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Speaker 1: The gearshift that changed driving forever. I didn't welcome back know.

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Speaker 1: It alls to another episode of the most anticipated podcast

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Speaker 1: on the Black Effect podcast network, especially in February, entitled

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Speaker 1: I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either. I'm your host

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Speaker 1: Be Dots, and I drive an electric vehicle and let

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Speaker 1: me tell you something, and I'll probably never in my

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Speaker 1: life return to gas fueled vehicles again. The EV just

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Speaker 1: so clean and it's so smooth. It's like a cheetah

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Speaker 1: in the wild, fast but still woo. I love it.

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Speaker 1: And you don't get that gasoline smell on your hands

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Speaker 1: from charging your vehicle. AnyWho. To kick off today's episode,

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Speaker 1: I've got three of the most useless facts you'll never need,

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Speaker 1: not a day in life. Your first useless facts, The

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Speaker 1: very first speeding ticket in history was issued in eighteen

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Speaker 1: ninety six. YEP. A man named Walter Arnold was fine

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Speaker 1: for driving eight miles per hour in a two mile

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Speaker 1: per hour zone. Yep, eight in a two Your second

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Speaker 1: useless fact, the early cars. They didn't have staring wheels. Now,

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Speaker 1: the first cars were stilled with a tiller like a boat.

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Speaker 1: And your third useless fact, gas stations didn't even exist

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Speaker 1: when cars were invented in the late eighteen hundreds and

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Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds. Car drivers bought they gas at pharmacies

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Speaker 1: and hardware stores and even bakeries, usually in glass containers.

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Speaker 1: Now for today's episode, do you have any idea who

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Speaker 1: the black man Richard Spikes was and what he did

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Speaker 1: to revolutionize the car industry? Because I didn't I didn't know.

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Speaker 1: I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I

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Speaker 1: didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know.

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Speaker 1: I didn't know. Before driving was as normal as it

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Speaker 1: is today, it was terrifying. Early cars was hard to control,

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Speaker 1: harder to stop, just dangerous to operate. Period transmission systems

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Speaker 1: were plunky, turns were unpredictable. Signals didn't exist. Then came

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Speaker 1: Richard Spikes, a black inventor who didn't just improve cars,

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Speaker 1: he civilized them. Spikes made an improvement to the gearshift

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Speaker 1: that made change in speed smoother and safer, and he

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Speaker 1: pattent in an automatic transmission improvement that took away the

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Speaker 1: need for constant manual adjustments. And if that wasn't enough,

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Speaker 1: he invented an early version of the turn signal. You

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Speaker 1: think about that, every safe turn you've ever made, every

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Speaker 1: smooth gear change, every time you signal before switching lanes.

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Speaker 1: That's all Richard Spike's influence. Not a brand name, not

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Speaker 1: a logo, not a commercial infrastructure which ties back to

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Speaker 1: the March in one hundred and what they represent excellence

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Speaker 1: so deeply embedded into the system you just stopped noticing it.

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Speaker 1: Richard Spikes didn't chase fame. He solved problems, and his

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Speaker 1: solutions became permanent. And that's the story of so much

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Speaker 1: black innovation. We make this world functional, man, Black folk

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Speaker 1: make the world go round. Then the world forget who

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Speaker 1: fixed it. A whole century after Carter G. Woodson argued

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Speaker 1: for documenting our systems, Richard Spike's engineered the mechanisms we

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Speaker 1: use to move through the world safely today, a black

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Speaker 1: built infrastructure that most people never even acknowledge. Every time

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Speaker 1: you shift gears without thinking, every time you signal a

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Speaker 1: turn without struggle, every time you drive somewhere safely, I

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Speaker 1: need you to remember that a black inventor made that possible,

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Speaker 1: and I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either,