Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. I will talk about
Speaker 1: the genesis of this episode on Friday's episode, because it's
Speaker 1: very silly, but it was born, like so many of
Speaker 1: our topics, out of just seeing something and asking off
Speaker 1: handedly when was that invented? Which I do a lot.
Speaker 1: This led me to look that up and it came
Speaker 1: as a surprise regarding its timing, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about that thing, but I also knew that that
Speaker 1: was not a media enough topic for a whole episode,
Speaker 1: so I decided I would group it with some other
Speaker 1: inventions that were made well before I would have thought,
Speaker 1: probably most people would have thought. There are so many
Speaker 1: things in our modern world that people presume our fairly
Speaker 1: recent inventions that aren't. We talk about things like that
Speaker 1: all the time, and often that is the result of
Speaker 1: like what I call this sort of present tense hubris,
Speaker 1: where we can't imagine another time or culture needing or
Speaker 1: inventing the things that we use today. But I feel
Speaker 1: like the three things that we're talking about in this
Speaker 1: instance seem, at least to my mind, pretty valid in
Speaker 1: presuming that they are more modern than they are, in
Speaker 1: part because they all have close associations with the recent past.
Speaker 1: One of them, the thing that inspired this episode, is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite inventions of all time. So for
Speaker 1: the first thing we're going to talk about, we have
Speaker 1: to go all the way back to the early Common
Speaker 1: era and a scientist known as Heron of Alexandria. Some
Speaker 1: texts give his name as Hero. He's sometimes described as
Speaker 1: being Egyptian because he lived in Alexandria. Other times he's
Speaker 1: described as Greek. Some accounts list both. He was likely
Speaker 1: born in Greece. He lived at a time of Greco
Speaker 1: Roman dominance throughout the Mediterranean, and Egypt was a Roman province.
Speaker 1: But all of the accounts agree he was very, very smart.
Speaker 1: He was well educated. He understood and wrote about mathematics
Speaker 1: and mechanics from all over the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. We
Speaker 1: don't have a whole lot of biographical information about him,
Speaker 1: though he's believed to have been born sometime early in
Speaker 1: the first century. We know he was alive in the
Speaker 1: year sixty two because he mentioned an eclipse in his
Speaker 1: writing that's known to have taken place that year. Everything
Speaker 1: else we know about Heron is what he recorded in
Speaker 1: his writings. He wrote a lot about mathematics and mechanics,
Speaker 1: but nothing autobiographical. Yeah, if you look up the dates
Speaker 1: associated with his life, they are all over the map.
Speaker 1: There are people that will put his date of birth
Speaker 1: at around the year zero or one, and other people
Speaker 1: that will put his death at around one hundred. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's possible, but not super probable at this
Speaker 1: point in time that he could have lived through the
Speaker 1: entire first century. But in any case, his work is
Speaker 1: influential in our lives in a number of small ways.
Speaker 1: For example, if you've ever used the idiom that someone
Speaker 1: has made one hundred and eighty degree turn in changing
Speaker 1: their position or their opinion on something, you can thank Heron,
Speaker 1: at least in part. The idea of a circle being
Speaker 1: divided by three hundred and sixty units known as degrees,
Speaker 1: actually originated in Babylonia, which used a base sixty system
Speaker 1: for mathematics, but Heron is credited with adopting it and
Speaker 1: teaching it widely in the technical school he founded in
Speaker 1: Alexandria and writing about it in his books. But Beyond that,
Speaker 1: his own work predates a lot of similar work, often
Speaker 1: by hundreds of years. His math writings include Mechanica, which
Speaker 1: included information about the workings of levers and how they
Speaker 1: can be used to bear loads, as well as velocity
Speaker 1: and the use of friction discs to create very ratios.
Speaker 1: These discs or the basics of the kinds of drives
Speaker 1: that would be described as transmissions today. They can transfer
Speaker 1: torque to rotating parts at variable speeds depending on the
Speaker 1: ratio selected in Heron's writings. All of this information was
Speaker 1: intended to help architects manage building projects by providing them
Speaker 1: ways to more efficiently transport and lift heavy loads in construction.
Speaker 1: His book Dioptera is essentially a manual for measurement. It
Speaker 1: includes descriptions of various measuring instruments, including a diopter. It
Speaker 1: also included a method to measure distance traveled by a wheel.
Speaker 1: A lot of this book is about how to measure
Speaker 1: distance in the interest of land surveying purposes. Heron's three
Speaker 1: volume work Metrica was all about geometry that covered topics
Speaker 1: like the measurement of geometric figures. There are formulas for
Speaker 1: using the lengths of a triangle's sides to calculate its area,
Speaker 1: and a method for finding the square root of a
Speaker 1: non square number. Metrica was actually lost for a very
Speaker 1: very long time. This book was mentioned in the writings
Speaker 1: of Utosius of Ascalon, who lived in the late fifth
Speaker 1: and early sixth centuries, but its contents were a mystery.
Speaker 1: Then in the eighteen sixties there was a mention of
Speaker 1: an eleventh century manuscript in a library in Constantinople that
Speaker 1: might contain some of Heron's writings. But this wasn't a
Speaker 1: library just anybody could visit. There were hoops to jump
Speaker 1: through just to get permission to enter. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety six that German archaeologist and head of the
Speaker 1: Royal Museum of Berlin, Richard Shone, was able to identify
Speaker 1: that a copy of Metrica was indeed contained in that manuscript.
Speaker 1: Shona's Sun Hermann published the first critical edition of Metrica
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh three. Haron wrote other books, and even
Speaker 1: more have been attributed to him that are almost certainly
Speaker 1: not his work, But the book that's most Germane today
Speaker 1: is Pneumatics. In that work, he describes a variety of
Speaker 1: mechanical devices featuring so many concepts we might think of
Speaker 1: as fairly modern gas power, water power, steam power, atmospheric pressure,
Speaker 1: and pumps, among others. But the section related to today's
Speaker 1: topic is automata. He offers a little bit of multi
Speaker 1: entry for this episode because he invented a lot of
Speaker 1: things that were far far ahead of his time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he also, just to avoid confusion, did also write another
Speaker 1: book called Automata. But the things we're talking about are
Speaker 1: in this book pneumatics, and the first one that we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about is the eolapile, which is today
Speaker 1: sometimes also called a hero motor named after him. So
Speaker 1: Heron had concluded that air is elastic and that it
Speaker 1: consists of particles that move relative to one another. He
Speaker 1: was essentially onto the idea of airflow and air mechanics,
Speaker 1: although he didn't have it all figured out, and these
Speaker 1: are concepts that Irish chemist robber Boyle was still working
Speaker 1: to understand when he created what is often credited as
Speaker 1: the first functioning air pump in the mid sixteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and Heron's understanding of airflow and how it could be
Speaker 1: impacted by heat led him to develop a rudimentary steam engine,
Speaker 1: the eola pile is something that modern teachers and hobbyists
Speaker 1: recreate all the time, but there's a slight difference in
Speaker 1: the way that these modern versions function compared to the
Speaker 1: one that Heron described in pneumatics. Modern variations often consist
Speaker 1: of a hollow sphere filled with water, which is suspended
Speaker 1: over heat source by two arms. As that water heats up,
Speaker 1: the steam is released through two short armlike valves on
Speaker 1: the sphere's equator, and that causes it to rotate. So
Speaker 1: this is a rudimentary steam turbine that creates a rotary motion.
Speaker 1: But in Heron's original version, that water is actually contained
Speaker 1: in a base vessel. He describes it as a call
Speaker 1: caldron with a fitted lid that the ball is suspended over.
Speaker 1: From that cauldron are two tubes. These are the ones
Speaker 1: that the sphere is suspended with, but they're hollow tubes
Speaker 1: that carry steam from the cauldron as it's heated and
Speaker 1: into the sphere, which builds up until it releases that
Speaker 1: steam through the equatorial valves, and that's what results in
Speaker 1: the spinning motion. Similar mechanics would not be implemented for
Speaker 1: practical use until the seventeenth century, but Heron's machine had
Speaker 1: no practical use. It was not intended for any type
Speaker 1: of job. It was built as an exploration and examination
Speaker 1: of the effects of heat and air and steam combining,
Speaker 1: and in the first century it was considered nothing more
Speaker 1: than a fancy toy. There just was not a vision
Speaker 1: of how this technology could be used. Yeah, I kind
Speaker 1: of think of it as like the mechanical desk toys
Speaker 1: that executives might have on their tests, Like this is neat,
Speaker 1: look at spins when I heat it up. But it
Speaker 1: could have spletely change the world if they had been
Speaker 1: like I bet we could apply this to a vehicle.
Speaker 1: The other hair and invention, which is similar in concept
Speaker 1: to modern machines and really is the focus of like
Speaker 1: the precursor to a modern machine in terms of the
Speaker 1: context of this episode, is called in his book sacrificial vessel,
Speaker 1: which flows only when money is introduced. This was a
Speaker 1: very rudimentary vending machine, and here is how Heron described it. Quote,
Speaker 1: if into certain sacrificial vessels, a coin of five drachms
Speaker 1: be thrown, water shall flow out and surround them. Let
Speaker 1: the example diagram be a sacrificial vessel or treasure chest
Speaker 1: having an opening in its mouth, and in the chest
Speaker 1: let there be a vessel containing water and a small
Speaker 1: box from which a pipe conducts out of the chest.
Speaker 1: Near the vessel place a vertical rod about which turns
Speaker 1: a lever widening into the plate parallel to the bottom
Speaker 1: of the vessel, while at the extremity is and a
Speaker 1: lid which fits into the box so that no water
Speaker 1: can flow through the tube. This lid, however, must be
Speaker 1: heavier than the plate, but lighter than the plate and
Speaker 1: coin combined. When the coin is thrown through the mouth,
Speaker 1: it will fall upon the plate, and preponderating it will
Speaker 1: turn the beam and raise the lid of the box
Speaker 1: so that the water will flow. But if the coin
Speaker 1: falls off, the lid will descend and close the box
Speaker 1: so that the discharge ceases. More simply, this setup had
Speaker 1: a plate attached to a lever that would tilt just
Speaker 1: enough to open a valve that allowed water to flow out.
Speaker 1: The coin would slide off the plate as it tilted,
Speaker 1: and once it fell off, the lever would return to
Speaker 1: its original position, closing the valve. This vessel looked sort
Speaker 1: of like a semovar. That's a metal urn used to
Speaker 1: make and serve tea, and its intent was to dispense
Speaker 1: holy water at temples. He also created another vessel that
Speaker 1: would dispense wine as water was poured into a separate compartment,
Speaker 1: but as the water dispenser was strictly transactional with money,
Speaker 1: it's more of a true vending machine. The next big
Speaker 1: step in vending machines did not happen until London eighteen eighties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: coming up, we're going to talk about a very ancient
Speaker 1: invention intended to make the world a more pleasant smelling place.
Speaker 1: But first we will pause for a sponsor break. For
Speaker 1: a lot of people today, it is very normal to
Speaker 1: have a small tin or other container of breath mints
Speaker 1: in their bag or pocket. But breath mints are very
Speaker 1: far from new. The herbs in the mint family, which
Speaker 1: is lemiakie, are as anyone who's ever grown one, very
Speaker 1: hardy perennials. It is in fact harder to control them
Speaker 1: than to get them started outside. They will often appear
Speaker 1: to die back completely in cold temperatures and then pop
Speaker 1: up a new in warm weather, and they bread lake crazy.
Speaker 1: Because of their very assertive nature as a plant that
Speaker 1: spreads easily, and because it grows almost anywhere the origin
Speaker 1: of mint, the plant seems to be completely unclear. If
Speaker 1: you look it up, you will find texts that say
Speaker 1: that it originated in any number of areas, including Asia,
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean, Europe, and Africa. Mint has been used in
Speaker 1: a lot of cultures as part of food traditions and
Speaker 1: for its fresh, bright aroma. Blindey the Elder, who lived
Speaker 1: in the first century, had a lot to say about
Speaker 1: mint in his writings the Natural History. This isn't precisely
Speaker 1: what we're talking about today in terms of invention, but
Speaker 1: we are going to read a number of quotes from
Speaker 1: that writing to illustrate just how commonly mint was used
Speaker 1: and for a wide range of purposes. Pliny knew how
Speaker 1: easy it was to grow mint, noting quote wild mint,
Speaker 1: cat mint, ondieve, and penny royal will grow even without cultivation.
Speaker 1: That isn't the only mint of its heartiness in the
Speaker 1: Natural History. Pliny also writes quote, the mint that is
Speaker 1: used in the dishes at rustic entertainments pervades the tables
Speaker 1: far and wide with its agreeable odor. When once planted,
Speaker 1: it lasts a considerable length of time. It bears too,
Speaker 1: a strong resemblance to pennyroyal, a property of which is,
Speaker 1: as mentioned by us, more than once to flour when
Speaker 1: kept in our larders. So this also suggests that even
Speaker 1: when you're not taking care of mint is a cultivated plant,
Speaker 1: it can and will still grow on its o Pliny
Speaker 1: writes of mint being used as an antidote for poison. Quote,
Speaker 1: leaves of wild mint are kept dried and reduced to
Speaker 1: a fine powder as a remedy for poisons of every description.
Speaker 1: Spread on the ground or burnt, this plant has the
Speaker 1: effect of driving away scorpions. He also comments on its
Speaker 1: flavorful nature and claims that it has a benefit to milk,
Speaker 1: writing quote, the very smell of mint ree that meets
Speaker 1: the spirits and its flavor gives a remarkable zest to food.
Speaker 1: Hence it is that it is so generally an ingredient
Speaker 1: in our sauces. It has the effect of preventing milk
Speaker 1: from turning sour or curdling and thickening. Hence it is
Speaker 1: that it is so generally put into milk use for drinking,
Speaker 1: to prevent any danger of persons being choked by it
Speaker 1: in a curdled state. So much yuck about this, heads up,
Speaker 1: You cannot keep milk from going bad by adding mint
Speaker 1: to it. At best, it might for a little while
Speaker 1: mask the sourness of milk that is in his very
Speaker 1: early as stages of going bad. But also choking on
Speaker 1: milk that's super curdled just seems like you weren't paying attention.
Speaker 1: Yuck across the board. If you are about to give
Speaker 1: a big speech, Pliny suggest drinking mint tea quote the
Speaker 1: juice of mint is good for the voice when a
Speaker 1: person is about to engage in a contest of eloquence,
Speaker 1: but only when taken just before. Pliny included a lot
Speaker 1: of treatments that could be made with mint in his writing.
Speaker 1: There are twenty remedies that can be made with wild mint,
Speaker 1: and forty one from cultivated mint. And then outside of those,
Speaker 1: he noted how pleasant it could be simply to eat it. Quote.
Speaker 1: If the air is inhaled by a person when eating peppermint,
Speaker 1: he will be sensible of a cold feeling in the mouth.
Speaker 1: It's the York peppermint patty spiel, just with the mint
Speaker 1: at its base. But Pliny's writing about mint was drawing
Speaker 1: on cultural knowledge of it that had been circulating for
Speaker 1: hundreds of years already, and the use that we're focusing
Speaker 1: on is as a cure for bad breath, although I
Speaker 1: will say mint is not called out specifically in what
Speaker 1: we're about to talk about, but there is this term
Speaker 1: that's like general herbs available, and we know at the
Speaker 1: time that mint was growing very readily in this area,
Speaker 1: so presumably it was one of the herbs included. Even today,
Speaker 1: there are so many causes for breath odor that it
Speaker 1: can actually be hard to identify what the cause is
Speaker 1: in a given person. Obviously, good oral hygiene can help
Speaker 1: prevent the growth of bacteria that's often associated with foul breath,
Speaker 1: but there are a lot of other causes of bad breath.
Speaker 1: If you have dry mouth, you're more prone to it,
Speaker 1: or if your diet includes certain foods, you might have
Speaker 1: bad breath, even if you're great at brushing and flossing.
Speaker 1: Various health conditions can also lead to breath that smells
Speaker 1: less than fresh, and this has been a problem since
Speaker 1: humans existed. But we are jumping all the way back
Speaker 1: to ancient Egypt and one of their solutions for yuckie breath.
Speaker 1: We talked a bit about dentistry and ancient Egypt, and
Speaker 1: our two part episode on the history of dentistry. In
Speaker 1: May of twenty twenty two, in part one of the episode,
Speaker 1: we discussed how the Ebers Papyrus included information on packing teeth,
Speaker 1: basically doing fillings, regrowing gum tissue, and even putting rudimentary
Speaker 1: bridgework into the mouths of patience. It wasn't a time
Speaker 1: where there was no denise care, but that care was
Speaker 1: not as advanced as the care you would get today.
Speaker 1: That means that even people who had the means to
Speaker 1: access dental care were almost certainly going to develop some
Speaker 1: kind of problem which could result in bad breath. And
Speaker 1: as we mentioned just a moment ago, there are plenty
Speaker 1: of other things that can cause breath issues, and the
Speaker 1: Ebers Papyrus there was a treatment for that, and that
Speaker 1: is breath mins, invented by the ancient Egyptians. The actual entry,
Speaker 1: which to be clear we obviously only have from a translation,
Speaker 1: initially begins as an air freshener for the home, and
Speaker 1: that reads as follows quote substances to use in order
Speaker 1: to make pleasant the smell of the house or of
Speaker 1: the clothes dried mirr elderberries, incense, cyprus resin of aloes,
Speaker 1: sebit resin kalmus from the land tah in Asia in
Speaker 1: a coon grain mastics directs, crush a grind, make into
Speaker 1: one and put on the fire another for the woman
Speaker 1: to make they're out these ingredients. According to the other instructions,
Speaker 1: put in honey, cook, mix, form into little balls. They
Speaker 1: shall fumigate with them. It is also worthwhile to make
Speaker 1: mouthpills out of them to make the smell of the
Speaker 1: mouth agreeable. So basically, combine various good smelling things that
Speaker 1: you might have on hand, cook them in honey, and
Speaker 1: form that into tablets. These probably we're not super tasty,
Speaker 1: and also they don't really contain any mint, at least
Speaker 1: according to this list. But the mention of calamus is interesting.
Speaker 1: It is referring to calamus, which comes up in other
Speaker 1: papyri from ancient Egypt. Commonly it's known as sweet flag.
Speaker 1: It is toxic and has psychoactive chemical components, So maybe
Speaker 1: it just made people think their breath smell better. Definitely
Speaker 1: a far cry from the many minty options for breath
Speaker 1: that there are today. So by the time that that
Speaker 1: Pliny was writing several hundred years later, they had figured
Speaker 1: out the mint could be involved in this whole thing.
Speaker 1: To keep your breath delightful. The next invention we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about involves various sparkly things, and we're going
Speaker 1: to get to that right after we hear from the
Speaker 1: sponsors that keep the show going. On September twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty one, in Hamilton, Ohio, which is part of
Speaker 1: the Cincinnati metro area, Bernard H. Weiste and Anna M.
Speaker 1: Gold Camp Weiste had a son named Louis Bernard WEISTI,
Speaker 1: who would grow up to patent one of my favorite things.
Speaker 1: There is not a whole lot of information about mister Weiste,
Speaker 1: but he did at some point mary a woman named
Speaker 1: Florence Bliss Stemball and start a family. Lewis and Florence
Speaker 1: had two daughters, Helen born in nineteen thirteen and Bonnie,
Speaker 1: born in nineteen seventeen. But even when we was still
Speaker 1: a kid, there was a mention of a mirror ball
Speaker 1: in a trade paper put out by a Charleston, Massachusetts
Speaker 1: Electricians union in eighteen ninety seven. So that's right, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about what would later become known as
Speaker 1: the disco ball. Holly and I each kind of went
Speaker 1: on a little expedition trying to find this periodical. Both
Speaker 1: mental Floss and Vice say that this periodical carried the
Speaker 1: write up about the union's annual party where this mirrored
Speaker 1: ball apparently scattered sparkling light all around the room. We
Speaker 1: did find a union paper that wrote up this event,
Speaker 1: but had no mention of a mirror ball in it,
Speaker 1: so it's possible there was just a different version that
Speaker 1: came directly from the union rather than like Union country
Speaker 1: wide paper, which is the one that we had found, Right,
Speaker 1: we were looking at the bigger one that may have
Speaker 1: aggregated other articles and may have edited right. In addition
Speaker 1: to this lack of mention of the mirror ball and
Speaker 1: the one version of this Holly and I found, there
Speaker 1: are no photos of whatever this looked like. It is
Speaker 1: often noted as the first time that a mirrored ball
Speaker 1: was mentioned in the historical record. If it did look
Speaker 1: something like today's disco ball. There's no attribution regarding who
Speaker 1: came up with this decoration, which was at the Christmas party. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we also don't know how the one that we know
Speaker 1: got invented came to be. We have no information about
Speaker 1: the inspiration behind it. Where we Stee's brain went. You
Speaker 1: know what I'd like to do is glue a lot
Speaker 1: of mirrors on something and throw light on it. But
Speaker 1: if we jump forward in Lewis Wees's life, there is
Speaker 1: plenty of newspaper coverage about his patented invention, which he
Speaker 1: called the myriad reflector. He filed a patent for the device,
Speaker 1: his Myriad Reflector, on February twelfth, nineteen sixteen, and he
Speaker 1: was granted that patent almost a year later, on February
Speaker 1: sixth of nineteen seventeen. The technical portion of this patent
Speaker 1: at the end of the copy is straightforward, as it
Speaker 1: would need to be. It's described as quote one, a
Speaker 1: myriad reflector comprising mirrors mounted to form a polyhedron, bounded
Speaker 1: by a convex system of plane faces, in combination with
Speaker 1: means for suspending the device so that it may be
Speaker 1: swung and rotated simultaneously to produce myriad reflections when light
Speaker 1: rays from an extraneous source are thrown thereon. He also
Speaker 1: described it a second time in an almost identical way,
Speaker 1: but specifying that the mirrors could be separated slightly by
Speaker 1: a non reflective sir. This was a reference to the
Speaker 1: patent being about the mirrors not necessarily on a spherical shape,
Speaker 1: but on any shape quote to suit the particular requirements,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty astute way of cutting off copycats
Speaker 1: for making and these sort of hanging mirrored reflectors in
Speaker 1: shapes that were not spheares trying to patent those two.
Speaker 1: But while that wording is legally smart, there is some
Speaker 1: rather more florid language in the general description that I
Speaker 1: found rather charming. We see wrote quote the object of
Speaker 1: my invention is to produce a myriad reflector comprising a
Speaker 1: plurality of reflecting surfaces, the same to be arranged in
Speaker 1: such a manner that the several reflections shall be projected
Speaker 1: at varying angles, the device itself being arranged so that
Speaker 1: it may be rotated or otherwise moved, so that the
Speaker 1: reflections may produce a scintillating and spectacular effect. It is
Speaker 1: scintillating and spectacular. Oh, he knew the key to my heart.
Speaker 1: I'm a magpie of my soul. The exact timing is
Speaker 1: not clear, but around the time Westy got his patent,
Speaker 1: or shortly thereafter, Westy's friend Benny Friedman, who owned a
Speaker 1: tailor's shop, asked Lewis, who went by lou if he
Speaker 1: wanted to use some space in the shop to set
Speaker 1: up his own venture, and he did. He founded the
Speaker 1: LB West Decorating Company out of that space, and soon
Speaker 1: he was getting large contracts to set up parties and
Speaker 1: municipal celebrations, and of course to sell his Myriad reflector
Speaker 1: for those events. And to be really clear, the Myriad
Speaker 1: reflector was a big deal. It was touted constantly in
Speaker 1: newspapers by ballrooms and entertainment venues that had acquired one
Speaker 1: as a draw. Reading through newspapers, it seems as though
Speaker 1: a lot of venues saw it as this way they
Speaker 1: were going to reinvigorate their business. Even before Weisty's patent
Speaker 1: was granted, there are mentions of the Myriad reflector in
Speaker 1: local papers indicating that weiste was already producing them. In
Speaker 1: January nineteen seventeen, the Rotary Charity Ball of Piqua, Ohio,
Speaker 1: which is a town about eighty miles north of Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: had a write up in the Piqua Daily Call that read,
Speaker 1: in part quote, during the Grand March, the hall was
Speaker 1: darkened and from a Myriad reflector, sparks of every color
Speaker 1: were flying over the ceiling, making a most dazzling and
Speaker 1: wonderful scene. This was kept up at intervals during the
Speaker 1: Grand March. This article notes that everything was donated for
Speaker 1: the ball except the music, so presumably Weesti made that
Speaker 1: Myriad reflector as a donation or loaned it to the event.
Speaker 1: A June thirteenth, nineteen twenty one ad in the Salt
Speaker 1: Lake Telegram read Dance to the Flash of the Myriad Reflector,
Speaker 1: and it featured this drawing of five dancing couples beneath
Speaker 1: a mirrored ball that is scattering light around the room.
Speaker 1: That drawing is not especially detailed, but it is immediately
Speaker 1: apparent what it depicts. The accompanying copy reads quote the
Speaker 1: Myriad Reflector, one of the most beautiful electric lighting devices
Speaker 1: ever seen here is now an exclusive feature at the
Speaker 1: Salt Air You will find it flashing on the big
Speaker 1: dance floor every Tuesday night. Come tomorrow night and see it.
Speaker 1: There is also an addendum bit of copy in this
Speaker 1: ad that has nothing to do with the mirror ball,
Speaker 1: but which is also really charming to me because it says,
Speaker 1: come early enough for a dip in the lake, and
Speaker 1: in all caps, bathing is superb. Bathing is superb? Are
Speaker 1: you just telling people to be clean or do you
Speaker 1: really want them to splash about and enjoy your lakeside venue?
Speaker 1: That autumn, the Great Falls Leader of Great Falls, Montana
Speaker 1: drummed up excitement for its annual fall opening odeon Ball
Speaker 1: by sharing with readers that a Myriad Reflector had been
Speaker 1: procured for the event, and it also explains what it is. Quote.
Speaker 1: The Myriad Reflector is something new in the amusement world
Speaker 1: and had heretofore been used only in such places the
Speaker 1: Marigold Gardens of Chicago, Hotel Astor in New York City,
Speaker 1: Cave Hall of Saint Louis Schubert's Winter Garden of New York,
Speaker 1: and like places. The Myriad Reflector is a novelty that
Speaker 1: transforms a hall into a brilliant fairyland of flashing, changing
Speaker 1: living colors, a marvel of kaleidoscope charm. The result is
Speaker 1: thousands of small reflections, dancing, changing, chasing after one another,
Speaker 1: into every nook and corner. What's interesting here, too, is
Speaker 1: that after giving this sort of romantic descriptor, the Great
Speaker 1: Falls Leader explains exactly how this effect is created. Quote.
Speaker 1: The device is an immense globe twenty seven inches in diameter,
Speaker 1: completely covered with more than one thousand special made mirrors.
Speaker 1: When spotlights are thrown on the rotating ball, the reflections
Speaker 1: of the mirrors are multiplied into a dazzling, dancing, indescribable
Speaker 1: lighting effect that is simply immense. It's funny that the
Speaker 1: write up says it's indescribable right after it went to
Speaker 1: great lengths to describe it. It made me think of
Speaker 1: Samuel Taylor, Coleridge and Kubla Khan and like writing this
Speaker 1: whole poem and then being like and then I was
Speaker 1: woken up, and I could never describe what I experienced.
Speaker 1: It's like, maybe you just did you just did? I
Speaker 1: read it. Other newspapers had similar features that talked about
Speaker 1: Wisti's mirrored marvel. The timing of the patent really could
Speaker 1: not have been better, as the Roaring twenties offered exactly
Speaker 1: the right cultural atmosphere to embrace all of that sparkle,
Speaker 1: and many of these write ups mentioned that it had
Speaker 1: a small motor that turned it to keep the reflected
Speaker 1: lights moving and dancing. That rotator motor wasn't part of
Speaker 1: the original patent, and Weiste didn't apply for a patent
Speaker 1: on the motor until several years after the examples that
Speaker 1: we've been quoting in nineteen twenty four. That patent wasn't
Speaker 1: actually granted until March thirteenth, nineteen twenty eight, at which
Speaker 1: point he had been including the motor on his setup
Speaker 1: for the better part of a decade. Lewis Weisty died
Speaker 1: on April tenth, nineteen thirty three, at his home on
Speaker 1: Wayside Avenue in the Mount Washington neighborhood of Cincinnati, and
Speaker 1: the years after his death, his wife, Florence ran the
Speaker 1: family business with the help of their daughter Helen. The
Speaker 1: business struggled but made it through the Great Depression, and
Speaker 1: was even hired to decorate Crossley Field for the All
Speaker 1: Star Game in nineteen thirty eight. But after Helen got
Speaker 1: married and started a family, Florence couldn't keep things going
Speaker 1: by herself, and the business shuddered. In nineteen forty five. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's an interesting write up about it's closing that kind
Speaker 1: of has that you know, social norm line about well,
Speaker 1: Helen had a baby, so she's just domestic now she
Speaker 1: can't work. It's like, oh, after the wee C Company closed.
Speaker 1: The main producer of reflective mirrored balls was Omega National Products,
Speaker 1: which o it out of Louisville, Kentucky. It was making
Speaker 1: an estimated ninety percent of them when the disco craze
Speaker 1: hit and made them super popular. Omega still exists today,
Speaker 1: although a lot of other manufacturers have entered the market
Speaker 1: since the nineteen forties. Yeah, today, if you go to
Speaker 1: a craft store, you can buy mirrored pumpkins, mirrored kitty cats,
Speaker 1: mirrored anything you can think of, in a variety of colors.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't know. I don't own any of those. I
Speaker 1: own all of those. I have a disco cat. You
Speaker 1: can have people make giant discoed skeletons. I mean, one
Speaker 1: woman did her own as a craft project and it's beautiful,
Speaker 1: one of those giant yard skeletons. M you can't put
Speaker 1: enough mirror stuff on things for me. I love it.
Speaker 1: I'm obsessed with it. I'm also obsessed with listener mail.
Speaker 1: Here's one, okay from our listener, Jane, who writes, Hi,
Speaker 1: hollyod Tracy. I've been a longtime listener. I honestly don't
Speaker 1: remember when I started listening. I know it was sometime
Speaker 1: in undergrad, maybe even my senior year of high school.
Speaker 1: I'm nearly thirty now, and I know in the grand
Speaker 1: scheme of things, it's not old, but my brain is fuzzy.
Speaker 1: I'm remembering things I did yesterday, and I've always wanted
Speaker 1: a reason to send a note about something. Listen. I
Speaker 1: feel like after we all lived in our homes, mostly
Speaker 1: through the early part of COVID, memories got real weird
Speaker 1: for everybody that's it doesn't matter your age. I just
Speaker 1: think like time became a flat circle. Jane continues, there
Speaker 1: have been so many somethings. As I am listening through
Speaker 1: the backlog of episodes, I think I'm finally into twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six. I started a re listen like three years ago,
Speaker 1: from the very beginning of the podcast, and it's taken
Speaker 1: me forever to get back to present day. There have
Speaker 1: been so many subjects, especially the twenty twenty five episode
Speaker 1: about the Library of Congress. She shares her connection to it,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to read that part because I
Speaker 1: don't want it to be too identifying it for personal information.
Speaker 1: And the most recent Cranberry episode. I had to pull
Speaker 1: over on my way home because the Cranberry episode nearly
Speaker 1: made me pee my pants. And I will tell you
Speaker 1: why this is, Like if you put this line in
Speaker 1: an email I want to keep reading. My beloved grandmother,
Speaker 1: who still lives in the in law apartment of my parents' house,
Speaker 1: has never been able to cook. I think she's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I had such a hard time trying
Speaker 1: new foods as a kid, because as her favorite grandchild
Speaker 1: at that time. A whole podcast on its own of
Speaker 1: how my grandmother determines who is her favorite grandchild and
Speaker 1: why at any given moment, if I said I wanted
Speaker 1: to try something, she'd make it. The problem with this
Speaker 1: is she would somehow change the texture of foods that
Speaker 1: are really hard to mess up. I remember she made
Speaker 1: steak one time and called it rare. It was as
Speaker 1: hard as a hockey puck and gray all the way through,
Speaker 1: but she tried. She also somehow managed to roast a
Speaker 1: bell pepper into rubber. I don't know how she managed that,
Speaker 1: but it was legitimately inedible. But now I have a
Speaker 1: night shade sensitivity and I can't have them anyways. But
Speaker 1: my favorite memories of my grandmother and her inability to
Speaker 1: cook always come at Thanksgiving. She has for my entire
Speaker 1: almost thirty years, insisted on cooking something for Thanksgiving. And
Speaker 1: somehow my mother has managed to get it down to
Speaker 1: two things, homemade cranberry relish and her homemade saltine stuffing
Speaker 1: or dressing. I'm not really sure the difference. My family
Speaker 1: calls it both. My family calls it both to most people,
Speaker 1: stuffing as if it's cooked in the bird, dressing if
Speaker 1: it's in a tray or a dish that you put
Speaker 1: in the oven. She would process them both through a
Speaker 1: food mill that I am fairly certain has survived since
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties. It's my goal to find it one
Speaker 1: day and confirm this. The problem is now her memory
Speaker 1: is starting to go and she can't remember where she
Speaker 1: left it last. I've never had the cranberry relish, but
Speaker 1: my sister loves it more than the canned jelly, which
Speaker 1: I also dislike but wish I didn't listen. It's grating cocktails.
Speaker 1: It's made with fresh squeezed orange juice, but bottled is
Speaker 1: fine too, just not the concentrate from the freezer section.
Speaker 1: We did that one year and it was vile to smell.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone ate it. And cranberry's frozen that
Speaker 1: have been passed through the food mill, and then you
Speaker 1: mix the juice and let it sit at least overnight,
Speaker 1: and it becomes a deep red, almost purple slop. The
Speaker 1: smell's wonderful. If I could make it a candle, I would.
Speaker 1: I won't go into detail about her stuffing because she
Speaker 1: has not been allowed to make it in years, and
Speaker 1: outside of saltines and celery, I couldn't tell you what
Speaker 1: was in it. She mentions the raisins might be in it,
Speaker 1: which makes me make a face. But you know, everybody's
Speaker 1: got their own taste. But I do know that her
Speaker 1: stuffing is the reason I refused tried again until I
Speaker 1: was twenty five. I love this idea. There's some more
Speaker 1: in this email, but I'm not going to read the
Speaker 1: whole thing. But I was fascinated because I'm like, you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't how to do anything with the cranberries To
Speaker 1: make cranberry sauce. You've literally just put them on the
Speaker 1: stove the little water and they get smooshy, goushy on
Speaker 1: their own, fall apart and become delicious. We all know
Speaker 1: that I love cranberries. I find this fascinating. The idea
Speaker 1: of like soaking them overnight is interesting and for people
Speaker 1: that maybe don't have a heath horse, or like anything's
Speaker 1: going wrong in their kitchen. That might be an option.
Speaker 1: I might test this just to see how it works. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated. Fascinated, I tell you, because I imagine the
Speaker 1: acidity of the orange juice would break down the cranberries
Speaker 1: enough that it would work just fine if they sat
Speaker 1: long enough. Yeah. I have made a homemade cranberry sauce
Speaker 1: type recipe before that has included a little orange juice.
Speaker 1: But like I often do, that was like what was
Speaker 1: in the recipe. I didn't really think through the chemistry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they often do. I I tend to leave the the
Speaker 1: we're off on a slight tangent, but come with me.
Speaker 1: I tend to leave the citrus part out because I
Speaker 1: really just like the cranberry flavor. And I throw a
Speaker 1: little vanilla in so it tastes almost even though it's
Speaker 1: there's no dairy in it. It has like an almost
Speaker 1: custardy taste because of the smoothness that it develops. Listen,
Speaker 1: I'm into it. However, here's the most important part of
Speaker 1: this email. Pet tax three beautiful beautiful kitties versus Princess
Speaker 1: Jane says She has many names, most unsuitable for broadcasts,
Speaker 1: but my partner and I call her that most and
Speaker 1: it fits the bill. She's sixteen, probably partner Reegian forest Cat,
Speaker 1: and I've had her since she was since I was twelve.
Speaker 1: A great birthday surprise to come home and find her.
Speaker 1: She's so beautiful and so pretty and listen, I love
Speaker 1: a mature lady kitty very much. I love mature kitties
Speaker 1: in general. Next is my baby boy Gizmo. He's five.
Speaker 1: He loves to be next to people, but hates when
Speaker 1: you touch him first. His favorite way to be pet
Speaker 1: is body slamming himself into your shins. And lastly, my
Speaker 1: gooby girl Gadget, who is four. She is tiny and
Speaker 1: wee and would wear my skin just to snuggle closer.
Speaker 1: My favorite part about her is she doesn't know how
Speaker 1: to yewl, but she does know how to squeak. These
Speaker 1: babies are so sweet. Yeah, oh, I love a little
Speaker 1: cat face. One of them is a very funny picture
Speaker 1: of her tiny kitty right up close to their nanny
Speaker 1: cam that they put in there. And then Jane signs
Speaker 1: off with thank you so much for all you do,
Speaker 1: and I can't wait to catch them on the podcast. Also,
Speaker 1: I didn't know y'all were on Netflix. Yep, we sure are.
Speaker 1: So if you want to sit and watch it, you
Speaker 1: can if you don't want to listen and only have audio.
Speaker 1: But anyway, thank you Jane, Thank you for sharing your
Speaker 1: kitty cats, sharing your family's Cranberry story. Listen. Not everybody
Speaker 1: has good cooks in their family. I was lucky to
Speaker 1: have many good cooks in my family. Not everybody does.
Speaker 1: There were oftentimes when I would go to other kids'
Speaker 1: houses and be like, what is happening at your home?
Speaker 1: This is not delicious. If you would like to write
Speaker 1: to us share a family recipe. Do you remember that
Speaker 1: turkey meatloaf recipe we had years ago? I have it still.
Speaker 1: I've made it several times. That was really good. I
Speaker 1: don't remember who sent it to us off hand, but
Speaker 1: I haven't shoved into a cookbook notebook somewhere upstairs. If
Speaker 1: you want to share a family recipe, a picture of
Speaker 1: your kiddie CAATs, a picture of anything else that you
Speaker 1: delight in, a picture of a disco ball, however you
Speaker 1: might use it in your home. That sounds great to me.
Speaker 1: You can do that at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: If you want to look at the show notes to
Speaker 1: see the research that we did for this or any
Speaker 1: of our episodes, those are available at mistonhistory dot com.
Speaker 1: If you would like to subscribe to the show and
Speaker 1: you haven't done that yet, you can do that on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.