Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Today
Speaker 1: Unstuffed to Blow your Mind, we have another invention themed
Speaker 1: episode for you. We're gonna be talking about something that
Speaker 1: might initially seem frightfully dull or at least very commonplace,
Speaker 1: and that is the odometer. I mentioned this to Rachel
Speaker 1: earlier and she was like, oh, yes, the device that
Speaker 1: measures odors. Yes or odo's. If you were to read
Speaker 1: the word wrong, you might think it says autometer, um,
Speaker 1: but it's yes, the odometer. So everyone other you probably
Speaker 1: know this device best is the little counter in your vehicle,
Speaker 1: the records how far you've driven. And I think we
Speaker 1: tend to think of this invention mostly as a self
Speaker 1: centered device. It tells us how far we've driven on
Speaker 1: our trip, how many miles or kilometers we've racked up
Speaker 1: on our vehicle. But you know, there's another way of
Speaker 1: looking at the odometer, and this, certainly this is something
Speaker 1: that plays into and into the history of the invention
Speaker 1: and also our attempts to understand its place in the
Speaker 1: ancient world. Is that an odometer can also be a
Speaker 1: method of determining distances on given routes. It's something that
Speaker 1: turns a vehicle into a tool from measurement, right, So
Speaker 1: it's it gives you information that would be useful to
Speaker 1: other people, because I mean, in the ancient world, you
Speaker 1: don't have Google Maps or anything. You might know that
Speaker 1: there are two cities, and you might know that you
Speaker 1: get from one of them to the other by following
Speaker 1: the road to the west, but you might not know
Speaker 1: how long it's going to take you to get from
Speaker 1: one to the other. So it would be very useful
Speaker 1: if you actually had some standard distance measurements that would
Speaker 1: allow you to estimate the length of the journey and
Speaker 1: to know how much you need to pack for the
Speaker 1: journey and so forth. Yeah, we've talked before about the
Speaker 1: some of the the important things that make up an
Speaker 1: empire and make an empire or a kingdom function, and
Speaker 1: there are things like standardized measurements, of course, and standardized currency.
Speaker 1: But another thing that would be useful is indeed, like
Speaker 1: you say, to know how long it takes to get
Speaker 1: from one place to another, what is the distance from
Speaker 1: one place to another, from border to border from port
Speaker 1: to capital, from frontier to ford and sofa forth. And
Speaker 1: this is the kind of thing that would of course
Speaker 1: be important for warfare, but also for trade and just
Speaker 1: general management of a given territory. So on one hand,
Speaker 1: you can imagine this situation, and you can and you
Speaker 1: can think about what an odometer is, and knowing that
Speaker 1: an odometer has uh some of its history in the
Speaker 1: ancient world, you might think, well, this is the this
Speaker 1: is the route we take to get to the invention.
Speaker 1: This is the necessity, uh that is the mother of
Speaker 1: this invention. But this doesn't necessarily seem to be the case,
Speaker 1: as we'll discuss, as we look at at its history
Speaker 1: both in the east and in the west. Now, I
Speaker 1: think it's worth thinking at least just a little bit
Speaker 1: about maps and cartography here, because it's easy for for
Speaker 1: the mind to go there, like I need to know
Speaker 1: the exact distance between X and Y because I want
Speaker 1: an accurate map, right, Uh. To kind of go hand
Speaker 1: in hand when we think about maps today, Like even
Speaker 1: if I'm looking through a Dungeons and Dragons book, I
Speaker 1: have a map of some sort of fantastic region, and
Speaker 1: then I have a little indicator to tell me exactly
Speaker 1: how how many miles and inches or something to that effect. Oh,
Speaker 1: once you get into D and D, though, I feel
Speaker 1: like it's often very loosey goosey about travel distances. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and um and as a when I am dungeon mastering,
Speaker 1: I I am also I hate it when there's like
Speaker 1: a really specific question about distances, like, well, is it
Speaker 1: is it one mile or two mile? It's like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's just it's however long it takes to
Speaker 1: get there. But any well, my experiences, you want to
Speaker 1: you want to take a queue from the d M
Speaker 1: basically like, is this a journey where things will happen
Speaker 1: on the journey or a journey where we will just
Speaker 1: magically arrive at the destination? Yes, sometimes the magic is
Speaker 1: in the journey, but sometimes it most definitely is not.
Speaker 1: So thinking about this the situation about figuring out knowing
Speaker 1: what the distances are between one place in the other,
Speaker 1: and thinking about the role of maps in the ancient world.
Speaker 1: I turned to one of my my favorite go to
Speaker 1: text for a lot of this sort of thing, Brian
Speaker 1: Fagan's The seventy Grade Inventions of the Ancient World, And
Speaker 1: there's a there's several different chapters in there, the deal
Speaker 1: with measures and maps. Uh and of Fagin and his
Speaker 1: co authors point out, I think a few important things
Speaker 1: about ancient maps that we might want to have in
Speaker 1: our head as we proceed. So, first of all, they
Speaker 1: point out, the Chinese maps of old were more about
Speaker 1: landscape features. So the journey from X to Y is
Speaker 1: more about the details of the landscape and the markers
Speaker 1: that are passed on the way. Yeah, that makes sense,
Speaker 1: navigating by landmarks. Yeah, and so the maps would reflect that.
Speaker 1: Another thing they point out is that while local maps
Speaker 1: in the ancient world we're one thing, as we're specialized maps,
Speaker 1: broader maps of the world or region, we're not really
Speaker 1: part of the overall ancient approach to maps. There were
Speaker 1: no regular standards of map making, and there were no
Speaker 1: general purpose maps. And uh, this is one quote from
Speaker 1: the book I thought was rather telling quote between them rulers, generals, sailors,
Speaker 1: and traders evidently all but ignored the practical assistance that
Speaker 1: maps could afford them. That's surprising. Yeah, I mean hindsight
Speaker 1: twenty but uh, yeah, it's interesting to look back and
Speaker 1: think about what benefits this broader approach to maps general
Speaker 1: purpose maps, etcetera. Could have afforded them, So I think
Speaker 1: all that's worth keeping in mind as we proceed here.
Speaker 1: None of this is to say peoples during these eras
Speaker 1: were not concerned with precise distances, but the relationship with
Speaker 1: exact maps wasn't quite the same as what we have
Speaker 1: now now. Another way of thinking about what came before
Speaker 1: is that there certainly were ways of measuring long distances
Speaker 1: before the invention of the mechanical odometer. Though there is
Speaker 1: some question about the relative accuracy of early mechanical methods
Speaker 1: versus pre mechanical methods, and one case study here that
Speaker 1: I think we should look at. It's very interesting puzzle
Speaker 1: that emerges if you look at a geography chapter of
Speaker 1: The Natural History by by our old friend Plenty of
Speaker 1: the Elder. Here I'll be referring to the Bostock and
Speaker 1: Riley translation for those not familiar. Plenty of the Elder
Speaker 1: was a first century Roman military commander and author, and
Speaker 1: the Natural History is an early attempt at creating a
Speaker 1: sort of world encyclopedia. So Plenty covers everything from mining
Speaker 1: and metallurgy to botany and zoology, cooking, politics. It's just
Speaker 1: it's just a book of everything, and in book six
Speaker 1: of the Natural History, Plenty sets out to describe, quote,
Speaker 1: an account of countries, nations, sees to ounds, havens, mountains, rivers, distances,
Speaker 1: and peoples who now exist or formerly existed. Very good
Speaker 1: chapter heading there. One of the chapters within this volume,
Speaker 1: chapter twenty one, is on the nations of India, as
Speaker 1: known to Plenty at the time. Again, this is the
Speaker 1: first century CE. So Plenty says that India is a
Speaker 1: vast country with over a hundred kingdoms, dozens of rivers,
Speaker 1: uncountable mountains, but he will undertake to describe some of
Speaker 1: it by following the path of Alexander the Great, who
Speaker 1: led a conquering army to India about four hundred years earlier.
Speaker 1: So Plenty rights quote, however, that we may come to
Speaker 1: a better understanding relative to the description of these regions.
Speaker 1: We will follow the track of Alexander the Great. Diagonitis
Speaker 1: and Biton, whose duty it was to ascertain the distances
Speaker 1: and length of his expeditions, have written that from the
Speaker 1: Caspian Gates to hecatom Pylon, the city of the Ptarthians,
Speaker 1: the distance is the number of miles, which we have
Speaker 1: already stated and he mentioned a number earlier, and then
Speaker 1: he goes on and that from thence to Alexandria of
Speaker 1: the ri I, which city was founded by the same king,
Speaker 1: the distance is five hundred and seventy five miles, and
Speaker 1: from thence to Prophesia, the city of the drag Ni,
Speaker 1: one hundred and ninety nine miles. And from here he
Speaker 1: just goes on and on, listing distances. It's this many
Speaker 1: miles to the next city, and this many miles to
Speaker 1: the next city. Uh. So he attributes all of these numbers,
Speaker 1: all of these distances and miles that he comes up
Speaker 1: with for this path leading into India to these two figures,
Speaker 1: Diagnetis and Biton. Who were these guys well, they were
Speaker 1: known as Bimatists, coming from the Greek word meaning step
Speaker 1: or pace. I looked up Bimatists in the Oxford Handbook
Speaker 1: of Classics, and the entry does identify them as the
Speaker 1: the surveyors essentially of Alexander the Great Uh and names
Speaker 1: a few other ones. In addition to the two already
Speaker 1: mentioned Byton and Diagnetus. It also names uh Philonides of Crete,
Speaker 1: who it says in a side note, was a celebrated
Speaker 1: distance runner, and the entry also notes that the two
Speaker 1: figures who worked for Alexander, Byton and Diagnetus, as well
Speaker 1: as some others quote had literary aspirations. Their measurements of
Speaker 1: key distances in the empire comprised an archive later controlled
Speaker 1: by Seleucus. The first individual Bemetists published their observations in
Speaker 1: monographs termed stath moy or Stages, which combined precise calculations
Speaker 1: of distance with more exotic reports of the flora, fauna,
Speaker 1: and customs of the empire. The latter tended to the outrageous,
Speaker 1: but the measurements were of lasting value and provided Eratas
Speaker 1: the Knees with the framework for his geography of Asia.
Speaker 1: Aretas the Nees, you might recall, was an really figure,
Speaker 1: a Greek philosopher who with pretty startling accuracy, calculated the
Speaker 1: actual size of the sphere of the Earth. And he
Speaker 1: did that just using knowledge of the distances between locations
Speaker 1: of different latitudes and then the use of the angles
Speaker 1: of sundials. Basically, yeah, So, how did the Bematists actually
Speaker 1: measure distances in the time of Alexander the Great? Well,
Speaker 1: I've seen some disagreement on this, some sources imply that
Speaker 1: they simply counted paces, so you'd walk and count how
Speaker 1: many steps you took, while others suggest that they used
Speaker 1: some kind of mechanical device. One of the weird things
Speaker 1: is that, as far as we can tell, most of
Speaker 1: the distances recorded by bematists such as Biton and Diagnetis,
Speaker 1: as well as others from the ancient world, are surprisingly accurate.
Speaker 1: On this point, I want to quote a book I
Speaker 1: was looking at by a American historian named Donald W. Ingalls.
Speaker 1: The book is called Alexander the Great and the Logistics
Speaker 1: of the Macedonian Army from the University of California Press
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy eight. And explaining a table in his
Speaker 1: book of the bimatists different estimates of the distances between
Speaker 1: cities on this route, ingles rights quote the overall accuracy
Speaker 1: of the bimatists measurements should be apparent. The minor discrepancies
Speaker 1: of distance parentheses only one point three percent from herat
Speaker 1: to begrum, can be adequately explained by slight changes in
Speaker 1: the tracks of roads during the last twenty three hundred years.
Speaker 1: The accuracy of the measurements implies that the bimatists used
Speaker 1: a sophisticated mechanical device for measuring distances, undoubtedly an odometer,
Speaker 1: such as described by Heron of Alexandria. So there's a clue.
Speaker 1: Uh Ingles here says, Look, the distance is given by
Speaker 1: these these people who worked for Alexander the Great and
Speaker 1: other immotists of the era. They're just too accurate. They're
Speaker 1: too good to be the result of trying to count
Speaker 1: your steps and estimate from that. They have to be
Speaker 1: using some kind of machine that we don't know about,
Speaker 1: and one good candidate is a machine like the one
Speaker 1: described later by Heron of Alexandria. Now, this idea that
Speaker 1: they may have simply been walking, on one hand, I
Speaker 1: can't help but think of the Monty Python ministry of
Speaker 1: silly walks and imagine like a specific, ridiculous but regular
Speaker 1: date that they're using, and and if they were super
Speaker 1: focused on their steps and counting their steps, maybe that
Speaker 1: would explain why they're reports of flora and fauna are
Speaker 1: so outrageous. They're like, well, I was it was. It
Speaker 1: was three thousand, eight hundred and seventies six steps. And
Speaker 1: to the left there may have been a dragon. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. I was just really focused on these steps
Speaker 1: and getting the step count right. I mean, descriptions of
Speaker 1: local flora, fauna, and people's of the world are notably
Speaker 1: hilarious throughout all kinds of ancient texts, including Plenty himself.
Speaker 1: He loves to talk about people who had like eyes
Speaker 1: in their stomachs and stuff. Yeah. I keep hoping one
Speaker 1: day I'll come across a passage in Plenty where he
Speaker 1: mentions people who have crab clause. I haven't found that yet. Oh,
Speaker 1: I have to have to look into that, I mean,
Speaker 1: because you mentioned it's it's of course not just Plenty
Speaker 1: in his writings and travelers that he's sourcing, and we
Speaker 1: we've discussed similar things in Chinese traditions as well, So
Speaker 1: there have to be some crab claude individuals out there somewhere.
Speaker 1: But okay, sorry to Hero or Heron of Alexandria. Multiple
Speaker 1: sources I found point to a device described by this
Speaker 1: first century mathematician and inventor, sometimes known as Hero, sometimes
Speaker 1: known as Iron, but he was from Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt.
Speaker 1: As you can tell by the name. A lot of
Speaker 1: inventions are attributed to Hero, though some of the most
Speaker 1: famous ones probably predated him, and he just described them
Speaker 1: in lectures and writings, and then later that gets sort
Speaker 1: of mistaken for him having actually invented the thing in
Speaker 1: the first place. In the latter category. One example, in fact,
Speaker 1: one of the most famous devices associated with Hero is
Speaker 1: the Yala pile, which is a type of early steam
Speaker 1: engine converting the power of steam into rotational energy. Basically
Speaker 1: it works, but you've got a big cauldron this full
Speaker 1: of water, and then you put a fire underneath it,
Speaker 1: and then that cauldron is connected by pipes to a
Speaker 1: sphere that can rotate around the pipes, and then the
Speaker 1: sphere has two little exhaust nozzles that allow steam to
Speaker 1: escape as the water boils and turns into steam and expands.
Speaker 1: But the way the nozzles are oriented, they're oriented in
Speaker 1: the same rotational direction, so as the as it gets
Speaker 1: hotter and hotter and the cauldron and the steam pressure
Speaker 1: builds up, it spins the sphere faster and faster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of images of this, as I recall,
Speaker 1: I remember seeing a cool woodcut of this, I think
Speaker 1: at one point um but it has a look of
Speaker 1: of a novelty of a device that's that's illustrating the
Speaker 1: principle here, but but of course not putting it to
Speaker 1: the sort of work that later UH steam engines would.
Speaker 1: For sure. Yes, and though the e Allo pile is
Speaker 1: often associated with UH, with Hero, I think this is
Speaker 1: something that he very likely did not actually invent. It
Speaker 1: was just something he described that already existed. UM. But
Speaker 1: we have talked about other machines possibly invented by Hero
Speaker 1: in previous episodes. One that I remember is the Hero
Speaker 1: of alexandrias In is credited with inventing the first vending machine,
Speaker 1: which strangely was also a piece of religious technology. It
Speaker 1: was a machine designed to dole out limited portions of
Speaker 1: sacred water within Egyptian temples when a devotee would insert
Speaker 1: the right amount of coinage. So I think you'd put
Speaker 1: a five drachma or five drama piece in through a
Speaker 1: coin slot, and then that would operate a weighted lever
Speaker 1: that would dispense a certain amount of holy water, and
Speaker 1: then once a certain amount of water had gone out,
Speaker 1: the machine would tip over and then it would close
Speaker 1: the valve and stop dispensing. Though even in this case,
Speaker 1: I read that it's actually possible Hero was simply describing
Speaker 1: a device that had already been invented by two Cbs
Speaker 1: of Alexandria in the third century BC. So, as with
Speaker 1: a lot of ancient inventions, it's often hard to tell
Speaker 1: if somebody actually invented something or if they're just talking
Speaker 1: about something that already existed. Anyway, I found multiple references
Speaker 1: to Hero either inventing or describing an odometer, as evidenced
Speaker 1: by a passage he wrote in a minor work called
Speaker 1: the Dioptera, which I wanted to find the full text for,
Speaker 1: but if it has been translated into English, I was
Speaker 1: unable to find it, so I don't know if that
Speaker 1: even exists in English. But regarding this, this machine he
Speaker 1: describes in the diopter again, the Hero is first century CE.
Speaker 1: A couple of caveats. One is that he Hero was
Speaker 1: definitely not the first known author to describe an odometer
Speaker 1: in Greek. In the Greek and Latin Corpus, the Roman
Speaker 1: engineer Vitruvius, who lived in the first century BC, so
Speaker 1: century before Hero, also describes an odometer, uh, though in
Speaker 1: a slightly different way. I'll get into the differences in
Speaker 1: a minute. But even Vitruvius does not claim to have
Speaker 1: invented the device out of whole cloth. And then there's
Speaker 1: a second caveat which is that remember again Ingles making
Speaker 1: the comment that Alexander the Great's bimatists must have had
Speaker 1: a device like Heroes. The problem here is that hero
Speaker 1: of Alexandria and Vitruvius both lived along after the conquest
Speaker 1: of Alexander the Great. So if it's true as Ingles
Speaker 1: suggests that these bimatists used a mechanical odometer similar to
Speaker 1: the one described by these engineers and authors, they would
Speaker 1: have been using some kind of earlier device similar to
Speaker 1: Heroes or Vitruvious. Is not something that hero or Vitruvious
Speaker 1: and vented. Now. An interesting source I found on on
Speaker 1: these two device descriptions is a book called Technical Exprassis
Speaker 1: in Greek and Roman Science and Literature, The Written Machine
Speaker 1: between Alexandria and Rome. This is by an author named
Speaker 1: Courtney Roby from Cambridge University Press. Courtney Roby is a
Speaker 1: professor of classics at Cornell and in this book, this
Speaker 1: is in the context of explaining patterns of composition in
Speaker 1: Greek and Roman technical books, how in different times and
Speaker 1: cultures there were different standards and uses for technical explanation
Speaker 1: of machinery. Hero and Vitruvius both wrote books describing odometers.
Speaker 1: I mentioned Heroes, but the the earlier mentioned by Vitruvius
Speaker 1: comes in a book called on Architecture, and according to Roby,
Speaker 1: Vitruvius himself acknowledges that the odometer is quote part of
Speaker 1: a technological tradition handed down from predecessors. Some authors have
Speaker 1: suggested that might mean from Archimedes, but I'm not aware
Speaker 1: of what what evidence there would be for this, so
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how strong that suggestion is. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: just kind of like, oh, Archimedes, he invented stuff, and
Speaker 1: maybe it's him. Yeah, I think some sometimes we see
Speaker 1: in different traditions we have these these noted inventors, noted minds,
Speaker 1: and they kind of become mythic magnets for various ideas
Speaker 1: and inventions. But there might be some good reasons for
Speaker 1: think of our comedies. I just don't know if there is.
Speaker 1: I did not turn it up than the basic principle,
Speaker 1: how does this odometer work? So you've got a chariot wheel.
Speaker 1: Odometer typically has a wheel of some kind that is
Speaker 1: rolling on the ground and that's your your basic point
Speaker 1: of contact with the Earth to get the the baseline
Speaker 1: measurement of distance. So you've got a chariot wheel of
Speaker 1: a fixed size two Roman feet in radius, which Vitruvius
Speaker 1: says h gives the wheel a circumference of approximately twelve
Speaker 1: point five Roman feet. So if the radius is two,
Speaker 1: that's four times pie, which is about twelve point five six.
Speaker 1: So when Vitrivius has twelve point five Roman feet, he's
Speaker 1: sort of approximating in his explanation. But anyway, each time
Speaker 1: the chariot wheel makes a full revolution, it will advance
Speaker 1: a cog wheel by one cog position, you know, one
Speaker 1: tooth advances and the cog has the cog wheel has
Speaker 1: a fixed number of teeth, meaning that it will make
Speaker 1: a full revolution once the wheel has traveled one Roman mile.
Speaker 1: Every time this cog wheel makes a full revolution, it
Speaker 1: will advance a gear that pushes a single small object
Speaker 1: like a pebble or a bead into a receptacle. And
Speaker 1: then at the end of the journey, you simply have
Speaker 1: a human count up the beans, you know, count up
Speaker 1: whatever the little pebbles or beads or beans are to
Speaker 1: know how many miles you've gone. And I want to
Speaker 1: make a note that this seemed interesting to me, that
Speaker 1: this is the principle of using a system of gears
Speaker 1: as a type of analog computer, similar to the use
Speaker 1: of gears in the ancient astronomical computer known as the
Speaker 1: Antikithera mechanism. We discussed this in an episode we did
Speaker 1: sometime in the past couple of years. It might have
Speaker 1: been in the Creature of the Gear episode about biological gears.
Speaker 1: But the idea that we often think of a gear
Speaker 1: is something that creates mechanical advantage, and it certainly does
Speaker 1: do that, but a gear can also manage ratios between numbers,
Speaker 1: like a gear can do math for you, and that's
Speaker 1: what it's doing in the case of this odometer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love these these examples of them from the ancient
Speaker 1: birth of the odometer or possible birth of the odometer,
Speaker 1: and some of these these instances, because it seems it's's
Speaker 1: kind of like we have the wheel turning on the road,
Speaker 1: and then it's a question of could we put that
Speaker 1: wheel to use, Like the wheel is already in a
Speaker 1: sense marking the distance in its revolution, and and in
Speaker 1: that it's kind of like the heavens. It's like the sun.
Speaker 1: It's like the moon, it's like the the cyclical movements
Speaker 1: all around us that mark the passage of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just need to correlate something with like a fixed
Speaker 1: number of teeth that you can count to those pre
Speaker 1: existing revolutions, and then you take those teeth to do
Speaker 1: some kind of work that will help you keep the count,
Speaker 1: like dropping a bean in a bucket, or advancing a
Speaker 1: dial to on a fixed face that has a number
Speaker 1: printed on it. Yeah, and it and it. You can
Speaker 1: imagine that into the in the ancent minds like you
Speaker 1: would have realized if we could harness this, like this
Speaker 1: is better than than than counting your steps. There's a
Speaker 1: regularity to this that would be harder to achieve through
Speaker 1: other means. Totally so so. Vitruvius describes a machine roughly
Speaker 1: like that. Hero later describes a similar machine, but there
Speaker 1: are some interesting differences in how the two authors present
Speaker 1: their explication. For example, Vitruvius describes his dodometer with fixed dimensions.
Speaker 1: The wheel is four Roman feet in diameter, the circumference
Speaker 1: is approximately twelve point five feet, and so forth. And
Speaker 1: here I want to read a passage from Roby quote.
Speaker 1: Rather than providing a mathematical formula whereby the odometer could
Speaker 1: be adapted to any desirable or available wheel size, as
Speaker 1: Hero does for his own description of an odometer, Vitruvious
Speaker 1: avoids formulas and geometrical language by specifying the wheel diameter
Speaker 1: and circumference as fixed numbers. That is to say, the
Speaker 1: version of the odometer he gives his reader is presented
Speaker 1: as the exact device transmitted from his quote predecessors, not
Speaker 1: a jumping off point for experimentation with the type of device.
Speaker 1: And she goes on to explain this as typical of
Speaker 1: the difference between Latin language technical literature from this period
Speaker 1: and Hellenistic technical literature. Works in Latin tended to be
Speaker 1: exact descriptions of existing devices rather than demonstrations of principles
Speaker 1: and scalable instructions for building new machines. Uh the ladder
Speaker 1: the you know, the scalable instructions and explication of principles
Speaker 1: is more like what Hero of Alexandria presents. Instead of
Speaker 1: having fixed dimensions, his explanation is about how to apply
Speaker 1: the idea of an odometer to different scales and uses.
Speaker 1: With the numerical figures being ratios rather than measurements. So
Speaker 1: Hero's goal was to represent these relationships between the different
Speaker 1: sizes of the wheels and the connected gears, and then
Speaker 1: to read one final passage from Robi quote. Heroes description
Speaker 1: allows mechanical flexibility as well. He suggests how to extend
Speaker 1: the number of cogs in the odometer, which can radically
Speaker 1: enhance its measuring capacity. On the other hand, he notes
Speaker 1: that it is pointless to make an odometer that measures
Speaker 1: a greater distance than its vehicle could cover in a
Speaker 1: single day, as it is easiest to just start the
Speaker 1: count over each warning, which I lay. That's very practical,
Speaker 1: but it also it flags an interesting difference here. They're
Speaker 1: just different assumptions about the reader uh the text. In
Speaker 1: a more Hellenistic tradition, or as as Hero does, it
Speaker 1: might be geared more toward a select audience of highly
Speaker 1: educated polymaths who would be expected to take the engineering
Speaker 1: principle and then vary it to their needs, whereas the
Speaker 1: Latin Roman tradition is describing an exact device in a
Speaker 1: more accessible way that's easy to replicate but offers less
Speaker 1: deep understanding and flexibility. But I wanted to come back
Speaker 1: to a kind of a lingering question about Alexander's bematists,
Speaker 1: whether they used a mechanical odometer or not. And the
Speaker 1: question is which is actually more accurate. You might assume
Speaker 1: a mechanical odometer is more accurate, but I've read some
Speaker 1: arguments that actually human pacers would be less prone to
Speaker 1: error over a long distance than a primitive mechanical device
Speaker 1: would be. Now, obviously the best possible scenario would be
Speaker 1: like to have the odometer on a modern car. You know,
Speaker 1: something that is highly accurate, very well calibrated, a highly
Speaker 1: accurate modern device, uh, that that's going to give you
Speaker 1: the best reading. But obviously something built in the fourth
Speaker 1: century b c. Would have significant enough inaccuracy and its
Speaker 1: measurements that this would cause problems over great distances. And
Speaker 1: so the idea is that any inaccurate measurement in a
Speaker 1: mechanical device would just build up and up over many,
Speaker 1: many miles on a great journey, Like if the circumference
Speaker 1: of your wheel is slightly too long over thousands of miles,
Speaker 1: it will start to significantly underestimate the distance traveled. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I think the idea at least is that human biobmtists
Speaker 1: literally counting their steps will also have inaccuracy, maybe inaccuracy
Speaker 1: relative to some reference length of a single pace, but
Speaker 1: that inaccuracy will go both ways. Steps that are too
Speaker 1: long and then steps that are too short, and those
Speaker 1: will average out over time. That's the argument at least,
Speaker 1: and I see the logic here, and I admit that
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not a genius at statistics, so I could
Speaker 1: be wrong. But my reaction is that I think this
Speaker 1: could also be mistaken because it would tend to assume
Speaker 1: that the human pacers inaccuracy will not be consistently biased
Speaker 1: either above or below whatever the reference past length being
Speaker 1: used is. Uh So, I think this logic might work
Speaker 1: if you had like a group of a thousand people walking,
Speaker 1: and then you had all of them count their steps,
Speaker 1: and then you averaged all of those together. But if
Speaker 1: it was just a single person, I would tend to
Speaker 1: think that their personal count might be biased more in
Speaker 1: one direction or another. They would just tend to have
Speaker 1: longer than average or shorter than average steps, and that
Speaker 1: even a pretty primitive machine would be better. But I
Speaker 1: don't know. That's fascinating, Yeah, I don't. I don't know
Speaker 1: what to make it because yeah, I can. I can
Speaker 1: see what they're getting at with the idea that some
Speaker 1: sort of a basic mechanical flaw in an ancient odometer
Speaker 1: device that you would just consistently get the wrong number,
Speaker 1: and then that would build up over time, and then yeah,
Speaker 1: when when it comes to the actual steps and the
Speaker 1: counting of those steps by an individual or individuals, you'd have,
Speaker 1: you know, a little, a little in one direction, a
Speaker 1: little another direction, but it would sort of even out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's fascinating to think about. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it would be more likely to even out if you
Speaker 1: were talking about a group of people, like a large
Speaker 1: group of people all average together. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: if that'd be the case for a single person anyway,
Speaker 1: whether or not they were using mechanical odometers, ancient dematists
Speaker 1: did a not at all bad job of measuring different
Speaker 1: distances between milestones between cities, and it's possible they were
Speaker 1: helped in this task by devices like the ones described
Speaker 1: by Vitruvious and Hero. But ultimately, I think we don't
Speaker 1: know for sure if they use these devices or not,
Speaker 1: and if they did, we don't know for sure who
Speaker 1: invented these ancient odometers. It's it's one of those questions.
Speaker 1: You know, there are many inventions where we just don't
Speaker 1: know where they came from. I wonder too if it
Speaker 1: might have been a situation where they use both where
Speaker 1: where their specialist in their field. So perhaps, like specialists
Speaker 1: in other fields, they're using more than one method and
Speaker 1: then comparing the numbers and figuring out some sort of
Speaker 1: more accurate measurement based on the two. Yeah, that could be.
Speaker 1: I don't know. But anyway, it's really impressive that in
Speaker 1: the what it's like the third or fourth century b c.
Speaker 1: We've got people getting like really accurate estimates of of
Speaker 1: travel distances that are on the order of hundreds of miles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fascinating. Now, all of this is going on in
Speaker 1: the Greco Roman world, but as we've partially alluded to already,
Speaker 1: there's there's also a history of the odometer in Chinese
Speaker 1: civilization as well. In particular, the device in question is
Speaker 1: the Lee recording drum carriage. Now, this is sometimes attributed
Speaker 1: as an invention of Zongheng, who lived at seventy eight
Speaker 1: through one c E. This is a Chinese polymath and
Speaker 1: court astronomer in the Eastern Han dynasty. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: an individual we've talked about before because there are a
Speaker 1: number of different inventions that are attributed to him, one
Speaker 1: of which was an early form of earthquake detection device. Uh.
Speaker 1: He had an important role tending calendars and celestial events,
Speaker 1: aiding the Emperor Um, who of course ruled at the
Speaker 1: mandate of Heaven, so, you know, maintaining the balance between
Speaker 1: cosmos and civil life. And this is a period of
Speaker 1: time that sometimes referred to as the Golden Age of
Speaker 1: Chinese history, for centuries of economic prosperity, that's all the
Speaker 1: traffic of goods and ideas across the Silk Road. He
Speaker 1: was an inventor, a poe it in an Early Scientist.
Speaker 1: We have an older invention episode about the earthquake detection device.
Speaker 1: And I was looking back at some of our notes
Speaker 1: and I'm reminded that that you shared some of his
Speaker 1: poetry in that episode. Oh I don't remember that now.
Speaker 1: Was it good poetry? Oh? Yeah, yeah, that's good stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: So he's credited with a number of inventions, innovations, and achievements.
Speaker 1: He wrote a treatise on the Mystical Laws of the Cosmos,
Speaker 1: which included the theory that the moon did not emit light,
Speaker 1: but reflected the light of the sun. And he's also
Speaker 1: sometimes attributed as the inventor of the Lee recording drum carriage,
Speaker 1: which again is this um uh, this this odometer of
Speaker 1: sorts in Chinese history. Now it is worth noting that
Speaker 1: that kind of like the situation with Hero and Archimedes,
Speaker 1: we have a very famous historical inventor here, and he's
Speaker 1: attributed with a number of inventions. And so I guess
Speaker 1: the question always lingers, is this an invention that this
Speaker 1: individual invented? Is it something that they described it something?
Speaker 1: Is it's something that just ends up being attributed to
Speaker 1: them because the technology was known during that time, or
Speaker 1: it's based on surviving records, etcetera. Yeah, exactly. So I
Speaker 1: ended up looking at some of the writings of Joseph
Speaker 1: need Him on this. So Needham lived. He was a
Speaker 1: British biochemist, historian of science and sinologists who wrote rather
Speaker 1: extensively on the history of science and technology in China.
Speaker 1: His second wife, lu gives him was a Chinese historian
Speaker 1: and biochemist, and she was an important co researcher and
Speaker 1: co author in his work. So we're talking multiple volumes
Speaker 1: that he wrote during his lifetime, very very much his
Speaker 1: life work. So before we get to the carriage itself,
Speaker 1: I thought we might stop to just consider Rhodes in
Speaker 1: ancient China. So Needham writes about Rhodes in general in
Speaker 1: the short Science and Civilization in China, and he points
Speaker 1: out that they were quite comparable to the famous roads
Speaker 1: of the Romans. Both empires had extensive road systems that
Speaker 1: served as a means of logistically connecting their vast land
Speaker 1: holdings for travel and trade as well as you know,
Speaker 1: playing an important part is just in just communication through
Speaker 1: the empire. That's always something to keep in mind, uh,
Speaker 1: that the road is also a lane for communication. Now,
Speaker 1: both systems, the Roman and the Chinese, fell into long
Speaker 1: periods of decay after the third century see he points out,
Speaker 1: though he writes that while the collapse of Roman roads
Speaker 1: had more of a fracturing effect in China, natural and
Speaker 1: artificial waterways and some surviving mountain road systems enabled these
Speaker 1: far reaching routes of communication to remain open. He also
Speaker 1: points out something very interesting about these two independent systems,
Speaker 1: that it's this rather on inspiring and I thought really
Speaker 1: nicely written. And it also kind of ties into some
Speaker 1: of the stuff we talked about in our previous episode
Speaker 1: about the Roman military that the Dethrone Emperor series quote.
Speaker 1: Should the Romans have ever succeeded in conquering the Parthians
Speaker 1: and the Persians, the two road systems might have met,
Speaker 1: perhaps somewhere west of shin Jiang, but this was not
Speaker 1: to be. The octopus like arms expanded independently, each in
Speaker 1: a world of its own, their builders, troubled only occasionally
Speaker 1: by the vaguest rumors of another system too far away
Speaker 1: to matter. It's in John, by the way, is in
Speaker 1: northwest China. That's where he's talking about here. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is such a I love this quote because it's
Speaker 1: just a imagining these two independent road systems, like like
Speaker 1: like octopuses, Uh, each doing their own thing. And if
Speaker 1: you know, world history had gone a different way, there
Speaker 1: could have been a situation where they met. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: it's crazy to think about, like like roads, I've often
Speaker 1: thought about. You know, you encounter a road and where
Speaker 1: does that road end? You know that basically goes It's
Speaker 1: not infinite, but uh, you can it stretches on for
Speaker 1: such a great distance. And to imagine these two vast
Speaker 1: systems um almost but not quite coming together. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like I don't know if if you've ever
Speaker 1: played around with this to to see like how far
Speaker 1: one can drive on a given continent or on connected continents,
Speaker 1: Like at what point do things seem to break down
Speaker 1: and you would have to find some other route to
Speaker 1: connect with another road? And I know when you get
Speaker 1: into Eurasia and Africa, like there are some pretty long
Speaker 1: travels by road that are that are possible today. The
Speaker 1: road is not going to be necessarily to be great
Speaker 1: the whole way, but you can do quite a lot
Speaker 1: thank so. Anyway, Needham points out that with the odometer
Speaker 1: or the way measure, it's it's a pretty simple proposition
Speaker 1: from a mechanical standpoint. If you have the wheel already,
Speaker 1: and you have row, and you have if you have roads,
Speaker 1: you have wheels, then all it is is quote a
Speaker 1: system of toothed wheels constituting a reduction gear train so
Speaker 1: that one or more pins revolved slowly, releasing catches at
Speaker 1: predetermined intervals, and in the case of this invention, striking
Speaker 1: drums or gongs, so the lee recording drum carriage. What
Speaker 1: is Alie Alie is the traditional Chinese measure of distance today,
Speaker 1: standardized at five meters or one thousand sixty feet, but
Speaker 1: as with a mile and Western traditions, historically there's some
Speaker 1: drift over exactly how far it is supposed to be.
Speaker 1: But it's standardized today and would have been standardized under
Speaker 1: different rules and different dynasties. Yes, standardization of measures does
Speaker 1: seem like such an important part of this too, because
Speaker 1: I when I kept thinking about the idea of of
Speaker 1: a bimitist potentially trying to measure distance with paces, I'm like,
Speaker 1: what is So You've got to have something that's like
Speaker 1: a reference pace, right, If you say something is x
Speaker 1: number of paces long, you've got to either know how
Speaker 1: much your pace typically relates to a standard measure like
Speaker 1: a mile, or you've got to be using your paces
Speaker 1: as some kind of literal standard measure, like people would
Speaker 1: know what that number meant. Yeah, yeah, it's yeah. The
Speaker 1: the history of of measurements alone would be something interesting
Speaker 1: to come back to, because, of course you get into
Speaker 1: use of various parts of the human body uh to
Speaker 1: to form your base measurements, UH, the creation of tools
Speaker 1: and UH and certainly when you're getting into weights for
Speaker 1: goods and trade, like some of our oldest data and
Speaker 1: oldest examples are all related to that. But then when
Speaker 1: you start thinking about these larger measurements, like the measurement
Speaker 1: between you know, the fourth in the frontier, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, like you like, you can't just count, You
Speaker 1: can't just have someone go out there with essentially a
Speaker 1: ruler and say all right, start measuring it off, like
Speaker 1: you've gotta have some other system. Yeah, yeah, alright, So
Speaker 1: Needa gets more into into the subject of the lea
Speaker 1: the Lee measuring art here in Science and Civilization in China,
Speaker 1: Volume for Physics and Physical Technology, Part two, Mechanical Engineering, Um,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it gets into the nature and origins of
Speaker 1: the Lee recording drum carriage. He cites several sources and
Speaker 1: post in some of these resources that go into more detail.
Speaker 1: Others just kind of mentioned it in passing and points
Speaker 1: out that that many of the mentions of the carriage, yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't actually describe the mechanism employed. In at least
Speaker 1: one case, it shows up as a math problem. It's
Speaker 1: it's something along the lines of if the Lee recording
Speaker 1: drum carriage were to travel between this city and this city,
Speaker 1: how many times would the gong u sound that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. The concept seems to date back to the
Speaker 1: Hun dynasty, and this is where the attribution to zong
Speaker 1: Hang seems to come into play. But when the carriage
Speaker 1: is described, it's generally described as a carriage drawn by
Speaker 1: four horses, and it works based on multiple cogged wheels,
Speaker 1: some vertical and some horizontal, you know, all of course,
Speaker 1: much like the earlier example in the Greco Roman traditions
Speaker 1: we were discussing, you know, it's tied to the movement
Speaker 1: of the wheels. In the simpler version of this um
Speaker 1: of this carriage, it's said that there is a wooden
Speaker 1: man in the carriage who is mechanically made to strike
Speaker 1: a drum with the passage of each lee. So the
Speaker 1: wheels are turning, the cogs are turning, there's a mechanical
Speaker 1: wooden man inside who like like a music box, he
Speaker 1: is going to mechanically strike a drum in this case,
Speaker 1: every time one lee has passed. Beat that vitruvious. You
Speaker 1: did not have a wooden man, did you. Later, a
Speaker 1: more complex version is described as being two stories in heights,
Speaker 1: So so it's a carriage that has two stories and
Speaker 1: each story has its own wooden figure. The lower figure
Speaker 1: strikes a drum every lee, while the higher figure rings
Speaker 1: a bell every ten le Okay, So one difference that
Speaker 1: occurs to me here is this would still if it's
Speaker 1: keeping track of the distance in an accurate way, but
Speaker 1: doing so by making a sound instead of by say,
Speaker 1: accumulating uh, pebbles or beads in a container. It's something
Speaker 1: that you would to some extent need to continuously keep
Speaker 1: track of as you're traveling, Like it would still require
Speaker 1: effortful engagement of the memory by somebody doing the traveling, right,
Speaker 1: That's right. That's based on my reading here of need him.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any indication that it was spitting
Speaker 1: out like you know, balls or or or or pebbles
Speaker 1: that could then be counted later, or there was anyway
Speaker 1: recording how many leaves it passed. It was just a
Speaker 1: you know, a ringing of a bell or the striking
Speaker 1: of a drum based on the intervals traveled, which would
Speaker 1: still be useful, but would require more work than or
Speaker 1: at least work spread out over a longer period of time,
Speaker 1: rather than say like a single counting activity in between
Speaker 1: travel segments. And in this we get into one of
Speaker 1: the big questions about the Lee recording drum carriage, and
Speaker 1: that is was this a device that was at all
Speaker 1: originally intended to measure distances? Or was it you? Or
Speaker 1: was it more about music? Was it more about novelty?
Speaker 1: Was it was it? Why was the technology employed? So
Speaker 1: again this was this? These writings are typically revolving around
Speaker 1: the Han period or perhaps a little earlier, but the
Speaker 1: Lee measuring drum carriage was not known as such until later,
Speaker 1: and need Him discusses that this might mean that the
Speaker 1: invention was in fact more expressly for musical performance rather
Speaker 1: than the measurement of distances. Again, at least during this
Speaker 1: time period. It may have may have changed later when
Speaker 1: someone realized, oh yeah, we can just count how many
Speaker 1: strikes of the drum, we can count how many rings
Speaker 1: of the bell, and then that's data that could prove useful.
Speaker 1: But he stresses that you know, these are still interconnected,
Speaker 1: interconnected possibilities, um. And if you're if you're asking, well,
Speaker 1: why would they do that, like why build a carriage
Speaker 1: like this? And why does it remain something other than
Speaker 1: just like a one time novelty, Like why is it
Speaker 1: written about so much? And he points out that music,
Speaker 1: of course, is often part of a procession, and he
Speaker 1: stresses that quote carriages for musicians, whether mechanized or not,
Speaker 1: survived in imperial processions through many subsequent dynasties. So the
Speaker 1: idea here is that the mechanical version uh here develops
Speaker 1: from non mechanical carriages with human musicians inside them. Imperial
Speaker 1: fleets of vehicles, as he refers to them, would have
Speaker 1: likely included palace officials and so forth, but also entertainers musicians.
Speaker 1: So as everyone's traveling down the road, there's music, and
Speaker 1: at some point someone says, hey, what we could We
Speaker 1: could build some gears. We could make a mechanical musical
Speaker 1: man inside one of the carriages, putting those flesh musicians
Speaker 1: out of the job. Well, I don't know if they've
Speaker 1: become cletely out of the job, because you know that
Speaker 1: these these mechanical musicians can only do so much here.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, for for a modern comparison, we might
Speaker 1: think of of a parade float as a as a
Speaker 1: counterpart is something like this. It does sound a lot
Speaker 1: like a parade float. It would have been, according to
Speaker 1: one account, painted red and decorated with flowers, and birds it.
Speaker 1: It's described as being escorted by eighteen men. Uh, and
Speaker 1: there would have been a phoenix headed carriage pole on it.
Speaker 1: So this was not clearly not something that was like
Speaker 1: a Google Maps vehicle that was out there just to
Speaker 1: perform a task. It Also it said that it looked marvelous.
Speaker 1: It's a joyous vehicle. And once more, Needham stresses that
Speaker 1: we don't know for sure if it was ever used
Speaker 1: by cartographers. Uh. It's possible that that later on photographers
Speaker 1: may make use of the data that could be provided
Speaker 1: by this, but we're not sure. Interesting, so Needham points
Speaker 1: out that heroes description of the podometer did not claim
Speaker 1: it as a new invention. He mentions the truvious and
Speaker 1: then mentions that after hero Vitruvius, the odometer appears in
Speaker 1: Western Europe during the fifteenth century, so it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of not really on the Western European radar for a
Speaker 1: long period of time, or doesn't seem to be based
Speaker 1: on surviving histories, and then it re emerges. Quote. The
Speaker 1: pattern is therefore the same as that which we have
Speaker 1: repeatedly met with i e. Greek antecedents paralleled or followed
Speaker 1: by followed at short distance by Chinese developments which continue
Speaker 1: throughout the medieval period, and then a reawakening of the
Speaker 1: subject in Europe. So in this he's touching on something
Speaker 1: that was kind of a career spanning question for him.
Speaker 1: Is often referred to as the need Him question, and
Speaker 1: that the question is basically why didn't China beat Europe
Speaker 1: to the scientific revolution. He's been a fair amount of
Speaker 1: his work thinking over this and looking to answers and
Speaker 1: Chinese social institutions and more. Uh though, as as of reading,
Speaker 1: the psychologist Nathan Siven, who would have been I think
Speaker 1: at times of liberator with Needham, pointed out that, you know,
Speaker 1: the whole thing is basically a why did an X happen?
Speaker 1: In history question, which by some estimates is less than
Speaker 1: a fruitful enterprise. You know, you get into all sorts
Speaker 1: of complex butterfly wing flapping concerns when you start asking
Speaker 1: questions like that. They can be kind of nifty head scratchers,
Speaker 1: but perhaps they are not the best exercise for an historian.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, the Needham question, you see it
Speaker 1: mentioned a lot in discussions of of the history of
Speaker 1: Chinese science. Now, I do want to note in reading
Speaker 1: about all this I also read as some material for
Speaker 1: needum about another interesting wheeled vehicle in Chinese history, and
Speaker 1: that is the south pointing chariot. But that's one we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to come back to. But yeah, the idea
Speaker 1: of a chariot with another mechanical man on it, but
Speaker 1: this mechanical man always points south omous. Okay. So we're
Speaker 1: not gonna We're not gonna go through the exhaustive history
Speaker 1: of the of the odometer in in recent centuries, but
Speaker 1: I thought it might be useful to point out a
Speaker 1: few different later innovations that kind of bring us up
Speaker 1: to the modern odometer. Um, there's Pascal's calculator. This would
Speaker 1: have been an invention or an innovation by Blaze Pascal. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was five not an adometer per se, But it
Speaker 1: was a computation mechanism that entailed rotating toothed gears, and
Speaker 1: much like a modern odometer, one complete cycle of one
Speaker 1: gear caused the movement of the next gear. Okay, So
Speaker 1: this would have been taking the same principle by which
Speaker 1: the ancient odometer worked, but applying it to general calculation
Speaker 1: rather than just the movement of a vehicle wheel. Right now,
Speaker 1: in the late sixteen early seventeen hundreds, we also see
Speaker 1: Thomas Savory's nautical odometer. Uh. Savories most famous invention was
Speaker 1: the steam engine, but he also devised a nautical adometer.
Speaker 1: I actually couldn't find out much about this, so I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm gonna have to come back to this
Speaker 1: one in a few sure, but because I was curious
Speaker 1: on how exactly it would have functioned. Interesting. Yeah, supposedly
Speaker 1: there was a patent, so it seems like I should
Speaker 1: be able to find that patent somewhere. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: I have to come back to that one. But this
Speaker 1: is a fun part because our old friend Ben Franklin
Speaker 1: also enters the fray here when it comes to the odometer.
Speaker 1: He's come up in more than one invention conversation, I believe.
Speaker 1: So what what was his take? So? In seventy five
Speaker 1: he was serving as Postmaster General for the British. Previously
Speaker 1: he had been postmaster of Philadelphia, and he wanted more
Speaker 1: data on the shortest routes for mail delivery. So he
Speaker 1: basically devised a simple odometer to attach to his own carriage.
Speaker 1: And UH, and this will for this reason you'll sometimes
Speaker 1: see especially some online sources saying Ben Franklin invented the odometer. No,
Speaker 1: it's not accurate in the least to say Ben Franklin
Speaker 1: invented the odometer. You could say he invented on odometer.
Speaker 1: He certainly would one up on the fly here. It
Speaker 1: seems so every four revolutions it would register a mile
Speaker 1: and the results were apparently pretty accurate based on what
Speaker 1: I was reading here. So at any rate, he was
Speaker 1: able to to to use the data, uh, to figure
Speaker 1: out which route was best for male delivery. Now, one
Speaker 1: thing I know I saw reference to on the internet
Speaker 1: and I didn't know what to make of this was
Speaker 1: the idea of a Mormon odometer. Yeah, this was one that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that came up for me as well. The rhodometer from
Speaker 1: Clayton and Pratt. Uh. This would have been eighteen forty seven.
Speaker 1: They were pioneers of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Speaker 1: Latter day Saints and they apparently crafted a simple odometer
Speaker 1: to measure how far a wagon train had traveled. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's it's interesting again. It's we're getting into this
Speaker 1: area where it sounds like people would find themselves in
Speaker 1: situations where they could really use an odometer, and since
Speaker 1: the knowledge was was known, you could create one. You
Speaker 1: couldn't go to the store and buy one, but the
Speaker 1: principles route there. The principles were part of of of
Speaker 1: of the technological canon, so you could draw on that
Speaker 1: and make yourself a functional odometer. In e Curtis age
Speaker 1: Vter came up with a bicycle mounted odometer, the cyclometer,
Speaker 1: and then in three we have the Warner autometer, which
Speaker 1: I think, like the advertised versions of this, this was
Speaker 1: like an actual product. It was a combined odometer, spedometer,
Speaker 1: and clock, but it made use of magnetism as opposed
Speaker 1: to just pure gear work. Uh So, like those are
Speaker 1: some of the big more big innovations in the odometer
Speaker 1: in recent centuries. And uh yeah, today the odometer again
Speaker 1: is something we tend to just take for granted or
Speaker 1: we don't even read it. It just sort of clicks
Speaker 1: by there and maybe we check in on it every
Speaker 1: you know. However, many thousands of miles, I guess at
Speaker 1: vary some people were probably more more into keeping a
Speaker 1: close eye in their odometer, or you have to for
Speaker 1: work obviously. I think about seeing those surveyors who have
Speaker 1: the wheel they use the surveyors the surveyor's wheel. Of course,
Speaker 1: I didn't think about that. That that's an obvious um
Speaker 1: innovation to compare to some of these discussions of the odometer,
Speaker 1: like harnessing the power of the wheel from measurement. All right, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go and close it out here, but we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from everyone out there. Perhaps you have
Speaker 1: particular thoughts about the odometer. It's ancient history, it's recent history,
Speaker 1: or or you know, our modern use of the technology
Speaker 1: right in we would love to hear from you. As
Speaker 1: a reminder, our core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind publish on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind podcast feed on Monday's we do listener mail,
Speaker 1: on Wednesday's we do a short form artifact or monster fact,
Speaker 1: and on Friday's we do Weird How Cinema. That's our
Speaker 1: time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk
Speaker 1: about the strange film huge thanks to our excellent audio
Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
Speaker 1: at Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com. Stuff to
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