ENIAC and the piston engine

ENIAC was the state of the art computer during the late 1940s to mid 1950s. It was built with vacuum tubes, diodes, resistors and other electrical components. To quote Wikipedia

ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. It weighed 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 8.5 feet by 3 feet by 80 feet (2.6 m by 0.9 m by 26 m), took up 680 square feet (63 m²), and consumed 150 kW of power.

Impressive, huh? The ENIAC could also perform 5000 simple addition or subtraction operations per second, with capacity to work much faster if strung to operate in parallel. It could also do 385 multiplications per second. I really suggest reading the Wikipedia entry for this. The details are fascinating. However, I wonder how many people would want to have the ENIAC as their personal computer. It's not even that old, just from the 1950s. I am sure vacuum tubes and diodes have become better these days, and a modern ENIAC could certainly outperform the original one by a huge factor.

Would you buy an ENIAC?

Consider this in contrast though: the Internal Combustion Engine was first conceived of in 1206 AD. That's 9 years before the Magna Carta was written. There have been various people who have made designs of it, till Nikolaus Otto came up with the 4-stroke engine in 1876. Then Karl Benz made the first automobile using a variant of the 4-stroke engine in 1879.

1879. That's 71 years before 1950. And we still drive 4-stroke engine automobiles. And we celebrate Benz (as we rightfully should) in the Mercedes-Benz. But we dismiss the Prius, which uses a hybrid system by combining an electrical motor and a 4-stroke engine, as a hype and as a political statement. The Prius actually uses the Atkinson cycle which was invented in 1882. So whichever way you look at it, the Prius uses more modern technology than any other car out there on the road. But people want the pricier BMWs, Ferraris, Mustangs and what not.

Why not buy a new ENIAC in a newly built concrete housing, with fresh paint, with voice operated climate control, with retina scan entry systems? Isn't that what the new cars offer? An engine technology nearly 130 years old with marginal, if any, modifications, packaged in shiny bodies with fancy interior gadgets.

Fortunately, the ENIAC now exists in the museum and we now use microprocessor powered PCs and Macs. Hopefully the Prius will send the 4-stroke Otto cycle engine to the museum as well. With a little help from the rising price of gasoline.

Priora!

What's the plural for Mustang? Mustangs!
What's the plural for Hummer? Hummers!
What's the plural for Corolla? Corollas!
But what's the plural for Prius? Prius.

At least that's what Toyota says. But they don't mind if customers use whatever their hearts desire. What does Prius mean? It is a Latin term that means before, ahead, prior. So put in context Prius is that which goes before. Wikipedia says the true plural of Prius is Priora. Here is the section. If you know Latin, I suppose it's really easy to understand.

I once walked into a Lexus dealership. They were holding a raffle (or some kind of draw) to give away a brand new Lexus sedan. As we walked up, the receptionist called in a sales person to take care of us. We told him we weren't looking to buy a Lexus, but we wanted to participate in the raffle nevertheless. In our conversation we had mentioned the Prius. And surprisingly the salesman went into a rant about how the Prius causes more damage to the environment than it saves. His argument, and I had seen this before, was that the mining of nickel for the battery, shipping it to Japan, making the battery, shipping the car back to the USA and then in time disposing the battery causes more harm to the environment than a Hummer does. A CNW Marketing analysis named "Dust to Dust" made these same claims. I wonder if that's where he got his talking points from. Of course he didn't mention the tests conducted at MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Argonne National Laboratories that completely shredded the "Dust to Dust" report. Again, here is the section from Wikipedia.

Another time, when we rented a Prius for a road trip, the Hertz mechanic who was around when we picked out the car, said that hybrids are no good at all. They are weak and inefficient and what the world needs is a better gas engine. He also said global warming was sham, scam and nonsense. According to this rental car company mechanic, the Prius is just a political show-off. I was extremely polite when I reminded him that he was neither an engineer, nor a physicist, nor a climatologist and that his opinion, as entitled to it as he may be, is best stored in a dark damp place only he is familiar with.

I called Toyota once to ask them about these claims. They actually took the time to explain the fallacy of the naysayers' arguments.

Priora: the ones that go before. And truly they do. They herald a new era. They blaze a trail for other cars to follow. And indeed, following the rest are.

Prius Pride!

People who own Harley-Davidson motorcycles are loyal. Very loyal. It is said that a pre-owned HD motorbike is more expensive than a new one. Why? Because you have to persuade the owner to sell it. And that often takes quite a bit more cash than the price of a new one. Well, all that is fairly well known and I contributed nothing new to the world... yet.

Consider now, the Prius. This is not a Harley. In fact if anything it is the polar opposite of a Harley. Well, actually a Prius is the polar opposite of a Hummer, but you know, people who drive Hummers could just as well own Harleys or vice-versa: so it's not that different. The Prius commands quite some loyalty from their owners. I have not seen a single owner of a Prius who does not say, "I love my Prius!"

Think about it. How often do you hear that? How often do you hear a Chevy Blazer driver brag about their SUV saying, "I love my Blazer!" My friend who has a Blazer doesn't brag too often. Or even people who own their M3 or M5 (yeah, BMW) don't have such a strong rapport with their cars. They probably like driving their vehicles, but they don't think of it as an extension of themselves. It's almost as if the Prius was a pet. Like a dog, or horse. You love your dog. You love your Prius. You love to drive your Porsche (if you have one). But you love your Prius. I think that's pretty amazing. And of course your Prius loves you back as well. It saves you from spending your hard earned money to buy overpriced liquefied dinosaurs. And it keeps the air you breathe clean.

May be soon there will be a proverb: Love me, love my Prius.