Reynolds took the V-Bar design and renamed it the V-Toner. Sales were hardly overwhelming. With very little marketing or word of mouth, the V-Toner was mostly a dud, until Reynolds paired up with Bieler.
THREE’S COMPANY
Bieler had worked his way up in the marketing field for years, becoming an executive with Procter & Gamble. He was also a video producer. He left that behind, though, in 1990 to form Ovation, Inc., a company dedicated to infomercials. He wouldn’t have to wait long for his dream product to come to him.
Reynolds approached Bieler about working together to promote the V-Toner, and Bieler was impressed. He knew it had potential. First, he renamed it the ThighMaster, and then he went to work looking for the face—and the legs—that would sell it. He found Suzanne Somers, former Three’s Company star and Las Vegas lounge act. With her striking figure and beautiful legs, Somers was perfect for the role, and she still had just enough fame to carry the program—but not enough fame to make her too expensive.
Somers’ infomercials helped create a media whirlwind around the product, which soon began selling 75,000 units per week. The infomercial was also spoofed on several TV shows, which just added to the frenzy. Ovation, Inc. spent about $9 million on advertising the ThighMaster in 1991. That investment paid off many times over—more than 10 million have been sold.
The craze also rejuvenated Somers’ career, leading to further television roles and her status as a fitness guru. She’s written several diet, fitness, and anti-aging books since and now owns the ThighMaster World Corporation. Bieler and Reynolds are no longer associated with the product.
AWARD ORIGINS
• Fields Medal. Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields died in 1936 and stipulated in his will that a prize be awarded every four years to one or more groundbreaking mathematicians who are under the age of 40. Presented by the International Mathematical Union, the Fields Medal is the highest honor in math. Andrei Okounkov won a Fields Medal in 2006 for “his contributions to bridging probability, representation theory, and algebraic geometry.” (Don’t worry—we don’t know what that means either.)
• Eisner Awards. It’s named after Will Eisner, a pioneering comic book artist who pioneered the long-form comic or “graphic novel” with his book The Spirit. Eisner Awards are given out each year to artists, writers, and publishers for excellence in comic books.
THE SMALL WONDERS AWARD
Nanotechnology
Smaller . . . smaller . . . smaller . . . nanoscientists
take on the task of making everything mini.
WELCOME TO THE MINIATURE WORLD
While technology continues to make data smaller and devices more lightweight (for example, thin laptops), nanotechnology goes even further into the miniature world—down to the microscopic level, in fact.
Nanotechnology is the science of designing electronics and mechanics at the atomic level. To give you an idea of how small that is, consider this: one nanometer (NM) is one-billionth of a meter (about a hundred-thousandth of the width of a human hair), and nanotechnology concentrates on sizes between 0.1 NM and 100 NMs. Nanotechnology aims to build chips, circuitry, and other mechanical devices one atom at a time, pushing the limits of technology to the point where one bit of data could be represented by just an electron.
THE BIBLE ON THE HEAD OF A PIN
In an effort to prove that science is fun (!), researchers in Israel made headlines in 2007 when they were able to fit the entire text of the Hebrew Bible (39 books) on an area smaller than the size of a pinhead—half the size of the pinhead, to be exact. Doctoral student Ohad Zohar supervised the project and proudly pointed out that the area the 308,428 words were printed on—a tiny piece of silicon—was the size of a grain of sugar. And it took Zohar and his band of scientists only about an hour to do it.
The process was surprisingly easy. The scientists first covered the silicon surface with a tiny layer of gold. Then they put the words on to that surface by focusing a particle beam at it—this blasted microscopic particles at the silicon and carved away the gold, etching the words into the silicon.
The laser beam they used is called a focused ion beam (FIB). FIB technology grew out of research in the mid-1980s and has been a major breakthrough in nanotechnology. FIB technology uses ions from gallium, a metal that becomes a liquid at room temperature, to make deposits—which in turn created the “etching” for the Bible.
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
Nanotechnology originally was devoted to building machines, robotics, and computer technologies at the microscopic level, and it’s been around for decades. It began as an idea in 1959 proposed by physicist Richard Feynman, who was speaking at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society. “What I want to talk about is the problem of manipulating and controlling things on a small scale,” Feynman said. And he did, in a way that inspired a new movement in science. He continued,
There is a device on the market, they tell me, by which you can write the Lord’s Prayer on the head of a pin. But that’s nothing; that’s the most primitive, halting step in the direction I intend to discuss. It is a staggeringly small world that is below. In the year 2000, when they look back at this age, they will wonder why it was not until the year 1960 that anybody began seriously to move in this direction. Why cannot we write the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica on the head of a pin?
The idea was brought further along in the 1970s by K. Eric Drexler, the first person to earn a Ph.D. in Molecular Nanotechnology from M.I.T. Nanotechnology development continued throughout the 1980s, with amazing discoveries on molecular and atomic levels.
In November 1996, U.S. scientists from a variety of agencies began meeting to further the discussion and understanding of nanotechnology. In 1998, they officially became the Interagency Working Group on Nanotechnology, renamed the National Nanotechnology Initiative in 2001, when President Bill Clinton declared the science a federal initiative. Americans love to think big, but they don’t want to be left behind on the submolecular level either.
SMALL STEPS
The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology has identified at least 11 risks that the world will face from the development of nanotechnology, ranging from economic problems like price-fixing to its use in terrorist activities. Every submolecular discovery may fill casual observers with wonder, but it’s also cause for trepidation—at least a little bit.
Scientists believe that the study of nanotechnology will eventually lead to nanofactories, microscopic production farms that could even create new nanofactories. Clearly, this is going to be a big little business. And it will bring about major changes in the structure of everything from your personal computer to the global economy.
VIEWERS’ CHOICE
In 1999, ESPN asked its viewers to name the top-10 rivalries in sports. Here’s what they said:
1. University of Michigan vs. Ohio State University (football)
2. Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier (boxing)
3. University of North Carolina vs. Duke University (basketball)
4. Wilt Chamberlain vs. Bill Russell (basketball)
5. Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Montreal Canadiens (hockey)
6. Arnold Palmer vs. Jack Nicklaus (golf)
7. New York Yankees vs. Boston Red Sox (baseball)
8. Auburn University vs. University of Alabama (football)
9. Dallas Cowboys vs. Washington Redskins (football)
10. Brooklyn Dodgers vs. New York Giants (baseball)
THE NOVEL APPROACH AWARD
Watchmen
This groundbreaking graphic novel series changed the
landscape of comics forever with a tale that
mixed fantasy and cold, hard reality.
CREATIVE COMICS
Often relegated to the depths of sub-literature, comic books enjoyed a renaissance in the mid-1980s. Cheaper and more efficient printing processes raised the quality of the paper that comic books were printed on. A mini “British Invasion” of talented arti
sts redefined the art form. Independent presses began to grow in the industry, and more mature storylines helped both to retain grown-up collectors as well as to attract new readers.
For the most part, the backbone of comic books remained superheroes, and superheroes have always been larger-than-life figures fighting for truth and justice in landscapes far removed from the reality of American life. Whether they lived in imaginary settings like Metropolis or Gotham City or in actual places like New York, superheroes didn’t participate in real-world events. They didn’t fight in wars, stop assassinations of world leaders, or prevent millions from starving in third-world countries. The real world was just a backdrop for epic battles fought against archenemies and super villains.
COMICS GET REAL
Watchmen, a comic book series that debuted in 1986, changed that. The brainchild of Brits Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen turned all of the previous conventions on their ear. Moore had already made a name for himself in comics by writing the acclaimed series Saga of the Swamp Thing, as well as a famous 1985 Superman story called “For the Man Who Has Everything,” in which Batman, Robin, and Wonder Woman come to celebrate Superman’s birthday, only to find him under the control of a monstrous alien. Gibbons was a talented artist who had drawn several comics series in the United Kingdom before being hired in America to draw Green Lantern.
THE PLOT THICKENS
In the mid-1980s, DC Comics bought the properties of Charlton, a defunct publisher that had produced superhero comics like Captain Atom and The Peacemaker in the 1940s. DC Comics hired Moore and Gibbons to relaunch those Charlton characters for a modern audience, but Moore envisioned a story far beyond the scope of what DC wanted. Instead, Moore and Gibbons created Watchmen, a monthly series that spanned 12 comic-book issues and was based loosely on the Charlton characters. For them, the pages of Watchmen became a canvas on which to mix the troubles of the real world with the optimism of superheroes.
That’s not to say that Watchmen was entirely realistic. In its pages, Richard Nixon is still president in 1985, the United States won the Vietnam War, and the world has a nuclear doomsday clock that’s sitting at five minutes to midnight. Superheroes exist in this world, too, but they’ve mostly gone into hiding. The very first superheroes, masked adventurers from the 1940s who banded together as the Minutemen, had enjoyed decades of adoration from the public for their exploits. But their successors are not so lucky. Times have changed, and now the public is suspicious of people who hide behind masks.
Worse still, a killer is hunting America’s retired superheroes.
THE STORY
The story opens with a narrative from the journal of the superhero Rorschach, a demented and violent psychopath with a twisted hatred toward almost all of humanity (although he claims to protect it). The Comedian, a former superhero whose brutal methods and tactics have earned him a place working for the government, is dead. Although the Comedian’s death appears to the police to be an isolated homicide, Rorschach believes it’s a case of someone hunting down heroes.
Rorschach begins his investigation by checking in on the retired superheroes who, in the 1960s, had formed a group named the Crimebusters. He finds . . .
• Dan Dreiberg (Nite Owl), an indecisive and impotent middle-aged man;
• John Osterman (Dr. Manhattan), formerly a human scientist and now the only person in the world with superhuman powers (he can teleport, read minds, etc.). Osterman was caught in a nuclear physics experiment and transformed into someone who can manipulate molecular structures and who experiences time in a nonlinear fashion. According to the Watchmen story, it was because of Dr. Manhattan’s unbeatable abilities that the United States won the Vietnam War, and he continues to work for the U.S. government, which uses his powers to maintain its status as the global superpower;
• Laurie Juspeczyk (Silk Spectre), once a teen superhero and now unhappily married to Dr. Manhattan;
• Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias), the smartest man in the world, who has become one of the world’s richest men as head of a large corporation.
As Rorschach continues his investigation into the Comedian’s death, other events begin to unfold. Laurie realizes how unhappy she is and leaves Dr. Manhattan. And people who have worked with Dr. Manhattan for years are diagnosed with cancer. Both of these events cause Dr. Manhattan to leave Earth, shifting the power balance in the world. The Soviet Union then threatens to invade Afghanistan, and the world comes to the brink of war. Death continues to loom—not only over the heads of the former Crimebusters, but also for the Minutemen. As the plot unfolds, Rorschach teams up with Dreiberg and Juspeczyk and begins to learn the truth. Someone has engineered these events in a drastic bid to bring peace to the world, even if it means destroying millions of lives in the process.
SUPERHEROES IN THE REAL WORLD
The heart of the series is Rorschach. A crazy conspiracy theorist who hates just about everyone, he still anchors the story with his insights into the minds of others and his intense thoughts, all conveyed through his journal.
In September 2007, England’s BBC launched Comics Britannica, a series of interviews with Watchmen’s creators. In the interview, Moore revealed his motives behind creating the Watchmen story:
Wouldn’t these characters be somehow kind of sad and touching in the real world . . . You find that, yes, superheroes in the real world are kind of funny. They’re also kind of scary, because actually a person dressing in a mask and going around beating up criminals is a vigilante psychopath. That’s what Batman is, in essence. We came up with the character of Rorschach as a way of exploring what that Batman-type, driven, vengeance-fueled vigilante would be like in the real world. And the short answer is a nutcase.
BATTLE OF THE SUPERPOWERS
For a comic book about superheroes, Watchmen is noticeably short on abilities beyond those of mortal men. In fact, all of the masked adventurers, except Dr. Manhattan, fight with just their hearts, minds, and fists.The real superpowers, just as in the actual world, are the frontrunners in the arms race. The United States struggles to keep up with its main enemy, the Soviet Union, and the world deals with the issues of poverty, warfare, and nationalism as well as the social upheavals of civil rights, feminism, and gay culture.
COMIC OR SOMETHING MORE?
Watchmen asked what separated costumed heroes from ordinary people and showed that neither was far removed from the other. Even more, it tore down many of the traditions comics had been based on (like clear-cut battles between good guys and bad guys) and built something new in its place. It was unique in other ways, too:
• The majority of the series is drawn in a gridlike pattern, three panels by three panels, nine to a page, providing a framework for the story.
• No thought balloons were used throughout the series. The only look inside the minds of the characters comes from their writings, such as Rorschach’s journals and sections of one character’s autobiography.
• Similarly, no “motion lines” (two or three wavy lines drawn around a character or object to convey movement) appear in the book.
• Each of the first 11 issues of Watchmen featured supplemental text, ranging from fictional book excerpts to magazine interviews with the characters to marketing concepts used for the promotion of action figures. Each one provided background, context, or irony (or all three) for the chapter that appeared before it.
• The year after its release, Watchmen’s 12 issues were bound together and released as a graphic novel. It won a Hugo Award (given for best science fiction or fantasy works), four Kirby Awards (recognizing comic-book achievements), and four Eisner Awards (also for comic-book achievements). And it has been named to Time magazine’s list of the “100 Best English Language Novels from 1923 to the Present.”
Today, Watchmen remains current and important, despite its Cold War backdrop and dated technology (a long-out-of-date computer system provides the final clue to solving the murder mystery). It represented a change in the way comics were creat
ed and the kinds of stories they told and brought a whole new genre—the graphic novel—into the mainstream.
MORE GREAT GRAPHIC NOVELS
Maus by Art Spiegelman (1991)
Based on his father’s stories, Spiegelman shows a harrowing and terrifying account of the Nazi invasion of Poland, the Warsaw Ghetto, and World War II concentration camps. But there’s a twist: Jewish people are portrayed as mice, the Nazis as cats.
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware (2000)
Corrigan is neither a child nor a genius, but an overweight, depressed man who tracks down (and is ultimately disappointed by) his long-lost father. Along the way, he finds redemption and belonging when he meets a sister he never knew he had.
THE BIG BROTHER AWARD
Microchips
From pets to people, microchips are everywhere, and
as the technology evolves, privacy issues get
trickier. (Uncle John is watching you.)
IT’S A GOOD THING
When a pet goes missing, the worry is tough to take. Microchips offer a relief for that worry. According to the American Microchip Advisory Council for Animals, more than 11 million household pets and horses have been chipped in the United States. Chipping programs began in the early 1970s, when the chips were placed on tags clipped to the animal’s ear. Microchipping started in the 1980s, when technological advancements produced chips small enough to implant in the animals.
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