Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault. This time we're gonna
Speaker 1: be looking at part two of our exploration from December
Speaker 1: of the Ark of the Covenant myth and uh and
Speaker 1: some strange historical hypotheses people have had about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In particular, this episode focuses mostly on the idea that,
Speaker 1: uh that what if the Ark of the Covenant wasn't
Speaker 1: so much a holy box of divine wrath it was
Speaker 1: more just a giant battery. This was I remember, I
Speaker 1: had some of the weirdest stuff we've ever read proposed
Speaker 1: by Nicola tesla Um. So yeah, anyway, we hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1: And Nate ab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took
Speaker 1: either of them his censer and put fire therein, and
Speaker 1: put incense there on, and offered strange fire before the Lord,
Speaker 1: which he commended them not. And there went out fire
Speaker 1: from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before
Speaker 1: the Lord. Now the Lord spoke to Moses after the
Speaker 1: death of the two sons of Aaron, when they had
Speaker 1: approached the presence of the Lord and died. The Lord
Speaker 1: said to Moses, tell your brother Aaron that he shall
Speaker 1: not enter at any time into the Holy Place inside
Speaker 1: the veil before the mercy seat, which is on the Ark,
Speaker 1: or he will die, or I will appear in the
Speaker 1: cloud over the mercy seat. Welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back for Arc
Speaker 1: too Electric Boogaloo, our second exploration of a bunch of
Speaker 1: weird sort of bronze punk, takes on the stories of
Speaker 1: the Ark of the Covenant from the Hebrew Bible. Right,
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of perfect because is this is a
Speaker 1: kind of this is kind of Hanaka content for Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your mind. Oh, I didn't think about the timing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're publishing these episodes the week of Hanaka almost entirely
Speaker 1: by by by accident, but but a pleasant accident, I
Speaker 1: would say. So. Last time we talked about the stories
Speaker 1: about say, the Philistine captivity of the Ark of the
Speaker 1: Covenant and the immrods and what all that meant. But
Speaker 1: there is another aspect to the ark of God's story
Speaker 1: that tends to tempt people into the techno mythology realm.
Speaker 1: Not only was the Arc said to bring vast destructions
Speaker 1: and plagues of m rods, there are also these Bible
Speaker 1: stories that tell of the Arc lashing out with blasts
Speaker 1: of power that kill offenders in an instant. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so there are a couple of examples. One is the
Speaker 1: story we just told about Erin's two sons. We don't
Speaker 1: get a whole lot of details, but it seems like
Speaker 1: Erin's two sons entered the presence of the Arc with
Speaker 1: some kind of strange fire. Essentially that it sounds like
Speaker 1: they were not doing the rituals of the tavern ackle
Speaker 1: as they had been commanded. They were doing something incorrect.
Speaker 1: Fun fact I I actually traveled home and attended a
Speaker 1: Sunday School class at my mom's church recently, and this
Speaker 1: was the passage they were discussing really well in the
Speaker 1: last episode. I thought we were talking about how they
Speaker 1: almost never bring these stories up in Sunday School, at
Speaker 1: least when we were kidding. I saw a great example
Speaker 1: of why. Because it's it's kind of difficult for folks
Speaker 1: to have a like a casual, real life oriented conversation
Speaker 1: about a passage like this about the strange fire of
Speaker 1: the Lord, which apparently sometimes translated is alien fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: alien fire. They brought alien fire and the sensors before
Speaker 1: the Lord, and the Lord did not like it, and
Speaker 1: he lashed out and struck them dead, consumed them with
Speaker 1: fire from the mercy seat. Now, before we get into
Speaker 1: the bronze punk discussions today, we should tell at least
Speaker 1: one more story of this kind. How about the story
Speaker 1: of Uza. So remember how the arc was taken to
Speaker 1: the land of the Philistines. That's one of the stories
Speaker 1: and Bible about it. The Philistines. Uh, there's a battle
Speaker 1: and Philistines take the arc and they put it in
Speaker 1: the temple of Dagon until the arc messes them up
Speaker 1: and it topples the statue of the god Dagon. And
Speaker 1: eventually the Philistines repenteth and the Israelites get the arc back.
Speaker 1: And so when the Israelites under King David are they're
Speaker 1: bringing the arc back to their land that we get
Speaker 1: to this passage quote. They placed the Ark of God
Speaker 1: on a new cart that they might bring it from
Speaker 1: the house of a ben a Dab, which was on
Speaker 1: the hill, and Usa and Ahio, the sons of a
Speaker 1: ben Adab, were leading the new cart, so they brought
Speaker 1: it with the Ark of God from the house of
Speaker 1: a ben Adab, which was on the hill, and Ahio
Speaker 1: was walking ahead of the arc. Meanwhile, David and all
Speaker 1: the house of Israel were celebrating before the Lord with
Speaker 1: all kinds of instruments made of fir wood, with liars, harps, tambourines, castanets,
Speaker 1: and symbols. But when they came to the threshing floor
Speaker 1: of Nakon, Usa reached out toward the Ark of God
Speaker 1: and took hold of it. For the oxen nearly upset it,
Speaker 1: and the anger of the Lord burned against Usa, and
Speaker 1: God struck him down there for this irreverence, and he
Speaker 1: died there by the Ark of God. And then there's
Speaker 1: a story that apparently this place comes to be named
Speaker 1: what roughly translates to the breakthrough of Usa or the
Speaker 1: bursting out at Usa, as we discussed at length in
Speaker 1: the last episode. Uh, if you look at any of
Speaker 1: these stories of the Ark of the Covenant, or if
Speaker 1: you look at, of course, in the classic film Raiders
Speaker 1: of the Lost Arc, you see great depictions of this
Speaker 1: general fact that the Ark of the Covenant is considered
Speaker 1: a dangerous item in the stories about it. It is
Speaker 1: it is a thing that that manifests the presence in
Speaker 1: the voice of God and uh, and therefore there are
Speaker 1: a lot of dangers associated with misuse um even even
Speaker 1: touching it, well, even even well meaning touching. Like the
Speaker 1: idea here is that Usa wasn't trying to do, you know,
Speaker 1: a blasphemy to the ark. He just reached out to
Speaker 1: keep it from falling over because the oxen we're getting
Speaker 1: all tipped around and so the arc might have fallen
Speaker 1: on the ground. He reached out to steady it, and
Speaker 1: that was enough that got him struck dead. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I think, as with the arc stories that we discussed
Speaker 1: last time, the most fruitful way of understanding these stories
Speaker 1: is that they are legendary narratives, not based on actual events,
Speaker 1: but rather to communicate values by telling a story. And
Speaker 1: in this case, I think one of the values that's
Speaker 1: primary here is that the commands of the Lord are
Speaker 1: to be taken very seriously, and that even deviating from
Speaker 1: God's commands in an accidental or well meaning way can
Speaker 1: be met with extremely harsh consequences. Like Aaron's sons, they
Speaker 1: screw up the rights of the tabernacle by offering alien fire.
Speaker 1: They burned something in the sensor in a way they
Speaker 1: weren't supposed to, and they get burned up themselves. USA
Speaker 1: touches the arc even meaning well, just to prevent it
Speaker 1: from falling over, and he gets blasted dead. I think
Speaker 1: the lesson is pretty clear, right, Yeah, It's like it's
Speaker 1: a basic Dungeons and Dragon's lesson as well. There is
Speaker 1: a high, high level magical item in your presence, don't
Speaker 1: touch it, don't don't, don't, don't do anything until you've
Speaker 1: at least cast a few, you know, provisional spells, just
Speaker 1: to see what's happening. Right is be very careful with
Speaker 1: the commands of God to do everything you're told. But
Speaker 1: in the last episode we discussed the concept of this
Speaker 1: historical hermoneutic we were calling bronze punk, the desire to
Speaker 1: for of modern interpreters with a little knowledge about science
Speaker 1: and technology under their belt to look back at legends
Speaker 1: like this assume that maybe they're based on some kind
Speaker 1: of actual event, whether directly or in some exaggerated form,
Speaker 1: and instead of assuming a magical explanation for the event
Speaker 1: behind the story postulates some kind of lost world of
Speaker 1: advanced technology hidden in the dust storms of history, which
Speaker 1: again is of course risky because this is the place
Speaker 1: where history and mythology can converge. So it's difficult to
Speaker 1: really lean too heavily on anything that is described in
Speaker 1: these stories. But at the same time we can't help
Speaker 1: but do it right with the great example from the
Speaker 1: last episode was was looking at the the plague of
Speaker 1: mice and uh and tumors or emads and trying to
Speaker 1: figure out, well, as this bubonic plague is that, what
Speaker 1: is that? What's being described here? That's one of the
Speaker 1: ways in which the Bronze punk hereameneutic, while not usually
Speaker 1: a good method of explaining the origins of these legendary
Speaker 1: tales and myths, does open up some interesting things to
Speaker 1: consider about the ancient world. Like one of the things
Speaker 1: we talked about in the last episode was, Okay, it
Speaker 1: probably does not make sense to say that the legends
Speaker 1: of the arc are caused by it actually being some
Speaker 1: ancient bioweapon, But could there have been bioweapons in the
Speaker 1: ancient world? Was their germ warfare before people had a
Speaker 1: germ theory of disease, and we decided, you know, it
Speaker 1: does seem like it's possible that that happened, and there's
Speaker 1: even some evidence of specific cases where it looks like
Speaker 1: it happened. Maybe not in this case, And for our
Speaker 1: purposes here on the show, it's also just a great
Speaker 1: excuse to talk about some of these things at the
Speaker 1: end of the episode, and at the end of this
Speaker 1: episode as well, we're probably gonna say, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't think we should really um put a lot of
Speaker 1: faith in this particular idea, but it does forces to
Speaker 1: ask questions about about the inner workings of the world
Speaker 1: in ancient times, applying what we know about science today
Speaker 1: and sort of unwrapping it through an analysis of the past. Well,
Speaker 1: there's an interesting question that's going to come out of
Speaker 1: today's episode about what what causes major breakthroughs in the
Speaker 1: progress of science in history. So we'll get back to
Speaker 1: that towards the end of the episode. So last time,
Speaker 1: we talked about the idea who could have been a
Speaker 1: weapon of germ warfare. That's unlikely, but it's fun to consider. Um,
Speaker 1: we talked about the pretty much impossible idea that it
Speaker 1: was a bearer of some sort of radiation hazard. And
Speaker 1: this has been popular with people like Eric von Danikin
Speaker 1: and I don't know about him specifically, but some of
Speaker 1: those ancient aliens. Yeah, anytime where you're like, oh, there's
Speaker 1: some sort of of of crazy piece of technology. It's
Speaker 1: a nuclear reactor or something. Uh. And then we of
Speaker 1: course talked about the psychology of artifacts, like the arc
Speaker 1: being a focal point for worship and how that affects
Speaker 1: the altered states of consciousness, the mind and so forth.
Speaker 1: But today we wanted to explore another very strange bronze
Speaker 1: punk rabbit trail that many many authors have taken over
Speaker 1: the years to explain stories like Errand's two Sons in
Speaker 1: the Story of Uza, these people who are struck dead
Speaker 1: in the presence of the arc, and that is the
Speaker 1: idea of the electric arc. Yes, this is this is
Speaker 1: a pretty fabulous notion because it doesn't really it doesn't
Speaker 1: depend on aliens, it doesn't depend on any um, you know,
Speaker 1: the alternative view of the evolution of consciousness or anything.
Speaker 1: It basically just depends it basically asked questions about like
Speaker 1: what were the what was the knowledge of electricity at
Speaker 1: the time, and what were the capabilities and material capabilities
Speaker 1: in many cases to construct a primitive device? I would
Speaker 1: like to read with some abridgements, from an article published
Speaker 1: in the Chicago Daily Tribune March five, ninety three by
Speaker 1: the Reverend John Evans, called Scientists, says Sacred Box was
Speaker 1: a condenser. Robert, will you help me read some sections
Speaker 1: from this? Certainly, would you like to take the beginning here?
Speaker 1: I shall It was a charge of some ten thousand
Speaker 1: volts of static electricity, and not the wrath of God
Speaker 1: that killed Uza when he touched the Ark of the Covenant. Such,
Speaker 1: at least is the scientific conjecture of Dean Frederick Rogers
Speaker 1: of the Department of Engineering at Lewis Institute of Technology,
Speaker 1: concerning the mysterious powers of the Arc, which was not
Speaker 1: only an object of reverence to the Israelites, but also
Speaker 1: a troublesome possession. Right. So the article then goes on
Speaker 1: to tell the story of Usa. As we told before,
Speaker 1: the arc goes unsteady. Oxen were about to knock it over.
Speaker 1: He touches it, he gets struck dead. Uh, And Evans writes,
Speaker 1: quote Professor Rogers made a study of the construction of
Speaker 1: the arc and discovered. Its design called for a perfectly
Speaker 1: constructed simple electric condenser or Leiden john Are. And then
Speaker 1: the article also goes on to tell the story of
Speaker 1: the construction of the Ark of the Covenant. We talked
Speaker 1: about that in the last episode. But basically the design
Speaker 1: specifications are it's a big wooden box with gold on
Speaker 1: the inside and the outside, and not just any wood
Speaker 1: at shipham would right, Yeah, it's which I believe is
Speaker 1: supposed to be the Acacia tree Acacia would uh. They
Speaker 1: called it ship him wood and it's got gold on
Speaker 1: the inside, gold on the outside, and then these gold
Speaker 1: representative figures of Cherubim on the top. So going back
Speaker 1: to the article, the scientific interest in the construction pointed
Speaker 1: out by Professor Rogers was that the Acacia would box,
Speaker 1: about forty inches long and slightly less than thirty inches
Speaker 1: in width and depth, not only was lined with gold
Speaker 1: leaf on the inside, but overlaid with the same metal without. This,
Speaker 1: according to Professor Rodgers, is the first step that any
Speaker 1: modern boy with a flare for electrical experimentation will take
Speaker 1: to create a light in jar, and girls don't be
Speaker 1: discouraged there. You can create ldon jars too. Also, I
Speaker 1: don't never created a light in jar. I did the
Speaker 1: potato battery, and that's about as far as I went
Speaker 1: towards creating the arc. I never even made a potato battery.
Speaker 1: But I should also say, boys and girls alike, if
Speaker 1: you are actually constructing a light in jar, do some
Speaker 1: with with proper safety precautions and adult supervision, because they
Speaker 1: can actually be dangerous depending on their capacity. But anyway,
Speaker 1: moving on, except that in a light in jar, a
Speaker 1: glass receptacle is coated on the inside and the outside
Speaker 1: with tinfoil instead of gold. Then with the aid of
Speaker 1: a rod and a small knob at the top, and
Speaker 1: a short chain at the bottom, which is inserted through
Speaker 1: the cork so that the chain may make contact with
Speaker 1: the bottom of the jar, a young experimenter is ready
Speaker 1: to collect small charges of bottled lightning. Robert, would you
Speaker 1: like to take over? In the section subtitled a condenser
Speaker 1: of electricity? But the Ark of the Covenant was a
Speaker 1: much larger condenser and thought by Professor Rogers to have
Speaker 1: been capable of collecting death dealing charges. They divined erections
Speaker 1: called for the creation of two chair, of them pure gold,
Speaker 1: to be placed on a gold slab or mercy seat
Speaker 1: atop the arc. These chairbim Professor Rodgers explained what he
Speaker 1: believes to have been the positive pole of the circuit,
Speaker 1: similar to the knob on the top of the light
Speaker 1: and jar. When he was asked how the static charge
Speaker 1: of electricity got into the arc, Professor Rogers admitted that
Speaker 1: there was very little accepted authority among scientists concerning the
Speaker 1: action and control of atmospheric electricity. He explained, however, that
Speaker 1: it is known among physicists that a difference of potential
Speaker 1: exists between the Earth and the air, which may be
Speaker 1: collected in electrical charges under certain favorable conditions. The design
Speaker 1: of the arc, at least as described in Exodus. Undoubtedly,
Speaker 1: I love this certainty of people writing about these kinds
Speaker 1: of kind of hair brained interpretations. Clearly there's no room
Speaker 1: for for discussion here. That's what it was. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the article goes on to state that Rogers believes the
Speaker 1: arc could have been electrically charged by air currents created
Speaker 1: by smoke from the burning of incense and sacrifices, which
Speaker 1: the Bible says often happened close to the arc. He
Speaker 1: also says this could charge the light in arc enough
Speaker 1: to allow it to deal fatal bolts of electricity, and
Speaker 1: he cites a Hebrew commentary tradition that states that quote,
Speaker 1: the wings of the golden Cherubim not only emitted fire,
Speaker 1: but also an aura known among electricians as brush glow.
Speaker 1: The fire emitted by the Cherubim could have been well
Speaker 1: known electrical arc resulting from overcharge. Professor Rogers beliefs that
Speaker 1: a number of accounts of destruction attributed by the scriptures
Speaker 1: to the arc might be explained as being results of
Speaker 1: purely natural phenomena, and he gives some examples that like
Speaker 1: we talked about last time, the destruction of the Philistine
Speaker 1: idol of Dagon quote a divinity supposed to be half
Speaker 1: fish and half man. And just a side note, apparently
Speaker 1: that association of the Canaanite god Dagon with fish that
Speaker 1: I think that is supposed to be exonymic in origin,
Speaker 1: meaning that the the ancient Hebrews related the name of
Speaker 1: this god to the Hebrew word for fish. The original
Speaker 1: Philistine Dagon appears to be more likely some kind of
Speaker 1: grain and fertility gods. Sorry Lovecraft fans, Oh yeah, that
Speaker 1: is kind of disappointment, because Dagon, of course is a
Speaker 1: part of the Lovecraft mythos and uh and and then
Speaker 1: it's one of those cool gods where you read about
Speaker 1: it there, then you read about it in the Bible.
Speaker 1: And if you, like I was, if you were a
Speaker 1: you know, a high schooler who's who suddenly discovered Lovecraft
Speaker 1: and then found one of these deities in the Bible
Speaker 1: as well, it was a pretty awesome moment. Oh. I
Speaker 1: can't help but think of the creatures of the sea
Speaker 1: as the children of Dagon. I'm always going to go there,
Speaker 1: even knowing what I know now that he probably wasn't
Speaker 1: actually a fish god, right, But at the same time,
Speaker 1: we do have a lot of We've discussed some tremendous
Speaker 1: ancient fish gods on the show before, right. But anyway,
Speaker 1: So they tell the story in the article of this
Speaker 1: philistine idol repeatedly getting knocked over or off of the arc,
Speaker 1: and Roger says, quote, if the idol had been constructed
Speaker 1: out of some poorer metal in combination with wood, an
Speaker 1: electrical charge arched far below the capacity of the arc
Speaker 1: would have been enough to have accomplished the destruction. So
Speaker 1: I think they're saying that the arc could have knocked
Speaker 1: over the the idol just by discharging electricity. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: not sure about that, but okay, yeah, I'm gonna try
Speaker 1: to include some art that I found on the landing
Speaker 1: page for this episode a stuff to blow your mind
Speaker 1: dot com, because they are a number of wonderful depictions
Speaker 1: of like the glowing arc and a top old uh
Speaker 1: statue of the deity Dagon sometimes with a fish tail
Speaker 1: that of course is now broken because it fell over
Speaker 1: and uh and of course this is uh. This kind
Speaker 1: of thing was was also referenced in Rages of the
Speaker 1: Lost Arc. Again, that's scene where the Ark of the
Speaker 1: Covenant burns through the swastika on the crate that contains it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like like destroying another false idle. Yeah. Uh. So to continue,
Speaker 1: and we're getting close to the end of this article,
Speaker 1: but there's some other good stuff here. So Evans talks
Speaker 1: about how all these kinds of miracles could be attributed
Speaker 1: to electricity, and he talks about the tendency of people
Speaker 1: to attribute, you know, processes they don't understand, to divine intervention.
Speaker 1: And then he says, thus, if Moses accidentally stumbled upon
Speaker 1: the principle of the leiden Jar, the device would instantly
Speaker 1: be accepted as the conveying medium of divine favor or disfavor.
Speaker 1: Sounds again like a little bit too much certainty in
Speaker 1: this interpretation here, but the author tells a bunch more
Speaker 1: stories of the arc, and then also points out that
Speaker 1: the ark of the Covenant was not the only arc
Speaker 1: given sacred significance in the ancient world, and he discusses
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian arcs, speculating that Moses could have learned about
Speaker 1: the creation of electrical arcs from the Egyptians when he
Speaker 1: was growing up in the pharaoh's court. Again, that's that's
Speaker 1: a nice story, but I think once again the problem
Speaker 1: is just that it's taking the biblical source at face value.
Speaker 1: And what's more likely is that the biography of Moses
Speaker 1: is a legend. But but yeah, there there. He does
Speaker 1: point out that there are other arc like things in
Speaker 1: other cultures around the ancient Near East, and and and
Speaker 1: the Egyptians are a great example, right. But then again
Speaker 1: we have to come back to perhaps the simpler explanation
Speaker 1: that an arc like thing is a box. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and therefore, yes, the technology of box making was very
Speaker 1: much in effect at the time, right uh. And so finally,
Speaker 1: Robert do you want to read this very last paragraph here? Certainly,
Speaker 1: while no historian would engage in such speculation, yet it
Speaker 1: is the right of any man to fancy that it
Speaker 1: was in Egypt that the properties of the gold coated
Speaker 1: box were discovered by some hapless craftsman. He paid for
Speaker 1: his discovery with his life, but gave his kinsmen a
Speaker 1: home for a new and powerful god. Okay, so they've
Speaker 1: got a theory here. Some Egyptian craftsman accidentally discovered how
Speaker 1: to build alidon Jar by building boxes and covering them
Speaker 1: with gold, and then that information was transmitted to Moses,
Speaker 1: and then Moses carried the secret of how to build
Speaker 1: alidon Jar, and that became the Ark of the Covenant,
Speaker 1: and thus it gives us all these stories of like
Speaker 1: people touching it and getting struck dead. Now, I think
Speaker 1: it would be ridiculous to say that if the arc
Speaker 1: actually existed, we're assuming something like it may have if
Speaker 1: it existed, that it was best explained in these terms.
Speaker 1: But well, I don't think we need to resort to
Speaker 1: this to explain the Arc legend. I don't find it
Speaker 1: implausible at all that someone in the ancient world and
Speaker 1: someone in the ancient Mediterranean could have at some point
Speaker 1: accidentally created a capacitor, which is what alidon jar is,
Speaker 1: and that it could have injured or killed people. And
Speaker 1: that is a really interesting thing to consider, right because
Speaker 1: not I mean, not only, of course, the the accidental
Speaker 1: creation of such a thing, but then the recreation such
Speaker 1: a thing and the utilization of such a thing, either
Speaker 1: as essentially a tool of divination, like what's going to
Speaker 1: happen when I touch it? Like a fatal shock, as
Speaker 1: a no, not dying as yes, you know that that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, which which a lot of ancient practices
Speaker 1: of religion and even modern practices of religion really boiled
Speaker 1: down to that give me something to provide an answer
Speaker 1: for some question I have, or or provide some sort
Speaker 1: of a random answer to something that I am incapable
Speaker 1: of generating my own random answer too. Yeah, and again
Speaker 1: I think it's not hard to believe that that someone
Speaker 1: could have accidentally discovered how to build something like this. Again,
Speaker 1: like the discovery of the actual liden Jar was also
Speaker 1: accidental somewhat and frightening someone. Maybe we should explore that
Speaker 1: after a break. Thank alright, we're back. Okay, So we
Speaker 1: mentioned before the break that in fact, the discovery of
Speaker 1: the liden Jar itself. We've got these people saying that
Speaker 1: the Ark of the Covenant was some kind of ancient
Speaker 1: liden Jar, some kind of capacitor or condenser that would
Speaker 1: store up electric charge and then discharge it all at once,
Speaker 1: maybe killing somebody who touched it in the wrong way. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: in Set there was this German Lutheran bishop named you all,
Speaker 1: Georg von Kleist. I've also seen his name represented as
Speaker 1: you want, Jurgen von Klist. I don't know if those
Speaker 1: are variations on the same name or if that's discrepancy.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but either way, whatever his middle name was,
Speaker 1: von Kleist was performing experiments with an electrostatic generator. At
Speaker 1: the time, this would have been something like the spinning
Speaker 1: globe generator of Francis Howkesby or of Benjamin Franklin, which
Speaker 1: was essentially like a glass sphere that you would rotate
Speaker 1: rapidly against a wool cloth by turning a crank, charging
Speaker 1: the sphere by friction, essentially gathering up electrons from the cloth. Now,
Speaker 1: once this principle had been demonstrated, uh, lots of people
Speaker 1: were messing around with them, and von Kleist had a
Speaker 1: glass medicine bottle that was filled with liquid. It was
Speaker 1: water or alcohol, with a cork top and a nail
Speaker 1: driven through the cork, poking down into the liquid inside.
Speaker 1: And while he was doing his experiments, Von Kleist held
Speaker 1: the outside of the bottle with his hand and he
Speaker 1: touched the nail to the generator that was, you know,
Speaker 1: the friction generator. And after charging the inside of the bottle,
Speaker 1: he found that when he held the bottle with one
Speaker 1: hand and touched the nail with his other hand, he
Speaker 1: received a shock. Why because he just used his body
Speaker 1: to complete a circuit and thus the spark the shock. Yes. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then there's another guy around the same time, Peter
Speaker 1: van mussen Brook of Leiden, Holland, who discovered the same
Speaker 1: principle the following year, which is where the Lyden jar
Speaker 1: gets its name. It's it's spelled like l e y
Speaker 1: d e N. But I think Leiden Holland is with
Speaker 1: like an ei, so I'm saying Lyden. I've heard people
Speaker 1: say Leyden. I think I read it in my mind
Speaker 1: is laden for years and years I may have said
Speaker 1: laid in the past. Whichever way it is, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be saying, lyden. If you don't like that, you
Speaker 1: can email and complain. So von mussen Bruck was able
Speaker 1: to charge up a glass jar full of water with
Speaker 1: a metal rod plunging inside it. And he also discovered
Speaker 1: that when you touched the rod while holding the outside
Speaker 1: of the jar, you got this terrific shock. So the
Speaker 1: principle here is the one of creating this electrical potential difference.
Speaker 1: You know, by charging it up in this way and
Speaker 1: having the insulator of the glass there between the inside
Speaker 1: and the outside, you're creating this difference potential where one
Speaker 1: side is positively charged, one side is negatively charged, and
Speaker 1: they desperately want to equalize. And whenever you complete that
Speaker 1: circuit circuit, they will equalize. And if you are the
Speaker 1: thing that completes that circuit, that equalization can be unpleasant
Speaker 1: for you. It can be bad for your body. Now
Speaker 1: let's talk about how unpleasant because uh, we we experience
Speaker 1: static shock all the time, especially during the winter in
Speaker 1: our modern world. My son and I when we go
Speaker 1: to a playground, we always do this thing called electric
Speaker 1: high five where if there's if there's you know, static
Speaker 1: electricity is generated when he goes down the slide because
Speaker 1: because of friction, I wait at the bottom and he
Speaker 1: gives me a high five, and sometimes there is an
Speaker 1: alarming shock to it, like it's it's it's pretty intense,
Speaker 1: but it's fun, right, It's not something that I would
Speaker 1: attribute to the to the wrath of of of an
Speaker 1: ancient god. When he goes down slide, he's becoming an
Speaker 1: electrostatic generator and you, you are the You are the
Speaker 1: ground terminal. So yeah, the question though, is could that
Speaker 1: high five be dangerous or fatal? You bet? Actually, well,
Speaker 1: not on the slide, but given given how much charge
Speaker 1: you could store up under various circumstances, yeah, it's entirely possible.
Speaker 1: Van Musson Brook reportedly said I would not take a
Speaker 1: second shock for the Kingdom of France. And Benjamin Franklin,
Speaker 1: We've talked about this on the show before, but the
Speaker 1: year old American hero Benjamin Franklin, hanging out in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: loved experimenting with light in jars. He began to get
Speaker 1: more power by chaining them together in a circuit so
Speaker 1: that their combined capacity could be discharged all at the
Speaker 1: same time, giving even more power, and Franklin kind of
Speaker 1: turned into a mad scientist in this regard, he became
Speaker 1: temporarily enthralled with the idea of using the powerful shock
Speaker 1: from this parade of jars to deal lethal shocks to animals.
Speaker 1: And he compared this row of lden jars all strung
Speaker 1: together to a battery of cannons or military artillery, giving
Speaker 1: us the term we still used today for a slightly
Speaker 1: different form of storage for electrical potential. The battery is
Speaker 1: like a you know, it's a battery. In the seventeen forties,
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin told a friend of his that he had
Speaker 1: figured out that the discharge of two lden jars was
Speaker 1: quote sufficient to kill common hens outright. He even said
Speaker 1: that since the electric shock killed so quickly, it might
Speaker 1: become a more humane way of slaughter for butchers, so
Speaker 1: that the birds that they butchered suffered less. And he
Speaker 1: proposed that a butcher could kill a turkey by stringing
Speaker 1: together six Lden jars into a battery, and then tied
Speaker 1: the chain, which was one terminal, around the turkey's legs,
Speaker 1: and then lift the turkey so that its head touched
Speaker 1: the other terminal. Whether or not this was actually more
Speaker 1: humane as a method of butchery. It probably wasn't the
Speaker 1: safest method for butchers to use, because when Franklin himself
Speaker 1: was trying to perform experiments like this, like there was
Speaker 1: a time he wanted to have a turkey barbecue where
Speaker 1: he was trying to kill turkeys with liden jars, he
Speaker 1: ended up accidentally shocking himself horribly and he was like
Speaker 1: knocked back and he felt bruised for days. Uh he
Speaker 1: and he explicitly said that he was afraid that a
Speaker 1: blow like that could easily kill a man. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin here is really sounding like a man who
Speaker 1: has never observed, who has never watched someone who knows
Speaker 1: what they're doing kill a chicken or a duck, because
Speaker 1: generally it is just I've seen like food documentaries where
Speaker 1: you see like a loving, caring a duck farmer just
Speaker 1: you know, one second they're holding the duck and then
Speaker 1: it's like just a quick twist of the wrist and
Speaker 1: they've rung its neck and it's dead. Yes, far better
Speaker 1: than risking your own death. And it's like burning the
Speaker 1: house down in the process. Well, and then it didn't
Speaker 1: even always work, because he said so he was trying
Speaker 1: to instantly and humanely kill turkeys this way, but he
Speaker 1: would like knock them unconscious and sometimes they'd come back,
Speaker 1: they'd be kind of woozed. Uh. It just sounds horrible,
Speaker 1: what are you doing, Ben? But anyway, so eventually people
Speaker 1: figured out that there are multiple ways of constructing alidon jar.
Speaker 1: You can make one with a simple conductive foil on
Speaker 1: the inside and the outside of a glass jar, or
Speaker 1: you can make one with water on the inside. In
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century, it became common to cram the inside
Speaker 1: of the jar with gold leaf, and they're just a
Speaker 1: bunch of ways to do it. But essentially what you
Speaker 1: need is a thin layer of what's known as a dielectric,
Speaker 1: which is an insulating non conductive material like glass, with
Speaker 1: a way of charging up the potential difference between the
Speaker 1: conductors on each side of that dielectric layer. You've got
Speaker 1: the negative charge on the inside and the positive charge
Speaker 1: on the outside. And so back to the idea of
Speaker 1: of our friend professor Frederick Rodgers. He was saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's how the arc is working. Right. You've got dielectric,
Speaker 1: which is the wood, and then you've got the gold layering,
Speaker 1: the gold plating on the inside and on the outside,
Speaker 1: and those are forming the conductive foils like in a
Speaker 1: liden jar. All you really need is like a way
Speaker 1: of charging up the inside and having that potential difference.
Speaker 1: And it's very possible that you have a lethal electro
Speaker 1: static discharge machine capable of killing people who touch it
Speaker 1: the wrong way. Now, our friend professor Frederick Rogers, who oh,
Speaker 1: I just realized he's Fred Rogers, this is Mr Rogers. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day
Speaker 1: for electrocution. Uh So, Mr Rogers wasn't the first person
Speaker 1: to propose that the arc was a capacitor or a
Speaker 1: liden jar. Actually found earlier evidence of different versions of
Speaker 1: this theory, including one from one of my favorite discourse
Speaker 1: communities of all time, late nineteenth century American Spiritualism. Remember
Speaker 1: our old friend John Murray Spear, of course, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: the spiritualist agitator for the spirit Land building that tremendous
Speaker 1: contraption that was going to was was that a radio
Speaker 1: for speaking to God? Yes? Essentially, I mean it was
Speaker 1: very complicated his theology about that. But John Murray Spear
Speaker 1: was a spiritualist who thought he was getting messages from
Speaker 1: the spirits of the dead telling him how to build
Speaker 1: an electro mechanical Messiah called the New Motor, which would
Speaker 1: be a channel for the new motive power, which was
Speaker 1: God's energy poured into the universe through the lens of
Speaker 1: the Sun, which would be enlightening and would cause wisdom
Speaker 1: and a new human that would be created by essentially,
Speaker 1: what this machine was was like a coffee table with
Speaker 1: like a bunch of metal stuff on top of it.
Speaker 1: I remember looking at illustrations of this and it was
Speaker 1: no arc, that's for certain. I remember exactly what you
Speaker 1: said about it, which is that you said it looked
Speaker 1: like if a coffee table mate it with a dalek. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty much what it looked like. No chair of him.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I think we should explore some spiritualist bronze punk.
Speaker 1: So I wasn't able to find an original version of
Speaker 1: this article, but I want to talk about an article
Speaker 1: that's reproduced in a book by the spiritualist author Moses Hull.
Speaker 1: Whole quotes the entirety of this article, which was published
Speaker 1: sometime in the eighteen nineties and a spiritualist periodical called
Speaker 1: The Progressive Thinker, which has a great little subtitle, it's
Speaker 1: science supplemented by an exalted morality, the Bible of the future.
Speaker 1: And so you've got all these strange currents in nineteenth
Speaker 1: century American spiritualism, which as in this case, often featured
Speaker 1: like a combination of belief in the existence of spirits
Speaker 1: and our ability to receive communications from them, but then
Speaker 1: also like progressive politics, often abolition of slavery, women's suffrage,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, a kind of futuristic embrace of
Speaker 1: scientific and technological progress, skepticism about some traditional doctrines of
Speaker 1: religion while still embracing others. Given all this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: it's not surprising to me that spiritualist authors would be
Speaker 1: embracing an electrical theory of the arc legend. They sometimes
Speaker 1: had this sort of rationalism supernaturalism hybrid that made them
Speaker 1: want to read the Bible as in some ways literally
Speaker 1: true and in other ways like revealing hints of technologies
Speaker 1: that we would later discover, maybe through the revelations of spirits.
Speaker 1: Like remember John murray Spears belief that he was getting
Speaker 1: messages from the Association of Electrizers. Who were these people
Speaker 1: like Benjamin Franklin and all these dead people who were
Speaker 1: giving him technological messages from beyond the grave. But anyway,
Speaker 1: let's look at this article from the Progressive Thinker. So
Speaker 1: the the author of this article says, there is nothing
Speaker 1: new on the face of the earth, and there is
Speaker 1: no doubt that electricity was well known to the Israelites
Speaker 1: and probably to the Phoenicians. Again, no doubt. Why why
Speaker 1: is it always no doubt uncertainty? We'll come back to
Speaker 1: that particular question. Because on one hand, yes, there was
Speaker 1: some knowledge of electricity, but was it working. I don't
Speaker 1: know if we know that it was known to the Israelites. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean I have to admit I don't really
Speaker 1: know what the what the weather, weather patterns are necessarily
Speaker 1: like uh, in the Middle Middle East, like it to
Speaker 1: what extent lightning is observed, But the observation of lightning
Speaker 1: would be one slight level of knowledge of electricity, not necessarily,
Speaker 1: I mean, not a working knowledge. You can look at
Speaker 1: at a lightning storm, you can be impressed by it
Speaker 1: and have no idea what it is. Sure given a
Speaker 1: broad definition, okay, yeah, yeah, uh. And there's certainly what
Speaker 1: the Greeks knew, which we'll get to a little bit.
Speaker 1: So The author explains the story of the construction of
Speaker 1: the arc, points out that the special type of wood
Speaker 1: that was that was used to build the arc. They say, quote,
Speaker 1: was this choice accidental on account of the great value
Speaker 1: of the resinous would or was it in the choice
Speaker 1: of the best known nonconductor among the great number of
Speaker 1: various timbers. I don't know if that is correct. I
Speaker 1: sort of doubt that premise, but you know who knows um.
Speaker 1: I was wondering, is would a good insulator? And I
Speaker 1: looked this up. It basically depends on factors about the
Speaker 1: wood itself, such as the type of wood and the
Speaker 1: moisture content. So, of course, the author points out correctly
Speaker 1: that it is said that the inside and outside of
Speaker 1: the arc were covered in beaten gold, and that this
Speaker 1: is a good conductor of electricity. It is true that
Speaker 1: gold is a good conductor of electricity. Quote. So much
Speaker 1: is certain that if Edison or Tesla had lived in
Speaker 1: those days, they could not have improved upon the choice
Speaker 1: of material, and the result was a powerful leiden Jar.
Speaker 1: I think they actually could have improved on it. For instance,
Speaker 1: silver is an even better conductor than gold. Also, Sarah
Speaker 1: the them a higher rank of angel saying they could
Speaker 1: go from Cherban oh Toche. So the author also claims
Speaker 1: that the arc was charged by the smoke of burnt offerings,
Speaker 1: which is the same thing Roger said. Uh. The author
Speaker 1: says that after Moses died, others improved upon the design
Speaker 1: of the electrical arc by placing it in a temple
Speaker 1: surrounded by a hundred and fifty foot poles covered in
Speaker 1: gold to charge the arc with electrical storms. And then
Speaker 1: we get to my favorite part, which is that the
Speaker 1: author says that he essentially implies that Aaron in the
Speaker 1: Bible stories used the arc as a murder weapon. Robert,
Speaker 1: would you like to read this passage? I've got here, certainly,
Speaker 1: and we'll just pretend that we threw in the law
Speaker 1: and order sound effect right here, or maybe maybe we
Speaker 1: can do that. I don't know. We'll see any coroner's
Speaker 1: jury of today if it were to sit on an
Speaker 1: inquest over the bodies of Aaron's sons, would it once
Speaker 1: bring a verdict of death by discharge of electricity. Aaron
Speaker 1: knew this power, and to make it effective. All he
Speaker 1: had to do to deal death from this apparatus was
Speaker 1: to remove the costly camel's hair carpet, which are almost
Speaker 1: perfect non conductors of electricity and make the culprit stand
Speaker 1: on terra FIRMA death would result instantly by fire breaking
Speaker 1: out and leave no wounds or burns to account for
Speaker 1: his death. That several members of revolting tribes of israel
Speaker 1: Lites were thus electrocuted is also a matter of record
Speaker 1: in the Bible. I wouldn't call them revolting necessarily. That
Speaker 1: seems a little harsh. Oh means rebel, Yes, that is
Speaker 1: again matter of record. It is just a certainty. What
Speaker 1: what is with this? Well, I mean there's probably a
Speaker 1: lot to unpack their interns. I mean, we haven't packed
Speaker 1: this to a certain extent, uh, for instance, looking at
Speaker 1: the uh the Great flood and the idea of a
Speaker 1: biblical great flood and its effect on the study of
Speaker 1: geology for so long, you know, I mean, the the
Speaker 1: Biblical record as it was uh certainly influenced even scientific
Speaker 1: understanding of the world for for quite a while. Well,
Speaker 1: I just think it's so interesting that you've got this
Speaker 1: weird hybrid approach of looking at the Bible here where
Speaker 1: the person is saying, I'm going to question and interrogate
Speaker 1: the source of this power. But I'm going to absolutely
Speaker 1: take the story at face value except where it sort
Speaker 1: of doesn't really match what I'm saying. But also I'm
Speaker 1: going to take God completely out of the equation or
Speaker 1: replace it with a device. But I'm also going to
Speaker 1: treat the text this, uh, this translated text as if
Speaker 1: it is a pleet historical records, as if it's just
Speaker 1: a security cam footage of the Ark of the Covenant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is exactly what I was, maybe inarticulately trying to say.
Speaker 1: And then they in the article by saying, Franklin, the
Speaker 1: electric chair in the state of New York, and the
Speaker 1: discovery of the light in Jar itself in light in
Speaker 1: Germany are all back numbers. History only repeats itself, whether
Speaker 1: recorded or not. And then here's a here's an even
Speaker 1: crazier one. It seems that none other than Nicola Tesla
Speaker 1: toyed with this idea as well. In a nineteen fifteen
Speaker 1: essay called The wonder World to be Created by Electricity,
Speaker 1: Tesla wrote, the superstitious belief of the ancients, if it
Speaker 1: existed at all, can therefore not be taken as a
Speaker 1: reliable proof of their ignorance. But just how much they
Speaker 1: knew about electricity can only be conjectured. A curious fact
Speaker 1: is that the ray or torpedo fish was used by
Speaker 1: them in electrotherapy. Some old coins show twins, stars, or sparks,
Speaker 1: such as might be produced by a galvanic battery. The records,
Speaker 1: though scanty, are of a nature to fill us with
Speaker 1: conviction that a few initiated at least had a deeper
Speaker 1: knowledge of amber phenomena. To mention one, Moses was undoubtedly
Speaker 1: a practical and skillful electrician, far in advance of his time.
Speaker 1: Undoubtedly the Bible describes precisely and minutely arrangements constituting a
Speaker 1: machine in which electricity was generated by friction of air
Speaker 1: against silk curtains and stored in a box constructed like
Speaker 1: a condenser. It is very plausible to assume that the
Speaker 1: sons of Aaron were killed by a high tension discharge,
Speaker 1: and that the vestal fires of the Romans were electrical.
Speaker 1: The belt drive must have been known to engineers of
Speaker 1: that epoch, and it is difficult to see how the
Speaker 1: abundant evolution of static electricity could have escaped their notice.
Speaker 1: The words of Nicola Tesla impressive, I had no idea
Speaker 1: that he ever commented on this again is certainly undoubtedly,
Speaker 1: and then more recently, of course, the idea of the
Speaker 1: electric arc as. I think we've mentioned this at the beginning.
Speaker 1: If not, you will not be surprised to learn that
Speaker 1: it seems popular with people operating in the ancient alien
Speaker 1: cinematic universe. Eric van dani Can claimed this, while also
Speaker 1: claiming that it was as part of his whole ancient
Speaker 1: alien technology thing. It was. It was alien gift motif.
Speaker 1: I think he said that it was like a radio.
Speaker 1: Somebody said that it was a nuclear reactor. I know Rile,
Speaker 1: the founder of the Aliens, had some idea that it
Speaker 1: was a nuclear reactor or something like that. But to
Speaker 1: what end, What good does it do to have a
Speaker 1: nuclear reactor and just trot it about the desert. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that it does, because really the whole point
Speaker 1: what makes this subject actually interesting is that building a
Speaker 1: form of a capacitor is technically possible for the ancients
Speaker 1: without supposing any kind of alien nonsense or intervention. That's true,
Speaker 1: and then ultimately the use of it as religious technology
Speaker 1: is also reasonable as well. I mean, we've discussed religious
Speaker 1: technology in the show before. In the way that various
Speaker 1: religions throughout history have used some sort of new technology
Speaker 1: as ritual. All right, let's take one more quick break,
Speaker 1: and then when we come back, we'll finish up our discussion. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So there are all these ideas people have had,
Speaker 1: as we've been talking about about the Ark of the
Speaker 1: Covenant as a capacitor some form of electrical device. And
Speaker 1: while I think you don't need to go to these
Speaker 1: kind of bronze punk explanations to explain the origin of
Speaker 1: these legends, it is really interesting to think about the
Speaker 1: idea and the possibilities for electrical technology in the ancient world. Now,
Speaker 1: there isn't really much or any evidence of electrical technology
Speaker 1: in the ancient world, but there is some indication that
Speaker 1: there were the beginnings of understanding of electricity in the
Speaker 1: ancient world. Yeah, I mean there again. Obviously, aspects of
Speaker 1: our electrical world that are unmistakable. Lightning is probably the strongest,
Speaker 1: clearest overt sign of electricity in our world. But of
Speaker 1: course merely observing lightning is a far cry from having
Speaker 1: a decent underst standing of what it is. Likewise, certain
Speaker 1: circumstances can cause us to produce our own electrostatic discharge.
Speaker 1: And the ancient Greeks knew about some of this. They
Speaker 1: knew about the triboelectric effect. For instance, this occurs when
Speaker 1: materials become electrically charged after they come into frictional contact
Speaker 1: with a different material. This is the concept behind the
Speaker 1: electrostatic generator infraction generator. Yeah. Again, rub a balloon on
Speaker 1: someone's hair and you can witness this holy power. Uh,
Speaker 1: do the electric high five with a six year old
Speaker 1: and you can also feel the divine spark. They may
Speaker 1: not have had our level of advanced playground equipment in
Speaker 1: ancient Greece, but they've probably had some stuff you could
Speaker 1: rub your butt on that would give you static discharge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's a whole list of materials that can, under
Speaker 1: the right circumstances, produce this effect on the positive charge
Speaker 1: side of things. The list includes human skin, hair, leather,
Speaker 1: rabbit fur, cat fur, and wool. You know, think of
Speaker 1: all those electric cats in ancient Easia. Right. And then
Speaker 1: on the other side of the equation you have would
Speaker 1: gold balloons and of course amber. We alluded to the
Speaker 1: amber effect earlier in one of the quotes that that
Speaker 1: I believe you were reading. Yeah, and amber is a big,
Speaker 1: big issue here. Yeah, the ancient Greeks certainly knew about
Speaker 1: the amber wool combination. Daileys of Melitis reported on this.
Speaker 1: Uh He was a mathematician and astronomer from the Greek
Speaker 1: city of Militis in uh Ionia, which is modern day Turkey,
Speaker 1: and he lived from six four through five six b c.
Speaker 1: He discovered that static electricity could be generated by rubbing
Speaker 1: fur on a piece of amber, and the Greeks noted
Speaker 1: that the this through a charged amber buttons as well,
Speaker 1: especially because these could attract you know, light objects such
Speaker 1: as hair. And I think this is this is key
Speaker 1: to thinking about what ancient people's knew about electricity is
Speaker 1: the materials they used and sort of the everyday circumstances
Speaker 1: in which they would, through continual usage, have the uh
Speaker 1: encounter the chance of creating that spark. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: still there in the language we used to discuss electricity today,
Speaker 1: like the word electron and electricity comes from the Greek
Speaker 1: word electron, which means amber. Yeah, so you know some
Speaker 1: level of understanding regarding static discharge as a property of
Speaker 1: material interaction in the ancient world, even three thousand BC
Speaker 1: is certainly not crazy. It would seem just a natural
Speaker 1: result of, again, of working with those materials of human
Speaker 1: invention and toolmaking exactly. Yeah, so the principles of friction
Speaker 1: generators for electricity, much like Franklin's and Hawksby's friction generators
Speaker 1: had it had basically already been discovered in ancient times
Speaker 1: and didn't require any modern materials or technology to produce.
Speaker 1: And then you've also come you compound that with the
Speaker 1: rest of our discussion, which makes it seem that while
Speaker 1: these stories of the arc probably have nothing to do
Speaker 1: with this, the storage of electricity and some kind of
Speaker 1: crude capacitor could also have been managed in the acient
Speaker 1: world via basic types of Leiden jars. You've got to
Speaker 1: you know, dielectric insulator, and you've got some kind of
Speaker 1: like gold or something on either side of it. It
Speaker 1: might have even been built by accident at some point.
Speaker 1: This also doesn't require any kind of great crazy bronze
Speaker 1: punk sci fi. So this kind of leads us to
Speaker 1: a big question. If the ancients had pretty much all
Speaker 1: they needed to generate and store electricity, at least in
Speaker 1: the crudest sense, why didn't they harness these earlier. Why
Speaker 1: didn't this lead them to to perform the step up
Speaker 1: in in the next experiments, in the next experiments like
Speaker 1: it did in say the eighteenth century. Uh, that would
Speaker 1: lead to the subsequent development of electrically based technologies in
Speaker 1: the ancient world. What if by the time of the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire the world had electric power? How different would
Speaker 1: the world be? Well, that is at once a tantalizing
Speaker 1: question and a frightening question. Knowing knowing what inevitably occurs
Speaker 1: as humans new technological breakthroughs. Yeah, I don't know that
Speaker 1: I would have trusted the Romans with electricity. I got
Speaker 1: I scarcely trust um any modern day cultures with electricity. Well,
Speaker 1: as Carl Sagan said, humanity has become powerful before humanity
Speaker 1: has become wise. And you know this is true even today,
Speaker 1: I'd say, I'd venture a guest. We were even less
Speaker 1: wise in the times of the Romans, or at least
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire was less wise. How many chickens would
Speaker 1: have been fried by by by by Roman Benjamin Franklin's
Speaker 1: at the time, One can only imagine. Yeah, so there
Speaker 1: must be some kind of answer to this question. Like,
Speaker 1: it's not like there's some kind of magical ingredient they
Speaker 1: did not possess that would not allow them to start
Speaker 1: this chain of research to gain power over the electrical world.
Speaker 1: I have to guess that the main impediment. Maybe there's
Speaker 1: something I'm not thinking of here. I have to think
Speaker 1: the main impediment is just like they didn't have the
Speaker 1: proper ecosystem of scientific investigation, like all these different people
Speaker 1: in different places doing their independent experiments and then all
Speaker 1: coming together to compare notes. You know, this reminds me
Speaker 1: of a discussion that we had for our new show,
Speaker 1: our new podcast that is launching I believe next week,
Speaker 1: UH invention podcast, all about inventions where they come from,
Speaker 1: and uh, we're talking about the X ray, I believe,
Speaker 1: and we were talking about, Okay, you have the materials
Speaker 1: and the parts that were necessary to create the X ray,
Speaker 1: the understanding limited as it was at the time, uh,
Speaker 1: to create this machine. And yet there were a few
Speaker 1: decades there before somebody actually really did, before they really
Speaker 1: cracked the mystery of what was going on. And kind
Speaker 1: of like the Leiden Yard, the discovery was partially an accident.
Speaker 1: I mean, somebody was Uh. The discoverer of the X
Speaker 1: ray machine was messing around with with electrical equipment. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't like they were just like, you know, cleaning
Speaker 1: their garage and they discovered the X ray machine, but
Speaker 1: they weren't setting out to discover a way to look
Speaker 1: inside the body, right, And part of it too was
Speaker 1: like was also very literally where were they looking and
Speaker 1: there when they were creating some sort of an effect?
Speaker 1: What how are they trying to understand it? And so
Speaker 1: I think there might be an answer there if and
Speaker 1: again we're making a few different leaps here, but if
Speaker 1: assuming for a second that the Arc of the Covenant
Speaker 1: was indeed a light in jar and uh, and then
Speaker 1: this was an electrostatic discharge that people were observing and experiencing,
Speaker 1: what were they observing? How were they trying to observe it?
Speaker 1: And what were they looking for? What answers were they
Speaker 1: looking for in playing with this technology. Well, one of
Speaker 1: the things that the people who were doing this kind
Speaker 1: of like pseudohistory about the arc do is they say, well, okay,
Speaker 1: clearly Aaron started using the arc as a murder weapon,
Speaker 1: and they were using it as a weapon of war
Speaker 1: or something like that. I would tend to think if
Speaker 1: it actually were the case that there was an arc
Speaker 1: and the arc was actually a light and jar. Again,
Speaker 1: I am not at all saying I think this is likely,
Speaker 1: but just suppose, I would think the most likely used
Speaker 1: for it would be a piece of religious technology. The
Speaker 1: purpose of it is to demonstrate some sort of supernatural
Speaker 1: power by letting off this discharge or whatever it is
Speaker 1: indication that something you don't understand that is powerful and
Speaker 1: is unexplained is happening. And this gives you a kind
Speaker 1: of like peek behind the curtain of reality and you
Speaker 1: can see the powers that lie beyond. And really that
Speaker 1: would be the most powerful application of the technology at
Speaker 1: the time, because no matter what the stories are about
Speaker 1: the arc um, you wouldn't be able to bring down
Speaker 1: the walls of Jericho with this thing. You wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to stop the flow of the river Jordan's. Maybe
Speaker 1: you could murder your nephew, maybe, But that's kind of
Speaker 1: small potatoes compared to giving yourself some some powerful force
Speaker 1: that not only was able to help like shore up
Speaker 1: your religion, but also convince those that needed convincing that
Speaker 1: you were privy to the divine word of God through
Speaker 1: this device. Well, in fact, about the primary ways that
Speaker 1: lead in jars were used. When people first started making them,
Speaker 1: they became like a parlor game, entertaing thing. Yes, it
Speaker 1: was entertainment. In fact, it was almost a form of
Speaker 1: religious technology. There would be the stories of people they
Speaker 1: get a bunch of light in jars together, or I
Speaker 1: don't know about a bunch, maybe just one. They'd have
Speaker 1: some kind of capacitor, and then they would get a
Speaker 1: bunch of monks to hold hands, and then they'd shock
Speaker 1: them all at the same time in a chain so
Speaker 1: that they all felt it at once. It was almost
Speaker 1: like a strange ritual. Yeah, you get into the power
Speaker 1: of the performance, right, and it's it's it's a part
Speaker 1: of religion, it's a part of entertainment. It's just a
Speaker 1: part of the human experience. It was primarily useful, not
Speaker 1: for work it would do in the material world, before
Speaker 1: the work. It would do on the minds of the
Speaker 1: people taking part and observing. It was performative. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: so there you have it. Um. I hope everyone leaves
Speaker 1: these episodes like maybe a little more interested and a
Speaker 1: little more enthralled by the arc, you know, because ultimately
Speaker 1: we can't explain what it actually was. If it was
Speaker 1: a thing. I mean, it's just again, this is a
Speaker 1: place where history and mythology converge. Yeah, but I do
Speaker 1: love it as a jumping off point. It's almost like
Speaker 1: it's the way station to all these strange bronze punk
Speaker 1: planets you can visit that that are revealing once you
Speaker 1: start thinking about them. Indeed, and we would love to
Speaker 1: hear everyone else's thoughts on on the arc. Yeah, people
Speaker 1: who learned about it from Raiders of the Lost Arc
Speaker 1: first of all, and and from people who learned about
Speaker 1: it in uh, you know, uh their history class, or
Speaker 1: their Bible class, or uh, whatever kind of a religious
Speaker 1: study they were involved in. Um, perhaps you have a
Speaker 1: particular favorite theory. Perhaps you have your own brand new
Speaker 1: theory that we haven't thought of. Maybe it contained a
Speaker 1: giant squid. I don't know. I will leave it to
Speaker 1: you to provide us with those new theories. But in
Speaker 1: the meantime, be sure to check out Stuff to Blow
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Speaker 1: Stuff Big Thanks as always to our excellent audio producers
Speaker 1: Alex Williams and try Harrison. If you would like to
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