Inventions – Page 4 – Author Sarah Angleton

In 1937, in a busy restaurant kitchen in Whitman, Massachusetts, a harried chef by the name of Ruth Wakefield rushed to make a batch of her butterscotch nut cookies to serve with ice cream. But there was a problem. The vibrations from the industrial mixer Wakefield used, caused enough of a ruckus to knock loose a bar of semi-sweet chocolate stored on the shelf above, which, becoming splintered by the mixer, contaminated the dough with chips of the chocolate variety.

Beware of falling chocolate. photo credit: AngryJulieMonday via photopin cc

Wakefield nearly threw the dough out, disgusted at the wasteful accident, and determined that the reputation of the Toll House restaurant was important enough to just start the batch over. Fortunately for Grandmas and glasses of milk everywhere, another cook convinced her to go ahead and bake the batch. And the results just seemed right.

Of course that’s probably not a true story. Another version suggests that Wakefield was making chocolate cookies, but had run out of baker’s chocolate. She substituted chunks of semi-sweet chocolate (allegedly a sample bar provided by Nestlé) thinking it would melt through the dough. And the world rejoiced that it didn’t.

If I’m perfectly honest (and I never lie about cookies), I doubt the validity of this tale, too. Because Wakefield was an educated lady and not a hack in the kitchen. I’ve seen enough Food Network shows to know that even highly trained chefs under extreme conditions (like using only a pocket knife and a candle to make a five course gourmet meal made entirely of beef jerky, in fifteen minutes) occasionally make silly mistakes. Still, I’m inclined to give Wakefield the benefit of the doubt on this one.

I suspect that she understood the properties of chocolate and very intentionally invented the single ever greatest leap forward in the field of cookie science (and trust me, it is a science). For her contribution to the field, she received a lifetime supply of free chocolate (and consulting fees) from Nestlé for the rights to print her recipe on the backs of their bright yellow chocolate chip packages, where it’s been ever since.

Even today, for a lot of us this recipe (perhaps tweaked a little over the years, but still largely the same) on the Nestlé’s package is our go-to for chocolate chip cookies. But it’s not without its rivals. Actually, there are some who claim it wasn’t even the first, that in fact the 1934 Hershey’s cookbook contained a similar cookie recipe.

This little yellow package always makes me hungry for cookies.

And there are many who would argue that the Nestlé Toll House recipe is kind of meh when compared to some of the manufactured cookies on the market today, the most exciting of which, according to my quick sampling of those who have enough time on their hands to write about great chocolate chip cookies on the Internet, is the Dutch company Merba’s 37% chocolate chip cookie.

There’s even one blogger who set out to test whether or not Merba cookies really contained 37% chocolate simply because (and I’m guessing here) he has too much time on his hands. He concluded that given a little wiggle room for error in his experimental technique, it did. Why 37% you may ask? It does seem pretty random.

Another mathematics blog attempted to answer that. In a complicated explanation of the behavior of randomly scattered dots within a circle and the intricacies of cookie manufacturing, he proved without question that he has even more time on his hands than the first guy.

Don’t get me wrong. I am super impressed by the dedication of both men to the field of cookie science. Personally, I think the Merba cookie has 37% chocolate because it seems like a good number and it looks good on a package. I base this on the conclusions of some other people with too much time on their hands, who tell us that if asked to pick a random number between 1 and 100, most of us will choose either 37 or 73.

Since a cookie with 73% chocolate would pretty much be, well, a chocolate cookie, Merba wisely chose 37% for their delicious marketing gimmick. Because it just seemed right. And that’s also why I chose to celebrate my 37^th birthday this week with a giant chocolate chip cookie, baked from my altered version of Ruth Wakefield’s famous recipe with, if I’m honest, quite likely more than 37% chocolate.

Because it just seemed right.

On February 7, 1661, at the tender age of seven, the Kangxi Emeror who would become the longest reigning emperor in history, ascended to China’s throne. It would be another six years before he managed to seize full control from his regents, but when he did, he proved to be a successful ruler.

Part of the reason for this, I have to think, is that he had at least one really smart friend. You know that friend, right? He’s the (kind of nerdy) one who seems to know at least a little bit about everything and can come up with solutions to any problem.

For the young emperor, that friend was a Jesuit priest named Ferdinand Verbiest who was serving as a missionary in China. Verbiest became a favorite teacher, tutoring the emperor in geometry, philosophy, and music.

He spoke more than six languages, wrote more than thirty books, designed and oversaw construction of an aqueduct, was a capable cartographer, used fancy European astronomical gadgetry to correct the Chinese calendar, and rebuilt and headed the Beijing Ancient Observatory. In a day before everyone had the ability to google the answer to any question, a guy like Verbiest was pretty handy to have around.

And then to top it all off, he constructed a totally cool toy to impress the Kangxi Emeror, because what’s a know-it-all nerdy friend without a few impressive gadgety toys?

What Verbiest designed was a steam-powered vehicle. It was designed without a driver in mind as it was only a little over 25 inches long and though he describes it in his book Astronomia Europea, it’s not clear whether or not he ever built it. Still (not to take any credit away from Karl Benz) this may have been, at least in concept, the world’s first ever self-propelled “car.”

So let’s skip ahead a few centuries. I don’t know whether or not you yourself have one of those nerdy know-it-all friends like Verbiest, but fortunately, we all have access to one. In our house, we call him “Google.” Thanks to our smart phones this “friend” now goes with us everywhere and he knows (or at least he thinks he does) pretty much everything about anything.

Of course you do have to be a little careful because he can’t always be counted on to give you an entirely correct answer. For example, you might ask him who invented the first car and he’ll direct you to some silly blog post about Ferdinand Verbiest, which you should probably just ignore.

But he has held up his end of the nerdy know-it-all friend bargain in the gadgety toy department. After all he did make you a pair of glasses that allow you to pretend to be the Terminator. And now he’s made you a self-propelled car that is designed without a driver in mind.

Just yesterday, Google announced that this summer, it will have about a hundred prototype vehicles ready for testing, without a gas pedal, steering wheel, or brake pedal among them. But don’t worry, your friend Google isn’t a complete idiot. He will include two seatbelts just in case some irresponsible driver of a regular old human-controlled car slams into you.

The new self-driving car seats two, won’t go over 25 miles per hour, and, frankly, looks kind of like a toy. Google hasn’t released a name yet for its newest gadget. I’m thinking it should be the Google Doodlebug. I’m also thinking, I probably won’t be lining up to drive ride in one any time soon.