Why do Clocks run clockwise? (8 page)

(Don’t look for it in your bookstore; it was published in 1892.) The history of Jack as a pet name for John is a long and tangled one, as these things usually are. Most people assume that Jack is derived from the French Jacques, and that Jack should therefore be short for James rather than John. Nicholson debunked this notion, claiming that there is no recorded example of Jack ever being used to represent Jacques or James.

Jack is actually derived from the name Johannes, which was shortened to Jehan and eventually to Jan. The French were fond of tacking the suffix-
kin
onto many short names. French nasalization resulted in the new combination being pronounced Jackin instead of Jankin. The name Jackin was shortened to Jack. The Scottish version, Jock, was a similar contraction of Jon and -
kin
.

By the fourteenth century, Jack had become a synonym for
man
or
boy
, and later was also used as a slang name for sailors (thus the Jack in Cracker Jack).

In the mid-nineteenth century, Jack became popular as a Christian name, and it remained so until its use peaked in the 1920s. At that point, the diminutive Jackie became popular, propelled by child stars Jackie Cooper and Jackie Coogan. The feminine equivalent, Jac-queline, became the rage in the 1930s, and Jackie, for a short period, became a unisex name. Jack never regained its prominence, though there was a small surge after the United States elected a popular president named John, whose pet name was Jack.

Submitted by Michael Jeffreys and Krissie Kraft, of Marina del
Rey, California
.

WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 43

Which Side Gets the Game Ball When a Football
Game Ends in a Tie?

Jim Heffernan, director of public relations for the National Football League, told
Imponderables
that NFL rules require that each home team provide twenty-four footballs for the playing of each game.

The home team and the visiting team each provide additional balls for their pregame practice.

A “game ball,” contrary to popular belief, is not one football given to the winning side. Game balls are rewards for players and coaches who, as Heffernan puts it, “have done something special in a particular game.” The game-ball awards are usually doled out by the coach; on some teams, the captains determine the recipients.

The same holds true in college football. James A. Marchiony, director of media services for the National Collegiate Athletic Association, says, “Game balls are distributed at the sole discretion of each team’s head coach; a winning, losing or tying coach may give out as many as he or she wishes.”

Submitted by Larry Prussin, of Yosemite, California
.

Why Do Ketchup Bottles Have Necks So Narrow
That a Spoon Won’t Fit Inside?

Heinz has had a stranglehold on the ketchup business in the Western world for more than a century, so the story of ketchup bottle necks is pretty much the story of Heinz Ketchup bottle necks. Ironically, although Heinz ads now boast about the
difficulty
of pouring their rather thick ketchup, it wasn’t always so.

44 / DAVID FELDMAN

When Heinz Ketchup was first introduced in 1876, it was considerably thinner in consistency. It came in an octagonal bottle with a narrow neck intended to help impede the flow of the product. Prior to the Heinz bottle, most condiments were sold in crocks and sharply ridged bottles that were uncomfortable to hold.

Over the last 111 years, the basic design of the Heinz Ketchup bottle has changed little. The 1914 bottle looks much like today’s, and the fourteen-ounce bottle introduced in 1944 is identical to the one we now use. Heinz
was
aware that as their ketchup recipe yielded a thicker product, it poured less easily through their thin-necked bottle. But they also knew that consumers preferred the thick consistency and rejected attempts to dramatically alter the by-now-familiar container.

Heinz’s solution to the problem was the marketing of a twelve-ounce wide-mouth bottle, introduced in the 1960s. Gary D. Smith, in the communications department of Heinz USA, told
Imponderables
that the wide-mouth bottle, more than capable of welcoming a spoon, is the “least popular member of the Heinz Ketchup family.”

He added, though, that “its discontinuance would raise much fervor from its small band of loyal consumers who enjoy being able to spoon on” their ketchup.

In 1983, Heinz unveiled plastic squeeze bottles, which not only solved the pourability problem but also solved the breakability problem. The sixty-four-ounce plastic size, while mammoth, still has a relatively thin neck.

Until 1888, Heinz bottles were sealed with a cork. The neck-band at the top of the bottle was initially designed to keep a foil cap snug against its cork and sealing wax. Although it was rendered obsolete by the introduction of screw-on caps, the neck-band was retained as a signature of Heinz Ketchup.

Submitted by Robert Myers, of Petaluma, California
.

WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 45

Ivory Soap Advertises Its Product as 99 and 44/100

Percent Pure—99 and 44/100 Percent
What?
And
What Is the Impure 56/100 Percent of Ivory Soap?

Procter & Gamble, in the late nineteenth century, sold many products made of fats, such as candles and lard oil, as well as soap. Ivory Soap was originally marketed as a laundry soap, but the company was smart enough to realize its product’s potential as a cosmetic soap. The only problem was that most consumers were buying castile soaps (hard soaps made out of olive oil and sodium hydroxide) and considered laundry soap inappropriate for their personal grooming.

In order to convince consumers that its soap was wholesome, Procter & Gamble employed an independent scientific consultant in New York City to determine exactly what a pure 46 / DAVID FELDMAN

soap was. The answer: a pure soap should consist of nothing but fatty acids and alkali; anything else was foreign and superfluous.

Samples of Ivory Soap were sent to the same chemist for analysis.

Much to the manufacturer’s surprise, Ivory, by the consultant’s definition, was “purer” than the competing castile soaps—containing only 0.56 percent “impurities.” The impurities, then and now, were rather innocent:

Uncombined alkali 0.11 percent

Carbonates 0.28 percent

Mineral matter 0.17 percent

The first Ivory advertisement was placed in a religious weekly,
The Independent
, on December 21, 1881. Procter & Gamble decided to emphasize the positive, and right away hammered at their product’s advantages. Ivory Soap was trumpeted as “99 and 44/100

percent pure,” a rare advertising slogan in that it has lasted longer than a century.

Submitted by Linda A. Wheeler, of Burlington, Vermont
.

Why Do We Grow Lawns Around Our Houses?

At first blush, this Imponderable seems easily solved. Lawns are omnipresent in residential neighborhoods and even around multiunit dwellings in all but the most crowded urban areas. Lawns are pretty.

Enough said.

But think about it again. One could look at lawns as a monumental waste of ecological resources. Today, there are approximately 55

million home lawns in the United States, covering 25 to 30 million acres. In New Jersey, the most densely populated state,
nearly one-fifth of the entire land area is covered with turfgrass
, twice as much land as is used for crop production. Although turfgrass is also used for golf courses and public parks, most is planted for lawns. The average home lawn, if used for growing fruits and vegetables, would yield two thousand dollars worth of crops. But instead of this land becoming a revenue

WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 47

generator, it is a “drainer”: Americans spend an average of several hundred dollars a year to keep their lawns short and healthy.

If the purpose of lawns is solely ornamental, why has the tradition persisted for eons, when most conceptions of beauty change as often as the hem length of women’s dresses? The Chinese grew lawns five thousand years ago, and circumstantial evidence indicates that the Mayans and Aztecs were lawn fanciers as well. In the Middle Ages, monarchs let their cattle run loose around their castles, not only to feed the animals, but to cut the grass so that advancing enemy forces could be spotted at a distance. Soon, aristocrats throughout Europe adopted the lawn as a symbol of prestige (“if it’s good enough for the king, it’s good enough for me!”). The games associated with lawns—bowls, croquet, tennis—all started as upper-class diversions.

The lawn quickly became a status symbol in colonial America, just as it was in Europe. Some homeowners used scythes to tend their lawns, but most let animals, particularly sheep, cows, and horses, do the work. In 1841, the lawn mower was introduced, much to the delight of homeowners, and much to the dismay of grazing animals and teenagers everywhere.

Dr. John Falk, who is associated with the educational research division of the Smithsonian Institution, has spent more time ponder-ing this Imponderable than any person alive, and his speculations are provocative and convincing. Falk believes that our desire for a savannalike terrain, rather than being an aesthetic predilection, is actually a genetically encoded preference. Anthropologists agree that humankind has spent most of its history roaming the grasslands of East Africa. In order to survive against predators, humans needed trees for protection and water for drinking, but also grassland for foraging. If primitive man wandered away into rain forests, for example, he must have longed to return to the safety of his savanna home. As Falk commented in an interview in
Omni
magazine: “For more than ninety percent of human history the savanna was home.

Home equals safety, and that information has to be fairly hard-wired if the animal is going to respond to danger instantaneously.”

48 / DAVID FELDMAN

When we talked to Dr. Falk, he added more ammunition to support his theories. He has conducted a number of cross-cultural studies to ascertain the terrain preferences of people all over the world. He and psychologist John Balling showed subjects photographs of five different terrains—deciduous forest, coniferous forest, tropical rain forest, desert, and savanna—and asked them where they would prefer to live. The savanna terrain was chosen overwhelm-ingly. Falk’s most recent studies were conducted in India and Nigeria, in areas where most subjects had never even seen a savanna. Yet they consistently picked the savanna as their first choice, with their native terrain usually the second preference.

Falk and Balling also found that children under twelve were even more emphatic in their selection of savannas, another strong, if in-conclusive, indication that preference for savanna terrain is genetic.

In the
Omni
article, Falk also suggested that even the way we ornament our lawns mimics our East African roots. The ponds and fountains that decorate our grasses replicate the natural water formations of our homeland, and the popularity of umbrella-shaped shade trees might represent an attempt to recreate the acacia trees found in the African savanna.

Of course, psychologists have speculated about other reasons why we “need” lawns. The most common theory is that lawns and gardens are a way of taming and domesticating nature in an era in which affluent Westerners are virtually divorced from it. Another explanation is that lawns are a way of mapping territory, just as every other animal marks territory to let others know what property it is ready to defend. This helps explain why so many homeowners are touchy about the neighborhood kid barely scraping their lawn while trying to catch a football. As Dr. Falk told
Imponderables
, “People create extensions of themselves. When people create a lawn as an extension of themselves, they see a violation of their lawn as a violation of their space.”

Lawns are also a status symbol, for they are a form of prop WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 49

erty that has a purely aesthetic rather than economic purpose. Historically, only the affluent have been able to maintain lawns—the poor simply didn’t have the land to spare. Fads and fashions in lawns change, but there are usually ways for the rich to differentiate their lawns from the hoi polloi’s. Highly manicured lawns have usually been the preference of the rich, but not always. In the Middle Ages, weeds were considered beautiful. In many parts of the world, mixed breeds of turf are preferred.

American taste has become increasingly conservative. Ever since World War II, the “ideal” American lawn has been a short, mono-culture, weed-free lawn, preferably of Kentucky bluegrass. Falk sees these preferences as carry-overs from the technology used by American agronomists to develop grass for golf courses. Americans always want to build a better mousetrap; our “ideal lawn” has become just about the only type.

Americans have largely resisted the inroads of artificial grass. Although many team owners endorse it, sports fans by and large recoil at artificial turf in sports stadiums—perhaps another genetically determined predisposition.