Category Archives: SCIENCE

100 YEAR OLD ROLLS ROYC

It was originally bought for $1,000 in 1912 (almost 93,000 in today’s money) but has now gone under the hammer for $4,705,500, making it the most expensive Rolls- Royce ever sold at auction.

The Rolls Royce Silver

Unique: This 100-year-old

Unique: This 100-year-old Silver Ghost Rolls Royce has sold for a world-record price of 5 million after a furious bidding war at Bonhams.

Through the roof: The

Through the roof: The lengthy auction saw two enthusiasts dueling for the pristine car as the bidding went up in increments of 100,000, smashing past the 2 million estimate.

In great

What it lacks in gadgetry, the British-made classic more than compensates for with an extraordinary level of luxury that leaves its modern-day counterparts looking a little unsophisticated.

 Its gleaming interior fittings are made of silver and ivory, while the door panels are embroidered silk, with brocade tassels attached to silk window shades for privacy.

 THE PASSENGER FOOT REST HIDES A FULL PICNIC SET FOR FOUR, A CHINA TEA SERVICE, COMPLETE WITH AN ALCOHOL-FUELED BURNER AND KETTLE TO HEAT THE WATER, AND A SET OF SIX DECANTERS – THREE IN STERLING SILVER AND THREE IN LEATHER-WRAPPED GLASS.

 The sale took place at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in West Sussex on Friday. Auctioneers had expected it to sell for around 2 million and were astonished when the bidding between two rival collectors topped 4 million. James Knight, from Bonhams auctioneers, said: ˜There were three bidders, then one of them dropped out at 2.3 million and we thought it would end there.

Traveling in style: The

Travelling in style: The design chosen by its original owner echoed the luxurious ‘ Pullman ‘ Railway carriages pioneered by American George Pullman.

The lu

The front seat and steering

Luxurious: The elegant passenger compartment (left) complete with 29 beveled glass windows and (right) the stylish steering wheel.

˜But then another bidder entered and the bidders were duelling. It went up in increments of 50,000, and then 100,000, and then back down to 50,000.

˜It went on and on and on and was the longest car sale I have ever witnessed. It was pure theatre. Everyone was very respectful but when the price reached a milestone, like 3 million, there was an intake of breath.

˜The bidders were duelling and when the hammer came down there was spontaneous applause. ˜It was fitting because the car is celebrating her centenary.

The car was commissioned by Rolls Royce connoisseur John M. Stephens, who also bought the first Silver Ghost the luxury car-maker produced in 1906. The body was built by former royal carriage-maker Barker’s of Mayfair , which had previously built coaches for King George III and Queen Victoria.

Standing the test of time:

Standing the test of time: The 7.3-litre, six-cylinder engine is still purring smoothly and is capable of doing around 15 miles to the gallon.

Mark of history: A plaque

Mark of history: A plaque bearing the vehicle’s chassis number of 1907.

Touch of class: The

Touch of class: The original owner employed the services of the best coach-making company, Barker and Co. Ltd, to do the bodywork.

Classic

Classic designs: One of the car’s brake lights. The Rolls- Royce still had its headlights, carriage lights, rear lights and inflatable tyres when it went up for sale.

The car even had an early speedometer – an important addition given that a 20 mph speed limit was introduced in 1912.Unlike most car enthusiasts of his time, Mr. Stephens, from Croydon, South London, asked the makers not to include a glass division window between the driver and the passengers as he wanted to drive it himself rather than rely on a chauffeur.

The car’s distinctive cream and green design echoed the luxury ˜Pullman Railway carriages of the time, and it was known as a Double Pullman Limousine.

But it was nicknamed ˜the Corgi Silver Ghost in the 1960s after the toy-maker based its Silver Ghost toy car on this model.

Mr. Stephens’s car is believed to be the only one of its kind to survive with its full interior and bodywork, as many Rolls Royces from the era were converted into ambulances during the First World War.

The Nut that gave Coca Cola it’s name

The kola nut has always been popular in West Africa – but more than a hundred years ago it came to Europe and the US. BBC Future looks at how it helped create one of the world’s biggest products.

  • By Veronique Greenwood

23 September 2016

You may have heard that Coca-Cola once contained an ingredient capable of sparking particular devotion in consumers: cocaine. The “coca” in the name referred to the extracts of coca leaf that the drink’s originator, Atlanta chemist John Pemberton, mixed with his sugary syrup.

At the time, in the late 19th Century, coca leaf extract mixed with wine was a common tonic, and Pemberton’s sweet brew was a way to get around local laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol. But the other half of the name represents another ingredient, less infamous, perhaps, but also strangely potent: the kola nut.

The pod of the kola nut, if you’ve never had the pleasure of seeing one yourself, is about two inches long, and green. Inside the shell are knobs of fleshy meat like you might find inside a chestnut, but reddish or white in colour. In West Africa, the kola nut’s native habitat, people have long chewed them as stimulants. That’s because the nuts contain caffeine and theobromine, substances that also occur naturally tea, coffee, and chocolate. They also have sugar and kolanin, said to be a heart stimulant.

There’s plenty of pick-me-up in them, and their cultivation in West Africa is hundreds and hundreds of years old. Historian Paul Lovejoy relates that for many years the leafy, spreading trees were planted on graves and as part of puberty rituals. Even though the nuts, which need to stay moist, can be somewhat delicate to transport, traders carried them hundreds of miles throughout the forests and savannas. Their value can be understood by the company they kept: In 1581, the ruler of the Songhai Empire in the western Sahel sent to Timbuktu on the occasion of a mosque’s construction a sumptuous gift of gold, cowrie shells – and kola nuts.

Europeans did not know of them until the 1500s, when Portuguese ships arrived on the coast of what is now Sierra Leone, Lovejoy relates. And while the Portuguese took part in the trade, ferrying nuts down the coast along with other goods, by 1620, when English explorer Richard Jobson made his way up the Gambia, the nuts were still peculiar to his eyes.

(Credit: iStock)

“When we were at the highest part of the river, people brought them abundantly unto us, and did wonder much, we made no more esteeme or care to buy them,” he wrote. But: “Ten is a present for a king.” Given six of the nuts himself, Robson hoped to bring them back to England, but they withered or were eaten by worms before he made it home.

Of course, this ignorance did not last. By the late 19th Century, kola nuts were being shipped by the tonne to Europe and the United States. Many made their way into tonic medicines like Burroughs Wellcome and Co’s “Forced March” tablets, intended as a kind of energy boost. “Containing the combined active principles of Kola Nut and Coca Leaves,” their label trumpeted. “Allays hunger and prolongs the power of endurance.” Users were to take one an hour “when undergoing continued mental strain or physical exertion.”

One extremely popular medicinal drink was Vin Mariani, a French product consisting of coca extract mixed with red wine. It was created by a French chemist, Angelo Mariani, in 1863, and Pope Leo XIII was a devotee, appearing on Vin Mariani posters; Queen Victoria, Thomas Edison, and Arthur Conan Doyle were also said to be fans. But this was just one stimulating tonic among many, in an era when such nerve potions claimed positively glorious effects.

So when Pemberton, the American chemist, created his concoction, it was the latest incarnation in an ongoing trend. And while cocaine eventually fell from grace as a beverage ingredient, kola-extract sodas – also known as “colas” – proliferated, of course.

The first year it was available, Coca-Cola averaged about nine servings a day across all the Atlanta soda fountains where it was sold,according to the company. As it grew more popular, the company sold rights to bottle the soda, so it could travel easily. Today something like 1.9 billion Cokes are purchased daily.

It’s become so iconic that attempts to change its taste in 1985 – sweetening it in a move projected to boost sales –  proved disastrous, with widespread backlash and anger from consumers. “Coca-Cola Classic” returned to store shelves just three months after the “New Coke” was released.

These days, the Coca-Cola recipe is a closely guarded secret. But it’s said to no longer contain kola nut extract, relying instead on artificial imitations to achieve the flavour. Recipes for making kola soda abound, however, and if you want to taste what a real cola might have been like, you can take a crack at it.

Mixed with oil of neroli, orange essence, caramel, and vanilla, among other tinctures, the striking bite of the kola nut – in Jobson’s words, “the taste of him, when he is bitten, is extreme bitter” – may be masked. But its caffeine kick will certainly be present, and you may get a sense of what has attracted people in West Africa, in Atlanta, all over the world, to this distinctive nut.

THE EXPONENTIAL AGE

Welcome to the exponential age!

In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide.

Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went bankrupt.

What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years – and most people don’t see it coming. Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on paper film again?

Yet, digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore’s Law. So, as with all exponential technologies, they were a disappointment for a while, before they became superior and mainstream in only a few short years. This will now happen with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs. Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution.

 

Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.

Uber is just a software tool, they don’t own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world. Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don’t own any properties.

Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected. In the US, young lawyers already don’t get jobs. Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. So, if you study law, stop immediately. There will be 90% less lawyers in the future, only specialists will remain.

Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, 4 time more accurate than human nurses. Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self-driving cars will appear for the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You won’t want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and you can be productive while driving. Our kids will never get a driver’s license and will never own a car. It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% less cars. We can transform former parking space into parks. 1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 100,000 km; with autonomous driving that will drop to one accident in 10 million km. That will save a million lives each year.

Most car companies might become bankrupt. Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels. I spoke to a lot of engineers from Volkswagen and Audi; they are completely terrified of Tesla.

Insurance companies will have massive trouble because without accidents, the insurance will become 100x cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.

Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in more beautiful areas.

Electric cars will become more mainstream after 2020. Cities will be less noisy because all cars will be electric. Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can only now see the impact. Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. The price for solar will drop so much that all coal companies will be out of business by 2025.

With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter. We don’t have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if we can have as much clean water as we want, for very low cost.

Health: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There will be companies who will build a medical device (called the “Tricorder” from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and your breath into it. It then analyses 54 bio-markers that will identify nearly any disease. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world-class, inexpensive medical care.

3-D printing: The price of the cheapest 3-D printer came down from $18,000 to $400 within 10 years. In the same time, they became 100 times faster. All major shoe companies have begun 3-D printing shoes. Spare airplane parts are already 3-D printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large amount of spare parts they used to have in the past.

At the end of this year, new smartphones will have 3-D scanning possibilities. You can then 3-D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home. In China, they have already 3-D printed a complete 6-story office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that’s being produced will be 3-D printed.

Business opportunities: If you think of a niche you want to go in, ask yourself: “in the future, do you think we will have that?” and if the answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner? If it doesn’t work with your phone, forget the idea. And any idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed to failure in the 21st century.

Work: 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enough new jobs in such a small time.

Agriculture: There will be a $100 agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their fields instead of working all days in their fields. Aeroponics will need much less water. Petri-dish-produced veal is now available and will be cheaper than cow-produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces are used for cattle. Imagine if we don’t need that space anymore. There are several startups who will bring insect protein to the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat. It will be labeled as “alternative protein source” (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).

There is an app called “moodies” which can already tell in which mood you are. By 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions if you are lying. Imagine a political debate where it’s being displayed when they are telling the truth and when not.

Bitcoin will become mainstream this year and might even become the default reserve currency.

Longevity: Right now, the average life span increases by 3 months per year. Four years ago, the life span was 79 years, now it’s 80 years. The increase itself is increasing and by 2036, there will be more than one year increase per year. So, we all might live for a long, long time, probably way more than 100.

The world has always had an overpopulation problem within recent history, and this will make it worse.  Technology may grow by leaps and bounds, but human enculturation will not.  We will have the same political greed for power and control, others kicking back, and wars will continue.  The new technology will be evident in the tools of war, and the death rate could be staggering.  Continued overpopulation will make cemeteries unpopular and there will be a push to replace them with something that does not take up space.

Education: The cheapest smartphones are already at $10 in Africa and Asia. By 2020, 70% of all humans will own a smartphone. That means everyone has access to world class education. Every child can use Khan academy for everything a child learns at school in First World countries. They have already released their software in Indonesia and will release it in Arabic, Swahili and Chinese this summer, because they see an enormous potential. They will give the English app for free, so that children in Africa can become fluent in English within half a year.

HOW ABOUT THAT?!