Win Some, Lose Some
No idea is infallible.
The following are a few examples of scientific notions which can be found in a Funk & Wagnall's 1982 yearbook that did not quite achieve their expectations during the past year.
E. Alan Cameron of Pennsylvania State University had been working on a potent chemical which would act as a sex attractant to male gypsy moths. The idea was to lure them into traps where they could be disposed of. The chemical appeared to work very well, but turned out to be much more persistent and less biodegradable than was intended. Even after a year since his last exposure to the substance, Cameron still finds himself a very desirable object to male gypsy moths, who perform massive assaults on his person and on his office windows while he is working.
Roy Lundgren of Fort Lauderdale entered an International Inventors Exposition in New York. His invention was a springy carpet that generated energy by operating a series of rocker arms concealed beneath the carpet. When someone walked over, enough electricity was generated to operate a small fan mounted on Lundgren's exhibit table. Apparently, the less-than-solid footing did not impress the judges. He did not win first prize.
John Baudouine, a fireman in Bullhead City, Arizona, maintained a local weather station for the National Weather Service. Because the thermometer was located near sprinkler heads on the front lawn of the fire station, Baudouine thought it a good idea to move it around to the back of the station in a dry lot. After he did, there were eight days in August when Bullhead City registered the highest official temperatures in the United States--113° to 115°F. Local businessmen were highly displeased, complaining that the new temperature readings were driving away business.
Adrian Wells of Wilton, Maine, considered himself a professional in a field that few of us willingly practice--growing dandelions. Wells raised dandelions on a three-acre plot and sold them to restaurants who used them in salads, cooked them as vegetables, and fermented them to make dandelion wine. Even though dandelions flourished in his lawn and among his flowers, they dwindled and died on his dandelion farm. "What I can't understand," Wells laments, "is how these things grow so well where you don't want them to, but when you water and feed and weed them they give up and die."
Perhaps slightly more successful is a study financed by a half million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where farm engineers at the University of Missouri are employing 600 pigs to set in motion their on-the-farm energy system. Their goal is to lower energy costs by harnessing the waste products of the pigs and the corn that feeds them. First, a still produces alcohol from the corn, and the alcohol is used to fuel field equipment. Then the corn mash from the still is fed to the pigs, which produce manure. The manure is transformed into methane gas that lights and cools the pigs' barn and runs the still. Rube Goldberg would have loved it--the pigs certainly do. We haven't yet learned the results.
