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Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is

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Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,

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Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

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Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet

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Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Everyone needs to unwind after a long week

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Speaker 1: at the office, dealing with constant demands of emails, meetings,

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Speaker 1: and phone calls. It's nice to take a little time

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Speaker 1: to kick off one's shoes, lean back, and enjoy some

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Speaker 1: peace and quiet. Now the way we relax is up

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Speaker 1: to personal preference. Where one person might play video games

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Speaker 1: well into the night. Someone else may pour themselves a

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Speaker 1: cup of tea or scotch and curl up with a

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Speaker 1: good book. Still, others unwind by engaging their brains by

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Speaker 1: attending trivia nights, or playing card games, or perhaps honing

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Speaker 1: their mental acuity with a puzzle. Those were the people

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Speaker 1: Arthur was interested in. Born in England in eighteen seventy one,

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Speaker 1: Arthur seemed destined to work for a newspaper. After all,

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Speaker 1: his father had been the editor of the Liverpool Mercury

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Speaker 1: for many years. In when Arthur was twenty years old,

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Speaker 1: he came to the United States looking to establish a

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Speaker 1: name for himself. He found his place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,

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Speaker 1: and while his father may have been the editor of

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Speaker 1: a local paper back home, Arthur would have to work

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Speaker 1: his own way up at the much larger Pittsburgh Press.

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Speaker 1: There's was not a modest operation. In fact, it only

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Speaker 1: lagged behind the Philadelphia inquir the most popular newspaper in

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Speaker 1: Pennsylvania at the time. The Press served as the perfect

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Speaker 1: springboard for Arthur's rise to fame. By thirteen, he had

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Speaker 1: moved on from Pennsylvania to Cedar Grove, New Jersey, where

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Speaker 1: he took a job at another newspaper called The New

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Speaker 1: York World. Now The World was owned by the Pulitzer family,

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Speaker 1: and they were in need of material for their Fun section,

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Speaker 1: an area of the paper where puzzles and games were

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Speaker 1: often published to keep readers entertained. Arthur, though, didn't want

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Speaker 1: to repurpose something someone else had made. He knew of

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Speaker 1: all kinds of puzzles that would have worked within the

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Speaker 1: World's pages, but rather than limit himself to a common

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Speaker 1: brain teaser that might have been found in a children's

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Speaker 1: activity book, Arthur created his own, and he designed it

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Speaker 1: with adults in mind. He borrowed an idea from the

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Speaker 1: word square, a puzzle in which letters of random words

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Speaker 1: were arranged in a square shape so that they were

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Speaker 1: read the same horizontally and vertically. Except instead of a square,

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Speaker 1: Arthur laid out small boxes into a diamond shape, with

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Speaker 1: the word fun already filled in across the top three squares.

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Speaker 1: The rest of the boxes had small numbers printed in

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Speaker 1: their corners and a list of clues underneath. It was

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Speaker 1: the reader's job to read each clue and fill in

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Speaker 1: the corus boding answer and the puzzle, with each letter

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Speaker 1: occupying a single square. His creation became an overnight sensation.

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Speaker 1: Within a few years, his unique word puzzles were being

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Speaker 1: adapted and printed in newspapers all over the country, including

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Speaker 1: Arthur's old stomping grounds, the Pittsburgh Press. Of course, as

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Speaker 1: the puzzles continued to gain popularity, newspapers started altering the

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Speaker 1: original design. That first diamond shape went through a number

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Speaker 1: of iterations until it became standardized into the now common

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Speaker 1: square shaped layout. In order to separate the clues and

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Speaker 1: make the answers more readable black boxes were also added.

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Speaker 1: Puzzle addicts were solving them everywhere, on subway trains, in cafes,

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Speaker 1: and on park benches. The New York Public Library found

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Speaker 1: itself policing the use of its dictionaries as the children

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Speaker 1: who needed to use them were being turned away by

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Speaker 1: fervent puzzle solvers. And as with all popular pastimes, Everyone's

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Speaker 1: latest obsession also attracted its fair share of critics. One

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Speaker 1: writer for The New York Times called it a primitive

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Speaker 1: form of mental exercise, which is pretty funny considering that

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Speaker 1: today The New York Times is home to one of

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Speaker 1: the most popular and wide be solved puzzles in the world.

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Speaker 1: Published every Monday through Saturday, there's measures and even fifteen

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Speaker 1: by fifteen squares. However, on Sunday it balloons to an

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Speaker 1: impressive squares because when something is popular, people just want more.

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Speaker 1: Arthur Wins silly game took the world by storm. Originally

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Speaker 1: called a word cross, the element of its name got rearranged,

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Speaker 1: much like the squares on the page, into something more

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Speaker 1: timeless and classic, the crossword puzzle. When it comes to

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Speaker 1: notable events in American history, New Jersey tends to stand

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Speaker 1: out above the rest it was the location of more

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Speaker 1: revolutionary war battles than any other colony. The boardwalk in

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Speaker 1: Atlantic City was not only the first one ever built,

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Speaker 1: it was also the longest in the world, and founding father,

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Speaker 1: Alexander Hamilton's was famously killed in a duel there by

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Speaker 1: Aaron Burr in eighteen o four. Speaking of Hamilton's, he

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Speaker 1: had great plans for New Jersey. He believed that the

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Speaker 1: town of Paterson was destined to become the start of

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Speaker 1: a new revolution, and it was Hamilton's insisted the United

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Speaker 1: States needed to focus on industry. The rest of the

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Speaker 1: world was moving ahead and the new nation he'd helped

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Speaker 1: create was at risk of falling behind. Patterson became the

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Speaker 1: first planned industrial city in the country, and though its

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Speaker 1: future was hampered by events like the Great Depression and

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Speaker 1: the end of World War Two, it's intended greatness rippled

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Speaker 1: out to other parts of the state, namely nearby Hawthorne,

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Speaker 1: New Jersey. In nineteen fifty seven, two engineers from Hawthorne,

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Speaker 1: American Alfred Fielding and Swiss chemist Mark Chavon were working

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Speaker 1: to disrupt an industry they thought had fallen pretty flat. Literally,

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Speaker 1: they wanted to create a new kind of wallpaper, specifically

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Speaker 1: one that was three dimensional. Among their many attempts, one

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Speaker 1: involved two shower curtains, which they adhered together with a

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Speaker 1: heat ceiling machine. Their plan hit a snag, though, when

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Speaker 1: they found air bubbles trapped between the curtains. Yet, even

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Speaker 1: though it wasn't what they had anticipated, Fielding and Chavon

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Speaker 1: had achieved their goal a wholly unique kind of wallpaper.

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Speaker 1: It's puffy texture was different from the boring and flat

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Speaker 1: two dimensional wallpapers people were already familiar with, so they

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Speaker 1: pressed forward, but it didn't catch on. Customers couldn't see

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Speaker 1: the benefit of having padded walls in their homes. Even

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Speaker 1: the beat Nicks they were targeting with their hip new

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Speaker 1: invention didn't want it. Fielding and Chavon didn't quit, though

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Speaker 1: they piloted their air filled shower curtains to another industry,

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Speaker 1: building installation, specifically for greenhouses. Sadly, horticulturalists didn't care much

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Speaker 1: for it either. While it did provide some benefit to

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Speaker 1: greenhouse owners, it wasn't enough to justify the cost. It

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Speaker 1: seemed nobody wanted to install this new breed of covering

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Speaker 1: on their walls, regardless of whether they were made of

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Speaker 1: plaster or glass. It wasn't until three years later, when

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Speaker 1: Frederick W. Bowers got ahold of it, that things started

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Speaker 1: to turn around. Bowers was a marketing whiz, and he

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Speaker 1: saw a burgeoning opportunity for Fielding and Chavon in the

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Speaker 1: technology space. It was October of nineteen fifty nine and

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Speaker 1: IBM was getting ready to launch their new fourteen oh

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Speaker 1: one data processing system, comprised of three components, a card

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Speaker 1: read punch about the size of a bedroom dresser, the

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Speaker 1: processing unit, which looked a lot like a squat refrigerator,

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Speaker 1: and the massive printer. Together these pieces cost a month

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Speaker 1: to rent roughly two dollars today. They required large trucks

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Speaker 1: to transport them, and Bowers believe the puffy wallpaper that

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Speaker 1: he was selling would be perfect for making sure the

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Speaker 1: fourteen oh ones got to their destination safely and securely.

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Speaker 1: IBM thought so too. After a brief demonstration, they contracted

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Speaker 1: Bowers Company to wrap their new computers in it before

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Speaker 1: rolling them out the door and onto the new trucks.

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Speaker 1: The original design for Fielding and chavan was tweaked to

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Speaker 1: include more air pockets for better protection, and Alfred Fielding's

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Speaker 1: five year old son also seemed to like it. One day,

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Speaker 1: while playing with a sheet of the stuff, the little

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Speaker 1: boy popped one of the pockets in his hands. It

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Speaker 1: went off with a bang. He didn't cry, though. He

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Speaker 1: reached for another one and popped it, and then another,

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Speaker 1: and then another. The IBM deal was the beginning. The

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Speaker 1: discovery that had failed to fulfill its first and second

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Speaker 1: intended purposes, had found new life as an ideal packaging material.

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Speaker 1: It was a rousing triumph and one more feather in

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Speaker 1: New Jersey's prolific cap of successful inventions. Today, Bowers Company

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Speaker 1: Sealed Air sells about half a billion dollars worth of

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Speaker 1: the would be wallpaper each year under its more popular

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Speaker 1: name bubble Rap. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour

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Speaker 1: of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast

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Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky

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Speaker 1: in partnership with How Stuff Works. I make another award

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Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,

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Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it

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Speaker 1: over at the World of Lore dot com. And until

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Speaker 1: next time, stay curious. Yeah h