• Number of Beacon Journal stories in 1996 that contained the word ``Internet'': 1,148.

In a mere four years -- the length of time it takes to get a college degree, assuming you don't spend all of your time next to the keg -- this society fully embraced a radically new technology.

Major transformations do happen. Perhaps that's why the folks pushing hydrogen cars don't seem too discouraged by the long odds.

(BJ stories since 1985 containing the term ``hydrogen car'': 10, including this one.)

Sure, our gasoline-powered tradition is a century old and has become so ingrained in our culture that it colors everything from work to leisure to U.S. foreign policy. But that doesn't mean things can't change. Ask the makers of buggy whips.

One of the ringleaders of the hydrogen-car movement, Akron native Stan Ovshinsky, was in town again this week, showing off the third generation of his company's re-tooled Toyota Prius.

In August, when Ovshinsky brought his second-generation car to Akron, it drew raves from many corners -- engineers at Goodyear to scientists at the University of Akron to city officials to the gawkers who surrounded the car when it was displayed at Lock 3 Park.

This time, Ovshinsky's Michigan company, Energy Conversion Devices -- Ovonics, retrofit a maroon 2005 Prius. This one is addressing the challenge of calculating exactly how much fuel is left in the tank.

Although improvements have extended the car's range to about 200 miles, the fuel level is still somewhat of a guessing game.

Assuming those algorithms are properly crunched, the next version will likely address the problem of refueling time -- at this point, an intolerable 8 ½ minutes in a go-go society. The target is five.

But those issues are essentially minutiae. The big question is the most basic one: Is this really our future?

Ovshinsky certainly thinks so. ``This is the ultimate,'' he told me this week. ``You're freeing yourself from gasoline. You have no pollution, no climate-change gasses and no wars over oil. So I think this is a no-brainer.''

Well, maybe.

The one issue that isn't being discussed much: Creating pure hydrogen ain't easy. Yes, we have plenty of water, which means we have plenty of hydrogen. But separating out the hydrogen takes a lot of energy.

In fact, in the overall environmental equation, hydrogen cars could actually be worse for the environment.

If the whole country switched from gasoline to hydrogen tomorrow, we'd need twice the energy. Factor in the pollution generated in the production process -- the majority of our electric plants are coal-fired -- and we'd double the type of emissions that cause global warming.

Sure, the backers wax poetic about solar power and wind power, but those technologies have been ``right around the corner'' for 40 years now.

Hydroelectric? We're tearing down dams, not building them.

The current method of extracting hydrogen, natural gas, is outrageously expensive and incredibly inefficient. And using off-peak electrical power would still be using power.

On the other hand, most of us would agree that fueling our cars with domestic resources would be far superior to being hooked up to an IV leading to the oil fields of the Middle East.

As for the actual driving, the adjustment would be nil. I drove the H-car this week and, other than high RPMs -- this thing sounds like a lawn tractor trying to get up the Smith Road hill -- it looks, feels, handles and accelerates like any other mainstream car.

For more on Ovshinsky's efforts, you could go onto that newfangled Internet thingy and type in www.ovonics.com .