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The author was born in 1916, in Georgia, and placed in an orphanage at age seven. This toughened his resolve and he graduated from high school and went on to college, where he earned his degree in mechanical engineering at Clemson University. He spent one year with Bucky Fuller on the Dymaxion automobile. He began flying in 1932 and served in WWII as a pilot and spent the next 42 years in the Air Force on active and reserve status. Jordan’s life has been dedicated to speed and his struggle has honed his strong opinions. As an engineer he has advocated the use of hydrogen as a fuel for cars and for our space program. He built his first hydrogen-powered engine in 1932, as a sixteen-year-old young man, the same year he learned to fly. He flew a B-57 Canberra Jet hydrogen-powered bomber in 1956. In 1981, Jordan converted a landspeed car to hydrogen and is the first to drive such a car at the Bonneville Salt Flats, in Western Utah. He converted a 1924 Model T Ford Depot Hack into a hydrogen- fueled, turbocharged driven car, before donating the car to the San Diego Automotive Museum in 1995. He built his landspeed streamliner, called the Bockscar, and set seven records at Bonneville. Jordan is a proponent of educational literacy in our schools and believes that technology can solve our societal ills. He also includes short histories and stories pertaining to the automobile.
One story explains that Otto Benz is not the inventor of the internal combustion engine and the father of the automobile in 1885. He says that honor goes to a Swiss engineer, Isaac de Rivaz, whose patent in 1805 is duly recorded. De Rivaz’s Grand Char Mechanique reached speeds of 3 miles per hour and climbed a 12-degree hill on October 18, 1813. Jordan also gives a little history on automotive engines, with the biggest engine over 6840 cubic inches and the smallest engine only one (1) cubic inch in size. That one cubic inch engine powered a streamliner to a speed of 62 mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats. He devotes another page to the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) and their influence on the automobile. Jordan proposes a new way to tax fuel and automobile usage, based on the type of fuel used and its environmental impact. He rails against government bureaucracy and policies that forestall the type of research needed to solve our energy crisis. He views all fossil fuels as wasteful and inefficient and shows how much of the gasoline that we use is not burned in the engine but lost through the exhaust back into the atmosphere as pollution. He is an unabashedly proud proponent of the hydrogen-powered vehicle. He forecasts that eventually the automotive and fuel industries will have to evolve, pulling a stodgy and rebelling political structure along with it into the modern age of hydrogen power. Jordan also rails against the term “accidents happen.” He states there are no accidents and that government and the auto and gas industries are to blame for poor engineering of our highways and vehicles. Whatever view you hold, one has to admire Ben Jordan for fighting for his beliefs. There are no indexes or chapter headings, but that doesn’t detract from the book, because it is basically a dictionary with added sidelights. The reader just has to hunt for these gems and find them. Otherwise, the definitions are all in alphabetical order. This is a fine book to add to the serious hot-rodders library.
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