Tatsuro Toyoda, champion of the Prius, has died

rip

 

Gosh, he certainly made the world a better place.

This bit of the article confused me so much I had to go and Google things.

The name Toyoda was changed to Toyota because the number of strokes to write Toyota in Japanese (eight) was thought to bring prosperity. ​

I'd always thought it was some sort of attempt to make it sound less Japanese for export markets, but this sounds like a much better reason.

But it confused me because I'd always thought of the name as having nine strokes: 丰田. But, of course, this is Toyoda (Fengtian in Chinese), in simplified Chinese (豊田 (18 strokes) in complex Chinese characters and in Kanji). That's the name they use in China.

It hadn't occurred to me that the Toyota name in Japanese would be in katakana, where of course it is eight strokes (トヨタ).

The thing is, I know it's just a surname, but 豊田 / 丰田 (abundant field) sounds at least as auspicious to me as a made-up name that had eight strokes in katakana.

 

Some California Gen 3 owners here have made a Japanese badge, IIRC



from Rob's 2011 JDM Inspired Prius Modellista Build - The MPGstunna | Page 6 | PriusChat

 

Ahha. I had no idea: I thought katakana was just for foreign words, and I'd assumed that you'd use hiragana for people's names if you didn't know the kanji.

It's nice that とよた has eight strokes too...

Yes, I've seen 田 in the names of Japanese companies ending in both -da and -ta.

Yes, this is why this case could only have happened in America. It just wouldn't have worked in Britain or Australia.

 

That reminds me of the Toyota SR (a Corolla 4 seat, 2 door fastback) I bought in Cyprus late 70s. Not the photo, but the badge logo which was emblazoned on the steering wheel and elsewhere on my car and the various bits and bobs.

 

Tatsuro Toyoda was important at Administrative levels to develop Prius but the nuts and bolts guy was Takehisa Yaegashi.

T. Toyoda biggest thing might have been the NUMMI factory together with GM in California. GM left, then Toyota left, and now Teslas are built there. So one could see a link from Toyoda to Tesla as well.

 

nature abhors a vacuum

 

That 'abhor' chestnut gets a lot of repetition. But nature is very clumpy. Where a lot of matter self-assembles, vacuums are thermodynamically costly. Elsewhere, like in almost all the universe, matter isn't and vacuum is a very accurate description of state.

 

That's why it's a Tesla factory and not a Dyson one.

 

I agree, 8 is a lucky number, it’s next to 9, a number representing eternity.
Again, posting on an iPad is almost impossible, only on this website.....

 

thanks, how about outside the universe?

 

Humour from the sofa-hauler. Just when I'd hoped for interest in how good vacuum is out there in the lonelies.

 

how about what outside the universe?

The sound of no hands doing nothing.

 

we can't possibly know that.

 

I really am hilarious.

But yes, it is remarkable how much nothing - or at least how much nothing-we-can-detect - there is out there.

In many Chinese dialects, the word for 8 sounds a bit like the word for wealth. While wealth and 8 don't (to my admittedly-limited knowledge) sound the same in Japanese, I assume the superstition made its way over to Japan, along with Buddhism and writing.

One day we might.

 

can't argue with that. we'll probably all find out one day, in the not too distant future.

 

You want the skinny on vacuums. You just don't realize it yet.

Plain old air - that stuff we take for granted. Stop breathing for a minute and your appreciation for it may grow. There be 10^19 molecules per cm^3.

Pretty good lab vacuum with a well-maintained piston pump. 10^14 molecules per cm^3.

Really good lab vacuum requires a turbomolecular pump. Looks like a jet engine but no fuel etc. External electrical motor provides zillions rpm of spin. All the little blades just bump into molecules (sometimes) and send them to downstream suckers. 10^10 molecules per cm^3. Achieving 10^8 is possible but takes huge effort.

Interstellar medium with dense molecular clouds. 10^4 molecules per cm^3. Yeah they are astronomically pretty but a million times more vacuumy than can be made here.

Interstellar medium, typical. 10^0 molecules per cm^3. In simpler notation, one.

Between galaxies, probably a few orders of magnitude below that. Not something that can easily be measured. But that is what most of the universe is.

 

when i was a lad, my dad connected a vacuum pump to an aquarium, and blew up a balloon inside of it.