A visitor at a Ford factory in Dearborn, Michigan had the good fortune of encountering Henry Ford himself, who, demonstrating a newly finished automobile, proudly stated that there were "exactly forty-seven hundred and nineteen parts in that model."

Impressed by Ford's exhaustive wealth of knowledge, the visitor located a company engineer and asked the man for confirmation: Were there in fact exactly forty-seven hundred and nineteen parts in that model?

The engineer shrugged his shoulders. "I certainly don't know," he replied. "I can't think of a more useless piece of information!"