Suribachi during the battle for the island of Iwo Jima who were later killed in the battle

6.

number of soldiers in the photo

8.

weight, in tons, of UNIVAC, or the Universal Automatic Computer (the first electronic digital computer designed for commercial use)

18.

cost, in cents, of a gallon of gasoline in the United States in 1933

30.

age of American singer and bandleader Bill Haley when ”Rock Around the Clock” became the first truly international rock 'n' roll hit song in 1955

33.

number of whooping cranes left in the world in 1959 ~260.

number of whooping cranes estimated in the world in 2007

43.

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