Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manky'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. Everyone needs to unwind after a long week
Speaker 1: at the office, dealing with constant demands of emails, meetings,
Speaker 1: and phone calls. It's nice to take a little time
Speaker 1: to kick off one's shoes, lean back, and enjoy some
Speaker 1: peace and quiet. Now the way we relax is up
Speaker 1: to personal preference. Where one person might play video games
Speaker 1: well into the night. Someone else may pour themselves a
Speaker 1: cup of tea or scotch and curl up with a
Speaker 1: good book. Still, others unwind by engaging their brains by
Speaker 1: attending trivia nights, or playing card games, or perhaps honing
Speaker 1: their mental acuity with a puzzle. Those were the people
Speaker 1: Arthur was interested in. Born in England in eighteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: Arthur seemed destined to work for a newspaper. After all,
Speaker 1: his father had been the editor of the Liverpool Mercury
Speaker 1: for many years. In when Arthur was twenty years old,
Speaker 1: he came to the United States looking to establish a
Speaker 1: name for himself. He found his place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and while his father may have been the editor of
Speaker 1: a local paper back home, Arthur would have to work
Speaker 1: his own way up at the much larger Pittsburgh Press.
Speaker 1: There's was not a modest operation. In fact, it only
Speaker 1: lagged behind the Philadelphia inquir the most popular newspaper in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania at the time. The Press served as the perfect
Speaker 1: springboard for Arthur's rise to fame. By thirteen, he had
Speaker 1: moved on from Pennsylvania to Cedar Grove, New Jersey, where
Speaker 1: he took a job at another newspaper called The New
Speaker 1: York World. Now The World was owned by the Pulitzer family,
Speaker 1: and they were in need of material for their Fun section,
Speaker 1: an area of the paper where puzzles and games were
Speaker 1: often published to keep readers entertained. Arthur, though, didn't want
Speaker 1: to repurpose something someone else had made. He knew of
Speaker 1: all kinds of puzzles that would have worked within the
Speaker 1: World's pages, but rather than limit himself to a common
Speaker 1: brain teaser that might have been found in a children's
Speaker 1: activity book, Arthur created his own, and he designed it
Speaker 1: with adults in mind. He borrowed an idea from the
Speaker 1: word square, a puzzle in which letters of random words
Speaker 1: were arranged in a square shape so that they were
Speaker 1: read the same horizontally and vertically. Except instead of a square,
Speaker 1: Arthur laid out small boxes into a diamond shape, with
Speaker 1: the word fun already filled in across the top three squares.
Speaker 1: The rest of the boxes had small numbers printed in
Speaker 1: their corners and a list of clues underneath. It was
Speaker 1: the reader's job to read each clue and fill in
Speaker 1: the corus boding answer and the puzzle, with each letter
Speaker 1: occupying a single square. His creation became an overnight sensation.
Speaker 1: Within a few years, his unique word puzzles were being
Speaker 1: adapted and printed in newspapers all over the country, including
Speaker 1: Arthur's old stomping grounds, the Pittsburgh Press. Of course, as
Speaker 1: the puzzles continued to gain popularity, newspapers started altering the
Speaker 1: original design. That first diamond shape went through a number
Speaker 1: of iterations until it became standardized into the now common
Speaker 1: square shaped layout. In order to separate the clues and
Speaker 1: make the answers more readable black boxes were also added.
Speaker 1: Puzzle addicts were solving them everywhere, on subway trains, in cafes,
Speaker 1: and on park benches. The New York Public Library found
Speaker 1: itself policing the use of its dictionaries as the children
Speaker 1: who needed to use them were being turned away by
Speaker 1: fervent puzzle solvers. And as with all popular pastimes, Everyone's
Speaker 1: latest obsession also attracted its fair share of critics. One
Speaker 1: writer for The New York Times called it a primitive
Speaker 1: form of mental exercise, which is pretty funny considering that
Speaker 1: today The New York Times is home to one of
Speaker 1: the most popular and wide be solved puzzles in the world.
Speaker 1: Published every Monday through Saturday, there's measures and even fifteen
Speaker 1: by fifteen squares. However, on Sunday it balloons to an
Speaker 1: impressive squares because when something is popular, people just want more.
Speaker 1: Arthur Wins silly game took the world by storm. Originally
Speaker 1: called a word cross, the element of its name got rearranged,
Speaker 1: much like the squares on the page, into something more
Speaker 1: timeless and classic, the crossword puzzle. When it comes to
Speaker 1: notable events in American history, New Jersey tends to stand
Speaker 1: out above the rest it was the location of more
Speaker 1: revolutionary war battles than any other colony. The boardwalk in
Speaker 1: Atlantic City was not only the first one ever built,
Speaker 1: it was also the longest in the world, and founding father,
Speaker 1: Alexander Hamilton's was famously killed in a duel there by
Speaker 1: Aaron Burr in eighteen o four. Speaking of Hamilton's, he
Speaker 1: had great plans for New Jersey. He believed that the
Speaker 1: town of Paterson was destined to become the start of
Speaker 1: a new revolution, and it was Hamilton's insisted the United
Speaker 1: States needed to focus on industry. The rest of the
Speaker 1: world was moving ahead and the new nation he'd helped
Speaker 1: create was at risk of falling behind. Patterson became the
Speaker 1: first planned industrial city in the country, and though its
Speaker 1: future was hampered by events like the Great Depression and
Speaker 1: the end of World War Two, it's intended greatness rippled
Speaker 1: out to other parts of the state, namely nearby Hawthorne,
Speaker 1: New Jersey. In nineteen fifty seven, two engineers from Hawthorne,
Speaker 1: American Alfred Fielding and Swiss chemist Mark Chavon were working
Speaker 1: to disrupt an industry they thought had fallen pretty flat. Literally,
Speaker 1: they wanted to create a new kind of wallpaper, specifically
Speaker 1: one that was three dimensional. Among their many attempts, one
Speaker 1: involved two shower curtains, which they adhered together with a
Speaker 1: heat ceiling machine. Their plan hit a snag, though, when
Speaker 1: they found air bubbles trapped between the curtains. Yet, even
Speaker 1: though it wasn't what they had anticipated, Fielding and Chavon
Speaker 1: had achieved their goal a wholly unique kind of wallpaper.
Speaker 1: It's puffy texture was different from the boring and flat
Speaker 1: two dimensional wallpapers people were already familiar with, so they
Speaker 1: pressed forward, but it didn't catch on. Customers couldn't see
Speaker 1: the benefit of having padded walls in their homes. Even
Speaker 1: the beat Nicks they were targeting with their hip new
Speaker 1: invention didn't want it. Fielding and Chavon didn't quit, though
Speaker 1: they piloted their air filled shower curtains to another industry,
Speaker 1: building installation, specifically for greenhouses. Sadly, horticulturalists didn't care much
Speaker 1: for it either. While it did provide some benefit to
Speaker 1: greenhouse owners, it wasn't enough to justify the cost. It
Speaker 1: seemed nobody wanted to install this new breed of covering
Speaker 1: on their walls, regardless of whether they were made of
Speaker 1: plaster or glass. It wasn't until three years later, when
Speaker 1: Frederick W. Bowers got ahold of it, that things started
Speaker 1: to turn around. Bowers was a marketing whiz, and he
Speaker 1: saw a burgeoning opportunity for Fielding and Chavon in the
Speaker 1: technology space. It was October of nineteen fifty nine and
Speaker 1: IBM was getting ready to launch their new fourteen oh
Speaker 1: one data processing system, comprised of three components, a card
Speaker 1: read punch about the size of a bedroom dresser, the
Speaker 1: processing unit, which looked a lot like a squat refrigerator,
Speaker 1: and the massive printer. Together these pieces cost a month
Speaker 1: to rent roughly two dollars today. They required large trucks
Speaker 1: to transport them, and Bowers believe the puffy wallpaper that
Speaker 1: he was selling would be perfect for making sure the
Speaker 1: fourteen oh ones got to their destination safely and securely.
Speaker 1: IBM thought so too. After a brief demonstration, they contracted
Speaker 1: Bowers Company to wrap their new computers in it before
Speaker 1: rolling them out the door and onto the new trucks.
Speaker 1: The original design for Fielding and chavan was tweaked to
Speaker 1: include more air pockets for better protection, and Alfred Fielding's
Speaker 1: five year old son also seemed to like it. One day,
Speaker 1: while playing with a sheet of the stuff, the little
Speaker 1: boy popped one of the pockets in his hands. It
Speaker 1: went off with a bang. He didn't cry, though. He
Speaker 1: reached for another one and popped it, and then another,
Speaker 1: and then another. The IBM deal was the beginning. The
Speaker 1: discovery that had failed to fulfill its first and second
Speaker 1: intended purposes, had found new life as an ideal packaging material.
Speaker 1: It was a rousing triumph and one more feather in
Speaker 1: New Jersey's prolific cap of successful inventions. Today, Bowers Company
Speaker 1: Sealed Air sells about half a billion dollars worth of
Speaker 1: the would be wallpaper each year under its more popular
Speaker 1: name bubble Rap. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
Speaker 1: of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
Speaker 1: in partnership with How Stuff Works. I make another award
Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
Speaker 1: over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
Speaker 1: next time, stay curious. Yeah h