Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Grim and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable,
Speaker 1: and if history is an open book, all of these
Speaker 1: amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for
Speaker 1: us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. An
Speaker 1: idea is like a spark, a flash of light in
Speaker 1: our mind that illuminates our subconscious and those sparks have
Speaker 1: led to some brilliant discoveries. The traffic light, the telephone,
Speaker 1: and even liquid paper all come from people who've been
Speaker 1: struck by the right idea at the right time. Soldiers
Speaker 1: during the late sixteen hundreds had also experienced their own
Speaker 1: light bulb moments, emphasis on the light part. Back then,
Speaker 1: soldiers carried muskets into battle. They used flint and gunpowder
Speaker 1: to fire a little metal ball from a barrel of
Speaker 1: their rifle. But they quickly realized that the spark created
Speaker 1: when the real struck flint could be used for other things.
Speaker 1: Broken muskets and pistols weren't of much use as weapons,
Speaker 1: but they could certainly help the men see in the dark.
Speaker 1: Early on, a soldier would fill the barrel of a
Speaker 1: malfunctioning gun with tinder, such as dried out pieces of
Speaker 1: wood or brush, and then they'd fire the gun as usual.
Speaker 1: The spark that resulted would light the tinder inside and
Speaker 1: create a kind of torch. What they didn't realize at
Speaker 1: the time was that they had invented the world's first lighters. Eventually,
Speaker 1: gun manufacturers started taking their old, broken pistols and converting
Speaker 1: them into flintlock lighters for home use. These devices looked
Speaker 1: like guns with candle holders affixed to the top. One
Speaker 1: pull of the trigger and a flame would spark into
Speaker 1: a small reservoir at the front. A candle could then
Speaker 1: be tipped for the flame before placing it inside the
Speaker 1: holder on top of the lighter. It wasn't until eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty three, though, when one man found a less violent
Speaker 1: way to create a steady flame. His name was Johann
Speaker 1: Wolfgang dober Reiner, and he designed a jar that combined
Speaker 1: three things, hydrogen gas with a platinum sponge and oxygen.
Speaker 1: The chemical reaction caused the hydrogen to ignite, creating a flame,
Speaker 1: and he called his creation a dober Reiner's lamp. They
Speaker 1: became quite popular with over a million sold over the
Speaker 1: next several years. But three years later another inventor started
Speaker 1: working on his own method for starting impromptu fires. John
Speaker 1: Walker was a chemist and druggist from England who had
Speaker 1: a passion for combustion, but not in a creepy, destructive way.
Speaker 1: He wanted to find the right mixture of chemicals that
Speaker 1: would provide a flame that would burn slowly on a
Speaker 1: stick of wood. He'd been working with various concoctions when
Speaker 1: he accidentally struck a wooden stick against his hearth. The
Speaker 1: stick had been dipped in Walker's special brew, and it
Speaker 1: produced a flame instantly. It was at that moment he
Speaker 1: realized that he had done it. Walk began coating wooden
Speaker 1: sticks in sulfur before dipping them in a combination of
Speaker 1: potassium chlorates, gum arabic and sulfide of antimony. He called
Speaker 1: his invention friction lights, although today we know them better
Speaker 1: as matches. The concept of the match, though, dates back
Speaker 1: to ancient China, where people would soak pinewood sticks with
Speaker 1: sulfur and bring them close to a flame so that
Speaker 1: they had something to light their lamps with. But these
Speaker 1: were not friction matches that we know today. For those
Speaker 1: we can thank John Walker. Unfortunately, a man named Charles
Speaker 1: Souria from France changed the formula. He substituted white phosphorus
Speaker 1: for the antimony sulfide. This caused two big problems. First,
Speaker 1: these new matches didn't only light when struck against a
Speaker 1: rough surface. If they weren't stored properly, they could spontaneously
Speaker 1: ignite and start a massive blaze. The other problem was
Speaker 1: that white sulfurus was very toxic. There were numerous deaths
Speaker 1: attributed to white phosphorus poisoning during the mid nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and those who manufactured the matches were affected by a
Speaker 1: condition known as Fossey jaw, or a phosphorus necrosis of
Speaker 1: the jaw. It wasn't until the eighteen fifties when white
Speaker 1: phosphorus was replaced with a red variety and moved from
Speaker 1: the head of the match to the striking surface on
Speaker 1: the side of the box. These new matches were called
Speaker 1: safety matches, and by nineteen twenty five, almost every country
Speaker 1: had either outlawed the use of white phosphorus or taxed
Speaker 1: it so heavily that it just wasn't worth incorporating. Looking back,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to see how our mind play tricks on
Speaker 1: us because the idea of a match is simple, a
Speaker 1: stick of wood dipped in some chemicals. It's far less
Speaker 1: complicated than a contraption filled with metal and gas and
Speaker 1: moving parts. It may be hard to imagine, but the
Speaker 1: lighter predates the fiction match by a few hundred years,
Speaker 1: and just thinking about that gets me all fired up.
Speaker 1: Trust is not easy to build, especially as a new business.
Speaker 1: It could take a long time, even years, before a
Speaker 1: customer's loyalty is earned. But one misstep early on and
Speaker 1: it could spell the end of something great before it
Speaker 1: has a chance to truly grow. And just like what
Speaker 1: happened to Nicholas a pair Born in France in seventeen
Speaker 1: forty nine, Nicholas was a sort of middle child in
Speaker 1: his massive family. He was the ninth of eleven children,
Speaker 1: then worked at his parents in until he was twenty.
Speaker 1: He then spun off on his own with one of
Speaker 1: his brothers to open a brewery together. Nicholas had always
Speaker 1: been drawn to the culinary arts. From seventeen eighty four
Speaker 1: to seventeen ninety five he worked as a chef and
Speaker 1: confectioner in Paris, but it was in that final year
Speaker 1: as a chef when he started exploring something new and exciting,
Speaker 1: food preservation. He began storing things like jellies, soups, and
Speaker 1: vegetables in glass jars, which he sealed with cork and
Speaker 1: wax before dunking them in boiling water to cook them.
Speaker 1: Historians claimed that this technique was not new at the time,
Speaker 1: but Nicholas was the first to do it on a
Speaker 1: wide scale. It took a few years, but by the
Speaker 1: early nineteenth century, the entrepreneur had opened the world's first
Speaker 1: factory dedicated to bottling and preserving food. He eventually graduated
Speaker 1: from jellies and jams to more substantial foods like beef
Speaker 1: and eggs. Even full dishes could be preserved using Nicholas's method.
Speaker 1: His technique of ceiling and boiling each jar was given
Speaker 1: the name appetization, but it cost a lot of money
Speaker 1: to preserve food. The equipment was expensive, and Nicholas himself
Speaker 1: was lousy at business. Only two years after his factory opened,
Speaker 1: it closed down and the father of food science was bankrupt.
Speaker 1: But his idea lived on, and people continued to store
Speaker 1: their fruits and vegetables using Nicholas's ceiling method. Of course,
Speaker 1: there was still the problem of the jars themselves. Nicholas
Speaker 1: had started with champagne bottles before moving on to thicker,
Speaker 1: wider mouthed bottles that could accommodate larger food items. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until eighteen fifty eight, fifty two years after the
Speaker 1: Apport factory closed down, when a new idea hit the market.
Speaker 1: It had been invented by a New Jersey man named
Speaker 1: John Landis. No not the director of Animal House. This
Speaker 1: John was an inventor. He had gotten his start as
Speaker 1: a tinsmith before pattenting a new kind of product, one
Speaker 1: that would take canning and food preservation to a whole
Speaker 1: new level. Rather than rely on cork and wax to
Speaker 1: seal canning jars as Nicholas a pair had done, John
Speaker 1: created a jar with a metal lid that could be
Speaker 1: screwed on instead. It was originally made with the zinc
Speaker 1: cap that had been lined with milk glass, a type
Speaker 1: of colored glass used in everything from pottery to clock faces,
Speaker 1: and just below the lip of the jar sat a
Speaker 1: rubber gasket that would help seal everything once the lid
Speaker 1: was tightened over the top. It was a game changer,
Speaker 1: and others continued to improve its design over the next
Speaker 1: fifty years. For example, a man named Alexander Kerr created
Speaker 1: lids that had rubber seals set around their rim rather
Speaker 1: than on the jars themselves. In nineteen fifteen, he introduced
Speaker 1: the lid that separated into two pieces. Since the lined
Speaker 1: center of the lid would wear out faster than the rim,
Speaker 1: canners no longer had to toss out the whole lid.
Speaker 1: They only had to replace the middle portion, a design
Speaker 1: that endures to this day. John eventually sold his patents
Speaker 1: to Lewis R. Boyd's Sheet Metal Screw Company in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine. Twelve years later, John and Boyd went into
Speaker 1: business together and license their jars to other glassmakers, But
Speaker 1: because he had not patented any of his improved designs
Speaker 1: over the years, the courts ruled that he had forfeited
Speaker 1: his patent due to abandonment. From that point on, other
Speaker 1: companies were free to create their own jars just like John's. Today,
Speaker 1: though one company stands tall as the largest manufacturer of
Speaker 1: glass canning jars, the Ball Corporation, based in Broomfield, Colorado.
Speaker 1: Thanks to the work of Nicholas Apear and later John
Speaker 1: Landis Mason, the Mason Jar remains the gold standard for
Speaker 1: long term food preserve and all it took to make
Speaker 1: it was a little know how and a can do attitude.
Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
Speaker 1: World of Loore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.