Wednesday, February 06, 2013
A couple of picks
Every now and then some forum asks a question like: "If you get to heaven, who would you like to meet and what would you want to ask?"
I hadn't paid much attention to these questions because I don't have much regard for famous people in general; but recently I came up with a couple of picks. Assuming the usual vision of the afterlife as a sort of resort hotel with cooled or heated rooms, I'd want to reserve a few minutes with Henry Ford and an hour with Nixon.
I'd say to Ford: "Sir, you were right about everything in the areas of social and political life, but I'm curious about one thing in mechanics. When you switched from the T to the A, why didn't you continue and possibly modernize the planetary transmission? It was easier to use than the unsynchronized sliding-gear box. Shortly after that, GM grabbed the planetary system and turned it into an automatic. You had a tremendous head start on an automatic but you gave it up.** What happened?"
Nixon is a complete mystery. I can't possibly figure him out no matter how hard I try. I'd start by asking him: "Which side were you on? Which side was LBJ on?" ... and proceed from there.
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**At this point it would be tempting to say "You coulda had a V-8!" ... but Ford did develop a V-8 instead of an automatic; and he also recommended something similar to the V-8 vegetable drink as part of an ideal life. So I'd strongly resist the temptation.
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Much later update: Mystery solved without waiting for Heaven. More recent historians have found that Henry was in fact working on an automatic based on the T's planetary system. His engineers were overruled by Edsel's push toward conformist design.
¶ 11:49 AM 
