Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hate there
Speaker 1: and Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: Tech are You? So? Not that long ago, I was
Speaker 1: watching a YouTube video on Max Miller's Tasting History channel,
Speaker 1: And if you don't know what that is. Max Miller
Speaker 1: prepares historical meals, you know, like meals that people ate,
Speaker 1: you know, way back in history. So he'll pick a
Speaker 1: specific time and place and talk about a typical meal
Speaker 1: that was prepared or a special meal that's mentioned in
Speaker 1: some historical document, and he will prepare it himself as
Speaker 1: well as deliver a history lesson to go along with
Speaker 1: the food. It's a great channel. I have no connection
Speaker 1: to it. I have never corresponded with Max Miller. That
Speaker 1: bit's not important. But in this episode, Max was visiting
Speaker 1: the Mythical Test Kitchen and Josh of Mythical Kitchen. That's
Speaker 1: another YouTube channel as a connection with Good Mythical Morning,
Speaker 1: which has been a show that's been on forever, a
Speaker 1: great success in the world of online entertainment, one of
Speaker 1: the few shows that has had real staying power. But anyway,
Speaker 1: Josh of Mythical Kitchen and Max of Tasting History. We're
Speaker 1: talking about five foods that changed fast food forever. A
Speaker 1: lot of alliteration. I guess that does well in YouTube titles.
Speaker 1: During this conversation, they talked about the fast food chain
Speaker 1: in an out Burger, which is a chain I've never
Speaker 1: actually eaten at, because by the time I traveled to
Speaker 1: a place that had in an out Burgers, I was
Speaker 1: no longer eating meat, and that pretty much cuts down
Speaker 1: on what you can order there. I'm on the East
Speaker 1: coast of the United States, where in and Out just
Speaker 1: isn't a thing. You kind of had to travel further
Speaker 1: west to start encountering them. Anyway, Josh dropped a little
Speaker 1: bit of trivia that made me scratch my head. Namely,
Speaker 1: he said that the founder of In and Out, a
Speaker 1: guy named Harry Snyder, invented the two way intercom for
Speaker 1: drive through operations back in nineteen forty eight. Now, that
Speaker 1: to me can seem a little misleading. First of all,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about just inventing the intercom, that's far
Speaker 1: too late. However, you know, if we use the qualifier
Speaker 1: that he specifically invented it for the sole purpose of
Speaker 1: being able to communicate between a person in their car
Speaker 1: and a person inside a restaurant. Then really it all
Speaker 1: checks out. So it all just depends on how you
Speaker 1: word it. He didn't invent the intercom, but he did
Speaker 1: invent what would become the modern drive through. So today
Speaker 1: I thought I would talk about the actual history of
Speaker 1: the intercom, because that starts well before nineteen forty eight
Speaker 1: and Snyder's inventiveness. In fact, we have to kind of
Speaker 1: go back to the nineteenth century to talk about the
Speaker 1: telephone first, even that is super tricky to do. The
Speaker 1: simple answer as to who invented the telephone is one
Speaker 1: that I think most people know right. If you ask
Speaker 1: who invented the telephone, the answer invariably is Alexander Graham Bell.
Speaker 1: But that's not the complete answer. It's not even necessarily
Speaker 1: the most correct answer, depending upon your point of view.
Speaker 1: But we have to remember, like most inventions aren't really
Speaker 1: a stroke of genius that one person in the world
Speaker 1: experienced and then created something where nothing was before. Usually,
Speaker 1: invention is something that is built upon lots of other discoveries,
Speaker 1: and saying who is the inventor of something largely comes
Speaker 1: down to just time, place, and who was witness. So
Speaker 1: Bell would be the first to secure a patent for
Speaker 1: a technology that eventually would work. When he applied for
Speaker 1: his patent, he did not yet have a working model
Speaker 1: of a telephone. But he does deserve quite a bit
Speaker 1: of credit for being the first to really secure a patent.
Speaker 1: But other folks had mused upon the possibility of a
Speaker 1: talking telegraph and had done a lot of work toward that.
Speaker 1: The first mention I find predates Alexander Graham's Bell's patent
Speaker 1: by nearly three decades, nearly thirty years. And Tony Miucci
Speaker 1: began to experiment with a way to transmit voiceover telegraph
Speaker 1: wires all the way back in eighteen forty nine, that's
Speaker 1: before the US Civil War. He continued to experiment until
Speaker 1: he finally was able to file a caveat in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy one. Now, in most contexts, we use the word
Speaker 1: caveat to mean a warning, right, it means beware, And
Speaker 1: in fact that was the only context I was familiar with.
Speaker 1: I had not heard of filing a caveat. But in
Speaker 1: this particular context, what it means is that you are
Speaker 1: essentially a that you have an upcoming invention it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a preamble toward filing a patent. You haven't
Speaker 1: filled out the patent yet, but you file the caveat.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a placeholder to say, I don't want
Speaker 1: anyone swooping in here and patenting a technology that I
Speaker 1: am already working on, so I'm filing this document that
Speaker 1: says I have a patent application coming now. Unfortunately, Miucci
Speaker 1: was not really in a secure financial place in his life,
Speaker 1: so he wasn't able to afford the fee to renew
Speaker 1: his caveat when it came up for expiration. So for
Speaker 1: more than a century, Miucci was largely uncredited for his
Speaker 1: contributions toward the invention of the telephone. But in fact,
Speaker 1: if he had been able to be in a financially
Speaker 1: stable place, it's possible that Miucci would be the name
Speaker 1: we would be talking about when we say who invented
Speaker 1: the telephone. But there are other people who also did
Speaker 1: a lot of early work. There was a french Man
Speaker 1: named Charles Borciul. I'm just gonna call him Charlie because
Speaker 1: I already know I butchered his last name. So Charlie
Speaker 1: worked on his own version of a telephone or a
Speaker 1: speaking telegraph. In the eighteen fifties, he was employed by
Speaker 1: a telegraph company and he was convinced he could create
Speaker 1: a device that was capable of transmitting voice across those
Speaker 1: telegraph lines. So he developed a microphone to convert sound
Speaker 1: to electrical signals, but he never quite figured out how
Speaker 1: to make a receiver that could playback sound so that
Speaker 1: you could, you know, understand it. So I imagine a
Speaker 1: phone call with his device would sound like you were
Speaker 1: talking to one of the adults in a Charlie Brown
Speaker 1: cartoon that muted trumpet sound. Then there's the potentially shady
Speaker 1: story of Elisha Gray. His lawyers applied for a caveat
Speaker 1: for a talking telegraph system, and did so the very
Speaker 1: same day that Alexander Graham Bell's lawyers were applying for
Speaker 1: a patent for his telephone system. And if Gray's lawyer
Speaker 1: had been able to secure that caveat early enough, then
Speaker 1: that might have been enough for the patent office to
Speaker 1: dismiss Bell's application. But Bell's lawyer was recorded as being
Speaker 1: the fifth person in line that morning at the patent office,
Speaker 1: and Gray's lawyer was listed as the thirty ninth, And
Speaker 1: you know, first come first served. I guess now there
Speaker 1: are people who suggest that there were some shenanigans going
Speaker 1: on at the patent office, that perhaps Gray had a
Speaker 1: more legitimate claim to getting his caveat filed before Bell's
Speaker 1: patent was filed, and even some allegations that Bell perhaps
Speaker 1: lifted some of Gray's ideas in his design when Bell
Speaker 1: went on to actually make a working device, because like
Speaker 1: I said earlier, when Bell filed for his patent, he
Speaker 1: didn't yet have a working model of a telephone. And
Speaker 1: I found most of this information at the Library of
Speaker 1: Congress website, by the way, it's a fun little read,
Speaker 1: and you know, some of the other info were from
Speaker 1: other sources. But in the end, Alexander Graham Bell gets
Speaker 1: the simplified credit because he first secured a patent for
Speaker 1: the invention, and then later he was able to build
Speaker 1: a working version. His telephone had two components. It had
Speaker 1: a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter had kind of
Speaker 1: a cylindrical speaking phone device. You would speak into this
Speaker 1: cylinder and the other end of the cylinder was closed
Speaker 1: off right, the end you spoke into was open. The
Speaker 1: other end had a membrane across it. Technically a sheet
Speaker 1: of paper in the early days. And connected to this
Speaker 1: sheet of paper, on the opposite side from where you
Speaker 1: were talking in was a piece of cork that had
Speaker 1: a needle attached to it, and the needle would make
Speaker 1: contact with a conductive liquid like sulfuric acid and stuff
Speaker 1: in it. This was Gray's approach, by the way that
Speaker 1: he had described in his caveat This is the bit
Speaker 1: where some historians suggest that perhaps Bell was lifting from
Speaker 1: Gray in an effort to build a working version of
Speaker 1: his invention, and that he was essentially stealing. Whether that's
Speaker 1: true or not is still one of those historical mysteries.
Speaker 1: On the other side of the container of this liquid
Speaker 1: was a metal contact, and so the paper would vibrate
Speaker 1: due to the sound coming in through the cylinder, so
Speaker 1: that sound makes the paper vibrate. That ends up making
Speaker 1: the needle vibrate, and the vibrations mean the needle is
Speaker 1: moving through the liquid. In this conductive fluid, the movements
Speaker 1: of the needle would bring it closer to or further
Speaker 1: away from the metal contact. This would actually alter the
Speaker 1: current that was flowing through that liquid and thus then
Speaker 1: through the telegraph line. So on the other end was
Speaker 1: the receiver which consisted of a simple electromagnetic setup. So
Speaker 1: you had an an electromagnet that was suspended so that
Speaker 1: it was inside the magnetic field of a permanent magnet,
Speaker 1: like a horseshoe magnet. So as current would flow through
Speaker 1: the electromagnet, the electromagnet would generate its own magnetic field,
Speaker 1: and this would interact with the permanent magnets magnetic field.
Speaker 1: So if they were opposite charges like north and south,
Speaker 1: they would attract. If they were similar like north north
Speaker 1: or south south, they would repel. And so this changing
Speaker 1: fluctuation in the magnetic field of the electromagnet would make
Speaker 1: the electromagnet move closer to or further from the permanent magnet.
Speaker 1: Remember it suspended, it's not permanently fixed. And attached to
Speaker 1: this electromagnet was a taut membrane and a kind of
Speaker 1: a sounding horn. So the electromagnet would move due to
Speaker 1: these fluctuations of the magnetic field, and that in turn
Speaker 1: would cause the membrane to vibrate. These vibrations coincided with
Speaker 1: those fluctuations, and the flexing membrane would create changes in
Speaker 1: air pressure vibrations. In other words, and we perceived that
Speaker 1: as sound, so the sounds that created the vibrations on
Speaker 1: the transmitter aka the microphone side of the system would
Speaker 1: then be replicated by the vibrations on the receiver or
Speaker 1: loudspeaker side. It was a brilliant setup. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: how this led to the invention of the intercom, but
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsors.
Speaker 1: All right, So the invention of the telephone would really
Speaker 1: revolutionize the world, but it didn't happen overnight. It actually
Speaker 1: was a very slow process. For one thing, in the
Speaker 1: early days, not that many people had houses that were
Speaker 1: wired for electricity, let alone a telegraph line. So the
Speaker 1: earliest telephone systems were limited. They only went to a
Speaker 1: few locations, and they were all open party lines essentially,
Speaker 1: which means there was no way for two people to
Speaker 1: have a private conversation on the telephone. Anyone who was
Speaker 1: connected to that particular network or system could just pick
Speaker 1: up a receiver and listen into whatever was going on
Speaker 1: at that moment. And it also meant that if more
Speaker 1: than two people wanted to chat on the phone at
Speaker 1: the same time on the same network, there would be
Speaker 1: an issue. You would either have to have one party
Speaker 1: just sit out and wait or deal with a whole
Speaker 1: lot of crosstalk. But for our purposes, the important part
Speaker 1: is the telephone would be the starting point for a
Speaker 1: related communication system, the intercommunication device or intercom. So an
Speaker 1: intercom is typically a separate, standalone communications system for a
Speaker 1: building or other structure. So rather than being connected to
Speaker 1: a larger network that includes lots of buildings like homes
Speaker 1: and businesses and such, and intercom is something you would
Speaker 1: find inside a single location like you know, an apartment building,
Speaker 1: or even in a vehicle or in the case of
Speaker 1: a drive through the outside and the inside of a restaurant.
Speaker 1: It is independent of the larger telephone network, so you
Speaker 1: can't make calls to or from the intercom to the
Speaker 1: network at large, but it is built on similar technologies
Speaker 1: to the phone network. Now, before the electronic intercom, some
Speaker 1: buildings actually use speaking tubes. Typically these were made out
Speaker 1: of a material like brass, and they worked by channeling
Speaker 1: sound from one point to another. But you know, there
Speaker 1: was no conversion of sound into electricity or anything like that.
Speaker 1: This was just the transmission of actual vibrations. This had
Speaker 1: limitations because those vibrations lose power over distance. Right, they
Speaker 1: get weaker as they travel, so at a certain point
Speaker 1: the tube would be so long that the vibrations coming
Speaker 1: out the other side would be too weak for the
Speaker 1: typical person to hear, so you'd have people like outing
Speaker 1: their heads off at either end of the tube and
Speaker 1: only barely being heard by the other person. Also, outfitting
Speaker 1: a building with a whole bunch of brass tubes wasn't
Speaker 1: always practical. Like, maybe if you were building it with
Speaker 1: the tubes in mind from the beginning, you could do it,
Speaker 1: But if you were trying to retrofit a building with this,
Speaker 1: it wasn't always easy to do. On a similar note,
Speaker 1: like it wasn't just apartment buildings that were running into
Speaker 1: these kinds of challenges. During the First World War, the
Speaker 1: British realized they needed to create a way for piloting
Speaker 1: instructors to speak with pilots in training during training sessions.
Speaker 1: So the aircraft at this time had open cockpits. You know,
Speaker 1: there's no like glass separating you from the outside world.
Speaker 1: You're flying in an open cockpit. As you can imagine,
Speaker 1: that made it very noisy to sit in either the
Speaker 1: pilot's seat or the instructor seat, which sat in tandem
Speaker 1: behind the pilot. What's more, the British were seeing a
Speaker 1: large number of accidents that were caused by pilot error, so,
Speaker 1: equate to the website air Andspaceforces dot Com, sixty percent
Speaker 1: of the Brits combat losses were actually from pilot error.
Speaker 1: Only two percent of their losses came from enemy action
Speaker 1: like having an airplane shot down by the enemy or
Speaker 1: otherwise disabled or destroyed by the enemy. So clearly there
Speaker 1: needed to be a better way for instructors to talk
Speaker 1: with pilots in the training phases because pilots weren't learning
Speaker 1: the appropriate operation of their vehicles. So the way they
Speaker 1: solved this was kind of similar to those brass tubes
Speaker 1: I talked about in apartment buildings, except instead of brass tubes,
Speaker 1: there was a rubber hose. So on one end of
Speaker 1: the hose you had a funnel that would fit over
Speaker 1: the mouth of the instructor. The other end of the hose,
Speaker 1: originally there was a similar funnel that would fit over
Speaker 1: the student's mouth. And obviously that's not enough because right
Speaker 1: you could just be shouting into someone else's mouth. Do
Speaker 1: this must be the place by talking heads where he says,
Speaker 1: sing into my mouth, but you wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: hear anything. So the hose had little branching elements at
Speaker 1: either end that connected over the ear flaps on the
Speaker 1: helmets that the pilot's wore. Remember these are like the
Speaker 1: days of like leather helmets. So they eventually would make
Speaker 1: these metal cups that would fit over the ears, and
Speaker 1: the tubes would fit into the metal cups so that
Speaker 1: the sound could be heard by the person you know,
Speaker 1: wearing the helmet, and that way the instructor and the
Speaker 1: student could communicate with each other. The instructor could belt
Speaker 1: out directions, the student could hear and respond and ask questions,
Speaker 1: and it really helped bring down the accident stats as
Speaker 1: well as reduced the amount of time that was needed
Speaker 1: to train up a pilot. It sped up training considerably. Now,
Speaker 1: later versions of this setup would just ditch the funnel
Speaker 1: for the student, like they would not have a mouthpiece anymore.
Speaker 1: So learning to fly would mean that you would receive instructions,
Speaker 1: but you'd have to hold all your questions until you
Speaker 1: were back on terra firma. So the instructor would still
Speaker 1: have a funnel that they would speak into, but the
Speaker 1: funnel would just go to a branching set of tubes
Speaker 1: that would go to the ear pieces set into the
Speaker 1: helmet that the student was wearing. Even by World War One,
Speaker 1: there were already examples of intercom by wire systems. It
Speaker 1: just wasn't practical to use on an airplane yet, but
Speaker 1: it was in use elsewhere. One company that gets credit
Speaker 1: for developing early intercom systems was the Kellogg Switchboard and
Speaker 1: Supply Company, which secured a patent back in eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: four front early system for apartment buildings and the like.
Speaker 1: This is, of course, according to a website I've found
Speaker 1: called Butterfly MX. More on that in a second. So
Speaker 1: Kellogg in this case, it's not the serial guy. Kellogg
Speaker 1: in this case refers to Milo G. Kellogg. He had
Speaker 1: worked for a company called Gray and Martin before he
Speaker 1: founded his own business. And yes, that's Gray, as in
Speaker 1: Elisha Gray, Alexander Graham, Bell's rival who filed the caveat
Speaker 1: the same day that Bell filed his patent, Gray and Barton.
Speaker 1: That company would later become the Western Electric Manufacturing Company,
Speaker 1: and later it would just be known as Western Electric.
Speaker 1: And Kellogg had worked at Western Electric until eighteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: By the time he went on to found the Kellogg
Speaker 1: Switchboard and Supply Company, he had already secured more than
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty patents to his name, and these
Speaker 1: patents became assets of his company. Kellogg would actually play
Speaker 1: a really big part in fighting the American Bell Telephone Company,
Speaker 1: which of course was named after Alexander Graham Bell, and
Speaker 1: that company was attempting to secure a perpetual monopoly over
Speaker 1: the phone system in the United States, even though Alexander
Speaker 1: Graham Bell's patents had expired in the early eighteen nineties.
Speaker 1: So once patents expire their public domain, it's fair game.
Speaker 1: But the company was trying to change that. They were
Speaker 1: trying to persuade the American government to change patent law
Speaker 1: so that the company would enjoy perpetual exclusive rights to
Speaker 1: the telephone invention. Kellogg was one of many people who
Speaker 1: fought back against that movement, and ultimately Kellogg's side would win.
Speaker 1: That story by itself is fascinating and it would give
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones a run for the money as far
Speaker 1: as deceit and betrayal goes. But we don't really have
Speaker 1: time to go into that for great detail, so I'll
Speaker 1: have to hold off on that maybe covered in a
Speaker 1: future episode, because it is a fascinating story and it
Speaker 1: involves a point where Kellogg himself got very sick and
Speaker 1: his second in command behind his back, secretly sold Kellogg's
Speaker 1: switchboard and supply company to the Bell Telephone Company, and
Speaker 1: then Kellogg would have to take the whole to court
Speaker 1: and ultimately get the decisions reversed. It's a great story.
Speaker 1: I've just summed it up, but maybe I'll go into
Speaker 1: more detail in a future episode. Now. According to BUTTERFLYMX,
Speaker 1: which by the way, is a company that makes intercom
Speaker 1: hardware and software applications for businesses and homes, Like we're
Speaker 1: talking like advanced stuff that includes things like video conferencing
Speaker 1: and connections with other home automation systems, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Their website says that the intercom system from Kellogg back
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety four was really just a simple circuit
Speaker 1: that would connect handles at the front door of an
Speaker 1: apartment building that would connect to a specific circuit for
Speaker 1: each apartment inside. So there'd be one handle for like
Speaker 1: Apartment one A and another handle for apartment one B
Speaker 1: and so on. So pulling on a handle would close
Speaker 1: the circuit that would send a signal to the receiver
Speaker 1: that's in that respective apartment, and that receiver would would buzz. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it was like an alarm clock. It would cause a
Speaker 1: little hammer to hit against a bell or something, but
Speaker 1: that was the extent of this intercommunication. So essentially it
Speaker 1: was like a door bell that let someone know they
Speaker 1: had a visitor who was standing outside the building. I
Speaker 1: would argue that's not really an intercom because it didn't
Speaker 1: allow for a voice communication in either direction. However, again
Speaker 1: according to Butterfly MX quote, a few years later, the
Speaker 1: Kellogg company added an ear piece and mouthpiece to enable
Speaker 1: tenants to speak with visitors end quote. So assuming that
Speaker 1: that is correct, then this would be a very early example,
Speaker 1: you know, pre twentieth century example of an intercom system. Now,
Speaker 1: I should add I couldn't really find a love supporting
Speaker 1: documentation to give more details about this specific case when
Speaker 1: I was looking at Kellogg, I mean, obviously Kelleg Switchboard
Speaker 1: and Supply Company was a real company. They did a
Speaker 1: ton of work created elements that were used for telephone systems,
Speaker 1: so that is legit. It really was a thing. How
Speaker 1: much they did in intercoms and how early and when
Speaker 1: it changed. I can't give you details about that because
Speaker 1: I couldn't find particulars, but it is true that early
Speaker 1: intercom systems were essentially small, independent telephone systems that were
Speaker 1: confined to a specific location and did not interconnect with
Speaker 1: the larger phone network. And keep in mind, in the
Speaker 1: early days, there were a lot of separate phone networks,
Speaker 1: a lot of regional phone networks where you couldn't call
Speaker 1: anyone who was on a different network because there were
Speaker 1: no interconnections that would take time to form. So for
Speaker 1: a very long time, phone networks were really only useful
Speaker 1: for relatively local calls. Now, in general, finding a lot
Speaker 1: of hard information about the history of intercoms is tricky.
Speaker 1: Most other resources I found get pretty vague with details.
Speaker 1: For example, I found a piece that was on Techwala's
Speaker 1: article titled history of intercom Systems, and it shows that
Speaker 1: details get pretty fuzzy. There's a passage that says, quote
Speaker 1: by nineteen twelve, if not earlier, users had the choice
Speaker 1: between a telephone style handset or a desktop loudspeaker that
Speaker 1: let users keep their hands free end quote. So this
Speaker 1: is about like an interoffice intercom system and the fact
Speaker 1: that it has the phrase by nineteen twelve, if not earlier,
Speaker 1: suggests that there's a distinct lack of documentation going on here.
Speaker 1: No shade on techwallap, mind you. I'm not throwing them
Speaker 1: under the bus, because I also found it very hard
Speaker 1: to find a lot of firms supporting documentation where I
Speaker 1: can confidently say, in the year you know whatever, we
Speaker 1: saw the first interoffice intercom system. I just don't have
Speaker 1: that information. There are a lot of different people who
Speaker 1: are accredited as the inventor of office intercom systems, but
Speaker 1: usually they invented something very specific that made intercom systems better.
Speaker 1: When it comes to the actual first intercom system, the
Speaker 1: details there are a lot harder to find. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: going to take another quick break. When we come back,
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about fast food and drive throughs. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're back, and the whole point of this episode
Speaker 1: is that intercoms were definitely a thing before we ever
Speaker 1: get to In and Out Burger and Harry Snyder, because
Speaker 1: the first In and Out Burger didn't open until nineteen
Speaker 1: forty eight. However, I don't want to take away from
Speaker 1: Harry Snyder here because I don't think it's Snyder's fault
Speaker 1: that some people take a shortcut to suggest that he
Speaker 1: invented the intercom. A lot of sites are pretty good
Speaker 1: about this, where they say he didn't invent the intercom,
Speaker 1: Rather he was the first to use an intercom system
Speaker 1: to enable what would become the model for the modern
Speaker 1: drive through, which is the correct thing to say, but
Speaker 1: a lot of other sites simplify this just to say
Speaker 1: that he invented the intercom, which is not correct. But
Speaker 1: he did come up with a solution to a pretty
Speaker 1: tricky problem. So here in America, we have a very
Speaker 1: car centric culture. In America, we have this self identity
Speaker 1: where freedom plays a huge part in that self identity.
Speaker 1: Depending on how cynical you are, you might view this
Speaker 1: concept of freedom as being largely imaginary, but put that aside.
Speaker 1: Part of being free is this idea that you can
Speaker 1: travel throughout the United States whenever you want. You just
Speaker 1: have to have a way of getting around, but you
Speaker 1: can travel freely from state to state without needing papers
Speaker 1: or anything to be able to do it. And there's
Speaker 1: this kind of sense of pioneering and exploration that's kind
Speaker 1: of ingrained into the American identity. Again, how realistic that
Speaker 1: is is depended upon your point of view. Part of
Speaker 1: that meant that there was this very car centric culture,
Speaker 1: which required a couple of things to start to happen
Speaker 1: to enable that. The highway system was one of them.
Speaker 1: You had to have highways connecting different regions together in
Speaker 1: order to make these trips. The proliferation of gas stations
Speaker 1: was another. You had to have places where you could
Speaker 1: refuel while you were on the go. The creation of
Speaker 1: things like motels was another one. You had to have
Speaker 1: places where you could you could stop for the night
Speaker 1: and sleep so you could rest before you continued on
Speaker 1: your road trip, and places where you could grab food
Speaker 1: when you're on the go. So Snyder was coming up
Speaker 1: with a solution to that issue that you're going to
Speaker 1: grab food on the go. You want fast food, but
Speaker 1: it's not really convenient for you to drive to a place,
Speaker 1: park your car, get out of your car, walk up
Speaker 1: to the restaurant, go inside, place your order by talking
Speaker 1: to an actual human being face to face. That's the worst.
Speaker 1: Then paying for your food, waiting for it, bringing it
Speaker 1: back out to your car, and then you get to
Speaker 1: drive off. That's not very efficient. Now, Alternatively, you could
Speaker 1: have customers park in the parking lot, and then you
Speaker 1: could send employees out to the customers and take the
Speaker 1: customer's orders, then come back to the restaurant place the orders,
Speaker 1: wait for the food, grab the food, go back out
Speaker 1: to the customers and deliver it. Perhaps you could even
Speaker 1: have the employees wearing roller skates. This was a pretty
Speaker 1: popular method in the mid twentieth century. It still is
Speaker 1: in some places, like there's some places that do the
Speaker 1: retro thing. You know, the employees on roller skates who
Speaker 1: will take orders and bring food out to you and stuff.
Speaker 1: You could do this, but again wasn't very efficient. It
Speaker 1: also meant that you had to have more staff on
Speaker 1: your employment in order to get this done. So it
Speaker 1: would be a lot better for you if the customer
Speaker 1: could just drive up and order directly, But the noise
Speaker 1: of vehicles, the distance between customer and cook or cashier
Speaker 1: made it hard to have this work. It would create
Speaker 1: choke points, it was hard to understand folks, and the
Speaker 1: system would be inefficient. So Snyder's solution was to create
Speaker 1: an intercom system that would let one customer order at
Speaker 1: an ordering location, and then a customer further up ahead
Speaker 1: could actually be getting their food and paying for their transaction.
Speaker 1: And it made everything much more efficient, right, You weren't
Speaker 1: taking an order, prepping the food, delivering the food, and
Speaker 1: then taking money for it all at one spot. You
Speaker 1: were dividing that up so the line would move much
Speaker 1: more quickly. So he introduced this technology at his first
Speaker 1: In and Out Burger location in the Los Angeles area,
Speaker 1: technically in Baldwin Park. And from what I understand, the
Speaker 1: first intercom system was installed in nineteen forty nine, so
Speaker 1: he had only opened a year earlier, and he had
Speaker 1: built the first two way intercom system he used in
Speaker 1: his own garage and he installed it himself at the restaurant. So,
Speaker 1: according to Snyder's granddaughter Lindsey in her book The Ins
Speaker 1: and Outs of In and Out, Snyder was inspired by
Speaker 1: intercom systems that were in use on warships in the
Speaker 1: US Navy, and he decided to use that approach at
Speaker 1: his restaurants. The very first intercom system was pretty nondescript.
Speaker 1: It was just a speaker that was mounted on a
Speaker 1: post that was next to the restaurant, but customers didn't
Speaker 1: initially know how or why they should use it, so
Speaker 1: they had to put up some signage to let folks
Speaker 1: know not to just keep driving around to the takeout
Speaker 1: window and shout orders at line cooks, but instead to
Speaker 1: stop at the speaker where they could place their order.
Speaker 1: The system was very much Jerry rigged. You know, Snyder
Speaker 1: was not an electrician or an engineer. He was kind
Speaker 1: of just a tinkerer. He also was color blind, which
Speaker 1: meant he wasn't using the standard colored wires to indicate
Speaker 1: which wire would go where, which wouldn't be that big
Speaker 1: of a deal except for the fact that these speakers
Speaker 1: weren't secured to the post in a way that was unassailable.
Speaker 1: So in an effort to prevent people from stealing drive
Speaker 1: through speakers, which could be a thing. People would steal
Speaker 1: speakers so that they could use them for other stuff,
Speaker 1: he decided that his system would mean that employees would
Speaker 1: have to disconnect the speakers at the end of the
Speaker 1: day and then bring the speakers inside so they could
Speaker 1: be locked up inside the restaurant. And that meant you
Speaker 1: had to be very careful with how you stored the
Speaker 1: wires because you would really need to hook the speaker
Speaker 1: back up properly at the beginning of the next day.
Speaker 1: For business right, and since he was colorblind and wasn't
Speaker 1: using the standard wire colors to indicate, Hey, this wire
Speaker 1: goes here, that wire goes there. I mean, you had
Speaker 1: to be very careful when you were storing those wires
Speaker 1: in the speaker so that you could connect them properly
Speaker 1: the next day. Otherwise you're just going to be spending
Speaker 1: a lot of time troubleshooting and figuring out why the
Speaker 1: intercom system isn't working. Now, Snyder's innovation was a game
Speaker 1: changer for In and Out, and eventually it'd be a
Speaker 1: game changer for the rest of the fast food industry,
Speaker 1: but it would take some time for it to catch on.
Speaker 1: Business Insider has an article titled, how In and Out
Speaker 1: invented the two way speaker system and created the first
Speaker 1: modern drive through. I think the two way speaker system
Speaker 1: the invented the two way speaker system part is a
Speaker 1: little misleading, but creating the first modern drive through is
Speaker 1: absolutely on point. And that article says that competitors like
Speaker 1: Wendy's and Jack in the Box would start installing their
Speaker 1: own intercom systems and their drive throughs in the mid
Speaker 1: to late nineteen sixties, and that McDonald's didn't even get
Speaker 1: on board until the mid nineteen seventies. So since in
Speaker 1: and Out was doing this since nineteen forty nine, they
Speaker 1: had more than a decade of being the exclusive fast
Speaker 1: food chain that had an intercom drive through system, which
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. Now we can look at the drive
Speaker 1: through as kind of like that smaller component of that
Speaker 1: car culture I was talking about, right, Like, that's just
Speaker 1: one of those elements where you realize that the reason
Speaker 1: all this exists was to enable this culture in America
Speaker 1: that encouraged people to go on road trips and travel
Speaker 1: to distant places and explore the country. It was something
Speaker 1: that really cemented in the American psyche, this idea that
Speaker 1: car ownership is a big part of being an American citizen.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that you have to have a car
Speaker 1: to be an American citizen, but a lot of what
Speaker 1: we do does revolve around cars, and that if you
Speaker 1: don't have one, it makes participating in society a lot
Speaker 1: more challenging. There's some areas in America that have good
Speaker 1: to great public transportation alternatives, but where I am in Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 1: I will say that the public transportation is at best adequate,
Speaker 1: it's not great. And it requires you to make a
Speaker 1: lot of considerations and sacrifices in order to be able
Speaker 1: to get to where you're going, including leaving way earlier
Speaker 1: than you think you need to in order to be
Speaker 1: able to make all your connections. So, yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: It's one of those elements that collectively really tell the
Speaker 1: story of America's concept of freedom and independence and agency.
Speaker 1: And it all has to do, in this case, with
Speaker 1: a pretty simple system that was built on top of
Speaker 1: the old telephone system. Now, obviously intercoms have advanced quite
Speaker 1: a bit since those days. Now we have ones that
Speaker 1: include things like video cameras and the ability to interact
Speaker 1: with things like electronic lock systems and all that, but
Speaker 1: that would come later. And now we have ones that
Speaker 1: work over Internet protocol, not over like the old telephone system.
Speaker 1: So the actual method of transmission has changed over time
Speaker 1: as well, but the basic idea has remained the same.
Speaker 1: And so I think it's fair to say In and
Speaker 1: Out had a pretty big impact at least on fast
Speaker 1: food culture here in the United States, and that the
Speaker 1: tasting history element wasn't completely wrong. It was just perhaps
Speaker 1: a tiny bit misleading to suggest that Snyder invented the
Speaker 1: two way inter comm system. He didn't invent it, he
Speaker 1: just found a really, really good use for it. And
Speaker 1: if you're going to in and out get some fries,
Speaker 1: get them animal style, think of me while you do it,
Speaker 1: and I will live vicariously through you. That's it for
Speaker 1: today's episode. I hope you are all well, and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: app Apple Podcasts wherever you listen to your favorite shows.