Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know from house stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there. Lights
Speaker 1: are turned down here. We got our croovy pad going
Speaker 1: super swinging style. Why I couldn't get square? Could I
Speaker 1: couldn't get more squares? That what you're saying? Square? Square? Yeah? Square?
Speaker 1: Well could I answer my question? Uh, you're not square?
Speaker 1: I bet you got a lava lamp in your house.
Speaker 1: I don't. Actually I never have, really never have had
Speaker 1: one of you. I've I would love one. I think
Speaker 1: I had one. I think we had one in college
Speaker 1: and one of our houses. I doubt very seriously it
Speaker 1: was a uh trademark original lava lamp. Lava lamp. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but um it was probably a knockoff because I don't
Speaker 1: think it worked great. There's a lot of knockoffs from
Speaker 1: those you can get little cheapis now that there's no
Speaker 1: good right you want the real one? Yeah? And I
Speaker 1: think if for no other reason than to support the original,
Speaker 1: the o G stuff handmade in the UK. Yeah, still, yeah,
Speaker 1: you believe that I do. Actually that's great based on
Speaker 1: on the woman who owns it now. She seems like
Speaker 1: the type who would just be like sticking to it. Yep.
Speaker 1: I could make way more money, but I'm not going
Speaker 1: to because it's the way it should be done. That
Speaker 1: is how it started. I'm staying with tradition. That's how
Speaker 1: she does it. So we're talking about lavelmps and actually, Chuck,
Speaker 1: can you just give me a second here before we
Speaker 1: get started? Can I give a little plug? Okay? So, um,
Speaker 1: as you know, but I want to share with everybody else.
Speaker 1: On October eight, I will be doing a live show
Speaker 1: on existential risks. It's called Existential Risks or How I
Speaker 1: Learned to Start worrying and Love Humanity. It's pretty great show. Um,
Speaker 1: there's slides involved, there's um doom and gloom, maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit of optimism. Who knows, there's some humor mixed in.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a pretty good show. Um. I did
Speaker 1: a similar show at the Bellhouse a couple of years back.
Speaker 1: This is a totally brand new show, so even if
Speaker 1: you saw it then this will be new to you.
Speaker 1: But it's October eight at the Bellhouse and if you
Speaker 1: happen to want to go, Tickets are available at the
Speaker 1: Bellhouse ny dot Com. Dude, I would be there with
Speaker 1: Bells on. I will list you, but I'll be in California.
Speaker 1: Well I'm gonna list you anyway. Yeah. Like, uh, former
Speaker 1: Falcons coach Jerry Glanville used to leave tickets for Elvis
Speaker 1: at every Falcons game. That's smart, it's stupid because those
Speaker 1: are two tickets. It could have gone to me. Oh
Speaker 1: that's a good point, just dumb. Oh hey did you
Speaker 1: uh are you gonna be on the radio for the Chiefs?
Speaker 1: Do you know you turn it down? I kept forgetting
Speaker 1: to respond. I was out of town, so it already
Speaker 1: came and went. Yeah. It was just for those of
Speaker 1: you wondering why we're just talking and chit chatting. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I wish I had his name? Can you find it?
Speaker 1: The some of the guys from the voice of the
Speaker 1: Kansas City Chiefs radio that they played a preseason game
Speaker 1: against the Falcons this last Friday in Atlanta and invited
Speaker 1: us to be on the field and in the booth.
Speaker 1: And I was out of town for my niece's wedding.
Speaker 1: Congratulations Shelby and Dan. Oh hey yeah, congrats and uh
Speaker 1: it was two family weddings, two out of town family
Speaker 1: wedding weekends in a row. So congratulations also to Alex
Speaker 1: and Catherine, Alex's Emily's cousin. Okay, so we went to Columbus, Ohio,
Speaker 1: and then Jacksonville, North Carolina. Lucky went to these weddings,
Speaker 1: and uh, I was not able to go to the
Speaker 1: Falcons game. Well that's quite a sacrifice because a guy
Speaker 1: named Dan Israel Dan Dan invited us to hang out
Speaker 1: in the broadcast for the preseason game between the Falcons,
Speaker 1: and it should have been so all over that and
Speaker 1: I presumed to help call the game something. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I would guess. I'm pretty sure he would have put
Speaker 1: us on. Well I told him at email them back
Speaker 1: said thanks, but if you ever come back, let me
Speaker 1: know do it. I just remembered I got to respond
Speaker 1: to him and say thanks, can I come? I just
Speaker 1: needed fire up the way back machine. So so that's
Speaker 1: a lot of chit chat. Yeah, if you don't like
Speaker 1: our sides and tangents and stuff, I'll bet you hate
Speaker 1: this episode already. But the net net of all that
Speaker 1: is I'm doing a live show. If done a live show,
Speaker 1: the net net of all that is that we're about
Speaker 1: to talk lava lamps. Dude, that's the net Net corporate goon.
Speaker 1: This was I think you've wanted to do this one
Speaker 1: for a bit, right, No, No, okay, I just made
Speaker 1: that up then, no I I Um, I was like
Speaker 1: trying to come up with an episode idea. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: harder than others. I don't know if you've noticed he's
Speaker 1: getting tougher, but um, the world's getting smaller. I remembered
Speaker 1: we did that one on food fads. I was like,
Speaker 1: that was an interesting episode. Let me go see if
Speaker 1: I can find another fat and one of them that
Speaker 1: came up with this pet Rocks article about laval app
Speaker 1: maybe we should do pet Rocks one day. So I
Speaker 1: was like, all right, let me see if this is
Speaker 1: any good and it was okay, But then I found
Speaker 1: an article by Zachary Crockett on prisonomics, which is one
Speaker 1: of the better websites of all time. Zachary Crockett is
Speaker 1: one of the better like nonfiction magazine writers of all time.
Speaker 1: Agreed on the web and um, this article the lava
Speaker 1: imp just Won't Quit really kind of gave a boost
Speaker 1: to the stuff on how stuff works. Yeah, so let's
Speaker 1: go back in time. Let's hop in the old way
Speaker 1: Back Machine. Well, and speaking of we actually have way
Speaker 1: Back Machine T shirts now, I know in our t
Speaker 1: public dot com store. Yeah, I got a bunch of
Speaker 1: different merch now. Alright, but we're on our own version
Speaker 1: of the way Back Machine, which is better than what's
Speaker 1: on that T shirt. Okay, And we're going back to
Speaker 1: in the County of Dorset in England, and a little
Speaker 1: boy named Edward Craven Walker is born. He would grow
Speaker 1: up and we follow him in the way Back Machine
Speaker 1: as he's growing. He eventually becomes an r AF pilot
Speaker 1: in World War Two. Looks like everything's going normal and smoothly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He he actually flew recon missions, photographic missions where they
Speaker 1: would you know, go up in planes and take pictures
Speaker 1: of what the enemy is doing. And uh. He eventually
Speaker 1: the war ended, and after the war he said, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go live in this little trailer in London behind
Speaker 1: a pub and build us uh travel agency. Yeah. He
Speaker 1: actually created a home swapping program like Airbnb. This is
Speaker 1: in like the fifties. Interesting. Yeah, he's pretty ahead of
Speaker 1: his time. He was in a lot of ways. It
Speaker 1: seemed like, so again, everything's going pretty normally, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's just he's just travel agent ing and doing quite
Speaker 1: well at it, I think. And uh, he goes to
Speaker 1: the southern coast of France and what this author calls
Speaker 1: a life changing trip. Uh, and he comes back a
Speaker 1: nudist filmmaker, underwater nudist filmmaker. I think he did drugs
Speaker 1: down there. What do you think what that means? I
Speaker 1: just think he took his clothes off for the first
Speaker 1: time ever and was like, I had never really noticed
Speaker 1: the breeze before. This is nice. You think it just
Speaker 1: feels like drugs were involved. It's possible, but he seemed
Speaker 1: to not really think too highly of drugs, so I
Speaker 1: think it was more just like act. You're probably right.
Speaker 1: He became a nudist, is what it was. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you're right. So he took his clothes off for
Speaker 1: the first time. He was a never nude before that.
Speaker 1: And uh. In nineteen sixty he actually, under a pseudonym,
Speaker 1: made a movie called Traveling Light. It was a short
Speaker 1: film with a naked lady performing underwater ballet that, believe
Speaker 1: it or not, did okay in London had a six
Speaker 1: month run. When's the Last Movie You Knew? Had a
Speaker 1: six month run at a major theater in London. Titanic,
Speaker 1: maybe it was Luck. Probably Avatar is the last one,
Speaker 1: but probably so so. That was actually Chuck part of
Speaker 1: a trilogy Tatanic, No we Traveling Light? Oh what were
Speaker 1: the other two? Sun Swept? Because I was trying to
Speaker 1: get information. I was trying to watch it and I
Speaker 1: couldn't find anything. I'll bet you were Um, I know
Speaker 1: I couldn't find it either, but I found some mention
Speaker 1: of it and I saw the movie poster forward or whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was I think preceded by a
Speaker 1: movie called eaves On skis New to Skiing Trip. Sun
Speaker 1: Swept sounded like what what this is describing as um
Speaker 1: traveling Light? And then Traveling Light was actually I think
Speaker 1: the second of the three. It's actually a sweet little
Speaker 1: trilogy pre porn, time and humanity when like, yeah, like, hey,
Speaker 1: here's just a naked person skiing as titilating as we get.
Speaker 1: I've seen it referred to as new to propaganda films,
Speaker 1: which is basically like, look, this is like this is
Speaker 1: the life I went to the South of France. Now
Speaker 1: you can too, and it's certainly not pre porn. I
Speaker 1: was kidding about that. We should do an episode on pornography.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, we've done one on nudism New
Speaker 1: Beaches at least. Yeah, we should do one I porn.
Speaker 1: That'd be good. We should that. That could be a
Speaker 1: two parter. That's maybe even like three or four, Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe five or six. Yeah, alright, I'm a rusty porn
Speaker 1: you should know. So. Um, here's the thing about Edwin
Speaker 1: Craven Walkers film um film career. Yes, he he was
Speaker 1: very successful at it. He became something of a legend,
Speaker 1: and he invested his money in building a nudist camp. Yeah,
Speaker 1: He's like, I got all this dough and here's what
Speaker 1: I want to do with it. So I'm sure a
Speaker 1: few of you are like, hose about lava lamps. Chill
Speaker 1: out now we've reached the part where the lava lamps coming,
Speaker 1: that's right, and lava apps come in one day. And
Speaker 1: I think the mid fifties where um Edward Craven Walker
Speaker 1: and I believe it's hyphenated. Actually craven Walker is his
Speaker 1: last name. Oh is that the deal? And he's hanging
Speaker 1: out in a pub called the Queen's Head. The Queen's
Speaker 1: Head that's a new forest in the southwest of London
Speaker 1: and he's sitting at a bar ordering a beer pint
Speaker 1: and um, he notices on the bar along with the
Speaker 1: liquor bottles, there's a cocktail shaker. But there's weird bubbles
Speaker 1: floating around in it. Yeah, glass one too, not like
Speaker 1: a steel one. Right, And there's actually you can see
Speaker 1: pictures of it on the matha most site. Oh really
Speaker 1: the original thing? Wow? Yeah. Yeah. So he's sitting there
Speaker 1: about to drink, like you said, and it's got water
Speaker 1: and oil and there's a little camp stove underneath it
Speaker 1: heating it and uh it, you know, it looks like
Speaker 1: a little what would become a lava lamp. It's got
Speaker 1: the oils and little blobs and it's floating around. It's
Speaker 1: the thing. It we all recognize now. But when this
Speaker 1: dude sees it back then and no one had ever
Speaker 1: seen anything like this, he was like, wow, what what
Speaker 1: is that? Right? And the bartender was like, that's an
Speaker 1: egg timer. Yeah, kind of a weird answer, but that's weird.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what That's what the lava lamp started
Speaker 1: out as, is an egg timer. There was a guy
Speaker 1: named Great Trivia Question. It is a guy named Alfred Dunnett,
Speaker 1: who was a regular at the Queen's Head in New Forest,
Speaker 1: Um had built this thing where it was this glass
Speaker 1: cocktail shaker on a camp stove, just a little tiny
Speaker 1: camp stove, Um, and he put oil in the water
Speaker 1: and when the oil rose to the top, by the
Speaker 1: time it took the heat up and rise to the top,
Speaker 1: it meant that your egg was fully hard boiled. It
Speaker 1: was an egg timer. But Edward craven Walker saw this
Speaker 1: and said, no, no, no, this is way more than
Speaker 1: an egg timer. This is the most mesmerizing thing I've
Speaker 1: ever seen. And so he did it right. He found
Speaker 1: out that Alfred Unnat had passed away, but apparently he
Speaker 1: had a patent on the same timer. So Edward craven
Speaker 1: Walker went to to Um, the widow of Alfred Dunnet,
Speaker 1: and said, hey, how about you saw me this patent
Speaker 1: the history of bad deals. But here's the thing. You
Speaker 1: go ahead and I'm going to retort. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: I might even retort for you, because when you look
Speaker 1: at the history of business and bad deals. He got
Speaker 1: this patent for less than twenty pounds. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, Dunnett's widow was probably like what in the world.
Speaker 1: Why would anyone ever care about this? Right, it's just
Speaker 1: sitting there. And not only that, this guy doesn't want
Speaker 1: to make an egg timer. He wants to make something
Speaker 1: bigger out of this thing. So he actually rescued a
Speaker 1: patent from obscurity and improved on it. And by the way,
Speaker 1: West Egg doesn't convert for pounds and strictly USD. But
Speaker 1: there's a site called I am kate which does um
Speaker 1: inflation calculation for pounds. Oh interesting, So twenty pounds according
Speaker 1: to I am kate says, it would be about seven
Speaker 1: three pounds today, which is about a thousand dollars roughly.
Speaker 1: So that's not bad. Yeah, here's a thousand bucks that
Speaker 1: you were totally not expecting for something you were never
Speaker 1: going to do anything with. I'm going to take it
Speaker 1: and presented to the world. Yeah. So he gets a
Speaker 1: bottle um. It's called Treetop Orange Squash. It was a
Speaker 1: drink that he used to drink as a kid and
Speaker 1: stud I think, so, I don't think it has this
Speaker 1: original shape, but the shape of that bottle more or
Speaker 1: less is sort of what the shape of the glass
Speaker 1: of the any lava lamp that you see today. Looks
Speaker 1: like yeah, you look at it and you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course that would be the prototype. And so he
Speaker 1: gets a thing. He gets a couple of liquids. It
Speaker 1: is not oil and water like I probably thought before
Speaker 1: I researched this. It is water and why acts and
Speaker 1: they are what's known and we'll get into the science
Speaker 1: in a minute. But mutually insoluble, meaning uh that they
Speaker 1: don't dissolve into one another like oil and water. And
Speaker 1: he adds a few other little chemicals here and there,
Speaker 1: and it got a little light bulb, screwed it into
Speaker 1: a base and kind of hooked it all up and
Speaker 1: bought a being bought a boom. The astro lamp, the
Speaker 1: astro lamp, as he called it, was born. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was an astro light astro lamp. Okay, the astro lamp.
Speaker 1: That's another trivia question for you. The original name of
Speaker 1: the lava lamp was the astro lamp. Should we take
Speaker 1: a break, I think so. All right, we'll be back
Speaker 1: right after this and talk about science. All right, Chuck, science,
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk science because there's actually some physics behind
Speaker 1: the lava lamp, and we're going to explain it because
Speaker 1: it's actually understandable. Yeah, who was the guy who wrote
Speaker 1: this again, Zachary Crockett. But this is a how stuff
Speaker 1: works article that explains the physics. Oh the inside the
Speaker 1: lamp part, because I thought that was kind of cute. Actually,
Speaker 1: the bullet points for that are. The things that you
Speaker 1: need are a compound that makes up floating blobs blobs
Speaker 1: and quotes, a compound that the blob floats in. There
Speaker 1: wasn't in quotes that time, and then a lamp that
Speaker 1: illuminates the display and provides the necessary heat to move
Speaker 1: the blobs again no quotes. Yeah, that's it though, But
Speaker 1: that's what, Yeah, what you need. But we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about more science as far as mutually insoluble liquids go. Right,
Speaker 1: because it sounds really easy, right, You got your blobs,
Speaker 1: you got your liquid, the blobs floating, you got your
Speaker 1: light to heat the whole thing up. Easy peasy. It's
Speaker 1: actually really hard because what you're walking is a very
Speaker 1: fine line between something that will work as a lava
Speaker 1: lamp and something that will just not work at all
Speaker 1: and look like a lava lamp gone bad, right, exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: So you've got you've got admissible compounds compounds that don't
Speaker 1: um dissolve into one another, but you need to have them.
Speaker 1: They need to have pretty similar densities, not exactly the
Speaker 1: same because then it won't work, but not too different
Speaker 1: either because then that won't work either. And you'll understand
Speaker 1: why in a second. They need to be fairly close.
Speaker 1: And so the reason why UM Edward Edward Craven Walker
Speaker 1: used wax and water is because water plane old fresh
Speaker 1: water has a density of one point Oh, it's basically
Speaker 1: the set point for densities. Paraffin Wax has a density
Speaker 1: of point eight, which means that it's slightly less dense
Speaker 1: than water, but right very close. So if you heat
Speaker 1: up UH something, it tends to expand right correct. When
Speaker 1: it expands, it becomes less dense, which means that something
Speaker 1: that was more dense before will be less dense, meaning
Speaker 1: that if it's in some other liquid that's denser, this
Speaker 1: less dense thing will float to the top. Yeah. If
Speaker 1: it's less dense, it rises. If it's more dense, it
Speaker 1: will fall. Uh. And that's why you know, if you
Speaker 1: want to change this density and then make these molecules
Speaker 1: UH spread out. One of the things you can do,
Speaker 1: especially in the case of a lava lamp, is to
Speaker 1: heat it up. That's the point of that bulb at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the lava lamp. Yeah, because if you
Speaker 1: see lava lamp, it's not turned on. You just see
Speaker 1: the blob at the bottom and the fluid. It's not water,
Speaker 1: of course, uh, sitting at the top, and they're separated,
Speaker 1: but they're just sitting on top of one another. Right,
Speaker 1: And it actually is water. Oh is it really? I
Speaker 1: thought it was something else too, the some other some
Speaker 1: other stuff, but the liquid that the blobs are in
Speaker 1: is mostly water. Yeah. So here's the thing. When you
Speaker 1: turn on the lava lamp. You turn that that heat
Speaker 1: that you start the heat of the light bulb, and
Speaker 1: that wax begins to warm up and it liquefies. And
Speaker 1: as it liquefies, it becomes less dense, and things get
Speaker 1: really exciting at that point, right, And then it starts
Speaker 1: to flow to the top. Right, You're like, all right,
Speaker 1: things are happening. It actually forms what are called stalagtites. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and everyone's like you feeling it yet, right, right? And
Speaker 1: as it starts to form stealactites, they eventually the tops
Speaker 1: of them break off and it floats up to the
Speaker 1: top and you're like, I'm definitely feeling it. And then um,
Speaker 1: as it gets to the top of the lamp, it's
Speaker 1: far enough away from the heat source that it starts
Speaker 1: to cool down, and so it sinks again to the bottom,
Speaker 1: and as it does, it passes another globe that's on
Speaker 1: the way to the top, and when it reaches the bottom,
Speaker 1: the whole process starts over again, and that wax glob
Speaker 1: gets reheated, and it goes back up and it passes
Speaker 1: on the way up the glob that it just passed
Speaker 1: coming back down, and that's a lava lamp. And it's
Speaker 1: again it sounds simple, but to get the wax density
Speaker 1: and the water density just right, you have to add
Speaker 1: some other ingredients. And so, going back to the original
Speaker 1: prototype that was created by Edward Craven Walker, it's really
Speaker 1: impressive that this guy with zero chemistry training whatsoever, managed
Speaker 1: to do this, ever, let alone, and just less than
Speaker 1: a decade. Yeah, I mean, I imagine there was a
Speaker 1: lot of trial and error trying to get that thing
Speaker 1: just right. Because again, like I said, if I mean
Speaker 1: you think it sounds easy to build one on your
Speaker 1: own and prepared to be disappointed, and you can you
Speaker 1: can make one with oil water food coloring and then
Speaker 1: alca seltzer. It's called it's called a Yankee lava lamp.
Speaker 1: It's terrible. But this is nothing like this, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: what the whole point of a lava lamp is to
Speaker 1: create this mood and to have these amorphous blobs separating
Speaker 1: and floating around and rising and falling, and that's the
Speaker 1: whole effect. You know. It wasn't meant to be a
Speaker 1: lamp to give much light. It's to create mood and atmosphere.
Speaker 1: And as we will see, we keep making little druggy jokes. Uh.
Speaker 1: That was a big part of why they sold. But
Speaker 1: we'll get to that in a minute. But you were
Speaker 1: talking about the fact that it was impressive. Uh. It
Speaker 1: says only five or six people actually know that this
Speaker 1: exact formulas still that who worked for the real lava
Speaker 1: lamp company, And there are plenty of knockoffs, but that original, uh,
Speaker 1: that original lava lamp recipe is is not known by
Speaker 1: many people, very closely guarded. Yeah. Even in Craven Walker's
Speaker 1: original patent, it has the ingredients, but it doesn't say
Speaker 1: in what quantities or anything like that. It's still a
Speaker 1: trade secret to this day. Yeah. And you also he
Speaker 1: figured you had to uh, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: trial and error because he had to add the water
Speaker 1: um very slowly apparently, or else it becomes what's known
Speaker 1: as an emulsion, meaning it's just sort of mixed together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like you can conceivably mix oil and water together, especially
Speaker 1: if you have an emulsive fire, but you can also
Speaker 1: do it by stirring it really really fast, and it'll
Speaker 1: it'll mix together, and that's not what you want. You
Speaker 1: want them to be separate from the first moment they
Speaker 1: come in contact together in the lamp globe. Right, So
Speaker 1: nine h three years I think it took him to
Speaker 1: finally get the design right. He called it the astro lamp.
Speaker 1: He built a little factory in his backyard and his
Speaker 1: wife at the time, I think he's married four times,
Speaker 1: but she was like, you know, he was the type
Speaker 1: of guy that would finish this thing once he started it,
Speaker 1: and he did, and originally he decided that it was
Speaker 1: it fit really well in with this post World War
Speaker 1: two British demand for very flamboyant, colorful home furnishings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: He's like, this is nothing if not flamboyant and colorful.
Speaker 1: The original Lava lamp was yellow liquid water and red
Speaker 1: wax globs on a gold base. Great looking, groovy as
Speaker 1: groovy gets right, Um, But he originally envisioned it is like,
Speaker 1: this is something for a cool bachelor pad. If you
Speaker 1: were a wealthy bachelor and you're looking to put something
Speaker 1: that's very interesting and high end as a home furnishing,
Speaker 1: try the Astro lamp. It was originally envisioned as a
Speaker 1: high end home furnishing. Yeah. There there's this one great
Speaker 1: ad that had a the scene of a bachelor pad
Speaker 1: on a magazine page and the caption said, the perfect
Speaker 1: gift for one's relatives, one's friends, and dash it all
Speaker 1: oneself by three yeah, exactly, by three of them. So
Speaker 1: this actually didn't work out very well for Craven Walker
Speaker 1: because he and his wife were driving around in their
Speaker 1: vein in going to places like Herod's and getting a
Speaker 1: very chilly reception to these things. Apparently the Herod's buyer
Speaker 1: thought the lamps were disgusting and ordered them taken away.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. I can't imagine seeing them as disgusting.
Speaker 1: Maybe there was like pubic care stuck to the outside
Speaker 1: of or something that can make a lava lamp disgusting, right, well,
Speaker 1: I imagined at the time, especially in stuffy old England. Uh,
Speaker 1: this postwar transition wasn't uh met with open arms by everybody.
Speaker 1: I'm sure the traditionalist thought it was disgusting, this blobby
Speaker 1: thing floating around, especially with the pubic care. So um
Speaker 1: Craven Walker, Uh, he was like, well, fine, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna create my own company and I'll market it myself.
Speaker 1: So we formed crest Worth, which is the original company
Speaker 1: that put out the astro lamp, which we know and
Speaker 1: love is lava lamps. And I should say, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of different names for lava lamps and it's
Speaker 1: really tough to distinguish which one is actual trademarks. So
Speaker 1: lava lamp seems to be a generic term, lava light,
Speaker 1: it seems to be generic. But Lava all caps is
Speaker 1: a trademark name for the American version. But there doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be a trademark name for the lava lamp,
Speaker 1: the original one in England. They just call it a
Speaker 1: lava lamp. I thought it was lava lamp was the
Speaker 1: trademarked because not that I can see our dumb article
Speaker 1: caused them motion lamps. Well that I thought that was
Speaker 1: to avoid the generic term. Yeah, I thought they were
Speaker 1: doing that to avoid saying lava lamp. No, that's so
Speaker 1: like two thousand five how stuff works, Like call it
Speaker 1: the generic term. You know, it's not kleenex, it's facial tissue.
Speaker 1: You know, that's that's totally where why they call it that?
Speaker 1: Oh goodness, you're so right. Alright, so these things aren't
Speaker 1: selling to the rich and powerful. They did not see
Speaker 1: his luxury at him. But then the nineteen sixties are
Speaker 1: rolling along l st. He comes on the scene. Pink
Speaker 1: Floyd is in the back room, the Yardbirds are upfront.
Speaker 1: Sid Barrett is for freaking out. He's freaking out. And
Speaker 1: this thing, really, the astro lamp really fit in uh
Speaker 1: to this whole scene, Like he was just he was
Speaker 1: miss marketing this thing from the beginning. He was. I
Speaker 1: I think he didn't predict the sixties psychedelicy. He was
Speaker 1: more into like the swinging Austin Powers bachelor stuff that
Speaker 1: was pre psychedelic and moved into psychedelia. Um, but he
Speaker 1: should thank his lucky stars, and I'm sure he did
Speaker 1: more than once that the psychedelic thing happened. Because when
Speaker 1: that happened and the hippies in London found out about
Speaker 1: lava lamps, lava lamps took off, just shot off like
Speaker 1: a rocket. And at first Edward Craven Walker was not
Speaker 1: not entirely cool with this. I mean he was happy
Speaker 1: to have the money and his lamp was finally a
Speaker 1: six US, but he knew what people were buying these
Speaker 1: four They were buying them so that they could take
Speaker 1: acid and stare at him for eight hours, right, And
Speaker 1: he actually had an ad where he said, if you
Speaker 1: buy my lamp, you won't need drugs, which is l seven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the ed should have read this goes great with drugs,
Speaker 1: Like drugs, you're gonna love my lamp. Like that is
Speaker 1: the level of dedication this guy should have had to LSD,
Speaker 1: because LSD made him a very wealthy person. Like in
Speaker 1: a very short amount of time. Should we take a break,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna talk about how they hit America
Speaker 1: right after this, all right, So they're taking off in England.
Speaker 1: He takes these things to a trade show in Germany,
Speaker 1: and a couple of dudes named Adolf Votheima and William
Speaker 1: Rubinstein I'm pretty sure they didn't say their names like that.
Speaker 1: They're from Chicago. Yeah, so they were just good Midwestern Germans.
Speaker 1: And they said, I'm gonna I want to buy to
Speaker 1: I want to buy the North American manufacturing rights. We're
Speaker 1: gonna call it the Lava LIGHTE L I T E.
Speaker 1: And we have our own drug culture that's starting to
Speaker 1: boom over here. And I think he used to be
Speaker 1: a big hit, and they were, and they got him
Speaker 1: on TV, they got placement, they got him in Doctor
Speaker 1: Who that was huge, got in The Avengers, uh not,
Speaker 1: you know the old TV show The Avengers. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: says here though it was on James Bond. And I
Speaker 1: looked high and low for what they were talking about,
Speaker 1: and I actually came across a post on the Internet
Speaker 1: of all places by a m a guy who who
Speaker 1: runs a website. Oh, Anthony Vaz runs a website. I
Speaker 1: can't remember the name of it. I think maybe Lava
Speaker 1: Love or something like that, but he was on there
Speaker 1: saying I saw this in an article that it says
Speaker 1: it was in a James Bond film. What James Bond
Speaker 1: film are they talking about. I'm like a James Bond
Speaker 1: like fan for him. They're like, no idea, Bud, And
Speaker 1: if we don't know, it didn't happen. So I have
Speaker 1: no idea what what James Bond film? It was in
Speaker 1: the first giveaway to me that that's bogus is here's
Speaker 1: the sentence. A red model debut in the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: I'm Sorry sixty eight episode of Dr Who. This is
Speaker 1: followed by appearances in The Prisoner, The Avengers, and James Bond.
Speaker 1: Talk about generic Remember the movie James Bond. We should
Speaker 1: ask the great Mett Gorley does he know James Bond
Speaker 1: at the Super Ego podcast? Yeah? Okay, he's an officient
Speaker 1: not he hosts there you go tast called James Bonding.
Speaker 1: There you go. I bet Gorley would now so on
Speaker 1: that for him. Somebody's like, maybe that wouldy allan spoof
Speaker 1: Casino Royal. But I couldn't find any mention of lava
Speaker 1: lamps in that movie either, So who knows. But they
Speaker 1: made some product placement, uh they were They were starting
Speaker 1: to pop up all over the place, and apparently Edward
Speaker 1: Craven Walker knew that he'd made it. His wife later
Speaker 1: recounted when they found out that Ringo Starr had just
Speaker 1: bought one in n I love it. He also might
Speaker 1: know he made it by the fact that he sold
Speaker 1: seven million of them annually by the end of the sixties.
Speaker 1: Apparently he was so h eccentric that he would he
Speaker 1: drove a fire truck. Yeah, he'd rid around in a
Speaker 1: fire truck. Yeah. He also, um drove nothing if it
Speaker 1: was a car, nothing but British made jaguars. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with that. Sure, Um, well, it depends on
Speaker 1: the year, because they had some pretty terrible jaguars for
Speaker 1: a while. They're in the eighties. Uh so these uh,
Speaker 1: like any fad would go away, and in the late seventies,
Speaker 1: the lava lamp, I remember the lava lamps kind of
Speaker 1: just worn't around that much anymore. By the time we
Speaker 1: were kids, they didn't even have like kitchy appeal any longer.
Speaker 1: They were just like like everyone became the Herod's buyer,
Speaker 1: like these are disgusting, get them out of here. But
Speaker 1: he was smart enough to know that fads come back around.
Speaker 1: He did not shut down the business. He did not
Speaker 1: just sell it off for pennies on the dollar. No,
Speaker 1: he kept releasing new stuff. Yeah, nothing really took I
Speaker 1: tried to find any like his other little inventions, but
Speaker 1: I couldn't really get much. So nothing made the waves
Speaker 1: that the astro lamp did. And by the late nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties they declined to about a thousand lamps per year.
Speaker 1: That is so few from seven million a year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean even you would think you'd get a thousand
Speaker 1: like white elephant gift purchases, like, look, this is the
Speaker 1: dumbest thing I could find. I mean, I guess that's
Speaker 1: what they were, So a thousand year at that point.
Speaker 1: And uh. Then a woman that we mentioned earlier name
Speaker 1: Cressida Granger or Cressida Granger, she's twenty two years old,
Speaker 1: ran an antique booth and saw these things were selling,
Speaker 1: like the vintage ones. These use lava lamps. This is
Speaker 1: back in I think, yeah, And so she was like,
Speaker 1: these things are kind of selling. She got in touch
Speaker 1: with the guy with Craven Walker and said, hey, I'd
Speaker 1: like to buy your company, your partner with you and
Speaker 1: crest Worth. If you're open to it. He said, fine,
Speaker 1: meet me at this newdist camp and she went, all right,
Speaker 1: keep your pants on and I'll do so. And by
Speaker 1: all accounts, they were fully clothed and struck up a
Speaker 1: deal where she would take over operations and managing as
Speaker 1: managing director, and they had a deal in place and
Speaker 1: a great deal for her where she could slowly buy
Speaker 1: his company from him over time. Right, So, so think
Speaker 1: about being twenty two and having that kind of like
Speaker 1: get up and go. I love it that you're like,
Speaker 1: I'm starting to sell some intage lava lamps. I'll go
Speaker 1: see if I can buy the company. But then from
Speaker 1: from Craven Walker's perspective, You're like, I'm down to selling
Speaker 1: a thousand of easy year nothing trying. Yeah, if this
Speaker 1: person wants to like like invest in the company, why not.
Speaker 1: And so Crescitter Granger's timing could not have been better,
Speaker 1: Like she was really prescient to notice that, like the
Speaker 1: vintage lava lamps were selling, The reason the vintage lava
Speaker 1: lamps were selling was because there was an acid revival
Speaker 1: going on the same reason lava lamps sold the first
Speaker 1: time around is the reason they sold the second time around.
Speaker 1: Everybody discovered that they really really like LSD and Lava
Speaker 1: lamps go really really well with LSD well, And not
Speaker 1: only that, but that was with you know, the House
Speaker 1: of Music and Ecstasy and Raves and uh, Austin Powers,
Speaker 1: like that whole thing kind of came back. Well, Austin
Speaker 1: Austin Powers was like a kind of a third wave. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was mid to late nineties. Yeah, like I think seven.
Speaker 1: So she oversaw a revival of the Lava lamp, a
Speaker 1: resurgence in it, and like I saw the manufacturing uptick
Speaker 1: in it too in the late eighties early nineties, and
Speaker 1: then managed to ride that wave through to the late
Speaker 1: nineties when it ticked up even further because of Austin Powers,
Speaker 1: and they started to sell so much crested. Granger says,
Speaker 1: they sold more in the nineties than they did in
Speaker 1: the sixties. That's amazing. Yeah, And she started the whole
Speaker 1: thing at twenty two, going up to Edward Craven Walker
Speaker 1: Insaine how about it partner, Yeah, and so uh in
Speaker 1: nineteen one, the twenty year patent expired and Granger said that,
Speaker 1: you know, no one realized this, thankfully, and so we
Speaker 1: just kind of kept monopolizing the business and she slowly
Speaker 1: bought it out over time, and I think by ninety
Speaker 1: two she renamed the company Mathmas, which apparently was a
Speaker 1: to of the cap to Barbarella of the film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's there's like an energy bubble that it lives underneath
Speaker 1: the city or something, and that's what it's called today
Speaker 1: if you go to the website. Uh, she moved into
Speaker 1: the manufacturing facilities. So she didn't say, hey, let's take
Speaker 1: this state side or take it to China. She said,
Speaker 1: we're gonna keep doing it right here Endorset. And like
Speaker 1: you said at the beginning, that is still where these
Speaker 1: things are made today by hand by British workers. Like
Speaker 1: I think they said, how many of them can a
Speaker 1: good worker making a day amazing filling these bottles by hand? Right?
Speaker 1: So that's if you look at the mathmas Um lava
Speaker 1: lamps and compare the price to when you just find
Speaker 1: online like a knockoff um, which technically they're not a
Speaker 1: knockoff because the patent wore off, but um still a knockoffs.
Speaker 1: It's like eighty bucks compared to like fifteen or twenty
Speaker 1: bucks for what looks to be the same thing. And
Speaker 1: we're actually more like a hundred seven seven pounds. That's
Speaker 1: how much Mathemas is now. Yeah, like their standard the
Speaker 1: original classic lava lamp is seventy seven pounds. Got the
Speaker 1: reason why they're that much more is because they're handmade
Speaker 1: in the UK, just as they have been since the sixties.
Speaker 1: I love it, man, it's pretty cool. And and she
Speaker 1: said that there's a lot of pressure for her to
Speaker 1: transfer production overseas where it's going to be way cheaper
Speaker 1: and she can make way more money. And she's like, nope,
Speaker 1: I'm keeping it here. Um, yeah, they're more expensive, and yeah,
Speaker 1: we would sell more if they were cheaper, but I'm
Speaker 1: just not doing it. If you haven't noticed someone rich woman, right,
Speaker 1: I'm doing all right. I've been I've been pretty well
Speaker 1: off since twenty two. I'm I've got all the acid
Speaker 1: I can take. No, uh, all right, should we talk
Speaker 1: about lava lamp tips? Well, I want to say. I
Speaker 1: want to say one more thing. Um, another thing. That
Speaker 1: another reason I think Kresso Granger is pretty awesome. She
Speaker 1: kept Um Edward Craven Walker on as a consultant, yeah,
Speaker 1: up until his death, even though she had full control
Speaker 1: of the company. I think in whatever um and he
Speaker 1: was done, she kept him on as a consultant until
Speaker 1: he died. And it was two years later. But she
Speaker 1: didn't no one who was going to die unless she
Speaker 1: poisoned him with a lot of acid or something. She
Speaker 1: probably didn't do that, but I thought that was a
Speaker 1: pretty a mark in her favorite for sure, that she
Speaker 1: kept the guy on the original Creator the second Creator
Speaker 1: on as a consultant. I'd like to meet her one day. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we should give some Lava lamp tips because frankly,
Speaker 1: if I were out there listening and this happened to
Speaker 1: me during research, hearing all this stuff, I'd be like,
Speaker 1: I want a Lava lamp. Yeah. So if you buy
Speaker 1: a Lava lamps, there's actually some things you need to
Speaker 1: know about how to use it correctly. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: h apparently the bottles are replaceable, so they do run
Speaker 1: out after about two thousand hours of operating time, so
Speaker 1: they sell replacement bottles, which is really nice. I don't
Speaker 1: know about this. To to get rid of your old
Speaker 1: bottle and make a hole in the metal cap with
Speaker 1: a sharp point. Yeah. I also saw that you were
Speaker 1: the liquid out. That seems a little unsafe. You're um,
Speaker 1: that's what the Mathemas site recommends. Really, Yeah, to they
Speaker 1: say you can recycle the glass, you just gotta get
Speaker 1: rid of the contents inside. I also saw there's an
Speaker 1: sf Gate article on how to revitalize vintage lava lamps,
Speaker 1: and they say you can get that cap off with
Speaker 1: vice cripts. You should not do that. Don't do that.
Speaker 1: Josh and Chuck didn't tell you to do that. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying I saw that on SF gate. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I do that. Uh, so recycle it. You
Speaker 1: can get the bottle replaced. The liquid eventually will fade
Speaker 1: um at least the color in the liquid. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: over time. Like we said that, two thousand hours is um.
Speaker 1: I mean it's a lot of hours. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of acid, a lot of trips. Uh, here's another one.
Speaker 1: The lamp the very first time you take it out
Speaker 1: of the box, it may take up to an hour
Speaker 1: and a half to start working, but once you have
Speaker 1: used it, it doesn't take quite that long. Uh. You
Speaker 1: should have your room be at least sixty decrease fahrenheit
Speaker 1: celsius celsius because I think it's too cold. It won't work, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you don't want to near an air conditioner or
Speaker 1: a draft or anything like that, or the sun necessarily. Well,
Speaker 1: the sun will make the color fade that much faster. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: so you you if it's too cold, it won't work.
Speaker 1: But then they also have a tendency to overheat too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you come in your room and you're flying right
Speaker 1: and you're lava lamp is just a single blob and
Speaker 1: it's just a big blob, that means it's overheated or
Speaker 1: the universe is ending around your right now. So eight
Speaker 1: to ten hours, they said, is the max you want
Speaker 1: to run that thing in a row. So yeah, and
Speaker 1: in turn it often let it cool. Yeah, that's there,
Speaker 1: you go, that's your fix. You let it cool and
Speaker 1: then um so no more than eight hours usually for
Speaker 1: normal operation. Um. And then in between uses, let it
Speaker 1: cool completely. And that's just gonna extend the life of
Speaker 1: your wax that much longer. Um. But then another reason
Speaker 1: you don't want to overheat it is because it is possible,
Speaker 1: and it's probably not possible for it to overheat with them,
Speaker 1: but with the bulb itself like the glass. But one
Speaker 1: thing they say is, never ever ever put that thing
Speaker 1: on a stove, which some people have done. And you
Speaker 1: can understand why you'd want to do that. You got
Speaker 1: a hot date, or your assets kicking in faster than
Speaker 1: you think it's it's taking too long, so you'd put
Speaker 1: it on the stove. You don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: And seriously, at least one person has died from putting
Speaker 1: a lava lamp on a hot stove. Yeah. That it's
Speaker 1: hard to believe, but you sent this over. In two
Speaker 1: thousand four, a young man named Philip Quinn was twenty
Speaker 1: four years old and Kent Washington put his lava lamp
Speaker 1: on a stove. It exploded, uh, and shards of glass
Speaker 1: shut into his heart. He stumbled in his bedroom and died.
Speaker 1: And apparently no drugs or alcohol were involved, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't like he was just like messed up and goofing around.
Speaker 1: It sounds like he just wanted to heat it up faster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I think. He's impatient, wanted his lava lamp
Speaker 1: heat it up. And then some yahoo drank it right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: some somebody in the In the article on the Annals
Speaker 1: of Emergency Medicine, they describe a guy in his mid
Speaker 1: sixties who drank the contents of a lava lamp. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then immediately regretted it because he spent three months
Speaker 1: recovering from kidney failure. Man, what a dummy. And then
Speaker 1: there's one more thing about lava lamps. This is pretty recent.
Speaker 1: It's kind of awesome. Um, there's a company called cloud Flare.
Speaker 1: I didn't understand this at all, So okay, So whenever
Speaker 1: you're on the web, when you go into a new
Speaker 1: a new website, you're actually I done. You're You're assigned
Speaker 1: a code that you use on that website, and it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be random or else For some somehow, hackers
Speaker 1: can impersonate you if it's not a random code. Humans
Speaker 1: are not capable of generating random numbers, and the computers
Speaker 1: we program by extension aren't either. Okay, I can generate
Speaker 1: a random number. You can't. It's not random. That would
Speaker 1: be funny if you were like the new Internet security guy.
Speaker 1: He just starts spitting out numbers and foil all the hackers,
Speaker 1: well for now, until they employ you. This company, cloud Flare,
Speaker 1: has a wall of a hundred lava lamps and a
Speaker 1: camera recording their movement. And the the completely random, unpredictable
Speaker 1: movement of these globs on the video screen gets turned
Speaker 1: into pixels, and those pixels get turned into a random number.
Speaker 1: So this random number is generated by the movement of
Speaker 1: lava lamps. And that's how about fift of Internet traffic
Speaker 1: gets their random number security codes generated by a bank
Speaker 1: of lava lamps that cloud Flare's offices in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. Of course is in San Francisco. Of
Speaker 1: course they micro dose out there, which I think we've
Speaker 1: been on the chord is looking down on Uh. Do
Speaker 1: you want to hear an interesting tidbit about random numbers?
Speaker 1: And I don't know if this is tricky works? Quick?
Speaker 1: Give me another random number nine eight six seven five
Speaker 1: three o nine. Well that's my story though. Apparently that
Speaker 1: old song eight six seven five three o nine genny.
Speaker 1: If you go to a store where you have a
Speaker 1: rewards program and they say enter your number, Apparently enough
Speaker 1: people sign up using that number that you can go
Speaker 1: to any store in the country and spit that number
Speaker 1: out and you will get the whatever discount. Try that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nice work. Like you're traveling, you go into the bev
Speaker 1: Moo or bottle of wine, They're like, you got your
Speaker 1: bevmo card, Like, oh, I'm just in town. We don't
Speaker 1: have bedmos in Atlanta. Just say eight six seven five
Speaker 1: three o nine. That's awesome. And what if they're like,
Speaker 1: you're the one thousand customer or whatever, you're under arrest,
Speaker 1: you're chipping and it's bad news from there. It's got
Speaker 1: to be the last acid reference. I don't know, is
Speaker 1: there one in this listener mail coming up? I bet
Speaker 1: we can work one in. So if you want to
Speaker 1: know more about Lava lamps, go get one, and maybe
Speaker 1: you know if you've got the coin, splurge for a
Speaker 1: handmade one from UK for math. Most if not get
Speaker 1: one from Lava like here in the US, you won't judge,
Speaker 1: or just get one on Ali Baba or Amazon. Whatever
Speaker 1: floats your boat, Okay. Uh And since I said whatever
Speaker 1: floats your boat, that means it's time for listener mail
Speaker 1: called this board breaking follow up. Sometimes episodes that I
Speaker 1: think like, yeah, it was fine, we get tons of reactions.
Speaker 1: Well this one we just got something wrong, right, Physics,
Speaker 1: well that too, but we had a lot of kata
Speaker 1: te and martial arts. Okay, yeah, people right in enthusiast
Speaker 1: about board breaking. They really were into this. Uh So
Speaker 1: this is a kind of a two parter with a
Speaker 1: little correction in the end. Hey, guys, listening to board Breaking,
Speaker 1: it sounds like you had a confusing source. I hope
Speaker 1: I can clear it up. You said that when breaking
Speaker 1: a board with a karate chop, you want the grain
Speaker 1: parallel to your hand, but you weren't sure what to
Speaker 1: do with the grain when striking it with a close fist.
Speaker 1: What matters isn't the orientation of the grain compared to
Speaker 1: the hand, but the orientation relative to how the board
Speaker 1: is supported. When stressed, the board naturally wants to crack
Speaker 1: along the grain, not across it, So you want to
Speaker 1: be sure that the grain isn't oriented so that the
Speaker 1: fibers in the wood span from one support to the
Speaker 1: other like the person holding it, or it will be
Speaker 1: too strong. Yeah, when oriented correctly, the grain will be
Speaker 1: parallel to the hand for an open handed chop, but
Speaker 1: that's just coincidental with being oriented correctly compared to the supports.
Speaker 1: I hope I was able to say this clearly, guys,
Speaker 1: I can understand why your source had trouble putting it clearly.
Speaker 1: I think that's from David Branson. And then we also
Speaker 1: got a little bit of the formula wrong for force
Speaker 1: equals mass times acceleration. Yes, he said it's force equals
Speaker 1: mass times acceleration, not force equals mass times velocity. The
Speaker 1: thing is with physics like most of those terms are interchangeable.
Speaker 1: It means the same thing. Joe Dyer says, acceleration is
Speaker 1: the derivative velocity. Velocity is the derivative of position. And
Speaker 1: Joe also says, yes, I'm an engineer, so I won't
Speaker 1: bust your chops over this. Too bad. Yeah, So thanks
Speaker 1: Joe for being nice, and thanks to everyone who wrote
Speaker 1: in with those corrections and your enthusiasm for board breaking.
Speaker 1: So Joe wrote both of those no, no no, no, Joe
Speaker 1: Dyer wrote that one, and then David Branson of Branson, Missouri, no,
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding, Okay, he wrote, Well, maybe I don't know,
Speaker 1: probably not nice. Missouri's are nice, that's true. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you David, and thank you Joe, and thank you,
Speaker 1: like you said to everybody who wrote in, um, including
Speaker 1: those of you who wrote in while you were on acid. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with this, you
Speaker 1: can follow us on social media. Go to our website
Speaker 1: stuff you Should Know dot com and you'll find all
Speaker 1: the links there. Uh. And you can also send us
Speaker 1: an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom,
Speaker 1: and send it off to Stuff podcast at how stuff
Speaker 1: Where dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works? Dot com