X-Message-Number: 24075 Date: Sat, 08 May 2004 22:21:25 -0700 From: Olaf Henny <> Subject: I have a fantasy - I have a phantasy to bring three men back to life, who were instrumental in creating the automobile... Nicolaus August Otto who in 1876 invented an effective gas motor engine. Karl Benz was the German mechanical engineer who designed and in 1885 built the world's first practical automobile (3 -wheeled) to be powered by an internal-combustion engine. Gottlieb Daimler, who1886, took a stagecoach (made by Wilhelm Wimpff & Sohn) and adapted it to hold his engine, thereby designing the world's first four- wheeled automobile, powered by a V2 four stroke engine. ... and take them to a busy intersection in a large city. I am sure the would be in awe of the monster they have given birth to. - I would love to bring back to life Orville and Wilbur Wright and to repeat Wilbur s trip to Paris, but this time we would not send Orville to Virginia or sail by ship, but fly with both of them from JFK Airport in New York to Charles De Gaulle in Paris in a jumbo jet with 400 other passengers. I am sure, they would be fascinated. - But most of all I would love to bring my dad back, who died in 1962 in East Germany, where aside from antenna fed TV and nylon stockings the consumer oriented technology was essentially still pre WWII, and show him all the wonders of our modern technology, the open sesame of my garage door opener would have to appear like magic to him. During the last few weeks, as an exercise I have imagined him beside me during all the simple acts I perform daily and envisaged how he would perceive the world around us. Simple things, the disposable plastic shopping bag its lightness and strength; shoes, which do not push nails into your foot as the heals of the shoe wear down. Satellite TV, which lets us observe events on the opposite side of the globe, as they happen; an ATM machine which allows us to instantly withdraw money from an account on another continent; the microwave and remote sensing devises, which open doors for us as we approach; the car, that beeps obnoxiously, when I do not fasten my seatbelt and gets outright hysteric, when I open the door with the key in the ignition. The enormous amount of information on our fingertips and how little we learn from it would flabbergast him. Almost every step we take together offers something new and exiting to him. Our liberal attitude toward sex and our uptight code of political correctness, which puts 90% of all good jokes out of bounds would seem contradictory to him. He would find the sudden crumbling of the Soviet empire astounding and the drawing together the 25 nations in the EU exhilarating. It is incredible how fundamentally our world has changed in those 42 years and the above exercise gives us an indication, how much we will be babes in the woods , when revived out of cryo- suspension. If you have a loved one, who died 3-5 decades ago, bring him/her back in your mind and observe, how s/he would perceive the modern world, as s/he accompanies you in your daily routine. Best, Olaf Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=24075