Marcia and Bob engage in a wide-ranging conversation, covering topics such as the human brain’s storage capacity, Olympic medals, dinosaurs, and unexpected properties of materials. Marcia shares her knowledge of dragonflies, while Bob provides insights into the US flag’s evolution, bee honey production, and early American statisticians’ population growth predictions. They also discuss the origins and evolution of the pause symbol, which dates back to ancient Greek poetry.
Outline
Brain capacity, Olympic medals, and prehistoric giants.
- Marcia and Bob Smith discuss the capacity of the human brain, with Marcia estimating 2.5 million gigabytes and 2.5 petabytes.
- The brain’s capacity is compared to storing 3 million hours of TV or 1 million iPods, and the hosts joke about solving problems with all that storage.
- Bob Smith discusses the origins of Olympic medals for arts, including painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and literature, which were awarded at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm.
- The arts medals continued for over 30 years, but were eventually discontinued due to factors such as the 1936 Olympics under Nazi propaganda master Joseph Goebbels and World War Two.
- Marcia and Bob discuss prehistoric giants, including mammoths that survived on Wrangel Island for 6000 years after the Great Pyramids were built.
- Scientists published a study in June 2020 showing that mammoths lived on Wrangel Island until around 1650 BC, over 1000 years after the pyramids were built.
Dinosaur discovery, Kevlar, radiation, and dragonflies.
- Marcia and Bob discuss the current golden age of dinosaur discovery and the worst fight cousins have ever gotten into (World War I).
- Marcia and Bob discuss the accidental discovery of Kevlar, its original purpose, and its various applications, including bulletproof vests and automotive components.
- Marcia and Bob discuss radiation emissions from various sources, including coal and nuclear power plants, and the Sun.
- Marcia and Bob discuss dragonflies, US flag history, and evolution.
Poetry and technology, including the origin of the pause symbol.
- Marcia Smith discusses the world’s first and largest hotel built out of snow and ice, with ice sculptures and cozy ice beds, but no toilets.
- Bob Smith asks how cave people created moving images, with Marcia Smith explaining that they held fires up to their art to create animations.
- Bob and Marcia play a game of “Jackets” and struggle with difficult questions.
- Bob and Marcia discuss the origin of the pause symbol, which originated in ancient Greek poetry as a means of indicating a pause in recitation.
- The symbol, represented by two vertical lines, was widely used in Greek poetry and later adopted in other languages, including Latin and Old English.
Bee facts, early American statistician, and quotes.
- Bob and Marcia discuss bees, including their species, honey production, and visiting flowers.
- Benjamin Franklin accurately predicted North America’s population growth with a 1/7% margin of error.
- Bob and Marcia discuss US population growth, quote Ben Franklin, and share funny anecdotes.
Marcia Smith 0:00
How many gigabytes in storage capacity does your brain have?
Bob Smith 0:04
Originally, the modern Olympics gave medals for things other than sports. What else did they celebrate answers to those and other questions coming up in this episode of the off ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith. Start up that hard drive.
Marcia Smith 0:18
Yeah, don’t get it.
Bob Smith 0:36
Welcome to the off ramp a chance to slow down steer clear of crazy and take a side road to sanity. We do this every week for the Cedarburg Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and we explore many pressing issues of the day, including how many gigabytes your brain has, is it only gigabytes? It’s not terabytes or petabytes or
Marcia Smith 0:57
it is petabytes. I’ve got both I got gigabytes and petabytes for our informed listeners like you.
Bob Smith 1:02
Oh, okay. All right. So I’ll say it’s a lot of petabytes. It’s 2.5
Marcia Smith 1:07
million gigabytes. Wow. And 2.5 petabytes. So a petabyte is 1 million gigabytes. When
Bob Smith 1:16
did they figure this out? And how did they figure this out? Well, funny, you should ask
Marcia Smith 1:20
because I don’t know. But But. But according to Scientific American, which I was reading last night, and I really was, it’s equivalent to the storage space of a million iPods or USB flash drives. That’s because the neurons in the brain work together to store memories, exponentially increasing the brain’s capacity. Does that make sense? Yeah, sure. And I got an example here. If the brain were like a TV digital video recorder, it could store 3 million hours of your favorite TV show, which would take over 300 years to watch.
Bob Smith 1:56
Oh, my goodness. Well, your brain really has a massive capacity. It is yes. But think of all those TV shows. I’m thinking of all the problems you can solve. Oh, sure. In real life, and yeah, they can watch a little TV along the way, apparently what movies,
Marcia Smith 2:11
3 million hours of TV can use. It’s hard to find an hour of TV we want it sounds
Bob Smith 2:17
like an absolutely useless amount of things. And
Marcia Smith 2:21
we can’t remember what we did yesterday,
Bob Smith 2:24
let alone what streaming service to find that show was that on Netflix. Oh, gosh. All right. All right. All right. I have a question on the Olympics. Originally, the modern Olympics gave medals for things other than sports. What other achievements did they celebrate? Now I’m talking about the modern Olympics, beginning with the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. Okay. 12. The Olympics gave medals for sports, but they also gave medals for books. Bigger category than that bigger category for literature for the arts, or the arts. Yes. Olympic competitions originally included painting, sculpture, architecture, music and literature. I mean, the modern Olympics I’m not talking the ancient Olympics. Yeah, talking about from 19 No idea I didn’t either. In 1912, the founder and leader of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Cooper teen said From now on, they will be part of each Olympiad on a par with athletic competitions, and 1000s of artists, some of them famous submitted works. More than 150 Olympic arts medals were awarded in 1912. More than 130 the same metals the athletes received but for the arts, Olympic medals for the arts continued for more than 30 years. And at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. 400,000 people visited the month long exhibition of entries today, 1000s of gold, silver and bronze medals are awarded, but all for sports, none for the arts. So what changed things? Well, one reason was the 1936 Olympics, the infamous 1936 where the competition fell under the direction of Joseph gurbles. The Nazi propaganda master still at all, that’s why oh man, German entries dominated the metal willings that year and that reduced interest. And then World War Two cancelled the next two Olympics set for 1940 and
Marcia Smith 4:20
44. So they resumed and just said, let’s go with the sports when they did the
Bob Smith 4:26
Olympics in 1948. The arts were so diluted that Avery Brundage, the president of the American Olympic Committee said that sense art competition contestants are practically all professionals. Maybe we shouldn’t be giving Olympic medals to them since the athletes were all amateur at the time. Well, that makes sense. So Olympic medals for painting, sculpture, architecture, music and literature went by the wayside, never to be awarded. Again, that comes from an article published recently in the New York Times.
Marcia Smith 4:55
Okay, here’s a quickie. What is the only letter of the alphabet with Three syllables,
Bob Smith 5:01
the only letter of the alphabet with three syllable could see your little brain
Marcia Smith 5:05
clicking through them, right. Why
Bob Smith 5:06
is it my little brain is my big brain grows paddock petabytes?
Marcia Smith 5:09
Yeah, let’s go Bob. Three syllables,
Bob Smith 5:15
we’re talking letters letters, O W, Ws. Okay, although you Yes,
Marcia Smith 5:21
only one. Wow. Okay, that’s it. That’s the alpha and the omega of that question. I was that
Bob Smith 5:26
ironic it’s three syllables, but it’s double you it’s describing to us together. So it’s kind of ironic and kind of strange.
Marcia Smith 5:36
Totally useless information. I found it fascinating. All right,
Bob Smith 5:40
I have an interesting question here. What prehistoric giants were still hunting 1000 years after the great pyramids were built.
Marcia Smith 5:50
Really? Yes. Oh, but prehistoric giants. These are. Dinosaurs were like a dinosaurs. But elephants, those ones with the
Bob Smith 5:59
mean the woolly mammoth. Yes, that’s it. Well, thank you. This is a new study that was published in June of 2024. Woolly mammoths long thought to be extinct gone extinct 10,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age. Their numbers declined due to the warming climate and then they began to be hunted by humans. But a study has shown that a small number of mammoths survive for 6000 years in isolation on Wrangel Island. That’s an unglaciated island about the size of Yellowstone National Park in the Arctic Ocean the Arctic Oh yeah, northeast of Russia and west of Alaska. Scientists study DNA from Mammoth bones, teeth and tusks from the island and the mainland. And they believe that this Wrangel Island mammoth colony started when an 87 mile land bridge to the mainland was cut off by melting ice and rising sea levels 10,000 years ago, probably as few as eight mammoths were left on that island. Hmm, I wonder how they died. While they survived another 6000 years for more than 200 generations. Eventually there were 200 to 300 mammoth left on that island. They’re thought to have survived until about what year and the idea cash
Marcia Smith 7:14
now 1650 BC, BC.
Bob Smith 7:19
That sounds like a long time ago. But that means that mammoths were alive on Wrangel island during the Bronze Age and they were still living there more than 1000 years after the Egyptians built the pyramids.
Marcia Smith 7:29
Can you imagine being on a boat and getting lost here in Egyptian and go? What?
Bob Smith 7:35
Exactly imagine that well, the mammoths living on an island off Siberia while the Egyptians were building the pyramids in Africa. Scientists published their peer reviewed study in the journal Cell on June 27 2020. For Wrangel islands, an amazing place today it’s got a diverse wildlife population, the world’s largest polar bear breeding grounds are there. And then they also have the world’s largest population of Pacific walruses, plus snow geese, Snowy Owl seals, Arctic wolves, Arctic Fox, and well, lemmings.
Marcia Smith 8:06
Well, I can bounce off that question of yours, Bob. When was it considered the golden age of dinosaur discovery?
Bob Smith 8:13
That was the 19th century wasn’t it? Late 19th century? No.
Marcia Smith 8:17
When was it now?
Bob Smith 8:18
Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, cuz yeah, it’s being discovered all the time. Yeah.
Marcia Smith 8:22
Every year, an estimated 50 New Dainese dinosaurs. dinosaur species are discovered. That’s basically a new dinosaur every week. And I was just getting reading the other day, you know, they found a nother one in Montana, New Mexico this in 2024. Well, most of that is in China. Oh, 50% Actually, wow. Because they only recently opened up two paleontological pursuits.
Bob Smith 8:48
Yeah, most of them were discovered in the United States up to this point, but they were all over the world. It’s interesting. Yeah.
Marcia Smith 8:53
So it is currently the golden age of dinosaur discovery. Well,
Bob Smith 8:58
that’s pretty cool. It is. I didn’t know that. All right, more recent history. What’s the worst fight cousins have ever gotten into Marcia?
Marcia Smith 9:05
Cousins? Well, how would we know that movie? You said what you call it’s on the watch Commons? It’s illogical.
Bob Smith 9:10
It’s illogical it is. No. No, it’s not that you’re thinking of the
Marcia Smith 9:16
coils in the McCoys. No. This
Bob Smith 9:19
is a big big fight big Oh, this was the worst fight cousins ever got into tech
Marcia Smith 9:24
in World War One or Santa exactly right. Yeah. World
Bob Smith 9:28
War One was the worst fight cousins ever gotten into because they were the heads of the rival nations during the World War. King George is the fifth of England and Kaiser Wilhelm the second of Germany were first cousins, both grandchildren of Queen Victoria. That was the deadliest fight cousins have ever gotten into it’s a conflict in which neither royal perished but more than 8 million other people did, of course, their soldiers Yeah. And the soldiers of other nations including the United States died.
Marcia Smith 9:56
Ain’t war grand. Yeah. Okay, bye. Um, we’ve talked about Kevlar before. But you know what it was originally developed for?
Bob Smith 10:06
Well, let’s see was it for tires and things like that?
Marcia Smith 10:10
It was exactly something like that. In the 1960s, chemist Stephanie Kwolek was working in Wilmington, Delaware in the textile division at DuPont. And there was a looming gas shortage at the time. And DuPont was searching for a synthetic material that could make tires lighter and stronger, replacing some of their steel and improving overall efficiencies. But one day Kwolek notice that a particular batch of dissolved polyimides formed into a cloudy, runny consistency, rather than the usual clear syrup like concoction. Her colleagues told her to toss it out. And she said, No. And she discovered that it could be spun to create fibers of an unusual stiffness and Kevlar was born. And it could be bulletproof to Oh, yeah, DuPont introduced the Wonder fiber in 1971. Police immediately saw possibility for this. And the material began immediately undergoing ballistic tests. By one estimate, it has saved at least 3000 police officers from bullet wounds in the years since that’s amazing.
Bob Smith 11:17
And this is all of course, an accident. Yes, despite its
Marcia Smith 11:20
myriad applications, Kevlar still delivers on its original purpose as an automotive component, whether it’s baked into engine belts, brake pads, or yes, even tires. So there you
Bob Smith 11:31
go. And of course, people use it for fabric for bags and things like that, too. Yeah.
Marcia Smith 11:35
And, you know, Kevlar is strong, but it doesn’t outdo nature. In 2019, scientists discovered that Darwin’s Bark Spider in Madagascar produces silk with a tensile strength 10 times stronger than Kevlar. Wow, that’s amazing, making it one of the world’s toughest material,
Bob Smith 11:53
a spider. And it’s silk is that straw? That’s
Marcia Smith 11:57
hard to fathom, well, 10 times stronger than Kevlar. That’s pretty strong and how much prettier? A little silk blouse would be on lady police officers. Okay,
Bob Smith 12:08
all right, I’ve got something on energy. I thought you might find interesting what energy production emits more radiation than a nuclear power plant. It emits more radiation than a nuclear power plant.
Marcia Smith 12:21
Geez. I don’t know about coal, coal. Coal
Bob Smith 12:25
contains trace amounts of uranium and thorium that are added to the atmosphere whenever the coal is burned. How much radiation electric power plants that burn coal emit more radiation than a nuclear power plant?
Marcia Smith 12:37
Who knew Oh, no, not me.
Bob Smith 12:39
But before you get too worked up, consider this. Both coal burning power plants and nuclear power plants emit considerably less radiation than another source that touches you the Sun. The Sun exposes the average person to more radiation than a coal burning electric power plant or a nuclear power plant, which goes to show that it’s important to have all the facts so you can keep things in perspective. Speaking of that time for
Marcia Smith 13:03
a break, get perspective on life.
Bob Smith 13:07
That’s right. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith. We’ll be back in just a moment. We’re back. We’re back. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith. We do this each week for the Cedarburg Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin. It goes out over their CPL radio station every Monday night. And then after that on podcast platforms, it’s heard all over the world
Marcia Smith 13:29
all over the world. Guess what? What? I have a question from a listener. John L drew in a fox point Wisconsin. Okay, he sent me this question. What is considered nature’s most successful predator? In other words, who has the best kill rate out there and Mother Nature?
Bob Smith 13:47
I think it’s a cat isn’t a cat? No, no, it’s not human beings. Is it? No. Does it crawl?
Marcia Smith 13:54
It doesn’t crawl. Okay. It might it might walk a little. It flies.
Bob Smith 13:59
Animal vegetable animal. Okay. You know, there are plants that are predators. Yes.
Marcia Smith 14:03
You give up? Yes, they do. All right. dragon flies. Oh, really? Yep, they are nature’s most efficient predators, capturing 95% of their intended prey. Wow. By comparison, sharks capture only 50% and lions 25%. Wow. Yeah, who knew I’d have a better rate than the secret to their success lies in the many unique adaptations accumulated through their evolution, including aspects of their eyesight, and their flight patterns. They are carnivorous, and eat other insects, fish, tadpoles, and as adults, they chomped down on mosquitoes. midges, flies, bees and moths. Wow. And we do a lot of good then okay. Yeah, yeah. Especially the mosquitoes and well,
Bob Smith 14:48
that’s great. So that’s from John Drew and Lister in Fox Point, Wisconsin. Yeah, thank you, John. been studying dragon flies. I find them fascinating. I love when they come right up to you and then they’re moving around and before you know it They’re past you, you know, they’re fast. Marcia history question, why did the US flag once have 15? Stripes?
Marcia Smith 15:08
Did you know that? No. 15 is Dr. Stripes? Well, bets may be in the beginning as we kept adding states, they went with 15. But then they foresaw more states coming their way. And they said, let’s go back and keep it at the original 13. That’s
Bob Smith 15:24
exactly right. It was an interim solution as the US design was evolving. Marsha is right. Yeah, turns out in 1795, when the states of Vermont and Kentucky joined the Union to stripes, as well as two stars were added to the US flag. So we had a field of 15 stars and 15 Stripes. And that was the way it was for 13 years, we had flagged with 15 Stripes and 15 stars. But two decades later, in 1818, five new states join the union and your right officials immediately saw adding five stripes and five stars added a lot of complexity. This is going to look like so that’s when Congress decided on the current flag design. From that point on the nation would only add new stars. When new states join the Union. It stripped away the two extra stripes added in 1795 and permanently settled on 13 Stripes representing what the original 13 states and the 13 original colonies that formed the United States. Okay, fine. You did the right thing. It’s exactly right. It was kind of an interim solution.
Marcia Smith 16:31
Yes. Okay. Bomb name. This Swedish hotel that is the first of its kind and is deconstructed and reconstructed without modern conveniences every season in Sweden, I don’t think it’s true now. They take this down and put it up every year and it has no modern conveniences. You’re not going to have a toilet in this place. Well, I can’t wait to go yeah, they I forgot to what would I call it a bad Hotel. I’d call it the ice hotel winter, the world’s first and largest hotel built out of snow and ice that melts away every spring. These December through April rooms come complete with ice sculptures and cozy ice beds covered with rain gears. But no toilets. You got to book in advance. They were sold out on Expedia. I looked and they were for 2025 That’s amazing. They ran over 150 A night there’s a main lodge you can go to for you know big things like going to the bathroom eating something but your room is basically ice sculptures and a bed
Bob Smith 17:34
and ice cold. Yeah, I don’t know if I want that. Marcia. Just saying
Marcia Smith 17:39
ice hotel winter. There were several now all over the world. But they were the first
Bob Smith 17:44
that’s kind of a b&b, a new type of b&b? Yeah. Okay, Marsha, how did cave people create moving images?
Marcia Smith 17:52
How to cave people cave? like kids? Do you put different images and these, like they didn’t have papers? So how would they flip through the images? Where they would run past the images on the cave walls, and that would appear to be moving? Well, that would be
Bob Smith 18:07
moving. Yes. But they would be moving. Yeah. It’s sort of like that. britannica.com reports that based on thermal cracking that they have observed on carved stones. Anthropologists believed prehistoric cave people held fires up to their art. So the flickering light would animate the drawings in the cave. Say again they would do Why would hold fires Yeah, fires up to their art so that the flickering light. That’s very cool, because they found cracks in certain cave walls. He thought this must be the reason for this.
Marcia Smith 18:39
I’ll be darned. Yeah. Well see. That’s a long night in a cave. And
Bob Smith 18:44
a long night in an ice hotel. I don’t know where they’d rather be.
Marcia Smith 18:48
We haven’t evolved that.
Bob Smith 18:49
Oh my goodness. Time. 408 K. A K
Marcia Smith 18:53
A current favorite card game. Okay, Bob. So known as right? Yep. So known as All right. Today’s category is jackets. For instance, if I said Harley Davidson what kind of jacket am I talking about? Leather Jackets. Black leather jackets? No. What? Harley Davidson motorcycle Jackson. Oh, motorcycle Jack. I don’t know. That was the easiest one. Oh, dear. Okay, what kind of jacket? Okay, here’s the hint. Third Meal.
Bob Smith 19:22
The third meal the dinner Jack? That’s correct. Okay,
Marcia Smith 19:25
how about not gay? Not gay.
Bob Smith 19:28
Not gay. Straight? Yeah. Okay. All right. All right. Okay,
Marcia Smith 19:32
explosive dropper. What kind
Bob Smith 19:35
of dropper Uh huh. A bomber jacket.
Marcia Smith 19:38
Okay, this one is my favorite gas passer
Bob Smith 19:44
tear gas passer jacket. What would that be? I can’t get back I’m thinking about it. I don’t know if I like to think about that. The gas password. I don’t know what is it? windbreaker
Marcia Smith 19:56
that good? Okay, I don’t know if you’ll get this Portland Trail. player
Bob Smith 20:00
the Blazers. blazer jacket. Yeah. And
Marcia Smith 20:03
vitality. My talent meaning that debt what kind of jacket? Is
Bob Smith 20:07
it a life jacket? That’s
Marcia Smith 20:09
it all right.
Bob Smith 20:10
Well I didn’t do to bail you did not ask for all easier than the motorcycle in the Harley Davidson Oh, okay, good. All right. All right, Marcia, you’ve seen the pause symbol the two parallel lines on your remote control. Ah, how far back does that symbol that pause symbol? Go? And what did it have to do with poetry?
Marcia Smith 20:31
We just watched something on poetry the other night. I have no idea. Okay, now
Bob Smith 20:36
you hear it all the time people talk about pressing pause or hitting the pause button
Marcia Smith 20:40
right take a pause. It’s not too little kiddie pause on a no IFTA USC
Bob Smith 20:45
that expression pressing pause didn’t exist until 1955. That’s when a pause button first showed up on a reel to reel tape recorder. Oh really? Okay, that makes sense made by a company called VM tape automatic machine that sold for a whopping $179 in 1955. That’s the equivalent of $2,056 today, before that machines only had a start and stop. So in the words of one observer, the idea that you’re playing could stop and start on a dime was pretty cool. But the symbol when did the pause symbol the two vertical lines first appear in electronics on an Ampex tape recorder they introduced the pause symbol as part of an effort to globalize their products because they thought this is an international symbol of pause. Where does it come from the
Marcia Smith 21:29
right half poet poetry Oh,
Bob Smith 21:33
it goes all the way back to ancient Greek poetry. Oh,
Marcia Smith 21:36
when you were reciting your poem, to make them pause, they would put that mark
Bob Smith 21:42
at the end of a line of verse it’s called a says Euro meaning to cut it’s represented by a pair of twin slashes, forward slashes or vertical slashes. And the says euro was widely used in Greek poetry you can find too in the opening lines of the Elliot they were also used in Latin where the PA symbol can be seen in early manuscripts of Virgil’s Enid or in Old English. The says euro was represented in a pronounced pause in what otherwise might be a droning, monotonous line like when I’m reading right now I say
Marcia Smith 22:13
okay, let’s time to hit pause on that one. Okay, so that’s where
Bob Smith 22:16
the pause symbol came from. It came from poetry. Well, I’ll be done. So next time you press pause on your you know, remote control think of poetry. Sorry, paws got
Marcia Smith 22:24
it bomb. All right. According to a Reader’s Digest. They had 13 things you should know about bees. Okay, there are 20,000 different species of bees. Did you know that? That’s not my favorite subject? He’s allergic 20,000 different species. Out of those 20,000 How many produce honey, honey, honey,
Bob Smith 22:47
honey. How many of the 20,000 species I would think all of them would produce honey, but that’s not true. That’s not true. Okay. Is it 10 538? Yeah, only eight species of bees produce honey. I didn’t know that.
Marcia Smith 23:05
Yes, and I believe we talked about this before, but during its entire lifetime, one B, one B will create only 112 of a teaspoon of honey. No kidding. Maybe we didn’t talk about it before. Wow. So your 12 ounce jar Bob equates to the life’s work of 864 Bees. I hope you’re happy. How is that possible to produce one pound of honey a bee colony needs to visit about 2 million flowers. Wow, hold doesn’t seem pass and
Bob Smith 23:37
what a lot of work that is for those bees. I feel bad now.
Marcia Smith 23:42
Buying that honey and you let it spill out into the sticky or not. Okay. But that’s that’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?
Bob Smith 23:49
Gosh, all right. You know, we were talking about mammals recently. And I want to know what is the American mammal? What’s the official mammal of the United States? We discussed this animal a few episodes ago on the off ramp the rather big been around for a long time. They’re the official mammal of the United States.
Marcia Smith 24:09
I didn’t know we had one. But okay, what is the official mammal of
Bob Smith 24:13
the United States? Buffalo? That’s right. The Bison the American bison or Buffalo. It was named the national mammal of the United States in May of 2016. I’m
Marcia Smith 24:23
doing very well today. What are naming naming I deserve something.
Bob Smith 24:27
All right. I’ll give you one more here. Okay. What early American was a great statistician he predicted the nation’s population growth with incredible accuracy. He was one of the founding fathers. He was a scientist. Why
Unknown Speaker 24:43
was every
Bob Smith 24:44
clue on earth that you
Marcia Smith 24:46
need Okay, help me I wasn’t listless enough.
Bob Smith 24:48
Now. What early American was a great statistician who predicted the nation’s population growth with incredible accuracy.
Marcia Smith 24:57
Really? Was it well who was with Numbers Hamilton. No. I don’t know who all of the other
Bob Smith 25:05
signers of the Declaration of Independence were in there pretty much 30s or below 40s. He was 70
Marcia Smith 25:11
he Ben Franklin Benjamin Franklin,
Bob Smith 25:13
back in 1749. While conducting a census of Philadelphia, he began collecting population numbers for Boston, New Jersey and Massachusetts. And what he discovered was startling the colonial population was doubling once every 25 years. And he thought if that continued, he predicted within a century, North America would contain more Englishmen than Britain. And guess what? He was right. He was right. And 100 years later, the 1890 census showed the population was 16 times greater, it had doubled every 25 years, Franklin’s prediction was off by less than 1/7 of a percent. Not only that, by 1855 North Americans colonists did outnumber Britain’s a century after Franklin predicted they would in 1749. So from its independence in 1776, to 1900, the US grew from between three and 4 million people to 77 million people. And here’s a comparison. In that same period, the population of France had only grown from 30 million to 40 million within a century, ours went from 4 million to 77 million within a century. That
Marcia Smith 26:21
Oh, Ben Franklin, I’m going to have a nice quote from him. Oh, okay. Here’s my Ben Franklin. Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected, are as outraged as those who are. Well, that’s true, isn’t it? Yes. Very true. Everybody doesn’t see a problem with anything till it happens to them. Okay. And here’s good advice from man Bancroft. The best way to get most husbands to do something is to suggest that perhaps they’re too old to do it.
Bob Smith 26:52
Thanks a lot. I thought it was to suggest that maybe the next door neighbor could do it, because I’ve heard you do that. And my son Ben says his wife has said that to him, too. Maybe we could get Bill to do this. I’m not gonna let Bill do this for us. That’s funny. Pride and all that stuff. So
Marcia Smith 27:07
here’s what I chose not to use, but I’m gonna use it anyway. Here we go from Sex in the City. Okay. Sounds like Carrie Bradshaw doing this quote. It says The thing is, after a while, you just want to be with the one that makes you laugh. That’s cool. Isn’t that nice?
Bob Smith 27:24
Nothing wrong with that. No,
Marcia Smith 27:25
it’s from Sex and the City. My show is laughing the city.
Bob Smith 27:29
Okay. Well, hopefully you’ve enjoyed our laugh in the city or the country or wherever you are, and will join us again next time when we return with more fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia. I’m Bob Smith.
Marcia Smith 27:41
I’m Marcia Smith. You’ve been listening to
Bob Smith 27:43
the off ramp. The off ramp this produced in association with CPL radio online and the Cedarbrook. Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin, visit us on the web at the off ramp dot show.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
