Like many wonderful and useful scientific things, nitrous oxide was discovered by accident in 18th-century England, and much later (during the '30s and '40s) it was used by dentists as an anesthetic.

Adding nitrous oxide to your hot rod to make it faster is nothing new. In the late-model Mustang market, people have been using it to make their Ponies gallop faster since the '80s. The problem with ...