Gasoline...very interesting...
 

I'm watching the History channel.

I love that channel!

And I'm watching a show about JP Morgan, John Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie and their exploits in the 1890's.

Tons of cool info, but not enough room to type about it. Go watch it yourselves.

Anyway, JP Morgan screwed Edison out of Edison Electric and renamed it General Electric and went with Tesla's AC power over Edison's DC power and most of you know the rest of that story.

Meanwhile, Rockefeller owned Standard Oil and had amassed a fortune in oil.
Keep in mind that our dollar had not yet been devalued. So these guys were richer than GOD. $50 Million, for instance, is the equivalent of 1 BILLION dollars today (yep...our currency is worth 95% LESS than it's value was then).

Anyway, Rockefeller's money in the oil business came from making kerosene for lanterns. That's how people had light. But now that JP Morgan was wiring up the country with electricity, Rockefeller had to do something.

So he had an idea...seems there was this residue run-off during the process of refining oil. Up until this time, they were dumping it (throwing it away, mostly into rivers causing TREMENDOUS environmental damage).
Nothing could be done with this "worthless" by-product because it was so explosive that it was just too dangerous.

They called it "gasoline". LOL!

So Rockefeller had his scientists begin working on things that they could do with gasoline. He was looking for another revenue stream since kerosene was about to collapse in front of electricity.

They came up with over 300 things to use if for. Among those things: Vaseline (petroleum jelly), chewing gum, tar, etc.
But the thing that changed the world was that the internal combustion engine had just been invented.

And guess what?

All the dangerous aspects of gasoline made it PERFECT for those engines. And when Rockefeller saw what happened when they put those engines on wheels...horseless carriages...he KNEW he had found his answer.

I found that interesting as hell.
Basically gasoline was just the garbage left over from refining oil! And that's why it's so damn cheap! Well, at least until the govt. added a couple of dollars worth of taxes to every gallon of it :(

The History Channel rocks!

man you watching re-runs they were playing that like six months ago anyways it's a great documentary

Amateurs look at an orange and figure out how to monetize the juice. Professionals figure out how to also monetize the seeds and the peel. Visionaries figure out how to monetize the dirt on the rind, the label, the shine of reflected sunlight, the genetic code of the fruit, the color orange, the differences from one orange to the next, etc.... That being said, there is also plenty of luck and good fortune involved as well. Rockefeller didn't invent the combustion engine, and for him it was a damn good thing it happened when it did... And not thirty years later.

Relentless...all the cool shit I just wrote, you ruined it. :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Yeah saw those nearly a year ago, awesome shows.

http://gildedageperiod89.wikispaces....ockefeller.jpg



:stoned

ADG

The sticky mess that hardens to make asphalt road surfacing is a by product of refining fuel so cars were a double bonus to anyone owning oil.

I fucked myself with some oil byproduct.

That was actually very interesting, thanks :thumbsup

and they fucked cheap e-car

I enjoy having sticky fun with my ass too :thumbsup

[QUOTE=Robbie;19923764
Anyway, JP Morgan screwed Edison out of Edison Electric and renamed it General Electric and went with Tesla's AC power over Edison's DC power and most of you know the rest of that story.
[/QUOTE]


Yes we all know this story. They had several Albums that were great and I believe some went platinum.

:)

I would love to see a psychological study of minds, based upon a cross-section of people who have seen this series in its entirety.

What do people of different viewpoints and mindsets take away from this documentary?

Monopolies are good or bad - labor laws and unions are good or bad - restricting the development of new technologies in order to maintain a stranglehold over people is good or bad - and on and on....

As they say, people who do not study history are destined to repeat it.

Many would say that this history is very similar to today's economic and technological battles on many levels.

Power, greed, unfair wages, repressed advancements to maintain a status-quo, political payoffs, etc.

I would bet conservatives and liberals will spin this series very differently, without any prompting. I guess it's just human nature.

Awesome Series...



https://youtube.com/watch?v=dPpZ7-4zjwA



https://youtube.com/watch?v=SFpWd8pFiK0



https://youtube.com/watch?v=5jeJ1ZDu_iA



https://youtube.com/watch?v=FpMPN428fGo

the difference isn't in people, it's in how government is in bed with big business. today, big businesses are too big to fail and get backed up with government support.

back then, big businesses such as standard oil were deemed too big, anti-trust laws were used to bust the trusts

Like that:thumbsup

Sure, but questions of justice and morality are still issues that different people will answer very differently.

For example, today almost all Americans believe slavery is immoral and wrong, but go back 200 years and question slavery. The divide was enough to fan the flames of a civil war.

Same with child labor laws, environmental protection, minimum wages, etc.

:thumbsup :thumbsup :thumbsup

It's a mixed-emotions kind of thing to me.

In one hand...these guys and their ruthlessness really did "build" this country.
We might be a third world country if not for them...I don't know.

On the other hand, people were dying at work. They showed the numbers of people injured and killed while at their workplace, and it was like looking at automobile injury and death numbers in 2013.

And people living in abject poverty like that was reprehensible.

It's easy to see why unions were a necessity when they finally came about.

My personal opinion is that things were too far swung over that way. And then when the govt. finally stepped in and unions were legalized, I believe they found that "sweet spot" where the balance was correct and everyone made money and the country moved forward.

These days, it seems to me that it may have gone a little too far and went out of that "sweet spot".
That's kind of a natural progression though. And eventually it will swing back a bit and hit that spot again for a decade or so (until it goes too far the other way and the process repeats)

yep.. and just think, that's the whitewashed version they can show on tv

I don't know about that. They pretty much showed them doing as they wanted.

They even showed JP Morgan bailing out the U.S. govt. (not the other way around!)

They showed Morgan, Carnegie, and Rockefeller pretty much buying the presidency for William McKinley

I think you might want to actually watch it before you think that it's whitewashed. I'm not sure that they even need to whitewash events from the 1890's. :)

They even showed JP Morgan bailing out the U.S. govt. (not the other way around!)

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

yea, my bad.

Point is that when you are the guy who just saved the entire U.S. Govt. from going bankrupt by giving them money...you REALLY do own the govt. and can do as you please.

These days, the Govt. is the one who is a thousand times bigger than the richest companies in the world and THEY do the bailing out. The govt. is the power now.

But back then, it was the robber barons like JP Morgan.

I'm not sure what you are saying might be "whitewashed" since they covered the corruption, the massive deaths of workers, the horrible poverty, and the backstabbing and manipulations that these men used to get what they wanted.

What might they be missing or have "whitewashed"?

As I watched it I was simultaneously amazed, horrified, disgusted, envious, and even admired them.

Kinda like watching The Sopranos back in the day...you found yourself "liking' the bad guys. lol

fair enough, see you in vegas

The Men Who Built America is a great show, shame about "Ancient Aliens" and the likes :(

this is the problem with the history channel. it's not historically accurate. it's entertainment.

they didn't buy mckinley's presidency. in fact, this created such a huge backlash it catapulted grover cleveland into the potus. moreover, it ultimately led the u.s. government to bust the trusts, including jp morgan's.



:)

:thumbsup

I think it would be a much better program had it been done by PBS. The history channel loves to juice stuff up for the entertainment value and they are too stuck up on shows like pawn stars and all the dumb red neck shows.

Pretty much the truth....

why don't you look up what the Federal Reserve is... they and other giant banks and corporations own the government, still. It was never the other way around.

Very well put, but even without the combustion engine, a true visionary would have found a use for this highly flammable liquid :)

Oopsie lol

Happy new year Robbie ;)

I agree, a visionary always makes money. How much money is often a matter of timing and circumstance. Rockefeller would have found some way to make bank no matter what, but as much money as he made thanks to the invention of the engine ... Probably not.

Guys who can dunk a ball from the foul line make 9 figures in the NBA, before basketball existed they were poor people who could jump well. Guys who own teams and arenas would make money in any era, but likely not as much as they make in an era where their skills, timing and circumstance all come into perfect alignment.

There is no shame in admitting good luck helps a lot. I'm thrilled someone created an insatiable search engine that requires millions of words of original well-written text each year. I didn't invent the internet (thanks Al Gore lol) but I sure am glad someone did.