Automotive Journal

Contrary to popular belief just-auto's editor is not some kind of all-knowing oracle when it comes to the history of the auto industry - or anything else come to think of it. Don't get me wrong: I'm not totally ignorant and uneducated. I occasionally read books and have even got an honours degree to my name. All kinds of stuff is stored and jumbled up in my head.

I can tell you, for example, the formula for solving quadratic equations and know how to do long multiplication because I learnt those things and they stuck fast. I was also recently able to impress some colleagues in a trivia quiz that I knew 100% that the capital city of Brazil is not Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo - it is in fact Brasilia. Impressive, eh? But we all have a few gaps in our personal knowledge banks don't we?

I came across one such gap in my company knowledge yesterday that I will share here. I was out for lunch with some just-auto contributors for lunch - a Turkish restaurant in London where they do a light and reasonably priced special at lunchtime. 

Anyway, a colleague remarked that the pepper grinder on our table had a Peugeot logo on it. That's a bit random, I thought. Left over stock from some weird promotional thing that Peugeot had going on? But no, Peugeot invented the pepper grinder and the company has been involved in their manufacture since 1842. I must confess I had absolutely no idea and that I am also thinking that I would like to acquire a serious, industrial Peugeot pepper grinder like Gordon Ramsey probably uses. ('Chef Ramsey then picked up the Peugeot and bashed a contestant on the head with it; paramedics immediately attended the scene.') Did you know that someone at Fiat invented the garlic press and an inventor at Hyundai is responsible for the humble egg timer?