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Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. We are going

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Speaker 2: down down into the vault for an older episode of

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Speaker 2: the podcast. This one originally published on September sixth, twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty two, and it is about the invention of the odometer.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and that. Don't stop right there and think, Okay,

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Speaker 1: a dometer my dashboard of my car, the most boring

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Speaker 1: thing in the universe. No, no, no, this one gets weird.

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Speaker 1: I highly recommend it. This one goes into the ancient world.

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Speaker 1: There's some strange devices you're gonna have a lot of

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Speaker 1: fun with.

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Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is.

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Speaker 2: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: Today on Stuff to Blow your Mind, we have another

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Speaker 1: invention themed episode for you. We're going to be talking

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Speaker 1: about something that might initially seem frightfully dull or at

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Speaker 1: least very commonplace, and that is the odometer.

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Speaker 2: I mentioned this to Rachel earlier and she was like, oh, yes,

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Speaker 2: the device that measures odors.

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Speaker 1: Yes or odos if you were to read the word wrong,

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Speaker 1: you might think it says odometer, but it's yes, the odometer.

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Speaker 1: So everyone out there, you probably know this device best

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Speaker 1: is the little counter in your vehicle that records how

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Speaker 1: far you've driven. And I think we tend to think

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Speaker 1: of this invention mostly as a self centered device. It

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Speaker 1: tells us how far we've driven on our trip, how

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Speaker 1: many miles or kilometers we've racked up on our vehicle.

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Speaker 1: But you know, there's another way of looking at the odometer,

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Speaker 1: and this, certainly this is something that plays into the

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Speaker 1: history of the invention and also our attempts to understand

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Speaker 1: its place in the ancient world, is that an odometer

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Speaker 1: can also be a method of determining distances on given routes.

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Speaker 1: It's something that turns burns a vehicle into a tool

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Speaker 1: for measurement.

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Speaker 2: Right, So it's it gives you information that would be

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Speaker 2: useful to other people, because I mean, in the ancient world,

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Speaker 2: you don't have Google Maps or anything. You might know

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Speaker 2: that there are two cities, and you might know that

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Speaker 2: you get from one of them to the other by

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Speaker 2: following the road to the west, but you might not

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Speaker 2: know how long it's going to take. You to get

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Speaker 2: from one to the other. So it would be very

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Speaker 2: useful if you actually had some standard distance measurements that

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Speaker 2: would allow you to estimate the length of the journey

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Speaker 2: and to know how much you need to pack for

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Speaker 2: the journey and so forth.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we've talked it before about some of the important

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Speaker 1: things that make up an empire and make an empire

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Speaker 1: or a kingdom function, and there are things like standardized measurements,

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Speaker 1: of course, and standardized currency. But another thing that would

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Speaker 1: be useful is indeed, like you say, to know how

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Speaker 1: long it takes to get from one place to another,

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Speaker 1: what is the distance from one place to another, from

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Speaker 1: border to border, from port to capital, from frontier to ford,

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Speaker 1: and so for forth. And this is the kind of

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Speaker 1: thing that would of course be important for warfare, but

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Speaker 1: also for trade and just general management of a given territory.

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Speaker 1: So on one hand, you can imagine this situation, and

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Speaker 1: you can and you can think about what a nodometer is,

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Speaker 1: and knowing that an odometer has some of its history

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Speaker 1: in the ancient world, you might think, well, this is

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Speaker 1: the this is the route we take to get to

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Speaker 1: the invention. This is the necessity that is the mother

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Speaker 1: of this invention. But this doesn't necessarily seem to be

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Speaker 1: the case, as we'll discuss as we look at its history,

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Speaker 1: both in the East and in the west. Now, I

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Speaker 1: think it's we're thinking at least just a little bit

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Speaker 1: about maps in cartography here, because it's easy for the

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Speaker 1: mind to go there, like I need to know the

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Speaker 1: exact distance between X and Y because I want an

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Speaker 1: accurate map, right to kind of go hand in hand

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Speaker 1: when we think about maps today, Like even if I'm

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Speaker 1: looking through a Dungeons and Dragons book, I have a

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Speaker 1: map of some sort of fantastic region, and then I

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Speaker 1: have a little indicator to tell me exactly how how

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Speaker 1: many miles and inches or something to that effect.

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Speaker 2: Oh, once you get into D and D, though, I

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Speaker 2: feel like it's often very loosey goosey about travel distances.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and I and as a when I am

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Speaker 1: dungeon mastering, I am also I hate it when there's

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Speaker 1: like a really specific question about distances, like well, is

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Speaker 1: it is it one mile or two mile? It's like,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, it just it's however long it takes

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Speaker 1: to get there.

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Speaker 2: But any well, my experience is you want to you

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Speaker 2: want to take a cueue from the DM Basically like,

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Speaker 2: is this a journey where things will happen on the

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Speaker 2: journey or a journey where we will just magically arrive

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Speaker 2: at the destination.

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Speaker 1: Yes, sometimes the magic is in the journey, but sometimes

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Speaker 1: it most definitely is not. So thinking about this the

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Speaker 1: situation about figuring out knowing what the distances are between

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Speaker 1: one place and the other, and thinking about the role

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Speaker 1: of maps in the ancient world, I turned to one

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Speaker 1: of my favorite go to texts for a lot of

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Speaker 1: this sort of thing, Brian Fagan's The Seventy Great Inventions

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Speaker 1: of the Ancient World, and several different chapters in there

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Speaker 1: that deal with measures and maps, and Fagan and his

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Speaker 1: co authors point out, I think a few important things

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Speaker 1: about ancient maps that we might want to have in

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Speaker 1: our head as we proceed. So, first of all, they

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Speaker 1: point out, the Chinese maps of old were more about

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Speaker 1: landscape features. So the journey from X to Y is

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Speaker 1: more about the details of the landscape and the markers

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Speaker 1: that are passed on the way.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. That makes sense, navigating by landmarks.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And so the maps would reflect that. Another thing

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Speaker 1: they point out is that while local maps in the

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Speaker 1: ancient world were one thing, as were specialized maps. Broader

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Speaker 1: maps of the world or region were not really part

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Speaker 1: of the overall ancient approach to maps. There were no

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Speaker 1: regular standards of map making, and there were no general

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Speaker 1: purpose maps. And this is one quote from the book

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Speaker 1: I thought was rather telling quote between them rulers, general sailors,

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Speaker 1: and traders evidently all but ignored the practical assistance that

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Speaker 1: maps could afford them.

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Speaker 2: That's surprising.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think hindsight's twenty twenty. But yeah, it's interesting

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Speaker 1: to look back and think about what benefits this broader

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Speaker 1: approach to maps, general purpose maps, etc. Could have afforded them.

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Speaker 1: So I think all that's worth keeping in mind as

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Speaker 1: we proceed here. None of this is to say people's

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Speaker 1: doing these eras were not concerned with precise distances, but

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Speaker 1: the relationship with exact maps wasn't quite the same as

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Speaker 1: what we have now now.

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Speaker 2: Another way of thinking about what came before is that

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Speaker 2: there certainly were ways of measuring long distances before the

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Speaker 2: invention of the mechanical odometer, though there is some question

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Speaker 2: about the relative accuracy of early mechanical methods versus pre

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Speaker 2: mechanical methods, and one case study here that I think

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Speaker 2: we should look at. It's a very interesting puzzle that

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Speaker 2: emerges if you look at a geography chapter of the

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Speaker 2: Natural History by our old friend Plenty the Elder. Here

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Speaker 2: I'll be referring to the Bostock and Riley translation for

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Speaker 2: those not familiar. Plenty the Elder was a first century

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Speaker 2: Roman military commander and author, and the Natural History is

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Speaker 2: an early attempt at creating a sort of world encyclopedia.

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Speaker 2: So Plenty covers everything from mining and metallurgy to botany

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Speaker 2: and zoology, cooking, politics. It's just a book of everything.

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Speaker 2: And in book six of the Natural History, Plenty sets

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Speaker 2: out to describe quote an account of countries, nations, seas, towns, havens, mountains, rivers, distances,

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Speaker 2: and peoples who now exist or formerly existed. Very good

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Speaker 2: chapter heading there. One of the chapters within this volume,

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Speaker 2: chapter twenty one, is on the nations of India, as

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Speaker 2: known to Plenty at the time. Again, this is the

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Speaker 2: first century CE. So Plenty says that India is a

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Speaker 2: vast country with over one hundred kingdoms, dozens of rivers,

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Speaker 2: uncountable mountains, but he will undertake to describe some of

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Speaker 2: it by following the path of Alexander the Great, who

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Speaker 2: led a conquering army to India about four hundred years earlier.

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Speaker 2: So plenty rights. Quote. However, that we may come to

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Speaker 2: a better understanding relative to the description of these regions,

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Speaker 2: we will follow the track of Alexander the Great. Diagnetas

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Speaker 2: and Byton, whose duty it was to ascertain the distances

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Speaker 2: and length of his expeditions, have written that from the

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Speaker 2: Caspian Gates to hecatom Pylon, the city of the Parthians,

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Speaker 2: the distance is the number of miles, which we have

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Speaker 2: already stated, and he mentioned a number earlier. Then he

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Speaker 2: goes on and that from thence to Alexandria of the Arii,

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Speaker 2: which city was founded by the same king, the distance

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Speaker 2: is five hundred and seventy five miles, and from thence

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Speaker 2: to Prophthesia, the city of the Dragnai, one hundred and

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Speaker 2: night ninety nine miles. And from here he just goes

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Speaker 2: on and on, listing distances. It's this many miles to

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Speaker 2: the next city, and this many miles to the next city.

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Speaker 2: So he attributes all of these numbers, all of these

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Speaker 2: distances in miles that he comes up with for this

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Speaker 2: path leading into India to these two figures Diagnetis and Byton,

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Speaker 2: who were these guys well? They were known as Bimetists,

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Speaker 2: coming from the Greek word meaning step or pace. I

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Speaker 2: looked up Bimetists in the Oxford Handbook of Classics, and

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Speaker 2: the entry does identify them as the surveyors essentially of

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Speaker 2: Alexander the Great, and names a few other ones. In

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Speaker 2: addition to the two I already mentioned Byton and Diagnetis.

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Speaker 2: It also names Philonides of Crete, who it says in

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Speaker 2: a side note, was a celebrated distance runner. And the

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Speaker 2: entry also notes that the two figures who worked for Alexander,

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Speaker 2: Byton and Diagnetis, as well as some others quote had

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Speaker 2: literary aspirations. Their measurements of key distances in the Empire

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Speaker 2: comprised an archive later controlled by Seleucus. The first individual

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Speaker 2: Bematists published their observations in monographs termed stathmoy or Stages,

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Speaker 2: which combined precise calculations of distance with more exotic reports

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Speaker 2: of the flora, fauna and customs of the Empire. The

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Speaker 2: latter tended to the outrageous, but the measurements were of

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Speaker 2: lasting value and provided Eratosthenes with the framework for his

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Speaker 2: geography of Asia. Aritosthenes, you might recall, was an early figure,

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Speaker 2: a Greek philosopher who with pretty startling accuracy, calculated the

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Speaker 2: actual size of the sphere of the Earth. And he

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Speaker 2: did that just using knowledge of the distances between locations

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Speaker 2: of different latitudes and then the use of the angles

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Speaker 2: of sun dials. Basically, So, how did the Bemtists actually

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Speaker 2: measure distances in the time of Alexander the Great? Well,

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Speaker 2: I've seen some disagreement on this. Some sources imply that

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Speaker 2: they simply counted paces, so you'd walk and count how

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Speaker 2: many steps you took, while others suggest that they used

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Speaker 2: some kind of mechanical device. One of the weird things

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Speaker 2: is that, as far as we can tell, most of

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Speaker 2: the distances recorded by bimetists such as Byton and Diagnetis,

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Speaker 2: as well as others from the ancient world, are surprisingly accurate.

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Speaker 2: On this point, I want to quote a book I

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Speaker 2: was looking at by an American historian named Donald W. Ingalls.

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Speaker 2: The book is called Alexander the Great and the Logistics

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Speaker 2: of the Macedonian Army, from the University of California Press

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Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy eight, and explaining a table in his

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Speaker 2: book of the Bimetists different estimates of the distances between

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Speaker 2: cities on this route, Ingles rights quote the overall accuracy

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Speaker 2: of the Bimetists measurements should be apparent. The minor discrepancies

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Speaker 2: of distance parentheses only one point three percent from herot

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Speaker 2: to begram can be adequately explained by slight changes in

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Speaker 2: the tracks of roads during the last twenty three hundred years.

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Speaker 2: The accuracy of the measurements implies that the Bimetists used

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Speaker 2: a sophisticated mechanical device for measuring distances, undoubtedly an odometer,

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Speaker 2: such as described by Heron of Alexandria. So there's a clue.

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Speaker 2: Ingles here says, Look, the distance is given by these

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Speaker 2: people who worked for Alexander the Great and other Bimetists

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Speaker 2: of the era. They are just too accurate. They are

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Speaker 2: too good to be the result of trying to count

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Speaker 2: your steps and estimate from that. They have to be

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Speaker 2: using some kind of machine that we don't know about,

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Speaker 2: and one good candidate is a machine like the one

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Speaker 2: described later by Heron of Alexandria.

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Speaker 1: Now, this idea that they may have simply been walking

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Speaker 1: on hand. I can't help but think of the Monty

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Speaker 1: Python ministry as silly walks and imagine like a specific,

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Speaker 1: ridiculous but regular gait that they're using. And if they

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Speaker 1: were super focused on their steps and counting their steps,

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Speaker 1: maybe that would explain why wrote the reports of flora

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Speaker 1: and fauna are so outrageous. They're like, well, it was

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Speaker 1: three thousand, eight hundred and seventy six steps, and to

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Speaker 1: the left there may have been a dragon. I'm not sure.

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Speaker 1: I was just really focused on these steps and getting

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Speaker 1: this step count right.

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Speaker 2: I mean, descriptions of local flora, fauna, and peoples of

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Speaker 2: the world are notably hilarious throughout all kinds of ancient texts,

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Speaker 2: so including Plenty himself. He loves to talk about people

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Speaker 2: who had like eyes in their stomachs and stuff.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I keep hoping one day I'll come across a passage

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Speaker 2: in Plenty where he mentions people who have crab claws.

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Speaker 2: I haven't found that yet.

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Speaker 1: Oh, I have to have to look into that. I mean,

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Speaker 1: because you mentioned it's of course not just Plenty in

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Speaker 1: his writings, and that he's sourcing. And we've discussed similar

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Speaker 1: things in Chinese traditions as well, so there have to

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Speaker 1: be some crab claud individuals out there somewhere, but.

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Speaker 2: Okay, sorry, Hero or Heron of Alexandria. Multiple sources I

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Speaker 2: found point to a device described by this first century

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Speaker 2: mathematician and inventor, sometimes known as Hero, sometimes known as Hroon,

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Speaker 2: but he was from Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt. As you can

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Speaker 2: tell by the name. A lot of inventions are attributed

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Speaker 2: to Hero, though some of the most famous ones probably

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Speaker 2: predated him, and he just described them in lectures and writings,

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Speaker 2: and then later that gets sort of mistaken for him

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Speaker 2: having actually invented the thing in the first place, in

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Speaker 2: the latter category. One example, in fact, one of the

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Speaker 2: most famous devices associated with Hero is the Eyala pile,

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Speaker 2: which is a type of early steam engine converting the

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Speaker 2: power of steam into rotational energy. Basically, it works by

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Speaker 2: you've got a big cauldron this full of water, and

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Speaker 2: then you put a i underneath it, and then that

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Speaker 2: cauldron is connected by pipes to a sphere that can

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Speaker 2: rotate around the pipes, and then the sphere has two

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Speaker 2: little exhaust nozzles that allow steam to escape as the

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Speaker 2: water boils and turns into steam. And expands. But the

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Speaker 2: way the nozzles are oriented, they're oriented in the same

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Speaker 2: rotational direction, so as it gets hotter and hotter in

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Speaker 2: the cauldron and the steam pressure builds up, it spins

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Speaker 2: the sphere faster and faster.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, there are a lot of images of this, as

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Speaker 1: I recall. I remember seeing a cool wood cut of this,

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Speaker 1: I think at one point. But it has the look

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Speaker 1: of a novelty of a device that's illustrating the principle here,

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Speaker 1: but of course not putting it to the sort of

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Speaker 1: work that later steam engines would for sure.

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Speaker 2: Yes, and though the eolopile is often associated with Hero,

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Speaker 2: I think this is something that he very like did

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Speaker 2: not actually invent. It was just something he described that

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Speaker 2: already existed. But we have talked about other machines possibly

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Speaker 2: invented by Hero in previous episodes. One that I remember

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Speaker 2: is that Hero of Alexandria is credited with inventing the

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Speaker 2: first vending machine, which strangely was also a piece of

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Speaker 2: religious technology. It was a machine designed to dole out

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Speaker 2: limited portions of sacred water within Egyptian temples when a

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Speaker 2: devotee would insert the right amount of coinage. So I

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Speaker 2: think You'd put a five drachma or five drakma piece

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Speaker 2: in through a coin slot, and then that would operate

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Speaker 2: a weighted lever that would dispense a certain amount of

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Speaker 2: holy water, and then once a certain amount of water

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Speaker 2: had gone out, the machine would tip over, and then

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Speaker 2: it would close the valve and stop dispensing. Though even

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Speaker 2: in this case I read that it's actually possible Hero

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Speaker 2: was simply describing a device that had already been invented

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Speaker 2: by Tacbis of Alexandria in the third century BCE. So

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Speaker 2: a lot of ancient inventions, it's often hard to tell

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Speaker 2: if somebody actually invented something or if they're just talking

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Speaker 2: about something that already existed. Right Anyway, I found multiple

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Speaker 2: references to Hero either inventing or describing an odometer, as

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Speaker 2: evidenced by a passage he wrote in a minor work

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Speaker 2: called the Dioptera, which I wanted to find the full

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Speaker 2: text for, but if it has been translated into English,

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Speaker 2: I was unable to find it, so I don't know

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Speaker 2: if that even exists in English. But regarding this machine

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Speaker 2: he describes in the diopter again, the hero is first

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Speaker 2: century CE. A couple of caveats, one is that Hero

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Speaker 2: was definitely not the first known author to describe an

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Speaker 2: odometer in Greek. In the Greek and Latin Corpus, the

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Speaker 2: Roman engineer Vitruvius, who lived in the first century BCE,

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Speaker 2: so century before Hero, also describes an odometer, though in

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Speaker 2: a slightly different way. I'll get into the differences in

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Speaker 2: a minute. But even Vitruvius does not claim to have

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Speaker 2: invented the device out of whole cloth. And then there's

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Speaker 2: a second caveat which is that remember again Ingles making

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Speaker 2: the comment that Alexander the Great's bimetists must have had

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Speaker 2: a device like Heroes. The problem here is that Hero

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Speaker 2: of Alexandria and Vitruvius both lived long after the conquest

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Speaker 2: of Alexander the Great. So if it's true, as Ingles

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Speaker 2: suggests that these bimetists used a mechanical odometer similar to

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Speaker 2: the one described by these engineers and authors, they would

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Speaker 2: have been using some kind of earlier device similar to

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Speaker 2: Heroes or Vitruvius, is not something that Hero or Vitruvius invented. Now,

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Speaker 2: an interesting source I found on these two device descriptions

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Speaker 2: is a book called Technical Exprascis in Greek and Roman

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Speaker 2: science and literature the written Machine between Alexandria and Rome.

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Speaker 2: This is by an author named Courtney Roby from Cambridge

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Speaker 2: University Press, twenty sixteen. Courtney Roby is a professor of

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Speaker 2: classics at Cornell and in this book, this is in

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Speaker 2: the context of explaining patterns of composition in Greek and

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Speaker 2: Roman technical books, how in different times and cultures there

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Speaker 2: were different standards and uses for technical explanation of machinery.

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Speaker 2: Hero and Vitruvius both wrote books describing odometers. I mentioned Heroes,

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Speaker 2: but the earlier mentioned by Vitruvius comes in a book

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Speaker 2: called on Architecture, and according to Roby, Vitruvius himself acknowledges

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Speaker 2: that the odometer is quote part of a technological tradition

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Speaker 2: handed down from predecessors. Some authors have suggested that might

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Speaker 2: mean from Archimedes, but I'm not aware of what evidence

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Speaker 2: there would be for this, so I'm not sure how

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Speaker 2: strong that suggestion is. Maybe it's just kind of like, oh, Archimedes,

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Speaker 2: he invented stuff, and maybe it was him.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I think sometimes we see in different traditions we

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Speaker 1: have these noted inventors, noted minds, and they kind of

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Speaker 1: become mythic magnets for various ideas and inventions.

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Speaker 2: But there might be some good reasons for thinking or comedies.

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Speaker 2: I just don't know if there is. I did not

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Speaker 2: turn it up. The basic principle, how does this odometer work?

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Speaker 2: So you've got a chariot wheel. Odometer typically has a

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Speaker 2: wheel of some kind that is rolling on the ground

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Speaker 2: and that's your basic point of contact with the earth

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Speaker 2: to get the the baseline measurement of distance. So you've

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Speaker 2: got a chariot wheel of a fixed size two Roman

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Speaker 2: feet in radius, which Vitruvius says gives the wheel a

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Speaker 2: circumference of approximately twelve point five Roman feet. So if

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Speaker 2: the radius is two, that's four times pie, which is

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Speaker 2: about twelve point five six. So when Vitruvius has twelve

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Speaker 2: point five Roman feet, he's sort of approximating in his explanation.

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Speaker 2: But anyway, each time the chariot wheel makes a full revolution,

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Speaker 2: it will advancets a cogwheel by one cog position, you know,

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Speaker 2: one tooth advances, and the cog wheel has a fixed

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Speaker 2: number of teeth, meaning that it will make a full

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Speaker 2: revolution once the wheel has traveled one Roman mile every

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Speaker 2: time this cog wheel makes a full revolution, it will

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Speaker 2: advance a gear that pushes a single small object like

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Speaker 2: a pebble or a bead into a receptacle. And then

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Speaker 2: at the end of the journey, you simply have a

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Speaker 2: human count up the beans, you know, count up whatever

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Speaker 2: the little pebbles or beads or beans are to know

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Speaker 2: how many miles you've gone. And I want to make

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Speaker 2: a note. This seemed interesting to me that this is

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Speaker 2: the principle of using a system of gears as a

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Speaker 2: type of analog computer, similar to the use of gears

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Speaker 2: in the ancient astronomical computer known as the Antikythera mechanism.

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Speaker 2: We discussed this in an episode we did sometime in

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Speaker 2: the past couple of years. It might have been in

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Speaker 2: the Creature of the Gear episode about biological gears. But

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Speaker 2: the idea that we often think of a gear as

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Speaker 2: something that creates mechanical advantage, and it certainly does do that,

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Speaker 2: but a gear can also manage ratios between numbers, like

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Speaker 2: a gear can do math for you, and that's what

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Speaker 2: it's doing in the case of this odometer.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I love these these examples of the from the

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Speaker 1: ancient birth of the odometer or possible birth of the

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Speaker 1: odometer in some of these instances, because it seems it's

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Speaker 1: kind of like we have the wheel turning on the road,

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Speaker 1: and then it's a question of could we put that

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Speaker 1: wheel to use, Like the wheel is already in a

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Speaker 1: sense marking the distance in its revolution, and in that

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Speaker 1: it's kind of like the heavens. It's like the sun,

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Speaker 1: it's like the moon, it's like the cyclical movements all

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Speaker 1: around us that mark the passage of time.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you just need to correlate something with like a

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Speaker 2: fixed number of teeth that you can count to those

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Speaker 2: pre existing revolutions, and then you take those teeth to

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Speaker 2: do some kind of war that will help you keep

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Speaker 2: the count, like dropping a bean in a bucket or

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Speaker 2: advancing a dial on a fixed face that has a

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Speaker 2: number printed on it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can imagine that in the ancent mindset,

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Speaker 1: like you would have realized if we could harness this,

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Speaker 1: like this is better than counting your steps. There's a

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00:23:18,119 --> 00:23:22,440
Speaker 1: regularity to this that would be harder to achieve through

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Speaker 1: other means.

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Speaker 2: Totally.

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Speaker 1: So.

405
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Speaker 2: Vitruvius describes a machine roughly like that. Hero later describes

406
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Speaker 2: a similar machine, but there are some interesting differences in

407
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Speaker 2: how the two authors present their explication. For example, Vitruvius

408
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Speaker 2: describes his odometer with fixed dimensions. The wheel is four

409
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Speaker 2: Roman feet in diameter, the circumference is approximately twelve point

410
00:23:45,000 --> 00:23:47,520
Speaker 2: five feet, and so forth. And here I want to

411
00:23:47,520 --> 00:23:51,320
Speaker 2: read a passage from roby quote. Rather than providing a

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Speaker 2: mathematical formula whereby the odometer could be adapted to any

413
00:23:55,240 --> 00:23:58,639
Speaker 2: desirable or available wheel size, as Hero does for his

414
00:23:58,680 --> 00:24:03,600
Speaker 2: own description of an odomo, Vitruvius avoids formulas and geometrical

415
00:24:03,680 --> 00:24:08,160
Speaker 2: language by specifying the wheel diameter and circumference as fixed numbers.

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Speaker 2: That is to say, the version of the odometer he

417
00:24:11,040 --> 00:24:15,760
Speaker 2: gives his reader is presented as the exact device transmitted

418
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Speaker 2: from his quote predecessors, not a jumping off point for

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Speaker 2: experimentation with the type of device. And she goes on

420
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Speaker 2: to explain this as typical of the difference between Latin

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Speaker 2: language technical literature from this period and Hellenistic technical literature.

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Speaker 2: Works in Latin tended to be exact descriptions of existing devices,

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Speaker 2: rather than demonstrations of principles and scalable instructions for building

424
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Speaker 2: new machines. The latter. The scalable instructions and explication of

425
00:24:48,040 --> 00:24:51,840
Speaker 2: principles is more like what Hero of Alexandria presents. Instead

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Speaker 2: of having fixed dimensions, his explanation is about how to

427
00:24:55,840 --> 00:24:59,920
Speaker 2: apply the idea of an odometer to different scales and use,

428
00:25:00,720 --> 00:25:05,159
Speaker 2: with the numerical figures being ratios rather than measurements. So

429
00:25:05,240 --> 00:25:09,679
Speaker 2: Hero's goal was to represent these relationships between the different

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Speaker 2: sizes of the wheels and the connected gears, and then

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Speaker 2: to read one final passage from Roby quote. Hero's description

432
00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:20,840
Speaker 2: allows mechanical flexibility as well. He suggests how to extend

433
00:25:20,840 --> 00:25:24,200
Speaker 2: the number of cogs in the odometer, which can radically

434
00:25:24,280 --> 00:25:27,879
Speaker 2: enhance its measuring capacity. On the other hand, he notes

435
00:25:27,920 --> 00:25:30,720
Speaker 2: that it is pointless to make an odometer that measures

436
00:25:30,760 --> 00:25:33,720
Speaker 2: a greater distance than its vehicle could cover in a

437
00:25:33,760 --> 00:25:36,560
Speaker 2: single day, as it is easiest to just start the

438
00:25:36,600 --> 00:25:40,480
Speaker 2: count over each morning, which I like. That's very practical,

439
00:25:40,960 --> 00:25:43,920
Speaker 2: but it also flags an interesting difference here. They're just

440
00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:47,720
Speaker 2: different assumptions about the reader the text. In a more

441
00:25:47,880 --> 00:25:51,480
Speaker 2: Hellenistic tradition, or as Hero does, it might be geared

442
00:25:51,520 --> 00:25:55,440
Speaker 2: more toward a select audience of highly educated polymaths who

443
00:25:55,440 --> 00:25:59,240
Speaker 2: would be expected to take the engineering principle and then

444
00:25:59,359 --> 00:26:03,000
Speaker 2: vary it to their needs, whereas the Latin Roman tradition

445
00:26:03,359 --> 00:26:07,480
Speaker 2: is describing an exact device in a more accessible way

446
00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:11,680
Speaker 2: that's easy to replicate but offers less deep understanding and flexibility.

447
00:26:12,080 --> 00:26:13,919
Speaker 2: But I wanted to come back to a kind of

448
00:26:14,520 --> 00:26:19,879
Speaker 2: a lingering question about Alexander's bemtists, whether they used a

449
00:26:20,040 --> 00:26:23,879
Speaker 2: mechanical odometer or not, And the question is which is

450
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:27,600
Speaker 2: actually more accurate. You might assume a mechanical odometer is

451
00:26:27,760 --> 00:26:32,639
Speaker 2: more accurate, but I've read some arguments that actually human

452
00:26:32,760 --> 00:26:36,800
Speaker 2: pacers would be less prone to error over a long

453
00:26:36,880 --> 00:26:40,959
Speaker 2: distance than a primitive mechanical device would be. Now, obviously

454
00:26:41,440 --> 00:26:43,520
Speaker 2: the best possible scenario would be like to have the

455
00:26:43,880 --> 00:26:46,480
Speaker 2: odometer on a modern car. You know, something that is

456
00:26:46,600 --> 00:26:51,280
Speaker 2: highly accurate, very well calibrated, a highly accurate modern device

457
00:26:52,080 --> 00:26:54,719
Speaker 2: that's going to give you the best reading. But obviously

458
00:26:54,760 --> 00:26:59,520
Speaker 2: something built in the fourth century BCE would have significant

459
00:26:59,640 --> 00:27:03,520
Speaker 2: enough inaccuracy in its measurements that this would cause problems

460
00:27:03,560 --> 00:27:06,600
Speaker 2: over great distances. And so the idea is that any

461
00:27:06,760 --> 00:27:10,119
Speaker 2: inaccurate measurement in a mechanical device would just build up

462
00:27:10,160 --> 00:27:12,960
Speaker 2: and up over many, many miles on a great journey,

463
00:27:13,080 --> 00:27:16,160
Speaker 2: like if the circumference of your wheel is slightly too

464
00:27:16,240 --> 00:27:20,320
Speaker 2: long over thousands of miles, it will start to significantly

465
00:27:20,440 --> 00:27:24,199
Speaker 2: underestimate the distance traveled. Meanwhile, I think the idea at

466
00:27:24,280 --> 00:27:28,760
Speaker 2: least is that human biobemitists literally counting their steps will

467
00:27:28,760 --> 00:27:33,840
Speaker 2: also have inaccuracy, maybe inaccuracy relative to some reference length

468
00:27:33,880 --> 00:27:38,040
Speaker 2: of a single pace, but that inaccuracy will go both ways.

469
00:27:38,040 --> 00:27:40,080
Speaker 2: Steps that are too long and then steps that are

470
00:27:40,080 --> 00:27:43,000
Speaker 2: too short, and those will average out over time. That's

471
00:27:43,040 --> 00:27:46,040
Speaker 2: the argument at least, and I see the logic here,

472
00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:49,280
Speaker 2: and I admit that I'm not a genius at statistics,

473
00:27:49,280 --> 00:27:52,119
Speaker 2: so I could be wrong. But my reaction is that

474
00:27:52,200 --> 00:27:55,119
Speaker 2: I think this could also be mistaken because it would

475
00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:59,600
Speaker 2: tend to assume that the human pacers inaccuracy will not

476
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:04,080
Speaker 2: be consistently biased, either above or below whatever the reference

477
00:28:04,160 --> 00:28:07,600
Speaker 2: pace length being used is. So I think this logic

478
00:28:07,680 --> 00:28:09,840
Speaker 2: might work if you had like a group of a

479
00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:13,400
Speaker 2: thousand people walking, and then you had all of them

480
00:28:13,800 --> 00:28:17,000
Speaker 2: count their steps, and then you averaged all of those together.

481
00:28:17,520 --> 00:28:19,920
Speaker 2: But if it was just a single person, I would

482
00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:23,639
Speaker 2: tend to think that their personal count might be biased

483
00:28:23,720 --> 00:28:25,760
Speaker 2: more in one direction or another. They would just tend

484
00:28:25,800 --> 00:28:28,680
Speaker 2: to have longer than average or shorter than average steps,

485
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:32,000
Speaker 2: and that even a pretty primitive machine would be better.

486
00:28:32,040 --> 00:28:32,600
Speaker 2: But I don't know.

487
00:28:33,200 --> 00:28:39,320
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. Yeah, I don't quite know what to make it, because, yeah,

488
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:41,400
Speaker 1: I can see what they're getting at with the idea

489
00:28:41,480 --> 00:28:45,560
Speaker 1: that some sort of a basic mechanical flaw in an

490
00:28:45,560 --> 00:28:48,720
Speaker 1: ancient odometer device that you would just consistently get the

491
00:28:48,760 --> 00:28:51,320
Speaker 1: wrong number, and then that would build up over time,

492
00:28:51,920 --> 00:28:55,240
Speaker 1: and then yeah, when it comes to the actual steps

493
00:28:55,240 --> 00:28:58,920
Speaker 1: and the counting of those steps by an individual or individuals,

494
00:28:59,160 --> 00:29:01,760
Speaker 1: you'd have, you know, a little in one direction, a

495
00:29:01,760 --> 00:29:04,880
Speaker 1: little another direction, but it would sort of even out. Yeah,

496
00:29:05,120 --> 00:29:06,440
Speaker 1: it's fascinating to think about.

497
00:29:06,880 --> 00:29:08,640
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it would be more likely to

498
00:29:08,680 --> 00:29:11,280
Speaker 2: even out if you were talking about a group of people,

499
00:29:11,560 --> 00:29:14,640
Speaker 2: like a large group of people all average together. Yeah,

500
00:29:14,800 --> 00:29:16,200
Speaker 2: I don't know if that'd be the case for a

501
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:20,720
Speaker 2: single person. Anyway, whether or not they were using mechanical odometers,

502
00:29:20,840 --> 00:29:25,440
Speaker 2: ancientdematists did a not at all bad job of measuring

503
00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:30,640
Speaker 2: different distances between milestones between cities, and it's possible they

504
00:29:30,680 --> 00:29:33,880
Speaker 2: were helped in this task by devices like the ones

505
00:29:33,960 --> 00:29:38,320
Speaker 2: described by Vitruvius and Hero. But ultimately, I think we

506
00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:41,000
Speaker 2: don't know for sure if they use these devices or not,

507
00:29:41,240 --> 00:29:43,360
Speaker 2: and if they did, we don't know for sure who

508
00:29:43,640 --> 00:29:47,959
Speaker 2: invented these ancient odometers. It's one of those questions, you know,

509
00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:50,800
Speaker 2: there are many inventions where we just don't know where

510
00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:51,480
Speaker 2: they came from.

511
00:29:51,720 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 1: I wonder too if it might have been a situation

512
00:29:54,120 --> 00:29:58,360
Speaker 1: where they use both where they're specialist in their field.

513
00:29:58,840 --> 00:30:02,040
Speaker 1: So perhaps like specialist in other fields, they're using more

514
00:30:02,080 --> 00:30:05,680
Speaker 1: than one method and then comparing the numbers and figuring

515
00:30:05,720 --> 00:30:09,600
Speaker 1: out some sort of more accurate measurement based on the two.

516
00:30:10,160 --> 00:30:13,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, that could be. I don't know, But anyway, it's

517
00:30:13,120 --> 00:30:15,760
Speaker 2: really impressive that in what is like the third or

518
00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:20,800
Speaker 2: fourth century BCE, we've got people getting like really accurate

519
00:30:21,400 --> 00:30:24,160
Speaker 2: estimates of travel distances that are on the order of

520
00:30:24,240 --> 00:30:25,200
Speaker 2: hundreds of miles.

521
00:30:25,560 --> 00:30:28,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fascinating. Now, all this is going on in

522
00:30:28,120 --> 00:30:32,520
Speaker 1: the Greco Roman world, but as we've partially alluded to already,

523
00:30:32,520 --> 00:30:37,400
Speaker 1: there's also a history of the odometer in Chinese civilization

524
00:30:37,600 --> 00:30:41,880
Speaker 1: as well. In particular, the device in question is the

525
00:30:42,000 --> 00:30:47,120
Speaker 1: Lee recording drum carriage. Now, this is sometimes attributed as

526
00:30:47,160 --> 00:30:52,479
Speaker 1: an invention of Zhonghang, who lived seventy eight through one

527
00:30:52,600 --> 00:30:56,680
Speaker 1: thirty nine C. This is a Chinese polymath and court

528
00:30:56,720 --> 00:31:01,320
Speaker 1: astronomer in the Eastern Han dynasty. This is an individual

529
00:31:01,400 --> 00:31:03,440
Speaker 1: we've talked about before because there are a number of

530
00:31:03,480 --> 00:31:06,840
Speaker 1: different inventions that are attributed to him, one of which

531
00:31:06,960 --> 00:31:12,000
Speaker 1: was an early form of earthquake detection device. He had

532
00:31:12,200 --> 00:31:16,520
Speaker 1: an important role tending calendars and celestial events, aiding the emperor,

533
00:31:17,480 --> 00:31:19,920
Speaker 1: who of course ruled at the mandate of heaven, so,

534
00:31:20,080 --> 00:31:25,640
Speaker 1: you know, maintaining the balance between cosmos and civil life.

535
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:28,360
Speaker 1: And this is a period of time that sometimes referred

536
00:31:28,360 --> 00:31:31,480
Speaker 1: to as the Golden Age of Chinese history, for centuries

537
00:31:31,520 --> 00:31:34,080
Speaker 1: of economic prosperity that saw the traffic of goods and

538
00:31:34,160 --> 00:31:37,960
Speaker 1: ideas across the Silk Road. He was an inventor, a poet,

539
00:31:38,000 --> 00:31:41,320
Speaker 1: and an early scientist. We have an older invention episode

540
00:31:41,360 --> 00:31:44,360
Speaker 1: about the earthquake detection device, and I was looking back

541
00:31:44,400 --> 00:31:46,480
Speaker 1: at some of our notes and I'm reminded that you

542
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:48,880
Speaker 1: shared some of his poetry in that episode.

543
00:31:49,080 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 2: Oh I don't remember that now. Was it good poetry?

544
00:31:52,160 --> 00:31:55,680
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, yeah, it's good stuff. So he's credited with

545
00:31:55,680 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 1: a number of inventions innovations and achievements. He wrote a

546
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:02,320
Speaker 1: treatise on mystical law the Cosmos, which included the theory

547
00:32:02,600 --> 00:32:05,000
Speaker 1: that the moon did not emit light, but reflected the

548
00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:08,480
Speaker 1: light of the sun. And he's also sometimes attributed as

549
00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:12,160
Speaker 1: the inventor of the Lee recording drum carriage, which again

550
00:32:12,240 --> 00:32:18,160
Speaker 1: is this odometer of sorts in Chinese history. Now it

551
00:32:18,240 --> 00:32:20,640
Speaker 1: is worth noting that kind of like the situation with

552
00:32:20,720 --> 00:32:25,200
Speaker 1: Hero and Archimedes, we have a very famous historical inventor here,

553
00:32:25,640 --> 00:32:28,920
Speaker 1: and he's attributed with a number of inventions. And so

554
00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:32,760
Speaker 1: I guess the question always lingers, is this an invention

555
00:32:32,880 --> 00:32:37,120
Speaker 1: that this individual invented? Is it something that they described

556
00:32:37,560 --> 00:32:39,720
Speaker 1: it is something? Is it something that just ends up

557
00:32:39,800 --> 00:32:44,120
Speaker 1: being attributed to them because the technology was known during

558
00:32:44,160 --> 00:32:46,800
Speaker 1: that time, or it's based on surviving records, etc.

559
00:32:47,400 --> 00:32:48,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.

560
00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:50,760
Speaker 1: So I ended up looking at some of the writings

561
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:55,160
Speaker 1: of Joseph Needhaim on this. So. Needham lived nineteen hundred

562
00:32:55,200 --> 00:32:59,360
Speaker 1: through nineteen ninety five. He was a British biochemist, historian

563
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:02,239
Speaker 1: of science and sonologists who wrote rather extensively on the

564
00:33:02,280 --> 00:33:06,600
Speaker 1: history of science and technology in China. His second wife

565
00:33:07,280 --> 00:33:10,920
Speaker 1: Lu gives him as a Chinese historian and biochemist, and

566
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:13,720
Speaker 1: she was an important co researcher and co author in

567
00:33:13,760 --> 00:33:17,800
Speaker 1: his work. So we're talking multiple volumes that he wrote

568
00:33:17,840 --> 00:33:21,040
Speaker 1: during his lifetime. Very very much is life work. So

569
00:33:21,880 --> 00:33:25,720
Speaker 1: before we get to the carriage itself, I thought we

570
00:33:25,800 --> 00:33:29,680
Speaker 1: might stop to just consider roads in ancient China. So

571
00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:33,760
Speaker 1: Needham writes about roads in general in the short Science

572
00:33:34,040 --> 00:33:38,200
Speaker 1: and Civilization in China, and he points out that they

573
00:33:38,240 --> 00:33:40,920
Speaker 1: were quite comparable to the famous roads of the Romans.

574
00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:44,280
Speaker 1: Both empires had extensive road systems that served as a

575
00:33:44,320 --> 00:33:50,080
Speaker 1: means of logistically connecting their vast landholdings for travel and trade,

576
00:33:50,880 --> 00:33:53,760
Speaker 1: as well as playing an important part is just in

577
00:33:53,840 --> 00:33:56,840
Speaker 1: just communication through the empire. That's always something to keep

578
00:33:56,840 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 1: in mind that the road is also a lane for communication. Now,

579
00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:04,400
Speaker 1: both systems, the Roman and the Chinese, fell into long

580
00:34:04,440 --> 00:34:07,800
Speaker 1: periods of decay after the third century CE, he points out,

581
00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:10,920
Speaker 1: though he writes that while the collapse of Roman roads

582
00:34:11,320 --> 00:34:14,640
Speaker 1: had more of a fracturing effect in China, natural and

583
00:34:14,760 --> 00:34:19,399
Speaker 1: artificial waterways and some surviving mountain road systems enabled these

584
00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:23,680
Speaker 1: far reaching routes of communication to remain open. He also

585
00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:27,120
Speaker 1: points out something very interesting about these two independent systems

586
00:34:27,160 --> 00:34:30,320
Speaker 1: that this rather awe inspiring and I thought really nicely written,

587
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:32,560
Speaker 1: and it also kind of ties into some of the

588
00:34:32,560 --> 00:34:35,560
Speaker 1: stuff we talked about in our previous episode about the

589
00:34:35,640 --> 00:34:40,719
Speaker 1: Roman military the Dethroned Emperor series quote. Should the Romans

590
00:34:40,760 --> 00:34:44,799
Speaker 1: have ever succeeded in conquering the Parthians and the Persians,

591
00:34:45,200 --> 00:34:49,080
Speaker 1: the two road systems might have met, perhaps somewhere west

592
00:34:49,120 --> 00:34:52,759
Speaker 1: of Shinjang, but this was not to be. The octopus

593
00:34:52,960 --> 00:34:57,080
Speaker 1: like arms expanded independently, each in a world of its own,

594
00:34:57,480 --> 00:35:01,960
Speaker 1: their builders, troubled only occasionally by the vaguest rumors of

595
00:35:02,040 --> 00:35:06,120
Speaker 1: another system too far away to matter. Zinjohn, by the way,

596
00:35:06,200 --> 00:35:09,000
Speaker 1: is in northwest China. That's where he's talking about here.

597
00:35:09,560 --> 00:35:11,359
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is such a I love this quote

598
00:35:11,360 --> 00:35:18,040
Speaker 1: because it's just imagining these two independent road systems like octopuses,

599
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:22,000
Speaker 1: each doing their own thing, and if you know, world

600
00:35:22,040 --> 00:35:24,520
Speaker 1: history had gone a different way, there could have been

601
00:35:24,560 --> 00:35:28,359
Speaker 1: a situation where they met. It's crazy to think about,

602
00:35:28,480 --> 00:35:31,520
Speaker 1: like roads, I've often thought about. You know, you encounter

603
00:35:31,560 --> 00:35:33,560
Speaker 1: a road and where does that road end? You know

604
00:35:33,640 --> 00:35:39,480
Speaker 1: that basically goes It's not infinite, but it stretches on

605
00:35:39,600 --> 00:35:41,799
Speaker 1: for such a great distance, and to imagine these two

606
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:46,800
Speaker 1: vast systems almost but not quite coming together. Yeah. Yeah,

607
00:35:46,880 --> 00:35:48,600
Speaker 1: it's kind of like I don't know if you've ever

608
00:35:49,520 --> 00:35:52,719
Speaker 1: played around with us to see like how far one

609
00:35:52,800 --> 00:35:56,960
Speaker 1: can drive on a given continent or unconnected continents, Like

610
00:35:57,000 --> 00:36:00,239
Speaker 1: at what point do things seem to break down? And

611
00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:02,160
Speaker 1: you would have to find some other route to connect

612
00:36:02,160 --> 00:36:04,480
Speaker 1: with another road. And I know when you get into

613
00:36:04,480 --> 00:36:07,120
Speaker 1: your Asia and Africa, like there are some pretty long

614
00:36:07,480 --> 00:36:10,040
Speaker 1: travels by road that are that are possible today. The

615
00:36:10,320 --> 00:36:12,360
Speaker 1: road is not going to be necessarily be great the

616
00:36:12,400 --> 00:36:21,760
Speaker 1: whole way, but you can do quite a lot. So anyway,

617
00:36:22,040 --> 00:36:27,359
Speaker 1: Needam points out that with the odometer or the way measures,

618
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:30,600
Speaker 1: it's a pretty simple proposition from a mechanical standpoint. If

619
00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:33,160
Speaker 1: you have the wheel already, and you have row, and

620
00:36:33,200 --> 00:36:36,040
Speaker 1: you have if you have roads, you have wheels, then

621
00:36:36,200 --> 00:36:38,560
Speaker 1: all it is is quote a system of toothed wheels

622
00:36:38,719 --> 00:36:42,239
Speaker 1: constituting a reduction gear train so that one or more

623
00:36:42,280 --> 00:36:47,400
Speaker 1: pins revolve slowly, releasing catches at predetermined intervals, and in

624
00:36:47,440 --> 00:36:52,600
Speaker 1: the case of this invention, striking drums or gongs, so

625
00:36:53,320 --> 00:36:55,680
Speaker 1: the lee recording drum carriage. What is a lee. A

626
00:36:55,760 --> 00:36:59,800
Speaker 1: lee is the traditional Chinese measure of distance. Today's standard

627
00:36:59,800 --> 00:37:03,840
Speaker 1: eye at five hundred meters or one thousand, six d

628
00:37:03,840 --> 00:37:07,279
Speaker 1: and forty feet, but as with the mile in Western traditions,

629
00:37:07,920 --> 00:37:11,320
Speaker 1: historically there's some drift over exactly how far it is

630
00:37:11,360 --> 00:37:14,239
Speaker 1: supposed to be. But it's standardized today and would have

631
00:37:14,320 --> 00:37:18,520
Speaker 1: been standardized under different rules in different dynasties.

632
00:37:18,880 --> 00:37:22,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, standardization of measures does seem like such an important

633
00:37:22,520 --> 00:37:24,719
Speaker 2: part of this too, because when I kept thinking about

634
00:37:24,719 --> 00:37:29,680
Speaker 2: the idea of a bimitist potentially trying to measure distance

635
00:37:29,840 --> 00:37:32,640
Speaker 2: with paces, I'm like, what is So you've got to

636
00:37:32,640 --> 00:37:35,239
Speaker 2: have something that's like a reference pace, right, if you

637
00:37:35,239 --> 00:37:39,120
Speaker 2: say something is x number of paces long, you've got

638
00:37:39,160 --> 00:37:44,080
Speaker 2: to either know how much your pace typically relates to

639
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:47,360
Speaker 2: a standard measure like a mile, or you've got to

640
00:37:47,360 --> 00:37:50,920
Speaker 2: be using your paces as some kind of literal standard measure,

641
00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:53,080
Speaker 2: like people would know what that number meant.

642
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:57,759
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's the history of measurements alone would be

643
00:37:57,800 --> 00:37:59,799
Speaker 1: something interesting to come back to, because, of course you

644
00:37:59,800 --> 00:38:02,480
Speaker 1: get into use of various parts of the human body

645
00:38:03,040 --> 00:38:07,359
Speaker 1: to form your base measurements, the creation of tools, and

646
00:38:07,760 --> 00:38:10,760
Speaker 1: certainly when you're getting into weights for goods and trade,

647
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:13,279
Speaker 1: like some of our oldest data and oldest examples are

648
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:15,680
Speaker 1: all related to that. But then when you start thinking

649
00:38:15,680 --> 00:38:18,799
Speaker 1: about these larger measurements, like the measurement between you know,

650
00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:21,920
Speaker 1: the fort in the frontier, that sort of thing, like

651
00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:24,880
Speaker 1: you can't just count, You can't just have someone go

652
00:38:24,960 --> 00:38:27,279
Speaker 1: out there with essentially a ruler and say, all right,

653
00:38:27,320 --> 00:38:29,600
Speaker 1: start measuring it off, like you've got to have some

654
00:38:29,680 --> 00:38:34,360
Speaker 1: other system. Yeah, yeah, all right. Sonam gets more into

655
00:38:34,440 --> 00:38:39,240
Speaker 1: the subject of the Lee measuring card here in Science

656
00:38:39,280 --> 00:38:43,160
Speaker 1: and Civilization in China, Volume for Physics and Physical Technology,

657
00:38:43,239 --> 00:38:48,279
Speaker 1: Part two Mechanical Engineering, and yeah, it gets into the

658
00:38:48,560 --> 00:38:51,120
Speaker 1: nature and origins of the Lee recording drum carriage. He

659
00:38:51,239 --> 00:38:54,600
Speaker 1: cites several sources and pose in Some of these are

660
00:38:54,640 --> 00:38:56,880
Speaker 1: sources that go into more detail, others just kind of

661
00:38:56,880 --> 00:38:59,640
Speaker 1: mention it in passing and points out that that many

662
00:38:59,680 --> 00:39:02,000
Speaker 1: of them of the carriage, yet they don't actually describe

663
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:05,880
Speaker 1: the mechanism employed. In at least one case, it shows

664
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:08,840
Speaker 1: up as a math problem. It's something along the lines

665
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:11,880
Speaker 1: of if the Lee recording drum carriage were to travel

666
00:39:11,920 --> 00:39:15,320
Speaker 1: between this city and this city, how many times would

667
00:39:15,480 --> 00:39:19,000
Speaker 1: the gong sound? That sort of thing. The concept seems

668
00:39:19,040 --> 00:39:21,080
Speaker 1: to date back to the Han dynasty, and this is

669
00:39:21,120 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 1: where the attribution to Zunghing seems to come into play.

670
00:39:25,200 --> 00:39:28,239
Speaker 1: But when the carriage is described, it's generally described as

671
00:39:28,360 --> 00:39:32,400
Speaker 1: a carriage drawn by four horses, and it works based

672
00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:36,680
Speaker 1: on multiple cogged wheels, some vertical and some horizontal, you know,

673
00:39:36,719 --> 00:39:39,640
Speaker 1: all of course, much like the earlier example and the

674
00:39:39,680 --> 00:39:42,120
Speaker 1: Greco Roman traditions we were discussing, you know, it's tied

675
00:39:42,160 --> 00:39:45,360
Speaker 1: to the movement of the wheels. In the simpler version

676
00:39:45,640 --> 00:39:50,240
Speaker 1: of this carriage, it's said that there is a wooden

677
00:39:50,320 --> 00:39:54,120
Speaker 1: man in the carriage who is mechanically made to strike

678
00:39:54,200 --> 00:39:58,360
Speaker 1: a drum with the passage of each lee. So the

679
00:39:58,400 --> 00:40:00,799
Speaker 1: wheels are turning, the cogs are turned, learning there's a

680
00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:04,920
Speaker 1: mechanical wooden man inside who like a music box, he

681
00:40:05,040 --> 00:40:08,640
Speaker 1: is going to mechanically strike a drum. In this case,

682
00:40:08,800 --> 00:40:10,560
Speaker 1: every time one lee has.

683
00:40:10,480 --> 00:40:14,359
Speaker 2: Passed, beat that. Vitruvius, you did not have a wooden man,

684
00:40:14,440 --> 00:40:14,719
Speaker 2: did you.

685
00:40:16,600 --> 00:40:20,520
Speaker 1: Later, a more complex version is described as being two

686
00:40:20,560 --> 00:40:23,920
Speaker 1: stories in height, so it's a carriage that has two stories,

687
00:40:24,239 --> 00:40:27,440
Speaker 1: and each story has its own wooden figure. The lower

688
00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:31,400
Speaker 1: figure strikes a drum every lee, while the higher figure

689
00:40:31,680 --> 00:40:33,720
Speaker 1: rings a bell every ten lee.

690
00:40:33,960 --> 00:40:36,239
Speaker 2: Okay, So one difference that occurs to me here is

691
00:40:36,320 --> 00:40:40,080
Speaker 2: this would still if it's keeping track of the distance

692
00:40:40,560 --> 00:40:44,239
Speaker 2: in an accurate way, but doing so by making a

693
00:40:44,400 --> 00:40:49,799
Speaker 2: sound instead of by say, accumulating pebbles or beads in

694
00:40:49,880 --> 00:40:54,320
Speaker 2: a container. It's something that you would to some extent

695
00:40:54,440 --> 00:40:57,920
Speaker 2: need to continuously keep track of as you're traveling, Like

696
00:40:57,960 --> 00:41:01,960
Speaker 2: it would still require effort, full engagement of the memory

697
00:41:02,080 --> 00:41:04,440
Speaker 2: by somebody doing the traveling, right.

698
00:41:04,760 --> 00:41:08,360
Speaker 1: That's right. That's based on my reading here of Needham.

699
00:41:08,360 --> 00:41:10,760
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any indication that it was spitting

700
00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:14,680
Speaker 1: out like you know, balls or pebbles that could then

701
00:41:14,680 --> 00:41:17,959
Speaker 1: be counted later, or that was anyway recording how many

702
00:41:18,040 --> 00:41:21,120
Speaker 1: les it passed. It was just a you know, a

703
00:41:21,320 --> 00:41:24,920
Speaker 1: ringing of a bell or the striking of a drum

704
00:41:25,040 --> 00:41:27,000
Speaker 1: based on the intervals traveled.

705
00:41:26,760 --> 00:41:30,120
Speaker 2: Which would still be useful, but would require more work

706
00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:33,080
Speaker 2: than or at least work spread out over a longer

707
00:41:33,080 --> 00:41:35,840
Speaker 2: period of time, rather than say like a single counting

708
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:38,680
Speaker 2: activity in between travel segments.

709
00:41:39,160 --> 00:41:41,040
Speaker 1: And in this we get into one of the big

710
00:41:41,120 --> 00:41:43,960
Speaker 1: questions about the lee recording drum carriage, and that is

711
00:41:44,600 --> 00:41:48,839
Speaker 1: was this a device that was at all originally intended

712
00:41:49,200 --> 00:41:53,200
Speaker 1: to measure distances? Or was it you? Or was it

713
00:41:53,280 --> 00:41:57,560
Speaker 1: more about music? Was it more about novelty? Was it

714
00:41:58,920 --> 00:42:02,640
Speaker 1: why was the technology employed so again this These writings

715
00:42:02,680 --> 00:42:04,960
Speaker 1: are typically revolving around the Han period or perhaps a

716
00:42:05,000 --> 00:42:08,520
Speaker 1: little earlier, but the lee measuring drum carriage was not

717
00:42:08,719 --> 00:42:12,200
Speaker 1: known as such until later, and Needham discusses that this

718
00:42:12,320 --> 00:42:15,680
Speaker 1: might mean that the invention was in fact more expressly

719
00:42:15,719 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 1: for musical performance rather than the measurement of distances. Again,

720
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 1: at least during this time period. It may have changed

721
00:42:23,080 --> 00:42:25,440
Speaker 1: later when someone realized, oh yeah, we can just count

722
00:42:26,160 --> 00:42:28,000
Speaker 1: how many strikes of the drum, we can count how

723
00:42:28,040 --> 00:42:30,200
Speaker 1: many rings of the bell, and then that's data that

724
00:42:30,239 --> 00:42:33,200
Speaker 1: could prove useful. But he stresses that you know, these

725
00:42:33,239 --> 00:42:38,960
Speaker 1: are still interconnect interconnected possibilities and if you're if you're asking, well,

726
00:42:38,960 --> 00:42:41,840
Speaker 1: why would they do that? Like why build a carriage

727
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:44,600
Speaker 1: like this? And why does it remain something other than

728
00:42:44,640 --> 00:42:46,920
Speaker 1: just like a one time novelty, Like why is it

729
00:42:46,960 --> 00:42:49,560
Speaker 1: written about so much? And he points out that music,

730
00:42:49,640 --> 00:42:52,440
Speaker 1: of course, is often part of a procession, and he

731
00:42:52,520 --> 00:42:56,600
Speaker 1: stresses that quote carriages for musicians whether mechanized or not

732
00:42:57,080 --> 00:43:02,200
Speaker 1: survived in imperial processions through many subsequent dynasties. So the

733
00:43:02,239 --> 00:43:07,359
Speaker 1: idea here is that the mechanical version here develops from

734
00:43:07,520 --> 00:43:13,160
Speaker 1: non mechanical carriages with human musicians inside them. Imperial fleets

735
00:43:13,160 --> 00:43:15,520
Speaker 1: of vehicles, as he refers to them, would have likely

736
00:43:15,560 --> 00:43:20,399
Speaker 1: included palace officials and so forth, but also entertainers musicians.

737
00:43:20,800 --> 00:43:24,560
Speaker 1: So as everyone's traveling down the road, there's music, and

738
00:43:24,920 --> 00:43:28,160
Speaker 1: at some point someone says, hey, well, we could build

739
00:43:28,160 --> 00:43:31,600
Speaker 1: some gears. We could make a mechanical musical man inside

740
00:43:31,640 --> 00:43:33,120
Speaker 1: one of the carriages.

741
00:43:33,040 --> 00:43:35,320
Speaker 2: Putting those flesh musicians out of the job.

742
00:43:35,680 --> 00:43:38,279
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know if they'd be completely out of

743
00:43:38,280 --> 00:43:41,239
Speaker 1: the job, because you know, these the mechanical musicians can

744
00:43:41,280 --> 00:43:45,040
Speaker 1: only do so much here. But yeah, for a modern comparison,

745
00:43:45,200 --> 00:43:48,840
Speaker 1: we might think of a parade float as a counterpart

746
00:43:48,880 --> 00:43:50,680
Speaker 1: to something like this. It does sound a lot like

747
00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:53,600
Speaker 1: a parade float. It would have been, according to one account,

748
00:43:53,760 --> 00:43:58,320
Speaker 1: painted red and decorated with flowers and birds. It's described

749
00:43:58,320 --> 00:44:01,759
Speaker 1: as being escorted by eighteen men, and there would have

750
00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:05,400
Speaker 1: been a phoenix headed carriage pole on it. So this

751
00:44:05,600 --> 00:44:07,880
Speaker 1: was not clearly not something that was like a Google

752
00:44:07,920 --> 00:44:11,160
Speaker 1: Maps vehicle that was out there just to perform a task.

753
00:44:11,200 --> 00:44:14,759
Speaker 1: It also it said that it looked marvelous. It's a

754
00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:18,600
Speaker 1: joyous vehicle. And once more Needum stress is that we

755
00:44:18,760 --> 00:44:22,239
Speaker 1: don't know for sure if it was ever used by cartographers.

756
00:44:23,400 --> 00:44:26,560
Speaker 1: It's possible that later on cartographers may make use of

757
00:44:26,560 --> 00:44:28,640
Speaker 1: the data that could be provided by this, but we're

758
00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:33,160
Speaker 1: not sure. Interesting, so Needham points out that Hero's description

759
00:44:33,239 --> 00:44:35,400
Speaker 1: of thedometer did not claim it as a new invention.

760
00:44:35,640 --> 00:44:40,200
Speaker 1: He mentions Vitruvius and then mentions that after Hero Vitruvius,

761
00:44:40,239 --> 00:44:44,080
Speaker 1: the odometer appears in Western Europe during the fifteenth century.

762
00:44:44,160 --> 00:44:47,840
Speaker 1: So it's kind of not really on the Western European

763
00:44:47,920 --> 00:44:50,040
Speaker 1: radar for a long period of time, or doesn't seem

764
00:44:50,040 --> 00:44:53,400
Speaker 1: to be based on surviving histories, and then it re emerges.

765
00:44:53,840 --> 00:44:56,799
Speaker 1: Quote the pattern is therefore the same as that which

766
00:44:56,840 --> 00:45:01,200
Speaker 1: we have repeatedly met with i e. Greek antecedent paralleled

767
00:45:01,320 --> 00:45:05,040
Speaker 1: or followed by followed at short distance by Chinese developments

768
00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:09,520
Speaker 1: which continue throughout the medieval period, and then a reawakening

769
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:12,760
Speaker 1: of the subject in Europe. So in this he's touching

770
00:45:12,800 --> 00:45:15,320
Speaker 1: on something that was kind of a career spanning question

771
00:45:15,480 --> 00:45:18,480
Speaker 1: for him is often referred to as the need Him question,

772
00:45:18,920 --> 00:45:22,000
Speaker 1: and that the question is basically why didn't China beat

773
00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:25,520
Speaker 1: Europe to the scientific revolution. He's been a fair amount

774
00:45:25,560 --> 00:45:28,440
Speaker 1: of his work thinking over this and looking to answers

775
00:45:28,520 --> 00:45:33,480
Speaker 1: and Chinese social institutions and more. Though as reading that,

776
00:45:33,560 --> 00:45:37,279
Speaker 1: synologist Nathan Sivin, who would have been I think at

777
00:45:37,280 --> 00:45:40,759
Speaker 1: times a collaborator with Needham, pointed out that, you know,

778
00:45:40,840 --> 00:45:42,960
Speaker 1: the whole thing is basically a why did an X

779
00:45:43,000 --> 00:45:47,439
Speaker 1: happen in history? Question, which, by some estimates is less

780
00:45:47,440 --> 00:45:49,440
Speaker 1: than a fruitful enterprise. You know, you get into all

781
00:45:49,440 --> 00:45:53,399
Speaker 1: sorts of complex butterfly winging, flapping concerns when you start

782
00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:56,120
Speaker 1: asking questions like that. They can be kind of nifty

783
00:45:56,160 --> 00:46:00,480
Speaker 1: head scratchers, but perhaps they are not the best exercise

784
00:46:00,560 --> 00:46:04,040
Speaker 1: for an historian. But at any rate, the need Hum question,

785
00:46:04,200 --> 00:46:08,200
Speaker 1: you see it mentioned a lot in discussions of the

786
00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:10,920
Speaker 1: history of Chinese science. Now, I do want to note

787
00:46:11,400 --> 00:46:14,680
Speaker 1: in reading about all this, I also read some material

788
00:46:14,719 --> 00:46:19,360
Speaker 1: for Needum about another interesting wheeled vehicle in Chinese history,

789
00:46:19,400 --> 00:46:23,040
Speaker 1: and that is the South Pointing chariot. But that's one

790
00:46:23,080 --> 00:46:24,759
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to come back to. But yeah, the

791
00:46:24,800 --> 00:46:27,880
Speaker 1: idea of a chariot with another mechanical man on it,

792
00:46:27,920 --> 00:46:31,600
Speaker 1: but this mechanical man always points south ominous.

793
00:46:31,640 --> 00:46:33,040
Speaker 2: Okay.

794
00:46:33,120 --> 00:46:37,080
Speaker 1: So we're not going to go through the exhaustive history

795
00:46:37,160 --> 00:46:40,520
Speaker 1: of the odometer in recent centuries, but I thought it

796
00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:44,080
Speaker 1: might be useful to point out a few different later

797
00:46:44,160 --> 00:46:47,480
Speaker 1: innovations that kind of bring us up to the modern odometer.

798
00:46:48,800 --> 00:46:53,520
Speaker 1: There's Pascal's calculator. This would have been an invention or

799
00:46:53,560 --> 00:46:58,000
Speaker 1: an innovation by Blaise Pascal. This was sixteen forty five,

800
00:46:58,120 --> 00:46:59,880
Speaker 1: not in a dometer per se, but it was a

801
00:47:00,080 --> 00:47:04,640
Speaker 1: computation mechanism that entailed rotating toothed gears, and much like

802
00:47:04,680 --> 00:47:08,600
Speaker 1: a modern odometer, one complete cycle of one gear caused

803
00:47:08,600 --> 00:47:10,120
Speaker 1: the movement of the next gear.

804
00:47:10,360 --> 00:47:12,800
Speaker 2: Okay, So this would have been taking the same principle

805
00:47:12,840 --> 00:47:16,799
Speaker 2: by which the ancient odometer worked, but applying it to

806
00:47:17,239 --> 00:47:21,080
Speaker 2: general calculation rather than just the movement of a vehicle wheel.

807
00:47:21,680 --> 00:47:24,760
Speaker 1: Right now, in the late sixteen hundreds early seventeen hundreds,

808
00:47:24,760 --> 00:47:29,040
Speaker 1: we also see Thomas Savory's nautical odometer. Savory's most famous

809
00:47:29,080 --> 00:47:32,960
Speaker 1: invention was the steam engine, but he also devised a

810
00:47:33,040 --> 00:47:35,799
Speaker 1: nautical odometer. I actually couldn't find out much about this,

811
00:47:35,920 --> 00:47:37,000
Speaker 1: so I don't know. I'm I have to come back

812
00:47:37,000 --> 00:47:39,480
Speaker 1: to this one in the future, but because I was

813
00:47:39,560 --> 00:47:42,919
Speaker 1: curious on how exactly it would have functioned. Oh interesting, Yeah,

814
00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:44,680
Speaker 1: supposedly there was a patent, so it seems like I

815
00:47:44,680 --> 00:47:47,120
Speaker 1: should be able to find that patent somewhere. So I

816
00:47:47,160 --> 00:47:48,560
Speaker 1: don't know, I'll have to come back to that one.

817
00:47:49,400 --> 00:47:52,239
Speaker 1: But this is a fun part because our old friend

818
00:47:52,320 --> 00:47:56,799
Speaker 1: Ben Franklin also enters the fray here when it comes

819
00:47:56,840 --> 00:47:59,279
Speaker 1: to the odometer. He's come up in more than one

820
00:47:59,320 --> 00:48:01,080
Speaker 1: invention come resition, I believe.

821
00:48:01,360 --> 00:48:02,880
Speaker 2: So what was his take?

822
00:48:03,320 --> 00:48:06,600
Speaker 1: So in seventeen seventy five, he was serving as Postmaster

823
00:48:06,760 --> 00:48:10,720
Speaker 1: General for the British Previously he had been postmaster of Philadelphia,

824
00:48:11,080 --> 00:48:13,840
Speaker 1: and he wanted more data on the shortest routes for

825
00:48:13,920 --> 00:48:18,880
Speaker 1: mail delivery. So he basically devised a simple odometer to

826
00:48:18,920 --> 00:48:23,400
Speaker 1: attach to his own carriage. And this will for this

827
00:48:23,520 --> 00:48:26,839
Speaker 1: reason you'll sometime see, especially some online sources, saying Ben

828
00:48:26,920 --> 00:48:31,480
Speaker 1: Franklin invented the odometer. No, it's not accurate in the

829
00:48:31,560 --> 00:48:34,719
Speaker 1: least to say Ben Franklin invented the odometer. You could

830
00:48:34,760 --> 00:48:38,239
Speaker 1: say he invented unodometer. He certainly whipped one up on

831
00:48:38,280 --> 00:48:41,520
Speaker 1: the fly. Here. It seems so every four hundred revolutions

832
00:48:41,560 --> 00:48:45,080
Speaker 1: it would register a mile, and the results were apparently

833
00:48:45,080 --> 00:48:47,560
Speaker 1: pretty accurate based on what I was reading here. So

834
00:48:47,600 --> 00:48:50,240
Speaker 1: at any rate, he was able to use the data

835
00:48:51,239 --> 00:48:54,160
Speaker 1: to figure out which route was best for mail delivery.

836
00:48:54,360 --> 00:48:57,200
Speaker 2: Now, one thing I know I saw reference to on

837
00:48:57,239 --> 00:48:58,799
Speaker 2: the internet and I didn't know what to make of

838
00:48:58,840 --> 00:49:01,880
Speaker 2: this was the idea of a a Mormon odometer.

839
00:49:02,880 --> 00:49:05,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was one that that came up for me

840
00:49:05,280 --> 00:49:11,200
Speaker 1: as well. The rohdometer from Clayton and Pratt. This would

841
00:49:11,200 --> 00:49:13,440
Speaker 1: have been eighteen forty seven. They were pioneers of the

842
00:49:13,520 --> 00:49:15,759
Speaker 1: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, and they

843
00:49:15,800 --> 00:49:19,080
Speaker 1: apparently crafted a simple odometer to measure how far a

844
00:49:19,120 --> 00:49:24,960
Speaker 1: wagon train had traveled. So that's it's interesting again. You're

845
00:49:24,960 --> 00:49:27,640
Speaker 1: getting into this area where it sounds like people would

846
00:49:27,640 --> 00:49:31,200
Speaker 1: find themselves in situations where they could really use an odometer.

847
00:49:31,760 --> 00:49:35,480
Speaker 1: And since the knowledge was known, you could create one.

848
00:49:35,520 --> 00:49:37,040
Speaker 1: You couldn't go to the store and buy one, but

849
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:39,920
Speaker 1: the principles were out there. The principles were part of

850
00:49:41,520 --> 00:49:44,640
Speaker 1: the technological canon, so you could draw on that and

851
00:49:44,920 --> 00:49:49,280
Speaker 1: make yourself a functional odometer. In eighteen ninety five Curtis

852
00:49:49,440 --> 00:49:53,640
Speaker 1: h Veder came up with a bicycle mounted odometer, the cyclometer,

853
00:49:53,960 --> 00:49:57,319
Speaker 1: and then in nineteen oh three we have the Warner autometer,

854
00:49:57,520 --> 00:50:00,960
Speaker 1: which I think like the average versions of this, this

855
00:50:01,080 --> 00:50:04,160
Speaker 1: was like an actual product. It was a combined odometer, speedometer,

856
00:50:04,280 --> 00:50:07,680
Speaker 1: and clock, but it made use of magnetism as opposed

857
00:50:07,680 --> 00:50:11,319
Speaker 1: to just pure gear work. So like those are some

858
00:50:11,400 --> 00:50:15,319
Speaker 1: of the big more big innovations in the odometer in

859
00:50:15,360 --> 00:50:19,640
Speaker 1: recent centuries. And yeah, today the odometer again is something

860
00:50:19,640 --> 00:50:21,759
Speaker 1: we tend to just take for granted or we don't

861
00:50:21,800 --> 00:50:23,799
Speaker 1: even read it. It just sort of clicks by there

862
00:50:23,840 --> 00:50:26,440
Speaker 1: and maybe we check in on it every you know, however,

863
00:50:26,520 --> 00:50:29,160
Speaker 1: many thousands of miles, I guess it varies. Some people

864
00:50:29,200 --> 00:50:32,800
Speaker 1: are probably more into keeping a close eye in their odometer,

865
00:50:32,920 --> 00:50:34,400
Speaker 1: or you have to for work. Obviously.

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00:50:34,880 --> 00:50:37,640
Speaker 2: I think about seeing those surveyors who have the wheel,

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00:50:37,800 --> 00:50:39,600
Speaker 2: they use the surveyors wheel.

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Speaker 1: The surveyor's wheel. Of course I didn't think about that.

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00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:46,719
Speaker 1: That's an obvious innovation to compare to some of these

870
00:50:46,719 --> 00:50:50,000
Speaker 1: discussions of the odometer, like harnessing the power of the

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00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:52,520
Speaker 1: wheel for measurement. All right, Well, we're going to go

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Speaker 1: and close it out here, but we'd love to hear

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00:50:54,000 --> 00:50:57,359
Speaker 1: from everyone out there. Perhaps you have particular thoughts about

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00:50:57,400 --> 00:51:00,480
Speaker 1: the odometer, it's ancient history, it's recent history, tree, or

875
00:51:01,600 --> 00:51:04,399
Speaker 1: our modern use of the technology. Write in We would

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00:51:04,400 --> 00:51:07,080
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. As a reminder, our core

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Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind published on Tuesdays

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879
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880
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Speaker 1: do a short form artifact or monster fact, and on

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882
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Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns and just talk about the

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Speaker 1: strange film huge.

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Speaker 2: you would like to get in touch with us with

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Speaker 2: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a

887
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Speaker 2: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you

888
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Speaker 2: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

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