Rob Beckers
12th August 2009, 07:58
Recently I picked up the book "Internal Combustion" by Edwin Black at our local library. It chronicles how the world became addicted to oil, and how this was largely accomplished not by market forces, but by monopolistic behavior of various businesses.
It would be easy to dismiss the book as yet another conspiracy-theory-themed work, however, Mr. Black has actually done his homework. There is an almost unbelievable amount of research behind every statement, with references at every turn. In fact, just the references span 59 pages in fine print! The downside of all this is that it is a hard slug to read; the book is so dense with names, dates and such that it gets hard to keep track, and it definitely takes away from the flow of the story. I did work my way through, but would venture that most readers won't have the patience and will skip, reading a bit here and there (despite Mr. Black's explicit request in the introduction to read it front-to-back without skipping). A different style to tell the story would have benefited the book.
The book starts a few thousand years ago, then quickly works its way through the monopolies on wood in the middle ages, and coal after that, to the invention of the battery in the mid-1800's. Battery progress is killed through stock manipulation of the companies involved, to arrive at the horseless carriage in the late-1800's. The early cars at the turn of the 20th century were mostly powered by electric motors and batteries, to once again be run into the ground through poor management, monopolies on battery sources, patent strangleholds, and collusion between companies to favor the gasoline engine. Edison and Ford (yes, the model-T guy!) together gave it another try, a very expensive one, around 1912 - 1915. Once again they were thwarted in their efforts by business interest that needed the battery driven vehicle to fail.
By the way, it is this effort that resulted in the Edison battery, the Nickel-Iron battery that is still around these days. They last semi-forever with some of the original century old Edison originals still working, can be discharged to a full 100%, over and over, and overcharged without damage. On the downside, they have a 30-percent-a-month self-discharge rate and do poorly in freezing weather.
Electrical locomotion made a comeback in the form of streetcars as public transport in many American cities. That too came to an artificial end when those (public/municipal) transportation companies were systematically bought by a cartel of automotive related business lead by General Motors, and dismantled in the 1930's through 1950's. So ended public transport in many US cities, in favor of the automobile. A similar fate befall electrical train transportation in the US, in favor of diesel.
The book ends with a rather favorable review of the merits of hydrogen as an energy source. Personally I disagree with the author on that; in my view hydrogen makes a very poor fuel. It has a poor energy density, is very hard to store, and making it requires a great deal of energy (which at best comes from electricity, though currently almost all hydrogen is made from natural gas). In my opinion it would make more sense to work on better battery technology powered by renewable energy sources. Electric motors have very high efficiency, are quiet, last a very long time, and don't pollute. The trick is energy storage, and for that batteries offer more hope than hydrogen.
There are several messages I take away from reading this book. The big one is that free market forces have nothing to do with what products succeed, or fail. Neither does technical merit, it is not the best products that survive. Instead, it seems that those very institutions that were set up to promote a free market, and protection of intellectual property, are systematically abused by big business to achieve the exact opposite. Not only that, elected government seems set to rig the system to promote exactly such abuse. One may think that this is history (most of the book deals with the early 20th century), but events like Enron, and the current recession (largely caused by idiotic-but-perfectly-legal-and-very-profitable behavior of banks and related industry) tell otherwise.
In all, it's a good book. A bit hard to read, and probably not for everyone. For those interested in the subject I would recommend it.
-RoB-
It would be easy to dismiss the book as yet another conspiracy-theory-themed work, however, Mr. Black has actually done his homework. There is an almost unbelievable amount of research behind every statement, with references at every turn. In fact, just the references span 59 pages in fine print! The downside of all this is that it is a hard slug to read; the book is so dense with names, dates and such that it gets hard to keep track, and it definitely takes away from the flow of the story. I did work my way through, but would venture that most readers won't have the patience and will skip, reading a bit here and there (despite Mr. Black's explicit request in the introduction to read it front-to-back without skipping). A different style to tell the story would have benefited the book.
The book starts a few thousand years ago, then quickly works its way through the monopolies on wood in the middle ages, and coal after that, to the invention of the battery in the mid-1800's. Battery progress is killed through stock manipulation of the companies involved, to arrive at the horseless carriage in the late-1800's. The early cars at the turn of the 20th century were mostly powered by electric motors and batteries, to once again be run into the ground through poor management, monopolies on battery sources, patent strangleholds, and collusion between companies to favor the gasoline engine. Edison and Ford (yes, the model-T guy!) together gave it another try, a very expensive one, around 1912 - 1915. Once again they were thwarted in their efforts by business interest that needed the battery driven vehicle to fail.
By the way, it is this effort that resulted in the Edison battery, the Nickel-Iron battery that is still around these days. They last semi-forever with some of the original century old Edison originals still working, can be discharged to a full 100%, over and over, and overcharged without damage. On the downside, they have a 30-percent-a-month self-discharge rate and do poorly in freezing weather.
Electrical locomotion made a comeback in the form of streetcars as public transport in many American cities. That too came to an artificial end when those (public/municipal) transportation companies were systematically bought by a cartel of automotive related business lead by General Motors, and dismantled in the 1930's through 1950's. So ended public transport in many US cities, in favor of the automobile. A similar fate befall electrical train transportation in the US, in favor of diesel.
The book ends with a rather favorable review of the merits of hydrogen as an energy source. Personally I disagree with the author on that; in my view hydrogen makes a very poor fuel. It has a poor energy density, is very hard to store, and making it requires a great deal of energy (which at best comes from electricity, though currently almost all hydrogen is made from natural gas). In my opinion it would make more sense to work on better battery technology powered by renewable energy sources. Electric motors have very high efficiency, are quiet, last a very long time, and don't pollute. The trick is energy storage, and for that batteries offer more hope than hydrogen.
There are several messages I take away from reading this book. The big one is that free market forces have nothing to do with what products succeed, or fail. Neither does technical merit, it is not the best products that survive. Instead, it seems that those very institutions that were set up to promote a free market, and protection of intellectual property, are systematically abused by big business to achieve the exact opposite. Not only that, elected government seems set to rig the system to promote exactly such abuse. One may think that this is history (most of the book deals with the early 20th century), but events like Enron, and the current recession (largely caused by idiotic-but-perfectly-legal-and-very-profitable behavior of banks and related industry) tell otherwise.
In all, it's a good book. A bit hard to read, and probably not for everyone. For those interested in the subject I would recommend it.
-RoB-