Nintendo's Long, Strange History

Nintendo is a huge company that came to the forefront of the world in the 1980's with the still popular Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The NES reinvented the failed and disastrous video game industry collapse of the early 1980's. Most people think of this as the company that began with the NES, then went on to create other popular consoles such as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), the Game Boy, the Nintendo 64 (N64), the Game Boy Advance (GBA), the Gamecube, the Nintendo DS, the Nintendo Wii, the Nintendo DSi, the Nintendo 3DS, and most recently the Nintendo Wii U. They are known for their memorable character franchises such as Super Mario Brothers, Legend of Zelda, and Kirby. But when did this company start? Did they always do video games and video game consoles?



Amazingly, the Nintendo company has been around for a very long time. A topic for another day is the infamous video game industry collapse of the early 1980's. After this, it was nearly impossible for any kind of video game console to be sold in America. That is, until 1985. A superb marketing campaign by the Nintendo company took their Family Computer (or Famicom) and introduced it in North America as the Nintendo Entertainment System, which supposedly would let you do more than just play video games on it (there's even a port underneath for "future use" but was it ever needed?). But what happened before 1985?

Nintendo actually got into the video game industry in 1974 when they purchased the rights to distribute Magnavox's Odyssey video game console. In 1975, they released their first video game called EVR Race. In 1977, they began making hardware with a console simply called Color TV Game, which were four different plug and play consoles (these basically each had variations of the same game). Their first big success came when they released Donkey Kong in 1981. This was hugely popular, but they were able to cash in on it because it was licensed to port in with other consoles at the time: Atari 2600, Intellivision, and ColecoVision.

 

Here's the really interesting part of Nintendo: they existed before 1974! What did they do? They first started out as a playing card company. They handmade playing cards, and the demand made the company grow. The company still makes playing cards in their native Japan, and even sponsors a bridge tournament called the Nintendo Cup.

After a trip to America, the head of Nintendo decided that playing cards wasn't the best venture for the company. He changed the name from Nintendo Playing Card Co. to just Nintendo Co. They then went into a number of odd things such as a taxi cab company, a TV network, selling instant rice, and even a love hotel chain. All of these things eventually failed, and the company tried their hand at making toys such as the Ultra Hand, the Ultra Machine, and the Love Tester. They tried a series of laser gun shooting games, and even set up in abandoned bowling alleys laser clay pigeon shooting games. These had to be shutdown because of the high costs. During this time, they created the popular Wild Gunman arcade game, made famous in Back to the Future II. But because of the lessons learned by these latest ventures, they turned themselves into the video game company now legendary.

So, I'm sure you're thinking "that's all nice but when did the company start?" Well, let's go backwards. They introduced the NES to North America in 1985. They switched over to video games entirely in 1974. Their stocks were at all-time lows after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. They tried their hand at the odd ventures mentioned above between 1963-1968. The head of Nintendo renamed the company in 1963. They changed their playing card types in 1956. And before that they made playing cards... since 1889. That's right: Nintendo has been around since 1889.

Bet you never knew they were that old!

What Are the Largest Bills in American Money?

We all know about the US dollar bill denominations up to the Benjamin Franklin $100 bill. But what about higher denominations? Were there real American dollar bills printed with higher amounts? Run away with expendablenlightenment for a little while into the land of the big American bills of the past.

Many dollar bills have had different lives. They have come in a large bill format and a small bill format (the small bill format is what we have today). They have also changed the faces on the fronts from time to time, even for the lower denominations we use today. But for the large denominations listed below, the faces on them are the ones most recently published.

$500 bill



The $500 bill had President William McKinley on the front.

$1,000 bill



The $1,000 bill had President Grover Cleveland on the front.

$5,000 bill



The $5,000 bill had President James Madison on the front.

$10,000 bill



The $10,000 bill had Salmon P. Chase on the front.

$100,000 bill



The $100,000 bill had President Woodrow Wilson on the front. This bill, the highest denomination ever produced by the US, was not released to the public. It was released by the Treasurer to Federal Reserve Banks. It was only used as official transactions between Federal Reserve Banks. Unlike the other bills, this one was only printed from December 18, 1934, to January 9, 1935.

These large bills were last printed in 1945, and were taken out of circulation in 1969, though most of the higher denomination bills had mostly disappeared by then. These high bills were mostly used by banks and the government, though some private citizens used them.

Some of these high bills can still be seen today, although they are becoming increasingly rare. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury still consider the bills to be at face value, but collectors will pay much higher prices to obtain a piece of history.

In 2009, there was a search to try to find the remaining numbers of the bills in existence. They found this:
Of the $1,000 bill, there were 165,372 known to exist.
Of the $5,000 bill, there were 342 known to exist.
Of the $10,000 bill, there were 336 known to exist.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was opened to the public on July 1, 1940. Its opening had much pomp and circumstance associated with it. Great exaltation came with its opening, and immediately it became a household name in the area. But it didn't become known so quickly for what it did, or how beautiful it was, or how practical it was. No, it became known for something that bridges aren't supposed to do: wobble. Because of its unique trait, the bright became known as "Galloping Gertie".

If you've ever really looked at a lot of bridges, have you noticed how frail they appear to be? Buildings are large structures that weight a lot, but they have fully formed walls; they aren't just metal beams with open walls. Most bridges appear to be open beams all over the place. So why is that? Well, let's just say that if the Tacoma Narrows Bridge had been built that way, then it'd probably still be standing today.

You see, bridges have to be built with so many open spaces in them to allow wind to move through them. Buildings don't have that, but they are built to "sway" with the wind. The enormous Burj Khalifa in Dubai (over 2700 feet tall!) will sway six feet at the top with the wind. Buildings have to be strong, yet flexible. Bridges shouldn't move so much because you're driving at a decent rate of speed over them, so instead of swaying as much as buildings, the bridge has to let the wind pass through them.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was built too solidly, not allowing the wind to pass through it. As a result, the driving deck literally would wobble with the wind. It was a common attraction in the area. However, the longer it was there, the more violent the wobbling became.

On November 7 of that same year, the winds were blowing in at over 40 mph. The wobbling was the most violent it had ever been. The bridge was cleared, and in front of everyone, the bridge ended up shaking itself apart. The famous footage of the collapse was filmed by Barney Elliot on a 16mm movie camera. His film, part of which is in this video, is in the National Film Archive.



Four months after it was opened, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed because of a simple design flaw. The planned rebuilding of the bridge was halted because of the buildup to and the entry of the US involvement in World War II. The collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge just goes to show that simple math can go a long way in such a large structure.

Simple Solutions - Aircraft Carriers

The aircraft carrier has been around since World War I. But there was a fundamental flaw in the designs, a flaw that was sometimes contributing the deaths of the airplane (and later jet) pilots.

To understand the flaw, you have to see how the system was supposed to work back then. You have your airplanes on the flight desk preparing to take off. But a squadron of other planes are coming in to land. So you have to wait for them to land first. When they land, there are a series of cables that stretch across the flight deck to grab the plane and stop it. There's only one runway on the flight deck, so what if a plane misses the cables?

USS Langley with single straight deck

That was the problem. The planes that were waiting to take off had to wait on the same runway that was letting planes land on it. If a landing plane missed the cables, then it would run head-on into the waiting planes.

After some time, it was decided to put up a net to catch the planes that missed the cables. That way, they could stop the runaway planes in time. The problem was that the planes sometimes missed the net and still crashed anyway.

Meanwhile, World War II came and went. If you want to look at the irony, you can see it plain as day. On one hand, we had planes landing and taking off from the same flight deck which meant a high risk of crashes and potential deaths. On the other hand, in the same amount of time, scientists were able to discover how to split the atom and even the beginnings of space exploration. We just couldn't figure out how to make the aircraft carrier safer.

It wasn't until the early 1950's when the idea finally was struck: have two runways! The most common versions of this can be seen on the Nimitz class carriers. The new feature has one runway for takeoffs which is straight, and then next to it is an angled runway that is 9 degrees off straight for landings. This allows takeoffs and landings to occur at the same time, so faster turnarounds in takeoff/landing. This also allows for safer landings. If a landing plane misses all the cables, then he simply revs the engines and takes back up, circling to land again.

USS Forestal with angled flight deck, launched in 1954

Yes, it took many years to come up with such a simple feature, but it has been an important safety feature of the aircraft carrier ever since.