by Red Green
So the name Bloody Caesar is just a fun, catchy name that Canadians like, and when they drink it they’re not thinking about being stabbed to death by their best friends and left to die on the steps of the bar.
CANADA DRY GINGER ALE
John J. McLaughlin
John J. McLaughlin was born on March 3, 1865, in Enniskillen, Ontario. His father was Robert McLaughlin, who started the car company that eventually turned into General Motors of Canada. My dad used to talk about a McLaughlin Buick. It was either the same McLaughlin or an unbelievable coincidence. So I guess John was thinking, “Anybody can make a car, but very few can come up with a half-decent soft drink.”
John graduated from the Ontario College of Pharmacy in 1885. He travelled around Europe, where he got his first taste of the old-style golden ginger beer they drank over there. He must have gotten pretty excited about it, because when McLaughlin returned to Toronto in 1890, he gave up the pharmacy business and opened a soda-bottling plant, making his version of what he’d been drinking in the motherland. I guess the Europeans couldn’t stop him or didn’t bother trying. Maybe they weren’t aware that Canada was a country.
In 1904, McLaughlin’s company came out with the first-ever “dry” ginger ale, under the name Canada Dry. It caught on right away. They were selling way more “dry” than “golden.” Pretty soon it was for sale across the country and beyond. When they were looking for a slogan, I would have suggested “Ginger ale is like your pants—better dry.” But instead they went with “The Champagne of Ginger Ales,” and it continues to this day to be the most popular ginger ale in North America.
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Yet another brilliant Canadian who understood the value of not starting from scratch. Way smarter to find a good product and improve it than to try to come up with a new idea. A good idea is always better than a new idea, except when they’re both, which doesn’t happen all that often.
So J.J. found a popular drink, ginger beer, and decided that if he could jimmy the formula enough to get a patent, without abandoning the basic brand, he’d have a winner. I’m sure the fact that he was a chemist didn’t hurt.
As far as I can tell, he did two things right. First, he figured that ginger beer could afford to be a lot less sweet, and second that the word dry is the key, because it is a nice word for “sour” and it’s used when you’re talking about wine. So instead of calling his new drink Canada Sour, he called it Canada Dry, which was smart, but adding the tagline “The Champagne of Ginger Ales” was inspired.
Suddenly, anybody with $1.29 could buy a bottle of champagne at their local 7-Eleven. Let’s pop the bubbly and give Mr. McLaughlin a toast. A dry toast.
It’s somewhat interesting that people have always had a thing for beverages. Wine in the Bible, mead in the Middle Ages, sarsaparilla in the Old West, and Vernor’s Ginger Ale for about two weeks in the early ’60s. For hundreds of years, doctors have told us we need to drink more water, but we don’t want to. That’s because many of us lived in Brantford. Water is too bland.
I think most people prefer eating to drinking, so when they drink, they want it to feel like eating. There needs to be some substance and flavour and physical sensation. Drinking water is not like eating, it’s like breathing liquid air. There’s no kick, there’s no feeling, there’s no fun.
Booze has all of those in spades. But you don’t want to be drinking alcohol all the time. Especially if you’re a motorcycle cop. Coffee has the kick, but no feeling and no fun. Fruit juice has the feeling and the fun, but no kick. Then along came the miracle of carbonation. The soft drink. Kick, feeling and fun. So many of us have great teenage memories of sitting in the soda shop, chugging a large Coke and letting out a belch that shook the light fixtures and made everybody’s eyes water. That’s living, baby.
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Local Lodge member Floyd Demsler admired McLaughlin and spent most of his life—and all of his wife’s money—trying to emulate his success. Floyd was fascinated with bubbles, to the point that it eventually became his nickname. Even as a boy he would often slip away to the bathroom with a box of baking soda and a quart of vinegar. He would count and measure the bubbles and try to find a connection between the chemicals involved.
He became an expert on the bubbles in Canada Dry and some other carbonated beverages, although he never figured out where the bubbles in the bathtub were coming from. But he had his suspicions. When Floyd saw the success of Canada Dry, he was determined to make a similar beverage. Since ginger was a root plant, Floyd started with carrots and gradually worked his way through the family of underground spices and legumes. His Parsnip Soda and Pumpkin Pop were immediate failures, but when he came out with his Turnip Dry Ale, the public turned to violence. A gang of hoodlums broke the windows of his lab with bottles of his own Cauliflower Cola and the even less popular Diet Cauliflower Cola. They smashed all of Floyd’s equipment and then beat him about the upper arms with a medium-sized eggplant. Floyd survived the attack but abandoned his dream of cornering the vegetable-based soft drink industry.
Floyd “Bubbles” Demsler, Carbonation SpecialistCredit 10
Instead he turned his hand to making alcoholic drinks. His Brussels Sprout Lager and Yam Pale Ale never really caught on, but people say his Green Pea Beer sure lived up to its name.
To see how we made our beer at the Lodge, go to the Book of Inventions page at redgreen.com and click on “Beer.”
CANADARM
DSMA Atcon
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In 1969, NASA found out about a robot being made by a Canadian company called DSMA Atcon. They were using the robot to load fuel into CANDU nuclear reactors. It was hard to find workers willing to pick up handfuls of plutonium and toss ’em into a hopper. Especially workers who were hoping to have a family. Or only one head.
NASA was impressed and invited Canada to get involved with its space shuttle program. To be exact, NASA was looking for some help with the Shuttle Remote Manipulator System. It took a few years of work, but eventually Spar Aerospace, along with subcontractors Dynacon of Toronto and CAE Electronics of Montreal, made the Canadarm and delivered it to NASA in 1981.
If they had built two, they could have used each of them to load the other onto the train. And then perform the greatest high five ever recorded. But no.
People—mostly men—have always liked the idea of getting someone else to do the work. If you can’t find a friend or can’t afford a valet or can’t afford a friend, the next best thing is a robot. If you can’t afford a robot, the next best thing is part of a robot. In this case, an arm. Even the cavemen knew the value of a robot arm. In their case, it was a club, but isn’t it a lot smarter to prod a sabretooth tiger with a club than with your formerly five-fingered hand?
Sure, the Canadarm is pretty fancy, but it owes a lot of its basics to the shepherd’s crook and the mariner’s boat hook. Take a long, hard look at the picture on this page and tell me that doesn’t look like a high-end golf ball retriever. Although if your golf ball ends up in space, it may be time to take up a different game.
And as usual, tools and software that were meant for the space program can make our lives better right here on earth, or whatever planet you live on. Wouldn’t it be great to have your very own Canadarm right there for you to use in your own home? We’d have to make a few modifications in terms of size and weight, but the basic engineering remains the same.
And think of the convenience of having a Canadarm at your fingertips. Batteries dead in your remote? No problem. Use the Canadarm to push the buttons on the TV. Have a disgusting load of dirty laundry? No problem. Toss it all into the washing machine using your Canadarm. Want to grab another hot potato from the far end of the table?
Well, you get the idea. I know you’re excited, so let’s get started.
The Canadarm has three separate motions: extension, rotation and compression. The arm extends until it’s close to an object, rotates to put the pincers in the right position and then compresses the pincers to
pick up the object. So let’s deal with those motions one at a time. We’ll start with extension. Are there any tools out there that could be repurposed into a device that’s capable of changing its length? Of course there are, and you’ve probably already guessed what I’m thinking: a cordless drill and a house jack.
A house jack is a tube of steel with a nut welded onto one end. A threaded rod connected to a flange runs through that nut. It works by using the mechanical advantage of the low pitch of the threads. By turning the threaded rod, the flange is forced to rise and lift the house resting on it. It may sound impossible, but remember that you’re not really raising the house—the house has sunk for some reason. All you’re doing is putting it back the way it’s supposed to be.
But let’s get back to our Canadarm. First step is to remove the flange from the end of the rod. It may pop off easily, but if not, smack it with a sledgehammer or drive over it repeatedly.
Once the flange is gone, tighten the chuck of the cordless drill over the end of the threaded rod.
You have now changed the house jack into an extendible arm that will move forward and back using the forward and reverse position on the drill. If you try it at this point, the steel tube will just spin and not extend and probably catch on your pantleg and leave you standing in the garage in your underwear. Again.
Once we add the other attachments to the tube, there will be enough weight and friction to add inertia, which will prevent the tube from moving.
Time now to move on to rotation. Once the arm is extended, we want to be able to rotate it 360 degrees in any direction. Well, actually, 360 degrees is every direction, so I guess I said that wrong. No wait, we need two planes of rotation and they have to be 90 degrees from each other. I think it’s called a gimbal mount. It’s kind of like the earth, if the earth could spin north-south in addition to east-west. I’m starting to get a headache. The good news is the first rotation is easy. All we need to do is twist the drill.
For the other rotation, which I’ll call side to side, I suggest you take a close look at your tape measure. You’re going to have to use your imagination, and I know you hate that, but when you pull out the tape, you can almost picture the spool turning inside the cover, and you’ll also feel the force of a spring inside ready to wind the tape up again as soon as you let go. Those are exactly the conditions of motion that we need. Now, I’m not suggesting you wreck a perfectly good twelve-foot tape measure just to make a Canadarm, but maybe you know somebody who would lend you one. Mount the guts of the tape measure onto the side of a broomstick.
That will become the second leg of your arm. However, we need to allow the tape to move as the first arm is extended. This will require a second tape measure mounted on the drill. The ends of the two tape measures will be connected. That way, as the arm extends and contracts, the tape will maintain its position.
(The second tape measure will not be damaged, so you can use your own.)
Now we’re ready to move on to the pincers. Follow an old farmer home, and while he and his wife are watching Wheel of Fortune, sneak inside his barn and swipe his old ice tongs.
Wrap a bungee cord around the handles and attach the tongs to the other end of the broomstick.
Using the Handyman’s Secret Weapon, duct tape, mount a fishing reel onto the side of the cordless drill.
Put a few screw eyes into the broomstick and run line from the fishing reel up through the screw eyes and tie the line to one of the ice-tong handles.
And it’s just that easy. To test your new Canadarm, try to get an orange out of the fruit bowl on the kitchen table without leaving your seat in the living room.
Rest the Canadarm on a chair to take the weight, and then point it at the fruit bowl. Use the drill to extend the house jack until the ice tongs are lined up with fruit bowl. (Notice how the tape measures adapt to the extension.) Turn the drill so that the approach angle is correct. Pull on the tape until the tongs surround the orange in question.
Use the fishing reel to close the ice tongs and pick up the orange. Now simply reverse the process to bring the orange back to you. When you unlock the reel, the bungee will cause the ice tongs to open and drop the orange into your lap. Nice work, commander.
To see how I used a Canadarm to take out the garbage, go to the Book of Inventions page at redgreen.com and click on “Canadarm.”
CARBIDE ACETYLENE
Thomas “Carbide” Willson
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Thomas Willson was born near Woodstock, Ontario, in 1860, and grew up to be the Canadian equivalent of Nikola Tesla, except he didn’t get a car named after him. By the time Tom was twenty, he and a blacksmith buddy had built one of Canada’s first electric dynamos and used it to give Hamilton electric arc lights. I guess that makes them the first dynamic duo?
And Thomas was just getting started. Next he went to the States and started his own electric company, but his biggest claim to fame was coming up with a better way to make acetylene. People were using acetylene as fuel in lights because it gave a strong, white light, especially when it exploded. But acetylene was complicated to make, so it was expensive.
Our pal Mr. Willson fixed all that when he figured out that all you had to do was add water to carbide and you’d get acetylene. That’s how he got the nickname “Carbide.” That was a lot better than the other suggestion—“Acetylene Legs.”
Tom’s process made acetylene a commercial success, and it led to the use of oxyacetylene welding, which is responsible for big buildings and bridges not falling down, which is always a good thing.
As a sideline, Carbide Willson adapted navigation buoys to have lights, powered by acetylene, that lasted way longer and shone way brighter than the old kerosene versions—and way, way brighter than the ones that just used scented candles.
Thomas strikes me as a pretty sharp guy. And a pretty brave guy. Fooling around with electricity and acetylene is not for the faint of heart. And this was early days, when nobody really knew what they were doing. Like in the ’50s, when we used to play catch with balls of uranium.
But Thomas figured out how it worked and then made it work for him by making it work for us. And while he was doing it, he was hedging his bets. He was investing in electricity, which he thought would eventually supply all of our lighting needs, but at the same time he was making a better fuel in case Plan A blew a fuse.
Definitely a smart guy and a pioneer. And of all of his creations, I gotta say the navigation buoy with the bright light is my favourite. If I’m out in a boat at night during a storm, the navigation buoy can’t be bright enough, as far as I’m concerned. Who needs a navigation buoy that you can’t see? It’s just something else to hit. On the other hand, if I’m going to hit a buoy, I’d rather hit one that wasn’t full of acetylene. So it’s a double-edged sword.
Now, I know the world doesn’t use acetylene for navigation buoys anymore and electricity has come a long way from Willson’s early dynamo, but once in a while it’s good to stop and pay some respect to what got you here. So give a little gratitude to Thomas “Carbide” Willson. And call your mother.
CARDIAC PACEMAKER
John Hopps
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John Hopps was born in Winnipeg on May 21, 1919. He was pretty good in school and got his engineering degree from the University of Manitoba in 1941. He decided to do research work at the Banting Institute at the University of Toronto, where he started working on the effects of radio technology to warm up people suffering from hypothermia. I guess it was an early form of microwaving them.
But while he was trying different things, Hopps noticed that electrical impulses could get a stopped heart beating again. It was good news for dead people but a major setback for the electric chair. Eventually, John’s team came up with the first-ever cardiac pacemaker in 1951. The unit was bigger than a kitchen table and plugged into a wall socket. For the portable unit, the kitchen table had casters and an extension cord. But this baby paved the way for internal pacemakers, whic
h came along over the next ten years.
Canadian Wilson Greatbatch was a key player in the development of the internal pacemaker when he started using mercury batteries to run them. This allowed people with heart conditions to jog. For a little while.
This invention should almost have its own category. It has a pretty basic job—it keeps your heart beating. How important is that? I’m not a doctor, but I would say pretty important.
We all have a bunch of organs. Some are useful, some are just for show, some are vital. Vital is from the Latin word vita, which means “life.” The vital organs are the ones that keep you alive. And the most vital of the vital is the heart. You can be brain-dead and still survive, but when you’re heart-dead, you’re dead dead.
In fact, being brain-dead is an asset for many jobs. Being heart-dead is only good news for the undertaker, and maybe some high-priced lawyers.
The pacemaker is the best friend your heart ever had. It’s like jumper cables, training wheels, a safety net, a life jacket, a backup generator and life insurance for your heart. And it’s so simple. They just lift a little skin and plug the darn thing in. And it’s very reliable. In fact, it comes with a lifetime guarantee.