Spanish coins circulated freely in the New World before and during colonial times for at least two reasons. There weren’t enough native coins to go around, and Spanish gold and silver specie were negotiable just about anywhere in the world (like in the good old days when foreign nations sought American dollars) because they were backed by gold.
Was it a coincidence that two bits of a peso happened to equal two bits of a dollar? Not at all. Peter Eisenstadt, research associate at the New York Stock Exchange archives, told Imponderables that when U.S. currency was decimalized in 1785,
the U.S. silver dollar was established with a value equivalent to the Spanish silver peso. Though the official divisions of the dollar were in decimals, many continued to divide the new U.S. dollar into eighths and this practice was followed in securities trading.
Stocks were usually traded in eighths from the inception of securities trading in the United States in the 1790s. Eisenstadt believes that Americans simply borrowed the practice of quoting in eighths from the Europeans. As he notes, most early stockbrokers were part-timers, devoting most of their attention to the merchant trade, which had long quoted prices in eighths.
By the 1820s, stocks traded on the NYSE were universally quoted in eighths, but this was an informal arrangement; it became a requirement in 1885. The American and Pacific Stock Exchanges followed suit.
Although the history of our quoting stock prices in eighths makes historical sense, we don’t understand why the exchanges still maintain the practice. When a stock dips to near zero, prices now are quoted in sixteenths and even thirty-seconds of a dollar, forcing financial tycoons to rely on their memory of grade-school fractional tables when doing calculations. And what happens when someone wants to sell his one share of stock quoted at 48 3/8? Who gets the extra half-cent?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to quote all stocks in hundredths of a dollar? Why should two-dollar stocks have to rise or fall more than ten percent at a time when a 2% change in most stocks is considered significant? Roy Berces, of the Pacific Stock Exchange, acknowledges that our system is probably archaic, but sees no groundswell for changing tradition.
Submitted by E. B. Peschke of St. Charles, Missouri. Thanks also to John A. Bush of St. Louis, Missouri; Christopher Dondlinger of Longmont, Colorado; and Dave Klingensmith of Canal Fulton, Ohio.
Why Are Socks Angled at Approximately 115 to 125 Degrees When the Human Foot Is Angled at About 90 Degrees?
Not all socks are angled, of course. Tube socks are “angled” at 180 degrees. Tube socks are so named because they are a straight tube of fabric closed on one end by sewing. The tube sock is constructed by “full circular knitting” (i.e., the knitting head on the machine knits in a full circle).
A tube sock doesn’t contain a designated position for the heel, but more conventional socks do. Most socks are knitted with a feature called the “reciprocated heel.” Sid Smith, president and chief executive officer of the National Association of Hosiery Manufacturers, told Imponderables how the reciprocated heel is made:
Imagine a full circular knitting machine starting at the top of the sock and knitting in a complete circle all the way down the top of the sock, until it hits the point where the heel is to be knitted in. At this point, the machine automatically enters what is called the “reciprocated function.” Instead of knitting in a complete circle, it knits halfway to each side and then back again, until the heel portion is knitted in.
After this is completed, the machine automatically reverts to full circular knitting to finish the sock. This reciprocation is what causes the finished sock to be angled.
The 115- to 125-degree angle of the sock, then, is the result of, rather than the purpose of, the knitting process. The fabrics used for socks will give or stretch to conform to the contours of the foot. Since a 180-degree tube sock can fit comfortably on the human foot, there is no reason why a conventional sock won’t.
Submitted by Vernon K. Hurd of Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Why Do Cattle Guards Work?
No, there aren’t demons underground shooting BB pellets between the bars of the cattle guards. Cows are afraid to walk where their feet can’t get solid footing.
Our correspondent mentions that he has seen painted white strips used as cattle guards, presumably tricking cows into thinking that the unpainted area is a black hole. Cows are evidently as subject to phobias as cowboys and cowgirls.
Submitted by A. M. Rizzi of Torrey, Vermont.
Why Are There No A- or B-Sized Batteries?
Because they are obsolete. A- and B-sized batteries once existed as component cells within much larger zinc carbon battery packs. The A cells supplied the low-voltage supply for the filaments in the vacuum tubes used to supply power to early radios and crank telephones.
Of course, the descendants of the old A- and B-sized batteries are still with us. As electronic devices have gotten smaller, so have the batteries that power them. As might be expected, the A cell came first, then B, C, and D cells. The batteries were lettered in ascending order of size. James Donahue, Jr., of Duracell, Inc., says that as cells smaller than the original A cells were developed, they were designated as AA and then AAA cells. Donahue reports that there is even a new AAAA battery.
So the old A- and B-sized batteries are no longer in production. It’s no use having a battery larger than the device it powers.
Submitted by Larry Prussin of Yosemite, California. And thanks also to Herman E. London of Poughkeepsie, New York; Nancy Ondris of Kings Park, New York; and Ronald Herman of Montreal, Quebec.
What Are Those Little Plastic Circles (that Sometimes Have Rubber in the Middle) Found on the Walls of Hotels?
If you’ve noticed, those circles are located about three feet off the ground and usually near the entrance. They are called wall protectors, and their sole function in life is to keep doorknobs from slamming against the walls. And with some of the paperthin walls we’ve encountered in motels, wall protectors may be responsible for keeping the structural integrity of the building intact.
Submitted by Carol Rostad of New York, New York.
Why Does Starch Make Our Shirts Stiff?
Starch is a type of “sizing,” a filler used to add body, sheen, and luster to limp clothing. All shirts come off the rack with sizing, but sizing is water-soluble; every time the shirt is washed, sizing comes out of the shirt. The main purpose of adding starch, then, is to restore the original body of a garment.
The main ingredient in starch is wheat or, less frequently, corn. The grain is mixed with water, resins, and chemicals. As Bill Seitz, of the Neighborhood Cleaners Association, describes it, the starch is literally absorbed by the fabric. Cotton plus wheat is stiffer than cotton alone.
Norman Oehlke, of International Fabricare Institute, adds that starch also enhances soil resistance, facilitates soil removal for the next wash, and makes ironing easier.
Synthetic fabrics aren’t as receptive to starch as all-cotton garments, so extra chemicals are added to the starch, such as polyvinyl acetate, sulfated fatty alcohols, silicones, and our personal favorite, carboxymethylcellulose.
Submitted by Kris Heim of De Pere, Wisconsin. Thanks also to Stanley R. Sieger of Pasadena, California.
How Does the Campbell Soup Company Determine Which Letters to Put in Their Alphabet Soup? Are There an Equal Number of Each Letter? Or Are the Letters Randomly Inserted in the Can?
We spoke to a delightful young woman at Campbell’s named Ginny Marcin, who, astonishingly, did not have the answers to these questions at her fingertips. But she spoke to the vice president of Letter Distribution and obtained the following information.
Campbell’s makes two sizes of letters for their soups. Small letters go into some of the prepared soups (such as the Chunky line). Slightly larger letters bejewel their vegetable and vegetarian vegetable soups.
It is the stated intention of the Campbell Soup Company not to discriminate against any letter. All are equally represented. However, Campbell�
��s cannot control the distribution of letters while inserting the letters and soup into the can, so irregularities can result. You might find a can with eight q’s and only three u’s, screwing up your plans to use the letters as Scrabble tiles.
Come to think of it, if the letters really are distributed randomly, why does Campbell’s need a vice president of Letter Distribution?
Submitted by Tom Carroll of Binghamton, New York.
What Is the Purpose of Corn Silk?
These strands, which bedevil shuckers and flossless eaters alike, actually do have an important purpose. The longer threads of corn silk stand outside of the husk in tufts to collect pollen. The pollen then travels the silk to the ear of corn and fertilizes it.
Edith M. Munro, director of Information of the Corn Refiners Association, told Imponderables one of the critical factors exacerbating the loss in the corn harvest during the 1988 drought was that the “lack of moisture delayed the development of silks or dried the silks up, so that no silks were present when pollen was released.” Without sufficient pollination, the growth of the corn is stunted, resulting in ears of corn with only a few kernels.
Submitted by Denise Dennis of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.
Why Are U.S. Government Department Heads Called “Secretaries” Instead of “Ministers,” as in Most Other Countries?
The word “secretary” comes from the same Latin root as the word “secret.” In medieval days, a secretary was a notary or a scribe, someone privy to secret and often important information. Over time, secretaries became not only men and women in charge of correspondence for an employer but trusted advisors to heads of state and royalty. So although today’s office secretaries may now be a neglected and abused lot, Europeans have long called important officeholders “secretaries.”
We wrote to several historians who were kind enough to unravel this Imponderable. They concurred that although Americans appropriated their governmental vocabulary from the English, no single term was used to describe cabinet-level officials in England at the time the United States Constitution was drafted.
The parliamentary-cabinet style government of England was not established until the early 1700s, and many of the titles from feudal governments still existed. Thomas L. Purvis, of the Institute of Early American History and Culture, elaborates on the mishmash of English titles:
members of the cabinet carried titles both feudal and modern, such as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister. Intermediate in age were the secretaries of various departments, such as the former Secretary of State for the Southern Department (whose purview extended over the American Colonies) and the ad hoc Secretary at War.
Americans, in their revolutionary ethos, were not about to give a nod to the hated English king and his ministers. The terms “president” and “vice president” were chosen to distinguish elected leaders from the dreaded monarchy.
None of the framers of the Articles of Confederation wrote why “secretary” was designated as the term for America’s executive officers. The Department of the Treasury conducted an investigation into this Imponderable and found that the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the Office of Protocol at the Department of State could provide no documentary evidence for the choice.
But all of our sources indicated that the attempt to distance the United States from any trappings of a monarchy contributed to the selection of “secretary.” Samuel R. Gammon, executive director of the American Historical Association, told Imponderables that “the older English tradition of terming the monarch’s chief executive assistants ‘Principal Secretary of State’ may also have been in their [the framers of the Constitution] minds.”
“Secretary” was a solid, middle-of-the-road choice. As Purvis points out, the title seems honorific yet confers no indication of aristocracy and could be applied to any department in the government.
Submitted by Daniel Marcus of Watertown, Massachusetts.
Why Is Prepackaged Chocolate Milk Thicker in Consistency than the Chocolate Milk You Make at Home?
Gravity.
If you make a batch of chocolate milk at home and put it in the refrigerator to cool, you will notice something when you fetch it ten hours later. The chocolate sinks to the bottom.
All is not lost. Simply shaking up the container will redistribute the chocolate throughout the milk.
But this kind of separation is unacceptable in a commercial product, especially one that is sold in a transparent container. So commercial dairies use stabilizers and emulsifiers to assure that the chocolate and milk remain mixed. Although the job of the (usually natural) stabilizers and emulsifiers is to keep the chocolate from falling to the bottom of the carton, the by-product is a thicker consistency than home-style chocolate milk.
Submitted by Herbert Kraut of Forest Hills, New York.
Why Do Fingernails Grow Faster than Toenails?
This is not the kind of question whose solution wins Nobel Prizes for scientists or garners prestigious grants for research hospitals, yet the answer is not obvious. The average severed fingernail takes four to six months to grow back to its normal length. The average toenail takes nine to twelve months.
Dermatologist Dr. Fred Feldman says that although nobody knows for sure why toenails lag behind fingernails in growth, there are many possible explanations:
1. Trauma makes nails grow faster. Dermatologists have found that if a patient bites a nail down or loses it altogether, the traumatized nail will grow faster than on one left alone. Fingernails, in constant contact with many hard or sharp objects, are much more likely to be traumatized in everyday life than toenails. Even nonpainful contact can cause some trauma to nails. Because we use our fingers much more often than our toes, toenails do not tend to get the stimulation that fingernails do.
2. All nails grow faster in the summer than the winter, which suggests that the sun promotes nail growth. Even during the summer, most people cover their toenails with socks and shoes.
3. Circulation is much more sluggish in the feet than in the hands.
Our medical consultants did not suggest the obvious: The faster growth of fingernails is nature’s way of providing us with a constant tool with which to open pistachio nuts.
Submitted by Dave Bohnhoff of Madison, Wisconsin.
Why Do We Dream More Profusely When We Nap than We Do Overnight?
According to the experts we consulted, we dream just as much at night as we do when we take a nap. However, we recall our afternoon-nap dreams much more easily than our dreams at night.
While we are dreaming, our long-term memory faculties are suppressed. During the night, our sleep is likely to go undisturbed. We tend to forget dreams we experience in the early stages of sleep. The sooner that we wake up after having our dreams, the more likely we are to remember them.
Any situation that wakes us up just after or during the course of a dream will make the sleeper perceive that he or she has been dreaming profusely. Dr. Robert W. McCarley, the executive secretary of the Sleep Research Society, told Imponderables that women in advanced stages of pregnancy often report that they are dreaming more frequently. Dr. McCarley believes that the perceived increase in dreaming activity of pregnant women is prompted not by psychological factors but because their sleep is constantly interrupted by physical discomforts.
Why Do Place Kickers and Field-Goal Kickers Get Yardage Credit from Where the Ball Is Kicked and Yet Punters Only Get Credit from the Line of Scrimmage?
Well, who said life was fair? It turns out that this blatant discrimination occurs not because anyone wants to persecute punters particularly but for the convenience and accuracy of the scorekeepers. Jim Heffernan, director of Public Relations for the National Football League, explains:
Punts are measured from the line of scrimmage, which is defined point, and it sometimes is difficult to determine exactly where the punter contacts the ball. Field goals are measured from the point of the kick because that is the defined spot of contact.
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sp; Submitted by Dale A. Dimas of Cupertino, California.
How Does a Gas Pump “Know” When to Shut Off When the Fuel Tank Is Full?
A sensing device, located about one inch from the end of the nozzle, does nothing while fuel is flowing into the gas tank, but is tripped as soon as fuel backs up into the nozzle. The sensing device tells the nozzle to shut off.
Because of the location of the sensing device and the relatively deep position of the nozzle, a gas tank is never totally filled unless the customer or attendant “tops off” the tank. Topping off tanks is now illegal in most states and is a dangerous practice anywhere.
Submitted by Stephen O. Addison, Jr. of Charlotte, North Carolina.
How Does the Treasury Know When to Print New Bills or Mint New Coins? How Does it Calculate How Much Money Is Lost or Destroyed by the Public?
There are more than two hundred billion dollars in coins and currency in circulation today in the United States. Determining the necessary timing for the minting and printing of new monies is therefore far from a simple task.
When Do Fish Sleep? Page 11
