Sybil Bruncheon's "Thanksgiving Tales of Technology!"... 1878...

Boys and Girls (and I use those terms loosely!) did you know that when people were first inventing all the gadgets and appliances that we take for granted today, sometimes they were very different? Your cell phone which fits in your little hand was actually as big as a brick and weighed much more when it was first designed by a scientist many years ago. And your Daddy's laptop computer which is as thin as a magazine today was the size of a car 50 years ago and could only add 2 + 2... and it took three hours for it to come up with the right answer! Well, when your Mommy puts your turkey in the oven for Thanksgiving, she counts on the nice pop-up-timer that tells her when it's done! And once upon a time, the very smart men who invented that little pop-up-timer worked very hard for a very long time to come up with it. They drew pictures, and had meetings, and asked questions, and yelled at people, and even hit each other when they were drinking and had ladies over... but finally, they made the world's first pop-up-timer. Unfortunately, it was 11 stories high and weighed over 375 tons. None of that would matter, except that when it was put into the first turkey and the cooking time was finished, the timer actually chewed up and swallowed the turkey, the kitchen, and three of the scientists testing it in the lab. Frank Perdue's great grandfather said "Oh well, Progress is a cruel mistress!... and so is a moist, plump turkey!".

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