Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck.
Speaker 2: Jerry's here too, floating around somewhere out there. And that
Speaker 2: makes the stuff you should know.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: You thought of this one, and Dave helped us out
Speaker 1: with the research on chemistry sets. I will go ahead
Speaker 1: and to say that I never had a chemistry set,
Speaker 1: but you know darn well that somebody in my family did,
Speaker 1: was it Scott? Oh, of course he did. He was
Speaker 1: voted most likely to have a chemistry set in preschool.
Speaker 2: That's a Did he do anything magical with it?
Speaker 1: I mean, I just remember him having it in it,
Speaker 1: being around the house, and you know, he's just always
Speaker 1: had a more scientifically minded brain than me and has
Speaker 1: always been smarter than me from the drop. So he
Speaker 1: was into chemistry sets, and I was into you know,
Speaker 1: baseball cards.
Speaker 2: Well, I was into baseball cards too. I was gonna say,
Speaker 2: don't feel bad because I didn't have a chemistry set either,
Speaker 2: but I did have like an electrical set, like the
Speaker 2: electrical version of a chemistry So, yeah, you do all
Speaker 2: sorts of stuff, Yeah, yeah, And I distinctly remember just
Speaker 2: hitting it with a hammer because I had no idea
Speaker 2: what was going on with that thing.
Speaker 3: You can't build a circuit.
Speaker 2: No, you could put a gun to my head and
Speaker 2: be like, build a circuit, and I'd just start hitting
Speaker 2: it with a hammer. I think you know.
Speaker 1: Who got good at that is a friend of the
Speaker 1: show and Palavars in real.
Speaker 3: Life, David Reese. Oh yeah, he.
Speaker 1: Got into circuitry and like building and refurbishing old like
Speaker 1: musical electronics and pedals and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: What an interesting dude. If you don't know who Dave
Speaker 2: Reese is, yeah, go look up. What's the name of
Speaker 2: this book about artisanal pencil sharpened?
Speaker 1: I think it's how to sharpen pencils. See outside A
Speaker 1: great TV show that I'm not sure if you can
Speaker 1: find it, but you can try.
Speaker 3: Called Going Deep with day Man.
Speaker 2: It was so good.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's like how to shake someone's hand.
Speaker 1: Stuff like that seems very intuitive, but not through David's
Speaker 1: odd point of view.
Speaker 2: He also was on Dick Town with Hodgmen.
Speaker 1: Right, that's right, and he can build the heck out
Speaker 1: of a circuit. I bet you had a chemistry set.
Speaker 2: Too, very nice. I know that Dave Russ, who helps
Speaker 2: us with this, said that he had one of those
Speaker 2: electronic sets too. Dave's pretty sharp, so I'm presuming he
Speaker 2: didn't hit it with the hammer.
Speaker 1: But this is a pretty fun when we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about the history of chemistry sets, which, believe it
Speaker 1: or not, go back to the eighteenth century when they
Speaker 1: were called chemical chests. But this was pre let's make
Speaker 1: this a toy for kids. It was like, Hey, if
Speaker 1: you're a university student or a professional or amateur young chemist,
Speaker 1: button chemist.
Speaker 2: Do you like to wear capes?
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, you like a smock, get a chemistry set, right.
Speaker 2: So the first one, actually they traced it back to
Speaker 2: I named You're gonna make me say his name? Huh.
Speaker 2: Watch this, yeah, Johann Friedrich August Goudding.
Speaker 3: Nay, not bad, may mean not bad.
Speaker 2: That was dead on the nose.
Speaker 3: I think it was perfect.
Speaker 2: I think I can hear our German listeners giving me
Speaker 2: a standing ovation right now.
Speaker 3: Ah vundebar.
Speaker 2: He came up with a chemistry chest in I think
Speaker 2: seventeen eighty nine, if I didn't say that already, and
Speaker 2: it was called garay for this a portable chest of
Speaker 2: chemistry or a complete collection of chemical tests for the
Speaker 2: use of chemists, physicians, mineralogists, metallurgists, scientific artists, manufacturers, farmers
Speaker 2: and cultivators of natural philosophy and party boys.
Speaker 3: And again this thing wasn't a toy.
Speaker 1: It had thirty five chemicals, had a very robust like balance,
Speaker 1: you know, like a balance for weighing things, had a
Speaker 1: mortar and pestle.
Speaker 3: Of course, it had a book.
Speaker 1: And this is kind of as you'll see a key
Speaker 1: with all chemistry sets is a come with a book
Speaker 1: of experiments. Otherwise you're just going to be dangerous. You
Speaker 1: might be anyway, But this one had about one.
Speaker 3: Hundred and fifty experiments.
Speaker 1: And interestingly it had this platinum foil included that they
Speaker 1: would not include now because this stuff was very valuable.
Speaker 1: I believe in today dollars would be worth about a
Speaker 1: thousand bucks.
Speaker 2: Wow, if the price is right, that's right. The reason
Speaker 2: they include platinum foil is platinum is a really valuable
Speaker 2: and useful catalyst and a lot of chemical reactions. It
Speaker 2: wasn't just to show.
Speaker 3: Off, no, of course not so.
Speaker 2: There were other early chemistry sets too. Like you said
Speaker 2: they were for grown ups, they were for chemistry professionals,
Speaker 2: and people used to train to be chemistry professionals and
Speaker 2: go to college for it. Still do. But there was
Speaker 2: a guy at the University of Pennsylvania's medical school all
Speaker 2: the way back in seventeen ninety seven named James Woodhouse,
Speaker 2: and he was a professor of chemistry, and he also
Speaker 2: had a nice little sideline selling chemistry chests to his
Speaker 2: students and being like, you really won't get an A
Speaker 2: or even maybe past this class if you don't buy
Speaker 2: my chemistry set.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not bad.
Speaker 1: It's like when the professor wrote the book that you're
Speaker 1: exact textbook. One little just sort of fun fact that
Speaker 1: Dave threw in here was this was pre test tube.
Speaker 1: They didn't have test tubes yet. So in both of
Speaker 1: these early eighteenth century chemistry chests they said to use wineglasses.
Speaker 2: Very nice, very swanky.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So there was also even back then, well maybe not
Speaker 2: back in the seventeen hundreds, but certainly very quickly after that. No,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go ahead and say the seventeen hundreds
Speaker 2: in everybody was like this is not just like interesting
Speaker 2: and you can do stuff with it. This can be
Speaker 2: kind of fun too, Like it's fun to take two
Speaker 2: chemicals and suddenly make these two clear things turn blue.
Speaker 2: Who doesn't love that kind of thing. And so there
Speaker 2: was always a certain element of magic to chemistry, and
Speaker 2: in particular chemistry sets, and eventually people started like selling
Speaker 2: them as that, not just as that, but there was
Speaker 2: a transition from just for chemical professionals chemists, to for
Speaker 2: chemists but also for chemists who'd like to have a
Speaker 2: good time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there were and we talked about this before,
Speaker 1: like scientific demonstrations in the you know, nineteenth century could
Speaker 1: be everything from just like straight up science to a
Speaker 1: little little magic, a little showmanship, involved a little flare.
Speaker 1: People like Faraday were doing stuff like this in public.
Speaker 1: There was a chemist named Frederick Acam I guess Accum
Speaker 1: who would do these big public demonstrations that were, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of part magic show, part science, and you could
Speaker 1: even buy one of his sets. He had a chemistry set.
Speaker 1: I don't think they were called chess at this point,
Speaker 1: called alums still called the chests. Oh yeah, there it
Speaker 1: is in the title Acom's Chest of Chemical Amusement again,
Speaker 1: which you know lends itself to amusement. I think that
Speaker 1: was the booklet was called Chemical amusement colon a series
Speaker 1: of curious and instructive experiments in chemistry which are easily
Speaker 1: performed and unattended by danger.
Speaker 2: That's important right there. Yeah, because one of the things
Speaker 2: that kind of got all over chemistry sets over the
Speaker 2: years was safety. And this was even like back in
Speaker 2: the early nineteenth century that they were like, these can
Speaker 2: be dangerous. So yeah, that was a big, a big
Speaker 2: thing that he included that in the title of the
Speaker 2: booklet that came with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, and all of this, you know, talk
Speaker 1: of sort of magic and fun is a is a
Speaker 1: long way to get to the fact that by the
Speaker 1: sort of early ish eighteen hundreds and like eighteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: they started saying, hey, these like we should sell these
Speaker 1: to kids.
Speaker 3: These are fun.
Speaker 2: You know who's trustworthy kids?
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 1: There was one called the Eedies Youth Laboratory from eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty five. A few years later was Statham's Students Chemical Laboratory,
Speaker 1: and then by eighteen fifty six they had one called
Speaker 1: Pike's Youth Chemical Cabinet.
Speaker 2: Wow, chemical cabinet sounds amazing, it does. And then by
Speaker 2: the time the twentieth century rolled around, so they were
Speaker 2: making these things here or there for centuries by now
Speaker 2: finally they were like, Okay, our market is young people
Speaker 2: who are enthusiastic about chemistry, but also again wear capes
Speaker 2: because they like magic. And one of the good examples
Speaker 2: that Dave turned up about this was came out in
Speaker 2: nineteen hundred. It was Kingsley's Primus Chemical Magic and Practical
Speaker 2: Chemistry Cabinet, and it had everything you needed to carry
Speaker 2: out like these serious chemistry experiments. And it came with
Speaker 2: a booklet too that had plenty of instructions, but it
Speaker 2: also had a lot of stuff to set things on
Speaker 2: fire and instructions on how to essentially make fireworks and
Speaker 2: things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would love to see a Venn diagram of
Speaker 1: gen X kids who had chemistry sets.
Speaker 3: Yeah, who could.
Speaker 1: Pull a rabbit out of a hat or a card
Speaker 1: out of somebody's ear and like knew how to do
Speaker 1: the Rubik's cube and draw a flip book.
Speaker 2: That's the trifecta.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was my brother in a nutshell.
Speaker 2: Sure it's like oh Ruber's cube, Sure you.
Speaker 3: Want to see how to solve it.
Speaker 2: But he wouldn't even say watch this. He'd be like, here,
Speaker 2: let me help you.
Speaker 3: Right exactly.
Speaker 2: I also, just as a little side note, I'm like,
Speaker 2: why did they call that a primus chemistry cabinet? So
Speaker 2: it turns out primus, one of the definitions of it
Speaker 2: is a small stove that burns paraffin, so presumably that
Speaker 2: was included in the kid as like a Bunsen burner.
Speaker 2: And it went a little deeper. I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: why is the band Imus called Primus? And it turns
Speaker 2: out they were originally called the Primates. There was another
Speaker 2: band called the Primates that said we will sue the
Speaker 2: pants off of you if you call yourself the Primates.
Speaker 2: So less Claypool and friends looked up primate definitions and
Speaker 2: words and found out that Primus is the root word
Speaker 2: for Primates, so they went with Primus instead.
Speaker 1: Look at that one of my most hated bands of
Speaker 1: all time. Really yeah, I hate Primus, And you know
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna hear from Primis fans.
Speaker 3: You are not yuck and you'r yum.
Speaker 1: I love for you to love what you love, but
Speaker 1: I've got to be able to hate Primis as well.
Speaker 2: Sure they can't yung. You're yuck. Yeah, like everybody, It's
Speaker 2: not like you're telling them not to listen, or that
Speaker 2: they suck for listening.
Speaker 3: No, I'm sure they're great for certain years. It's just
Speaker 3: that's not mine.
Speaker 2: They have some good songs, though Chuck Jerry was a
Speaker 2: race car driver. You honestly don't like that song, no, okay,
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 1: They also sound the same to me. They all sound
Speaker 1: like his bass just all sounds.
Speaker 2: Like that was really good impression actually, and.
Speaker 3: All the singing and just Downrue too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't like Primis.
Speaker 3: I don't like it. Checks out. One of my very
Speaker 3: best friends loves Primus, and so you know we cannot we.
Speaker 1: Can all co exist, You're like, so I can say that, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: A lot of my friends are Primis fans. All right,
Speaker 1: let's take a break and we'll enter the twenty twenties,
Speaker 1: twentieth century right after this.
Speaker 4: Sure loss a much stuff from Josh and shuck stuff fui.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I think, like I said, in the early
Speaker 2: twenty century, they were like, yep, young boys who are
Speaker 2: interested in chemistry, And let's go back and emphasize this boys.
Speaker 2: That's who we're going to market these things too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is who chemistry sets belonged to. Like little Boy
Speaker 2: scientists who have an interest in chemistry, and the thing
Speaker 2: that went basically throughout the twentieth century, at least up
Speaker 2: until like the sixties. If you bought a chemistry set
Speaker 2: for your kid, like that was the first step toward
Speaker 2: being a professional chemist as they grew up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you were guaranteed to have a little boy
Speaker 1: on the front box.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent.
Speaker 3: That's just the way it was back then.
Speaker 1: And we'll get to more of that sort of weird
Speaker 1: sexism and science that still continues today in a little bit.
Speaker 1: But one of the big players, there were a couple
Speaker 1: of big ones. The first one was the Kim Craft Company.
Speaker 1: Kimkraft Chemistry Set in nineteen sixteen was the first really
Speaker 1: sort of popular toy chemistry set produced by the Porter
Speaker 1: Chemical Company out of Merryland, and it was about a
Speaker 1: buck fifty to maybe ten bucks if you were pretty
Speaker 1: well healed, because that's it's about forty to three hundred
Speaker 1: bucks today, so some pretty decent money you'd have to
Speaker 1: throw down on the high end chemistry set back then.
Speaker 3: Yeah, these had test tubes.
Speaker 1: By this point, you had an alcohol lamp, of course,
Speaker 1: you had your weights and balances, and you had lots
Speaker 1: of chemicals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like a serious chemistry set. It had
Speaker 2: like all this stuff you needed, and it was substantial
Speaker 2: in form right. The manual also was like we're going
Speaker 2: to do some serious stuff. One of the first experiments
Speaker 2: from this manual came from nineteen nineteen. That edition is
Speaker 2: called Combination of Elements, and basically, you put powdered zinc
Speaker 2: and sulfur on a metal spoon and start heating it.
Speaker 2: Be sure to quote keep your face at a little distance.
Speaker 2: And then as the mass becomes hot, the sulfur takes
Speaker 2: fire and burns, and then the mixture starts to swell
Speaker 2: to a bulky porous mass while on fire, and then
Speaker 2: suddenly there's a flash and sulfur and zinc unite, chemically
Speaker 2: forming zinc sulfide, and hopefully you have your eyebrows left afterwards.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny, Like the literal quote was keeping your
Speaker 1: face at a little distance, and the first three times
Speaker 1: I read that, I read it as keeping your little
Speaker 1: face at a distance.
Speaker 2: Oh, I wish they'd said that that's adorable.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 1: It should have been keep your little face at a
Speaker 1: great distance, because that was dangerous. There was also something
Speaker 1: called fire ink, which is exactly what you think is
Speaker 1: you would combine, or you may not know what you combined,
Speaker 1: but you know what the result probably is. You combine
Speaker 1: potassium nitrate and water in a test tube and then
Speaker 1: write on a piece of paper and light that on fire,
Speaker 1: and you know what you have spelled out is now
Speaker 1: on fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the potassium nitrate water is the ink, the
Speaker 2: fire ink, as it were, which sounds pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: Imagine being like, hello, how are you suddenly on fire
Speaker 2: on a piece of paper. Your friend's kind of think
Speaker 2: you're pretty I literally wrote neat with an exclamation point
Speaker 2: after that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you would also probably be more likely to
Speaker 1: write butthole or something like that.
Speaker 3: Then, hey, how are you?
Speaker 2: That's true? You know that's totally true. Also, I want
Speaker 2: to take back the word literally. I'm really trying hard
Speaker 2: to abandon that. Even when it's properly used. It's just
Speaker 2: so so wrong these days.
Speaker 3: Well, good for you, I think, literally, good for you.
Speaker 2: So what else?
Speaker 3: Well, that was another experiment. This is so fun. It's
Speaker 3: called making a fuse.
Speaker 1: That basically all you need to know is like, you know,
Speaker 1: you can you can probably make things that'll blow up.
Speaker 3: So you're gonna need a fuse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that went really well with the manufacture of
Speaker 2: colored fire, which was homemade fireworks. It was genuinely and
Speaker 2: sincerely a flash in a pan because you would put
Speaker 2: these different metals in and make for you make gunpowder.
Speaker 2: The little kid would make gunpowder and then depending on
Speaker 2: the chemical or metal that they added, it would burn
Speaker 2: a different color in a pan as a flash. Genuinely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you found another some cool research on like
Speaker 1: just how dangerous some of these chemicals.
Speaker 2: Were, right, Oh yeah, let's talk about those.
Speaker 3: Yeah. What else? What else was in there?
Speaker 2: In some of these sets that came out in the
Speaker 2: twentieth century, there was iodine solution, which sounds kind of innocuous,
Speaker 2: but they figured out over time that you could use
Speaker 2: that to make meth with Okay, you could also if
Speaker 2: you ate two grams of it or more, you would
Speaker 2: probably die. I think ammonium nitrate was in that, which
Speaker 2: is frequently used to make bombs.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What else, Well, one thing you could do that was
Speaker 1: fun is you could make smoke bombs right with that
Speaker 1: potassium nitrate, which is I don't know if you mentioned
Speaker 1: it's also in gunpowder. True, So a lot of these
Speaker 1: experiments were like watch it flame, spark, or boom in
Speaker 1: a small way.
Speaker 2: Another one used to show up with sodium cyanide, which
Speaker 2: is more commonly referred to as cyanide, and you would
Speaker 2: bind two metals like make essentially dissolved gold into water,
Speaker 2: metals into water. It's pretty neat, that's what it's used for.
Speaker 2: But it's also a rapidly acting toxin that can kill
Speaker 2: you dead pretty easily. And this was one of those
Speaker 2: chemicals in the glass vials that arrived in the chemistry
Speaker 2: sets for kids back then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and speaking of glass, or even some chemistry sets
Speaker 1: that had the material and instruction for blowing glass, which
Speaker 1: is no doubt a super cool, awesome thing to learn,
Speaker 1: but it's you know, it's not something it should be
Speaker 1: drying in their bedroom.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, it has to get really hot to
Speaker 2: melt glass enough to blow it. One of my favorites
Speaker 2: is calcium hypochlorite, which is one of the main ingredients
Speaker 2: for chlorine gas, which was I think the first chemical
Speaker 2: weapon to ever be banned by the world. So you
Speaker 2: could make a chemical weapon in your bedroom if you
Speaker 2: knew what you were doing.
Speaker 1: And as we're saying, all this, we should point out
Speaker 1: that these early kits and sets did not offer things
Speaker 1: like eye protection, like not even a little pair of
Speaker 1: like fun goggles, you know, like, hey kid, these are
Speaker 1: cute and fun. You look like a real scientist if
Speaker 1: you wear these, like just didn't come with them. And
Speaker 1: the whole thing with you know that we tied it
Speaker 1: into earlier with magic. A lot of them have like
Speaker 1: hares or like you know, your science experiments you can do.
Speaker 1: But also here's some just really fun, like sort of
Speaker 1: literal magic tricks you can do.
Speaker 2: Right. There was one that's called the magic handkerchief. And
Speaker 2: you take a handkerchief and you put I think blue
Speaker 2: cobalt on it, and as you dry it out, I
Speaker 2: think it turns white. You're no blue, and you can
Speaker 2: change it to white magically by it instructs you to
Speaker 2: ball it up and rub it in your hands for
Speaker 2: a few minutes. Any magic trick that takes a few
Speaker 2: minutes of repetitive motion is not a magic trick worth doing.
Speaker 2: But it's what was great is it said, now here's
Speaker 2: where you have some fun, and then it went on
Speaker 2: to the next instruction. So these these were really mid
Speaker 2: century written instruction booklets. That really captured the time. If
Speaker 2: you think.
Speaker 3: About it, Shall we take a break?
Speaker 2: Oh my, you bet?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 3: That was very insure, but we're doing it anyway. We'll
Speaker 3: be right back.
Speaker 4: We loss so much stuff from Josh and shuck stuff fui.
Speaker 1: All right, So you're getting these chemistry sets. Another big
Speaker 1: part of the whole sort of branding thing for these
Speaker 1: companies making these and this was just sort of big
Speaker 1: back in those days in the nineteen fifties was.
Speaker 3: Like clubs, like kids clubs.
Speaker 1: So if you got a chemistry set, it was a
Speaker 1: pretty good chance it would come with like a membership
Speaker 1: in like a science club, and there could be local
Speaker 1: chapters that you get together with your friends and things
Speaker 1: you could mail in for Probably a magazine is involved,
Speaker 1: like a quarterly magazine. Certainly in the case of kim
Speaker 1: Kraft they had the Science Club and the Kimcraft Chemists.
Speaker 1: Was there was there rag that they sent out, which
Speaker 1: was usually just ads for more stuff to buy, but
Speaker 1: there are they were like kind of fun little stories
Speaker 1: like where a kid would like save the day through
Speaker 1: some cool chemistry experiment. Yeah.
Speaker 2: They seem very Mark Trail esque, Yeah, for sure. So
Speaker 2: in addition to Gilbert was essentially Kimcraft's rival, and Gilbert
Speaker 2: was the company of Alfred Carlton Gilbert, who had invented
Speaker 2: the original Erector Set thirteen that originally was debuted as
Speaker 2: like an engineer's chemistry set. That's what directors were sold
Speaker 2: as is. But so Gilbert was like, well, let's get
Speaker 2: into chemistry too, So they came up with a Gilbert
Speaker 2: Chemistry outfit for boys. So the name of the product
Speaker 2: literally specifies that it's just for boys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it had a little astisk and at the
Speaker 1: very bottom it said must have penis.
Speaker 2: On the label too, Like the picture on the box
Speaker 2: had a little boy with his shirt sleeves rolled up,
Speaker 2: wearing a tie doing his chemistry stuff, like an eight
Speaker 2: year old wearing a tie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is nineteen twenty. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they found an instruction manual, not from the nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty edition but from nineteen thirty six, and this one
Speaker 1: finally did have a warning here and we should read
Speaker 1: this because this is pretty fun. Gilbert Chemistry sets are
Speaker 1: not intended for children who cannot read and understand the
Speaker 1: accompanying instruction books. The sets do not contain dangerous poisons,
Speaker 1: and the chemicals mentioned in this manual are not embraced
Speaker 1: under the term poisons. They're perfectly safe to use if
Speaker 1: handled carefully and intelligently. They're not intended to be taken
Speaker 1: by mouth or swallowed, and no intelligent person would be
Speaker 1: expected to use them for such purposes. So they're shaming.
Speaker 1: At the same time. It is necessary, however, to emphasize
Speaker 1: the fact that carelessness on the part of the experimenter
Speaker 1: can always lead to trouble.
Speaker 2: Yes, and if you ever signed up for Disney Plus,
Speaker 2: you can't sue us if you blow up and burn
Speaker 2: your house.
Speaker 3: Down, exactly.
Speaker 1: And then they have a few tips at the end,
Speaker 1: like you know, never point the open end of a
Speaker 1: test tube that you're heating at anybody. Never just put
Speaker 1: your nose at the end of one while heating to
Speaker 1: smell it, or put your face with your little face
Speaker 1: near it.
Speaker 2: Yep, exactly. So at least Gilbert's this is the thirties,
Speaker 2: mid thirties where Gilbert's like, okay, we need to let
Speaker 2: kids know, like you need to be responsible with this.
Speaker 2: And that was actually I read one of the expectations
Speaker 2: of chemistry sets in the middle of the twentieth century
Speaker 2: that it went to a home populated by a boy
Speaker 2: who had parents that taught that kid responsible stuff, how
Speaker 2: to be responsible, how to handle chemicals correctly, how to
Speaker 2: be safe, how to be smart. That that was kind
Speaker 2: of part and parcel with buying a chemistry set. You
Speaker 2: a parent, didn't just hand it to your kid and say, like,
Speaker 2: leave me alone for a while, like you were supposed
Speaker 2: to be involved, at least initially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at least looking over his shoulder with your least
Speaker 1: pipe in your.
Speaker 2: Mouth and knocking on the door and being like still
Speaker 2: alive in there.
Speaker 3: Right, mom, want you to always knock.
Speaker 1: So we talked a little bit about the sort of
Speaker 1: sexism involved with all this stuff. Is only marketed to boys.
Speaker 1: Pictures of boys literally on the package for boys. In
Speaker 1: some cases that was just the deal, was like boys
Speaker 1: were scientists. Girls were not considered for science. That is
Speaker 1: still a problem. There are so many initiatives these days
Speaker 1: to get young girls into at a young age, very successfully,
Speaker 1: you know, in a lot of cases, but it's still
Speaker 1: a challenge to be a woman in the world of science.
Speaker 1: I think we've heard from plenty of listeners who have
Speaker 1: verified that. But in the nineteen twenties they did the
Speaker 1: Porter Chypical Chemical Company did say, hey, we're some of
Speaker 1: these things to boys. What about the girls, And they
Speaker 1: were like, oh, how about Sashet craft the girl's sachet outfit,
Speaker 1: which was chemistry in that it was a way to
Speaker 1: mix perfumes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, making flowery smells from aromatic powders.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It was basically a perfum set.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. And they're still in use today. In Who
Speaker 2: Do Love Potions? And I was looking at some of these,
Speaker 2: and the names of the ones that I could find
Speaker 2: were confusion, Destroy Everything is one of the potions. Follow
Speaker 2: me gal was another one.
Speaker 3: No, I'll have that.
Speaker 2: So you want to steer clear of people using who
Speaker 2: Do Love Potions on you because there's no telling what
Speaker 2: they'll make you do is essentially the thinking behind it.
Speaker 2: But they're made from sashe powders as well, That's why
Speaker 2: I say that. I don't know if that was clear.
Speaker 1: Eventually, in the nineteen sixties, Gilbert finally was like, all right,
Speaker 1: let's make a four girls chemistry set. But even then,
Speaker 1: in the books and stuff, it was like, so you
Speaker 1: too can become a lab technician. A lab technician, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like not, you know, they weren't encouraging you to reach
Speaker 1: for the stars and become a scientist.
Speaker 2: No, it was like, so you could learn what you're
Speaker 2: doing and go assist boy chemists, the real.
Speaker 3: Kind, right, exactly, it's so nuts boo.
Speaker 2: So this was in the sixties. You said that at
Speaker 2: least chemistry sets for girls came out, even if they
Speaker 2: were still derogatory. That was the golden era of chemistry sets,
Speaker 2: the fifties to the sixties. Usually about the early to
Speaker 2: mid sixties, they say.
Speaker 3: We love a golden age.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this was definitely it. And I've seen in
Speaker 2: multiple places that the reason why this was the golden
Speaker 2: age of chemistry sets was because this was a time
Speaker 2: when America in particular was feeling pretty good about science.
Speaker 2: Not only had America been the first to come up
Speaker 2: with the bomb, we were also making things like nylon.
Speaker 2: We were making more durable goods out of plastics, like
Speaker 2: science was improving people's lives, and at the heart of
Speaker 2: this was chemistry. So there was a real desire to
Speaker 2: keep the party going by creating the next generation of chemists,
Speaker 2: by really going all in onto chemistry sets, and so
Speaker 2: they started selling even better than they ever had before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the two slogans changed in the fifties and sixties.
Speaker 1: For Kim Kraft, they changed it to porter Science prepares
Speaker 1: young America for world leadership, and Gilbert responded in kind
Speaker 1: with today's adventures in science will create tomorrow's America. And
Speaker 1: it was this idea. I think even a c. Gilbert
Speaker 1: the Founder like included a note that said hello boys,
Speaker 1: that said, Hello boys, the need for chemistry is greater
Speaker 1: now than any point in our country's history. This Gilbert
Speaker 1: Chemistry set may well be the means of launching you
Speaker 1: on a useful and well paying career. So it was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is a toy, but if you're interested in science,
Speaker 1: just wait, because there's a career out there waiting for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you like making things catch on fire, wait
Speaker 2: until they pay you money to make things catch on fire.
Speaker 2: You're gonna really like it. And so things just kind
Speaker 2: of started to get like anything they could throw at
Speaker 2: the wall. Because they were selling so many of these,
Speaker 2: they were willing to try a lot more than just
Speaker 2: the standard chemistry set. And one of the ones that
Speaker 2: came out, chuck In I think nineteen fifty is widely considered,
Speaker 2: at least by some the world's most dangerous toy.
Speaker 3: It was it bag of glass.
Speaker 2: It was even worse than that, although I don't know
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, I think bag of
Speaker 2: glass might be worse.
Speaker 1: That, of of course, was from the great Saturday Night
Speaker 1: Live from the seventies, think dan Ackroyd. But we did,
Speaker 1: or maybe you did, back in the day when we
Speaker 1: were tasked with doing what are they called, what do
Speaker 1: we call them image galleries? And you did something on
Speaker 1: dangerous toys, and I think I remember like this was
Speaker 1: in there, because I remember we talked about it, either
Speaker 1: there or in a maybe a podcast or one of
Speaker 1: the videos we used to do about the Atomic energy lab.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it had real uranium in it.
Speaker 2: It did not only did it have four vials of
Speaker 2: actual uranium or super radioactive uranium or well, I should
Speaker 2: say actual radioactive uranium ore. There are also three different
Speaker 2: sources of alpha, beta and gamma particle radiation too, So
Speaker 2: this box was like quite radioactive. It was a legit,
Speaker 2: real deal science box. It had a Geiger counter in it,
Speaker 2: thank god. It had something called the spintherroscope. You could
Speaker 2: look through it's almost like a seeing eyeglass. Now what
Speaker 2: are they called like that, like a captain would like
Speaker 2: pull out the not a telescope.
Speaker 3: Like a sextant.
Speaker 2: No, it's like the telescope that's small and pocket sized
Speaker 2: that telescopes into a smaller version of itself.
Speaker 3: I mean think it's called telescope in it whatever.
Speaker 2: So it's like that, but you can actually watch radioactive
Speaker 2: isotopes decaying under this thing. There was also a cloud
Speaker 2: chamber in there, which is really impressive that they had
Speaker 2: cloud chambers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, is this the thing you sent? Yes? I did
Speaker 3: not get a chance to look over this, so feel free.
Speaker 2: Okay. So a cloud chamber is a specific kind of
Speaker 2: like flask or vial that's set up to hold alcohol
Speaker 2: vapor that in some way shape or form I guess
Speaker 2: through magic. You can see the trails of radioactive particles
Speaker 2: moving through the alcohol vapor, very similar to like a
Speaker 2: contrail from an airplane, if you believe that those are
Speaker 2: actually contrails. Yeah, and the particles, the lower, lesser active
Speaker 2: radioactive particles would kind of zigzag and make little cute lines,
Speaker 2: but that's because they were actually being slowed down by
Speaker 2: the alcohol vapor.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 2: Really strong ones would make a nice bold straight line
Speaker 2: through there, and you could just see all these little
Speaker 2: trails of radioactive particles show up in your own personal
Speaker 2: cloud chamber that came in this play set. I know,
Speaker 2: it was really impressive.
Speaker 1: Well, the ones that came with uranium, they had you know, booklets.
Speaker 1: One was called Prospecting for Uranium that taught you how
Speaker 1: to mine a radioactive or so you're thinking, like all right,
Speaker 1: like how literally how dangerous was this? There have been
Speaker 1: modern calculations about, you know, what was contained in these boxes,
Speaker 1: and suppose that the amount of radiation from the uranium
Speaker 1: in one of these sets equaled about a day of
Speaker 1: UV exposure from the sun. So it's not the most
Speaker 1: dangerous thing in the world, but it is pretty funny
Speaker 1: that it came with like actual uranium, right.
Speaker 2: I couldn't find an answer though, like over what period
Speaker 2: of time was it day's worth of UV exposure? Like
Speaker 2: an hour if you spent the day with this thing,
Speaker 2: Like I couldn't quite nail it down. But I'm from
Speaker 2: the context that everybody describes it, and it sounds fairly harmless.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's exposure, but like what if it's on
Speaker 1: your skin or gets in your body somehow, your your.
Speaker 3: Teeth, it can't be good.
Speaker 2: So I saw that they only sold about five thousand
Speaker 2: of them, and that it wasn't There's a great Atlas
Speaker 2: Obscure video on this where they talked to a curator
Speaker 2: at a science museum who opens one of these and
Speaker 2: just talks about it, and she said that they were
Speaker 2: discontinued after two years, not because of safety concerns, but
Speaker 2: because they didn't sell very many. Because it was about
Speaker 2: five hundred or something dollars in today's money for these things,
Speaker 2: so most parents weren't like, sure, I'll buy you this,
Speaker 2: you know, atomic lab for five hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And here's the thing, it was just kind of fun.
Speaker 1: We won't read through all these quotes, but a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, legit Nobel winning chemistry chemists over the
Speaker 1: years got their start in chemistry sets. I imagine a
Speaker 1: lot of real deal scientists and chemists had these things
Speaker 1: when they were kids. And we'll read one from Oliver Sacks,
Speaker 1: the neurologist and author, said, I do not think there
Speaker 1: can be any adequate substitute for having a chemistry set
Speaker 1: or a little chemistry lab and doing experiments oneself, thinking
Speaker 1: them out, taking responsibility for them, and occasionally facing risks too.
Speaker 1: So Oliver Sacks talking about risk was one of the
Speaker 1: big sort of cells of chemistry sets for kids, like
Speaker 1: a little bit of danger involved. You know, they were
Speaker 1: fun and all, but I think it was that little
Speaker 1: bit of like, you know, you are making fire, you
Speaker 1: are making things go boom or smoke. That was one
Speaker 1: of the things that appealed to kids and probably still does, yeah.
Speaker 2: For sure. And the problem is is that over time,
Speaker 2: so like kids who were like, I'm really into this
Speaker 2: and I need to learn to be a responsible chemists
Speaker 2: because I want to grow up to be a chemist.
Speaker 2: Over like, there were also kids that got these that
Speaker 2: were not that interested in being a chemist. They just
Speaker 2: wanted to blow things up. And then I think also
Speaker 2: there were kids who were responsible but just had accidents,
Speaker 2: and so there were reports of people burning down their
Speaker 2: family house with these chemistry sets are injuring themselves. And
Speaker 2: that kind of coincided with a couple of things. One
Speaker 2: this increasing interest in protecting kids from toys, and then
Speaker 2: two also a greater emphasis on things like environmental pollutants
Speaker 2: and toxins, and that whole like love of chemistry that
Speaker 2: really carried everybody in the fifties and early sixties was
Speaker 2: starting to be questioned and like, exactly where these chemicals
Speaker 2: doing to us? So you put those two things combined,
Speaker 2: and chemistry sets started.
Speaker 3: To take a hit, Yeah for sure.
Speaker 1: In sixty six, Congress passed the Child Protection Act, which
Speaker 1: you know, all of a sudden you could ban a
Speaker 1: toy that had something dangerous or hazardous in there. A
Speaker 1: couple of years later, the US Department of Health, Education,
Speaker 1: and Welfare they estimated that toys, just all toys, caused
Speaker 1: about seven hundred thousand injuries a year. So more regulations
Speaker 1: were passed in the late sixties and early seventies seventies
Speaker 1: for like you said, just protecting kids from dangers and
Speaker 1: toys and what these toys were made of, in the
Speaker 1: case of chemistry sets, like the chemicals that were in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, like this increasing concern among parents and what
Speaker 2: are in these chemistry sets led to decline in sales,
Speaker 2: and in fact, Porter Chemical and Gilbert the two rivals
Speaker 2: who've made Chemcraft and Gilbert Chemistry sets, were bought by
Speaker 2: a toy maker named Gabriel Toys. You might recognize that
Speaker 2: name from Othello Trouble. The pottery craft activity, a little
Speaker 2: set where you could make your own pottery You remember
Speaker 2: that it was this little pottery wheel.
Speaker 3: And probably remember the box.
Speaker 2: You can you definitely would, but you could recreate that
Speaker 2: scene from Ghost.
Speaker 3: But for cheap Yeah, yeah, as a teenager too.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Gabriel they bought those two in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: and by the eighties they were like, no chemistry set.
Speaker 2: You just couldn't sell them. Some companies went on like, no,
Speaker 2: we're going to keep the flame going, but they really
Speaker 2: really watered them down starting in the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, and that I mean, I guess my
Speaker 1: brother would have had one probably from the seventies, so
Speaker 1: it may have still been a little bit legit. But yeah,
Speaker 1: in the eighties they started literally watering them down, watering
Speaker 1: down the chemicals. Things you know, became plastic, like you
Speaker 1: didn't get glass test tubes and metal scales and stuff
Speaker 1: like that anymore. Like you know, the old kids were
Speaker 1: just sort of smaller condensed versions of like the real deal,
Speaker 1: and that all changed. They just became cheaper, kind of
Speaker 1: like everything else. I think in two thousand and one
Speaker 1: there was a recall of a set called Professor Wacko's
Speaker 1: Exothermic Exuberance that had glycerine and potassium.
Speaker 3: What is that work?
Speaker 2: Manging it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, great, and that could cause things to catch
Speaker 1: on fire and spontaneously combust. These these this particular kid
Speaker 1: had containers with removable lids, but they weren't labeled, so
Speaker 1: kids were mislabeling things or just getting them confused basically
Speaker 1: because there were no labels. And there were two separate
Speaker 1: house fire incidents. So that one was recalled and that
Speaker 1: was I mean that was in the early two thousands.
Speaker 1: It was surprising those were still around.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think those people try to throw back to
Speaker 2: like the real deal and it just didn't quite work.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: There was another one that's YESI Fingerprinting Examination Kit, which
Speaker 2: sounds extremely innocuous, but it was recalled in two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven because they found out that the fingerprint powder
Speaker 2: that you used to dust for prints with had asbestos
Speaker 2: in it. It was up to five percent asbestos, which
Speaker 2: is obviously I think a mesothelioma causing carcinogen. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: that was like no, and parents were like, what are
Speaker 2: you guys doing. Stop selling our kids, Like, we're clearly
Speaker 2: into products safety, Stop selling our kids this stuff. So
Speaker 2: a toymaker named oh, I don't know who made it,
Speaker 2: but they came out with a set called Chemistry sixty
Speaker 2: and they were like, watch this. This is sixty fun
Speaker 2: activities with no chemicals.
Speaker 3: In other words, boring this. This is the irony here.
Speaker 1: Despite that it had no chemicals, it had two kinds
Speaker 1: of safety goggles, the goggles and those little clear safety
Speaker 1: glasses made out of whatever they're made out of, the
Speaker 1: chat non chat or something.
Speaker 2: And to fold it up, nanny who came out of
Speaker 2: the box to hover while all of these experiments are
Speaker 2: going on, and you could get the items that you needed,
Speaker 2: Like you did need some chemicals, but these are like
Speaker 2: kitchen level chemicals like vinegar, baking, soda, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: And I thought that was kind of reminiscent. Remember, Dave
Speaker 2: came up with a bunch of quotes of Nobel scientists
Speaker 2: who credit chemistry sets for like increasing their or starting
Speaker 2: their interest in science. There was one other scientist named
Speaker 2: Kerrie Mullis who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in
Speaker 2: ninety three, who said that their objective with their chemistry
Speaker 2: set was to figure out what things I might put
Speaker 2: together to cause an explosion, and that they discovered whatever
Speaker 2: chemicals might be missing, they could buy them at the
Speaker 2: local drug store or hardware store, and so like that's
Speaker 2: this is like the antithesis of that, Rather than being
Speaker 2: like I need more explosive stuff or I need this
Speaker 2: other thing to make this explosion happen. I'm going to
Speaker 2: go down to the drug store hardware store.
Speaker 3: This was.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go to the kitchen and make a
Speaker 2: baking soda and vinegar volcano in this chemistry set that
Speaker 2: my parents bought me, and then I'm going to go
Speaker 2: to sleep and maybe hopefully never wake up.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Dave did a little research, though, and found that there
Speaker 1: are some pretty good ones today that you can still get.
Speaker 1: There are some companies that are, you know, trying to
Speaker 1: make a safe version of a real deal chemistry set
Speaker 1: these days. This one called I don't know, it's TIMS
Speaker 1: or Themes in this case, and Cosmos with a K.
Speaker 1: It's called the kim C three thousand, two hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty bucks plus money for chemicals, So it better be
Speaker 1: good for that kind of dough.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It got best overall Chemistry set by the Wall
Speaker 2: Street Journal in two thousand and six. I didn't know
Speaker 2: the Wall Street Journal rated such things.
Speaker 3: But it makes steen years ago.
Speaker 2: It does make sense that they would rate it though,
Speaker 2: because these some of the legit chemistry sets sold today. Therefore,
Speaker 2: like homeschoolers like, who need this kind of stuff? And
Speaker 2: in fact, if you want to plunk down six hundred
Speaker 2: and forty five simoleans, you can get a chemistry set
Speaker 2: that covers an entire year of eleventh grade chemistry. Oh wow,
Speaker 2: pretty neat. I also saw one other reason that chemistry
Speaker 2: sets kind of got watered down over the years are
Speaker 2: meth labs. People were finding like they could actually buy
Speaker 2: these things and use them to make meth. Right, So
Speaker 2: there was another there was another prong to like be like,
Speaker 2: we need to really stop making these legit chemistry sets. Yeah,
Speaker 2: got anything else?
Speaker 3: I got nothing else?
Speaker 1: You know, support support science for your for your kids,
Speaker 1: little little girls, little boys, get them, get them a
Speaker 1: chemistry set.
Speaker 3: Very nice, That's what I say.
Speaker 2: That's right. Since Chuck gave us a nice PSA, it's
Speaker 2: time of course for a listener, mate.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call this all caught up. Hey, everybody
Speaker 1: got hooked on your show. In twenty nineteen, after a
Speaker 1: few weeks of listening, I decided I had to listen
Speaker 1: to all of it, and after five years, I finally
Speaker 1: have completed that task. Just finished listening to the Judas
Speaker 1: Priest suicide trial during a morning trail run, and now
Speaker 1: I feel like I have a little void in my life.
Speaker 1: You guys having to wait patiently throughout the week for
Speaker 1: new content. I often listen for hours on end during
Speaker 1: trail runs training for ultra marathons. By the way, Josh
Speaker 1: has many times called them ultrathons, which never fails to
Speaker 1: give me a chuckle.
Speaker 3: Ultrathon is that another thing?
Speaker 2: I think they're called ultra marathons. Ultrathon is like a
Speaker 2: bad guy on in a character Yeah, and some Japanese anime.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I like ultrathon.
Speaker 1: Your voices and content, guys, always give me keep me
Speaker 1: in a positive mood, even when I'm at the point
Speaker 1: of exhaustion. You've been with me and my wife through
Speaker 1: some big life events, our marriage, multiple cross country moves,
Speaker 1: new jobs.
Speaker 3: And now a new baby in a few weeks.
Speaker 1: And by the time this comes out, that baby will
Speaker 1: be around, I would imagine, because we're ahead by a
Speaker 1: few weeks at this point.
Speaker 3: So keep up the great work, guys.
Speaker 1: I can continue to share this and enjoy it with
Speaker 1: my family as it grows by one. Maybe a long shot,
Speaker 1: but I'd love to see a live show up here
Speaker 1: in Halifax, Nova Scotia. That you get a couple one
Speaker 1: hundred people in a room here, that's for Matt. Well, Matt,
Speaker 1: we got a couple of hundred people in a room
Speaker 1: in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we can't get worse than that, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd rather go to Halifax than have a hometown
Speaker 1: show be under sold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got any barns in Halifax, Matt. That we
Speaker 2: can do is.
Speaker 3: Showing that Bet Matt has a barn.
Speaker 2: Well. Congratulations in advance retroactively to you and your family
Speaker 2: for your baby's birth. And if you want to get
Speaker 2: in touch with us like Matt did and tell us
Speaker 2: how much we've kept you going on your ultrathons, you
Speaker 2: can do so by sending us an email to Stuff
Speaker 2: podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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