Special Editorial

...If the unemployed-per-person-sitting-downtime averages, say, 5 hours daily, then the nation's jobless spend about 25 million hours annually on their rumps...

...The poor, crowded, malnourished nations of today could conceiveably become the rich, well-fed, energy suppliers of tomorrow...

...Irskln, an American working at Princeton, briefly explored the time factor by factoring the right hand side of the equation by element t. His findings yet require confirmation...

...Edito r The Energy Crisis--Solved...

...Crawling babies could be put on specially constructed, absorbent, "junior-mills...

...The price of energy most probably would not drop, despite an increased supply, because the demand for energy might be expected to increase as a result of the general rise in the standard of living and the demand for more and more consumer goods...

...The treadmill might well be the answer not only for the energy problem, but for the irksome ills of unemployment, poverty, thirdworld agitation, sagging economies, and sagging stomachs...

...He lost his professorial chair--the renown Aytobrot Appointment--in 1843, and disappeared from the scene altogether after concocting a breakfast nutriment that required more energy to digest than was actually provided in the cereal...

...Unemployed persons would provide an ideal labor force to power the treadmills...

...Housewives wanting to work just a few hours daily or weekly would certainly qualify...

...Imagine i f each step produced energy...

...To solve the energy crunch, Americans must use imagination and originality...

...Simple arithmetic shows that, given a leisurely 3 . . . . . ' ' ( 6 " _9...

...Since treading is labor intensive, the more populous countries are even better suited for this energy solution than the United States...

...Unable to substantiate his claim, the Baron was quickly ridiculed by the most respected academics of the day...

...Though these people may have a higher average annual walking mileage than the norm of 3,800, owing to weekly journeys a p/ed to pick up unemployment checks, presumably these folks also spend more time sitting down--<loing nothing-than might be expected of working citizens...

...Treading need not be a permanent job...

...The Starvation Equation, nAy =xC, quickly followed (where n and x are any real numbers, v is the velocity of the sweeping arm motion, A is the size of the arm, and C, the power of the candles...

...China's potential, needless to remind, is staggering--sufficient, perhaps, for broadcasting the thoughts of Mao to Alpha Centauri...

...In 1856, Kotchestau discovered that by making sweeping motions of his arm over a lit candle, the flame died...

...Factories could build industrial strength treadmills, leaving existing power supplies exclusively for municipal use...

...Man's most powerful muscle is his heart...

...However, since harnessing heartpower has proven difficult for the scientist and fatal to the donor after about three ~conds, perhaps we had better turn to the leg muscles, whose reliability and accessibility are thus far unquestioned...

...R obert Stearns 4 The Alternative April 1974...

...With this in mind, the question now reduces to: How can "man-action" produce usable energy...

...While harnessing every step taken by every American appears to be out of the question--forced harnessing might precipitate a civil liberties--constitutional question---a more feasible plan might be implemented...

...Home treadmills could be installed for household self-sufficiency...

...Best of all, by merely walking on the tread, employees would rid themselves of extra pounds while stimulating healthy appetites--an indirect boon to farmers who will be called on to produce more and higher-grade food...

...To put this in some perspective, remember that our sun is a mere 93 million miles away...

...The importance of the yon Schilhammer-Kotchestau research far exceeds candle quenching...

...To walk 760 billion miles requires 1,760 • 760 billion or 1,337,600 billion paces...

...Indeed, all sectors of the economy would benefit...

...In total, our nation of 200 million--padding to and fro in our offices, pushing our carts in supermarkets, walking to our cars and from our cars--trod more than 760 billion miles in 1972...

...Crowded third-world nations like Indonesia could potentially generate the world's energy supply...

...Private enterprise need only seize the opportunity to harness these steps for energy production...

...For a solution, we turn to muscles...

...Another attractive feature of the treadmill concept is that it embraces a positive physical-fitness attitude...

...From this he concluded that the movement of his arm required more energy than that needed by the candle to remain aflame...

...ENERGY, ITSEIa v a marvelous and curious phenomenon, first drew scholarly attention in Germany Funded by government subsidy, Baron Ott~ yon Schilhammer diligently probed the mysteries of energy at the Krieger Institute, just outside of Diisseldorf...

...Part-time work for high school and college students, brief lunch-hour strolls for already employed workers, and night shifts are all within the realm of possibility...

...Given an average of 1 yard per step, to walk a mile requires 1,760 paces...

...Eric Kotchestau, a student of yon Schilhammer, continued the great scientist's work at the Berlin Technical Institute, near Frankfurt...

...The inexorable turn of the vicious circle can be stopped...

...Given a finite source of energy in his small laboratory, he further concluded that the candle died from energy starvation: the energy required by the sweeping arm motion deprived the flame...

...1,1...

...Indeed, a person sans job would be induced to spend his 5 daily do-nothing hours on the tread by good wages and work close to home, to say nothing of patriotic fulfillment...

...I ' , : , . I ~. 3 / ~mwI.~ l ,. , I i / ] / 1 " l ' . , ~ r / l " . miles per hour walking speed, unemployed Americans could potentially walk 25 million • 1,760 • 3, or 132,000 million additional yearly paces...

...Von Schilhammer, affectionately known in scientific circles as "the Father of the Spark," astutely concluded in 1841 that splitting the atom would lead to a military potential beyond anyone's wildest drean...

...Clearly, if n is significantly greater than x, then v is insignificant and Cwill quickly die...

...More vital is the stunningly common-sense proposition that human energy can perform useful functions...

...Athletes could do roadwork on the tread, sharing it with jogging executives...

...Aside from the tremendous advantage gleaned in the United States from the treadmills, the world-wide treading affects would be truly astonishing...

...Beauregard Meltzer, writing in the trackand-field journal W/nd Spr/nt, points out: " . . . The average American walks about 3,800 miles annually...

...Treadmill operations would simultaneously alleviate the energy crisis while creating an abundance of jobs, all leading to a rise in the standard of living...

...Competitive treading could be developed...

...By constructing tremendous treadmills--a side benefit here goes to builders, contractors, and capital providing financial institutions---coupled to enormous electrical generators and by erecting the entire assembly in high unemployment, i.e., poverty areas, the Solution to the energy crisis might figuratively be at hand, quite literally at foot...

...Indeed, while the Starvation Equation repeatedly comes under heavy academic fire, one caveat remains absolutely unchallenged: Man-produced movement, when harnessed efficiently, can be put to powerful-good use...

...Currently, the number of unemployed, healthy Americans hovers around 5 million...

...Similarly, if x is significantly greater than either n or v, then a compensatingly high n or v value is demanded to satisfy t h e properties of the equation...

...Since the mere act of walking requires no education and little skill, practically everyone would qualify for treadmill work...

...Let's just put our foot down, and give a little push with our legs as we do so...