The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 29: The 100 Billion Dollar Bar

Episode Date: August 9, 2016

How his sweet tooth changed your life.

This is the way I heard it. Percy was no stranger to making big decisions. He worked on secret projects for a large government contractor and supervised an elite team of physicists, engineers, and mathematicians. He understood the importance of being firm, clear, and concise with respect to all aspects of communication and decision-making. But today, the choice that Percy faced was simply too agonizing to rush. Peanut butter or chocolate.

Other people, less disciplined and more indulgent perhaps, might have chosen both, but Percy limited himself to one snack per day, so the decision was not so easily remedied. The bold and bittersweet luxury of the great American chocolate bar were the rich and creamy goodness of a peanut-butter cluster. Happily, Percy's discerning gaze fell upon an intriguing confection that absolved him of any further procrastination, a peanut butter cluster drizzled with chocolate fudge. Hallelujah. Percy slid his nickel across the counter, wrapped his treat in a napkin, and slipped the tidy bundle into the front pocket of his new suit, never knowing the nickel he just spent would reveal a strange and powerful force within the universe, incubating, in fact, in the heart

of Percy's laboratory. The team was already hard at work by the time Percy arrived, and the experiments were progressing ahead of schedule. The technology being explored on this particular day had the potential to allow a more accurate prediction of weather patterns and provide a better way to monitor sea levels. The test results were encouraging, and by mid-afternoon, Percy was starting to feel like the technology in question was far more significant than anyone realized. He was also starting to feel like it was time for a snack. A bit early, maybe, but why not? The comforting weight of his confection had been a reassuring presence all day, and really what was life, after all, without the celebration

of small victories. But alas, when Percy reached into his pocket for the sweet to which he now felt entitled, it wasn't there. Good God, was it possible? Had forces unleashed in his laboratory, where he transported his afternoon snack out of his pants and into some other dimension? Well, sort of. In the restroom, Percy stood before the full-length mirror and assessed the damage. His confection had not been transported, per se, but rather transformed into a liquid version of its prior self. Now it appeared to be a permanent part of his soiled but delicious smelling trousers.

The question was why. Why did Percy's chocolate treat melt in his pants and not in his mouth? The laboratory was warm, but not hot. Could his own body temperature have wreaked such havoc on the unsuspecting bonbon? Unlikely. And that's when the light bulb went off. After a few more quick but definitive tests involving popcorn and a raw egg, Percy had the answer and convinced his bosses to file a

a joint patent. Two years later, the first prototype emerged. It stood six feet tall and weighed 750 pounds. It also cost $52,628 in today's money, which is precisely why nobody bought one. A year later, Raytheon would call it their single greatest commercial failure of all time. But a year after that, Percy's prototype came down in size, down in weight, and down in price. And over time, his invention would go on to sell 30 million units a year and generate well over $100 billion in sales, which is why Percy is in the National Inventors Hall of Fame. It's tempting, though, to ponder Percy's place in history, as well as, the fate of countless leftovers had he chosen for his afternoon indulgence on that fateful morning

in 1945 an apple or a pretzel or a sensible bag of peanuts because those treats react very differently to the invisible force he accidentally discovered. Today it's Percy's brain that gets all the credit, but ultimately it was his sweet tooth that transformed kitchens around the world and a single nickel that led to the invention of an oven that relied not on gas, but on the invisible power of microwaves. Anyway, that's the way I heard it. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more.

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