Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Our jobs can be draining. Working forty hours
Speaker 1: or more can leave us feeling run down and tired
Speaker 1: by the end of the week. When the weekend comes,
Speaker 1: we often find solace in front of the TV or
Speaker 1: engaging in a relaxing hobby. Lonnie Johnson, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: he liked to tinker. Johnson was born in Mobile, Alabama,
Speaker 1: in nine His father, a veteran of World War Two,
Speaker 1: made sure Lonnie and his five siblings were well educated
Speaker 1: and most importantly, stayed curious. And Johnson was definitely curious.
Speaker 1: As a boy, he learned how to build his own toys.
Speaker 1: When that stopped being interesting, he moved on to making
Speaker 1: barry launchers out of bamboo shoots. Johnson grew more and
Speaker 1: more interested in the sciences, especially engineering. At thirteen years old,
Speaker 1: he built a go cart out of scraps from a
Speaker 1: junkyard and hooked it all up to a lawnmower engine.
Speaker 1: Rather than tested out on a track, though he decided
Speaker 1: to let a rip on the open highway. The police
Speaker 1: were less than thrilled with his initiative and pulled him
Speaker 1: over before returning him to his parents. As a budding scientist,
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight, Johnson attended a state science fair
Speaker 1: held at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. He was
Speaker 1: the only black student present and hoped to follow in
Speaker 1: the footsteps of his idol, agricultural scientist George Washington Carver.
Speaker 1: Johnson entered a project that while the judges a robot
Speaker 1: running on compressed air, His efforts won him first prize.
Speaker 1: He went on to earn a scholarship to Tuskegee University,
Speaker 1: where he graduated with the bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering,
Speaker 1: followed by a master's degree in nuclear engineering. Johnson the
Speaker 1: sky was the limit, literally, so fresh out of college,
Speaker 1: he joined the United States Air Force, where his intelligence
Speaker 1: and engineering skills were put to use in developing the
Speaker 1: Stealth Bomber. From there, even the sky seemed too low
Speaker 1: of a boundary for him. He needed to go higher
Speaker 1: above the clouds to the stars and beyond. NASA would
Speaker 1: become his home for the next few years. From nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine to nineteen eighty two, Johnson worked on the
Speaker 1: Cassini spacecraft, which traveled to Saturn, as well as the Galileo,
Speaker 1: which eventually reached Jupiter in nine. He returned to the
Speaker 1: Air Force after his brief stint at NASA, but was
Speaker 1: called back five years later to assist with the Mars
Speaker 1: Observer project. Yet, even as he bounced from one career
Speaker 1: to another, he never gave up on his first love,
Speaker 1: working on his own inventions. You see, in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: Johnson had begun designing a better heat pump. Heat pumps
Speaker 1: absorbed heat from one location and transferred it to another.
Speaker 1: For example, a heat pump might absorb the heat inside
Speaker 1: a house and transferred outside in order to cool the
Speaker 1: home down in warmer weather, much like an air conditioner.
Speaker 1: Johnson's version, however, was small and self contained. It featured
Speaker 1: a reservoir on top that looked like a two liter
Speaker 1: soda bottle, which was filled with pressurized water instead of
Speaker 1: free on The bottle was fastened to a few feet
Speaker 1: of PVC pipe and some pieces were handmade using his
Speaker 1: own tools. One night, Johnson was working on his prototype
Speaker 1: when it sprung a leak. The stream of water shout
Speaker 1: out several feet in front of him, and I gave
Speaker 1: him an idea. He walked into his bathroom and aimed
Speaker 1: it at his bathtub, where the pressurized water fired again.
Speaker 1: He calculated that given enough space, it was possible that
Speaker 1: his heat pump could launch a jet of water about
Speaker 1: forty ft long. Suddenly he didn't have a heat pump anymore.
Speaker 1: He filed the patent for the device, which he finally
Speaker 1: be received in six His goal for success had shifted
Speaker 1: from rocket science to consumer purchase. He believed everyday people
Speaker 1: would love to own such a unique product, but he
Speaker 1: couldn't find anyone to help him manufacture or market it.
Speaker 1: And then Laramie Corporation signed on. They saw a perfect
Speaker 1: opportunity to revolutionize pool parties and summer vacations with Johnson's
Speaker 1: heat pump. They marketed it as the Power Drencher and
Speaker 1: put it up for sale in nineteen The product didn't
Speaker 1: become a hit until a year later, when it was
Speaker 1: rebranded as a weapon made for mischief and sold for
Speaker 1: ten bucks apiece. It made two hundred million dollars that year,
Speaker 1: no doubt due to its highly descriptive name, the super Soaker.
Speaker 1: Bad habits can be hard to break. Biting your nails endlessly,
Speaker 1: scrolling social media, and staying up lates tend to have
Speaker 1: negative effects on one's health, But perhaps one of the
Speaker 1: worst habits a person can pick up is smoking. In
Speaker 1: the United States alone, smoking is responsible for upwards of
Speaker 1: four eight thousand deaths every year, so it's no wonder
Speaker 1: that people try and kick such a nasty habit all
Speaker 1: the time. There are patches, gums, books, and all kinds
Speaker 1: of methods designed to curb one of the deadliest and
Speaker 1: smelliest practices ever known. One man, however, came up with
Speaker 1: a way to quit smoking back in the twenties. His
Speaker 1: only problem was that kids liked it too. Eduard Hass
Speaker 1: was born in Austria in eighteen nine seven and developed
Speaker 1: an early interest in food. It wasn't surprising his father
Speaker 1: had built a successful baking powder company at the turn
Speaker 1: of the century. Thanks to his entrepreneurial family, the younger
Speaker 1: Hass found the taste for two things by the time
Speaker 1: he was eighteen, cake and business. When he was old enough,
Speaker 1: his father allowed and manage the baking powder company and
Speaker 1: handle marketing. Some of Hassa's biggest achievements were his print
Speaker 1: ads for their pre measured cake mix, but he didn't
Speaker 1: stop there. As he got older, he realized he needed
Speaker 1: to diversify. He didn't just want to make baking powder.
Speaker 1: He wanted to change the world, and one way was
Speaker 1: by helping people quit unhealthy habits, namely smoking and overeating.
Speaker 1: Combining his business acumen with his culinary knowledge, he came
Speaker 1: up with a lozenge made of compressed sugar. Hassa believed
Speaker 1: popping one of these in one's mouth instead of a
Speaker 1: cigarette could help people stop smoking entirely, and by flavoring
Speaker 1: it with peppermint, it could also freshen their breath. He
Speaker 1: sold the lozenges with the help of young women who
Speaker 1: he hired to give out free samples. Over time, the
Speaker 1: tablets round shapes changed into something more akin to a brick,
Speaker 1: and they sold even better. Pretty soon, Hassa's business strategy
Speaker 1: had to change. His factories that had been churning up
Speaker 1: baking powder were now forced to manufacture mints instead, and
Speaker 1: they never stopped for twin two years, He sold his
Speaker 1: peppermint tablets in metal tins meant to be carried around
Speaker 1: in his customers pockets, but they wanted something better and
Speaker 1: more sanitary. Hoss came up with a new kind of
Speaker 1: container after World War Two. It allowed a person to
Speaker 1: extract a single mint at a time, or give one
Speaker 1: to a friend without them contaminating the other tablets. These
Speaker 1: dispensers were called regulars, and they bore an uncanny resemblance
Speaker 1: to cigarette lighters. Hassa's regulars proved popular, so popular, in fact,
Speaker 1: that he had to build another factory in Austria just
Speaker 1: to make them. The company's growth in Europe was trending
Speaker 1: ever upward, and it was time to take the product overseas. However,
Speaker 1: when he brought it to America, it just kind of
Speaker 1: fizzled out. Adult smokers didn't want to give up their cigarettes,
Speaker 1: and they certainly didn't want to carry around a fake
Speaker 1: lighter full of mints in their pockets either. Hass couldn't
Speaker 1: afford to lose the US market, though, so he changed tactics.
Speaker 1: He got rid of the peppermint flavoring and started making
Speaker 1: them with fruit flavors instead, like orange, lime, cherry, and
Speaker 1: lemon as for the dispensers. He changed those two Hassas
Speaker 1: Candies now shot out of toy ray guns and popped
Speaker 1: out of robots and even Santa Claus. His idea was
Speaker 1: a hit, but an expensive hit. The ray gun used
Speaker 1: so much plastic and labored to put together it was
Speaker 1: too costly to keep producing. Eventually, he found a happy
Speaker 1: medium between toy and candy dispenser, and he debuted his
Speaker 1: new design during Halloween of nineteen seven. On top was
Speaker 1: a witch's head, on the bottom a plane plastic sleeve
Speaker 1: holding the candy tablets inside. One year later, he added
Speaker 1: popular comic strip character Popeye to the lineup. Since then,
Speaker 1: Eduard Hassas Sugar tablets have made millions of dollars worldwide.
Speaker 1: The company currently boasts a roster of over fourteen hundred
Speaker 1: different character dispensers, from Spider Man to Star Wars to
Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse and everyone in between. There's still a hit
Speaker 1: with kids of all ages to this day. So what
Speaker 1: did hass call his wondrous anti smoking mint turned candy.
Speaker 1: All he did was all three letters from the German
Speaker 1: word for peppermint, a P and E and a Z,
Speaker 1: and he simply called it pez. I hope you've enjoyed
Speaker 1: today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
Speaker 1: free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
Speaker 1: by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
Speaker 1: by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Ye