Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. We are going
Speaker 2: down down into the vault for an older episode of
Speaker 2: the podcast. This one originally published on September sixth, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two, and it is about the invention of the odometer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that. Don't stop right there and think, Okay,
Speaker 1: a dometer my dashboard of my car, the most boring
Speaker 1: thing in the universe. No, no, no, this one gets weird.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend it. This one goes into the ancient world.
Speaker 1: There's some strange devices you're gonna have a lot of
Speaker 1: fun with.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is.
Speaker 2: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: Today on Stuff to Blow your Mind, we have another
Speaker 1: invention themed episode for you. We're going to be talking
Speaker 1: about something that might initially seem frightfully dull or at
Speaker 1: least very commonplace, and that is the odometer.
Speaker 2: I mentioned this to Rachel earlier and she was like, oh, yes,
Speaker 2: the device that measures odors.
Speaker 1: Yes or odos if you were to read the word wrong,
Speaker 1: you might think it says odometer, but it's yes, the odometer.
Speaker 1: So everyone out there, you probably know this device best
Speaker 1: is the little counter in your vehicle that records how
Speaker 1: far you've driven. And I think we tend to think
Speaker 1: of this invention mostly as a self centered device. It
Speaker 1: tells us how far we've driven on our trip, how
Speaker 1: many miles or kilometers we've racked up on our vehicle.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's another way of looking at the odometer,
Speaker 1: and this, certainly this is something that plays into the
Speaker 1: history of the invention and also our attempts to understand
Speaker 1: its place in the ancient world, is that an odometer
Speaker 1: can also be a method of determining distances on given routes.
Speaker 1: It's something that turns burns a vehicle into a tool
Speaker 1: for measurement.
Speaker 2: Right, So it's it gives you information that would be
Speaker 2: useful to other people, because I mean, in the ancient world,
Speaker 2: you don't have Google Maps or anything. You might know
Speaker 2: that there are two cities, and you might know that
Speaker 2: you get from one of them to the other by
Speaker 2: following the road to the west, but you might not
Speaker 2: know how long it's going to take. You to get
Speaker 2: from one to the other. So it would be very
Speaker 2: useful if you actually had some standard distance measurements that
Speaker 2: would allow you to estimate the length of the journey
Speaker 2: and to know how much you need to pack for
Speaker 2: the journey and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've talked it before about some of the important
Speaker 1: things that make up an empire and make an empire
Speaker 1: or a kingdom function, and there are things like standardized measurements,
Speaker 1: of course, and standardized currency. But another thing that would
Speaker 1: be useful is indeed, like you say, to know how
Speaker 1: long it takes to get from one place to another,
Speaker 1: what is the distance from one place to another, from
Speaker 1: border to border, from port to capital, from frontier to ford,
Speaker 1: and so for forth. And this is the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that would of course be important for warfare, but
Speaker 1: also for trade and just general management of a given territory.
Speaker 1: So on one hand, you can imagine this situation, and
Speaker 1: you can and you can think about what a nodometer is,
Speaker 1: and knowing that an odometer has some of its history
Speaker 1: in the ancient world, you might think, well, this is
Speaker 1: the this is the route we take to get to
Speaker 1: the invention. This is the necessity that is the mother
Speaker 1: of this invention. But this doesn't necessarily seem to be
Speaker 1: the case, as we'll discuss as we look at its history,
Speaker 1: both in the East and in the west. Now, I
Speaker 1: think it's we're thinking at least just a little bit
Speaker 1: about maps in cartography here, because it's easy for the
Speaker 1: mind to go there, like I need to know the
Speaker 1: exact distance between X and Y because I want an
Speaker 1: accurate map, right to kind of go hand in hand
Speaker 1: when we think about maps today, Like even if I'm
Speaker 1: looking through a Dungeons and Dragons book, I have a
Speaker 1: map of some sort of fantastic region, and then I
Speaker 1: have a little indicator to tell me exactly how how
Speaker 1: many miles and inches or something to that effect.
Speaker 2: Oh, once you get into D and D, though, I
Speaker 2: feel like it's often very loosey goosey about travel distances.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and I and as a when I am
Speaker 1: dungeon mastering, I am also I hate it when there's
Speaker 1: like a really specific question about distances, like well, is
Speaker 1: it is it one mile or two mile? It's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it just it's however long it takes
Speaker 1: to get there.
Speaker 2: But any well, my experience is you want to you
Speaker 2: want to take a cueue from the DM Basically like,
Speaker 2: is this a journey where things will happen on the
Speaker 2: journey or a journey where we will just magically arrive
Speaker 2: at the destination.
Speaker 1: Yes, sometimes the magic is in the journey, but sometimes
Speaker 1: it most definitely is not. So thinking about this the
Speaker 1: situation about figuring out knowing what the distances are between
Speaker 1: one place and the other, and thinking about the role
Speaker 1: of maps in the ancient world, I turned to one
Speaker 1: of my favorite go to texts for a lot of
Speaker 1: this sort of thing, Brian Fagan's The Seventy Great Inventions
Speaker 1: of the Ancient World, and several different chapters in there
Speaker 1: that deal with measures and maps, and Fagan and his
Speaker 1: co authors point out, I think a few important things
Speaker 1: about ancient maps that we might want to have in
Speaker 1: our head as we proceed. So, first of all, they
Speaker 1: point out, the Chinese maps of old were more about
Speaker 1: landscape features. So the journey from X to Y is
Speaker 1: more about the details of the landscape and the markers
Speaker 1: that are passed on the way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That makes sense, navigating by landmarks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so the maps would reflect that. Another thing
Speaker 1: they point out is that while local maps in the
Speaker 1: ancient world were one thing, as were specialized maps. Broader
Speaker 1: maps of the world or region were not really part
Speaker 1: of the overall ancient approach to maps. There were no
Speaker 1: regular standards of map making, and there were no general
Speaker 1: purpose maps. And this is one quote from the book
Speaker 1: I thought was rather telling quote between them rulers, general sailors,
Speaker 1: and traders evidently all but ignored the practical assistance that
Speaker 1: maps could afford them.
Speaker 2: That's surprising.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think hindsight's twenty twenty. But yeah, it's interesting
Speaker 1: to look back and think about what benefits this broader
Speaker 1: approach to maps, general purpose maps, etc. Could have afforded them.
Speaker 1: So I think all that's worth keeping in mind as
Speaker 1: we proceed here. None of this is to say people's
Speaker 1: doing these eras were not concerned with precise distances, but
Speaker 1: the relationship with exact maps wasn't quite the same as
Speaker 1: what we have now now.
Speaker 2: Another way of thinking about what came before is that
Speaker 2: there certainly were ways of measuring long distances before the
Speaker 2: invention of the mechanical odometer, though there is some question
Speaker 2: about the relative accuracy of early mechanical methods versus pre
Speaker 2: mechanical methods, and one case study here that I think
Speaker 2: we should look at. It's a very interesting puzzle that
Speaker 2: emerges if you look at a geography chapter of the
Speaker 2: Natural History by our old friend Plenty the Elder. Here
Speaker 2: I'll be referring to the Bostock and Riley translation for
Speaker 2: those not familiar. Plenty the Elder was a first century
Speaker 2: Roman military commander and author, and the Natural History is
Speaker 2: an early attempt at creating a sort of world encyclopedia.
Speaker 2: So Plenty covers everything from mining and metallurgy to botany
Speaker 2: and zoology, cooking, politics. It's just a book of everything.
Speaker 2: And in book six of the Natural History, Plenty sets
Speaker 2: out to describe quote an account of countries, nations, seas, towns, havens, mountains, rivers, distances,
Speaker 2: and peoples who now exist or formerly existed. Very good
Speaker 2: chapter heading there. One of the chapters within this volume,
Speaker 2: chapter twenty one, is on the nations of India, as
Speaker 2: known to Plenty at the time. Again, this is the
Speaker 2: first century CE. So Plenty says that India is a
Speaker 2: vast country with over one hundred kingdoms, dozens of rivers,
Speaker 2: uncountable mountains, but he will undertake to describe some of
Speaker 2: it by following the path of Alexander the Great, who
Speaker 2: led a conquering army to India about four hundred years earlier.
Speaker 2: So plenty rights. Quote. However, that we may come to
Speaker 2: a better understanding relative to the description of these regions,
Speaker 2: we will follow the track of Alexander the Great. Diagnetas
Speaker 2: and Byton, whose duty it was to ascertain the distances
Speaker 2: and length of his expeditions, have written that from the
Speaker 2: Caspian Gates to hecatom Pylon, the city of the Parthians,
Speaker 2: the distance is the number of miles, which we have
Speaker 2: already stated, and he mentioned a number earlier. Then he
Speaker 2: goes on and that from thence to Alexandria of the Arii,
Speaker 2: which city was founded by the same king, the distance
Speaker 2: is five hundred and seventy five miles, and from thence
Speaker 2: to Prophthesia, the city of the Dragnai, one hundred and
Speaker 2: night ninety nine miles. And from here he just goes
Speaker 2: on and on, listing distances. It's this many miles to
Speaker 2: the next city, and this many miles to the next city.
Speaker 2: So he attributes all of these numbers, all of these
Speaker 2: distances in miles that he comes up with for this
Speaker 2: path leading into India to these two figures Diagnetis and Byton,
Speaker 2: who were these guys well? They were known as Bimetists,
Speaker 2: coming from the Greek word meaning step or pace. I
Speaker 2: looked up Bimetists in the Oxford Handbook of Classics, and
Speaker 2: the entry does identify them as the surveyors essentially of
Speaker 2: Alexander the Great, and names a few other ones. In
Speaker 2: addition to the two I already mentioned Byton and Diagnetis.
Speaker 2: It also names Philonides of Crete, who it says in
Speaker 2: a side note, was a celebrated distance runner. And the
Speaker 2: entry also notes that the two figures who worked for Alexander,
Speaker 2: Byton and Diagnetis, as well as some others quote had
Speaker 2: literary aspirations. Their measurements of key distances in the Empire
Speaker 2: comprised an archive later controlled by Seleucus. The first individual
Speaker 2: Bematists published their observations in monographs termed stathmoy or Stages,
Speaker 2: which combined precise calculations of distance with more exotic reports
Speaker 2: of the flora, fauna and customs of the Empire. The
Speaker 2: latter tended to the outrageous, but the measurements were of
Speaker 2: lasting value and provided Eratosthenes with the framework for his
Speaker 2: geography of Asia. Aritosthenes, you might recall, was an early figure,
Speaker 2: a Greek philosopher who with pretty startling accuracy, calculated the
Speaker 2: actual size of the sphere of the Earth. And he
Speaker 2: did that just using knowledge of the distances between locations
Speaker 2: of different latitudes and then the use of the angles
Speaker 2: of sun dials. Basically, So, how did the Bemtists actually
Speaker 2: measure distances in the time of Alexander the Great? Well,
Speaker 2: I've seen some disagreement on this. Some sources imply that
Speaker 2: they simply counted paces, so you'd walk and count how
Speaker 2: many steps you took, while others suggest that they used
Speaker 2: some kind of mechanical device. One of the weird things
Speaker 2: is that, as far as we can tell, most of
Speaker 2: the distances recorded by bimetists such as Byton and Diagnetis,
Speaker 2: as well as others from the ancient world, are surprisingly accurate.
Speaker 2: On this point, I want to quote a book I
Speaker 2: was looking at by an American historian named Donald W. Ingalls.
Speaker 2: The book is called Alexander the Great and the Logistics
Speaker 2: of the Macedonian Army, from the University of California Press
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy eight, and explaining a table in his
Speaker 2: book of the Bimetists different estimates of the distances between
Speaker 2: cities on this route, Ingles rights quote the overall accuracy
Speaker 2: of the Bimetists measurements should be apparent. The minor discrepancies
Speaker 2: of distance parentheses only one point three percent from herot
Speaker 2: to begram can be adequately explained by slight changes in
Speaker 2: the tracks of roads during the last twenty three hundred years.
Speaker 2: The accuracy of the measurements implies that the Bimetists used
Speaker 2: a sophisticated mechanical device for measuring distances, undoubtedly an odometer,
Speaker 2: such as described by Heron of Alexandria. So there's a clue.
Speaker 2: Ingles here says, Look, the distance is given by these
Speaker 2: people who worked for Alexander the Great and other Bimetists
Speaker 2: of the era. They are just too accurate. They are
Speaker 2: too good to be the result of trying to count
Speaker 2: your steps and estimate from that. They have to be
Speaker 2: using some kind of machine that we don't know about,
Speaker 2: and one good candidate is a machine like the one
Speaker 2: described later by Heron of Alexandria.
Speaker 1: Now, this idea that they may have simply been walking
Speaker 1: on hand. I can't help but think of the Monty
Speaker 1: Python ministry as silly walks and imagine like a specific,
Speaker 1: ridiculous but regular gait that they're using. And if they
Speaker 1: were super focused on their steps and counting their steps,
Speaker 1: maybe that would explain why wrote the reports of flora
Speaker 1: and fauna are so outrageous. They're like, well, it was
Speaker 1: three thousand, eight hundred and seventy six steps, and to
Speaker 1: the left there may have been a dragon. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I was just really focused on these steps and getting
Speaker 1: this step count right.
Speaker 2: I mean, descriptions of local flora, fauna, and peoples of
Speaker 2: the world are notably hilarious throughout all kinds of ancient texts,
Speaker 2: so including Plenty himself. He loves to talk about people
Speaker 2: who had like eyes in their stomachs and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I keep hoping one day I'll come across a passage
Speaker 2: in Plenty where he mentions people who have crab claws.
Speaker 2: I haven't found that yet.
Speaker 1: Oh, I have to have to look into that. I mean,
Speaker 1: because you mentioned it's of course not just Plenty in
Speaker 1: his writings, and that he's sourcing. And we've discussed similar
Speaker 1: things in Chinese traditions as well, so there have to
Speaker 1: be some crab claud individuals out there somewhere, but.
Speaker 2: Okay, sorry, Hero or Heron of Alexandria. Multiple sources I
Speaker 2: found point to a device described by this first century
Speaker 2: mathematician and inventor, sometimes known as Hero, sometimes known as Hroon,
Speaker 2: but he was from Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt. As you can
Speaker 2: tell by the name. A lot of inventions are attributed
Speaker 2: to Hero, though some of the most famous ones probably
Speaker 2: predated him, and he just described them in lectures and writings,
Speaker 2: and then later that gets sort of mistaken for him
Speaker 2: having actually invented the thing in the first place, in
Speaker 2: the latter category. One example, in fact, one of the
Speaker 2: most famous devices associated with Hero is the Eyala pile,
Speaker 2: which is a type of early steam engine converting the
Speaker 2: power of steam into rotational energy. Basically, it works by
Speaker 2: you've got a big cauldron this full of water, and
Speaker 2: then you put a i underneath it, and then that
Speaker 2: cauldron is connected by pipes to a sphere that can
Speaker 2: rotate around the pipes, and then the sphere has two
Speaker 2: little exhaust nozzles that allow steam to escape as the
Speaker 2: water boils and turns into steam. And expands. But the
Speaker 2: way the nozzles are oriented, they're oriented in the same
Speaker 2: rotational direction, so as it gets hotter and hotter in
Speaker 2: the cauldron and the steam pressure builds up, it spins
Speaker 2: the sphere faster and faster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are a lot of images of this, as
Speaker 1: I recall. I remember seeing a cool wood cut of this,
Speaker 1: I think at one point. But it has the look
Speaker 1: of a novelty of a device that's illustrating the principle here,
Speaker 1: but of course not putting it to the sort of
Speaker 1: work that later steam engines would for sure.
Speaker 2: Yes, and though the eolopile is often associated with Hero,
Speaker 2: I think this is something that he very like did
Speaker 2: not actually invent. It was just something he described that
Speaker 2: already existed. But we have talked about other machines possibly
Speaker 2: invented by Hero in previous episodes. One that I remember
Speaker 2: is that Hero of Alexandria is credited with inventing the
Speaker 2: first vending machine, which strangely was also a piece of
Speaker 2: religious technology. It was a machine designed to dole out
Speaker 2: limited portions of sacred water within Egyptian temples when a
Speaker 2: devotee would insert the right amount of coinage. So I
Speaker 2: think You'd put a five drachma or five drakma piece
Speaker 2: in through a coin slot, and then that would operate
Speaker 2: a weighted lever that would dispense a certain amount of
Speaker 2: holy water, and then once a certain amount of water
Speaker 2: had gone out, the machine would tip over, and then
Speaker 2: it would close the valve and stop dispensing. Though even
Speaker 2: in this case I read that it's actually possible Hero
Speaker 2: was simply describing a device that had already been invented
Speaker 2: by Tacbis of Alexandria in the third century BCE. So
Speaker 2: a lot of ancient inventions, it's often hard to tell
Speaker 2: if somebody actually invented something or if they're just talking
Speaker 2: about something that already existed. Right Anyway, I found multiple
Speaker 2: references to Hero either inventing or describing an odometer, as
Speaker 2: evidenced by a passage he wrote in a minor work
Speaker 2: called the Dioptera, which I wanted to find the full
Speaker 2: text for, but if it has been translated into English,
Speaker 2: I was unable to find it, so I don't know
Speaker 2: if that even exists in English. But regarding this machine
Speaker 2: he describes in the diopter again, the hero is first
Speaker 2: century CE. A couple of caveats, one is that Hero
Speaker 2: was definitely not the first known author to describe an
Speaker 2: odometer in Greek. In the Greek and Latin Corpus, the
Speaker 2: Roman engineer Vitruvius, who lived in the first century BCE,
Speaker 2: so century before Hero, also describes an odometer, though in
Speaker 2: a slightly different way. I'll get into the differences in
Speaker 2: a minute. But even Vitruvius does not claim to have
Speaker 2: invented the device out of whole cloth. And then there's
Speaker 2: a second caveat which is that remember again Ingles making
Speaker 2: the comment that Alexander the Great's bimetists must have had
Speaker 2: a device like Heroes. The problem here is that Hero
Speaker 2: of Alexandria and Vitruvius both lived long after the conquest
Speaker 2: of Alexander the Great. So if it's true, as Ingles
Speaker 2: suggests that these bimetists used a mechanical odometer similar to
Speaker 2: the one described by these engineers and authors, they would
Speaker 2: have been using some kind of earlier device similar to
Speaker 2: Heroes or Vitruvius, is not something that Hero or Vitruvius invented. Now,
Speaker 2: an interesting source I found on these two device descriptions
Speaker 2: is a book called Technical Exprascis in Greek and Roman
Speaker 2: science and literature the written Machine between Alexandria and Rome.
Speaker 2: This is by an author named Courtney Roby from Cambridge
Speaker 2: University Press, twenty sixteen. Courtney Roby is a professor of
Speaker 2: classics at Cornell and in this book, this is in
Speaker 2: the context of explaining patterns of composition in Greek and
Speaker 2: Roman technical books, how in different times and cultures there
Speaker 2: were different standards and uses for technical explanation of machinery.
Speaker 2: Hero and Vitruvius both wrote books describing odometers. I mentioned Heroes,
Speaker 2: but the earlier mentioned by Vitruvius comes in a book
Speaker 2: called on Architecture, and according to Roby, Vitruvius himself acknowledges
Speaker 2: that the odometer is quote part of a technological tradition
Speaker 2: handed down from predecessors. Some authors have suggested that might
Speaker 2: mean from Archimedes, but I'm not aware of what evidence
Speaker 2: there would be for this, so I'm not sure how
Speaker 2: strong that suggestion is. Maybe it's just kind of like, oh, Archimedes,
Speaker 2: he invented stuff, and maybe it was him.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think sometimes we see in different traditions we
Speaker 1: have these noted inventors, noted minds, and they kind of
Speaker 1: become mythic magnets for various ideas and inventions.
Speaker 2: But there might be some good reasons for thinking or comedies.
Speaker 2: I just don't know if there is. I did not
Speaker 2: turn it up. The basic principle, how does this odometer work?
Speaker 2: So you've got a chariot wheel. Odometer typically has a
Speaker 2: wheel of some kind that is rolling on the ground
Speaker 2: and that's your basic point of contact with the earth
Speaker 2: to get the the baseline measurement of distance. So you've
Speaker 2: got a chariot wheel of a fixed size two Roman
Speaker 2: feet in radius, which Vitruvius says gives the wheel a
Speaker 2: circumference of approximately twelve point five Roman feet. So if
Speaker 2: the radius is two, that's four times pie, which is
Speaker 2: about twelve point five six. So when Vitruvius has twelve
Speaker 2: point five Roman feet, he's sort of approximating in his explanation.
Speaker 2: But anyway, each time the chariot wheel makes a full revolution,
Speaker 2: it will advancets a cogwheel by one cog position, you know,
Speaker 2: one tooth advances, and the cog wheel has a fixed
Speaker 2: number of teeth, meaning that it will make a full
Speaker 2: revolution once the wheel has traveled one Roman mile every
Speaker 2: time this cog wheel makes a full revolution, it will
Speaker 2: advance a gear that pushes a single small object like
Speaker 2: a pebble or a bead into a receptacle. And then
Speaker 2: at the end of the journey, you simply have a
Speaker 2: human count up the beans, you know, count up whatever
Speaker 2: the little pebbles or beads or beans are to know
Speaker 2: how many miles you've gone. And I want to make
Speaker 2: a note. This seemed interesting to me that this is
Speaker 2: the principle of using a system of gears as a
Speaker 2: type of analog computer, similar to the use of gears
Speaker 2: in the ancient astronomical computer known as the Antikythera mechanism.
Speaker 2: We discussed this in an episode we did sometime in
Speaker 2: the past couple of years. It might have been in
Speaker 2: the Creature of the Gear episode about biological gears. But
Speaker 2: the idea that we often think of a gear as
Speaker 2: something that creates mechanical advantage, and it certainly does do that,
Speaker 2: but a gear can also manage ratios between numbers, like
Speaker 2: a gear can do math for you, and that's what
Speaker 2: it's doing in the case of this odometer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love these these examples of the from the
Speaker 1: ancient birth of the odometer or possible birth of the
Speaker 1: odometer in some of these instances, because it seems it's
Speaker 1: kind of like we have the wheel turning on the road,
Speaker 1: and then it's a question of could we put that
Speaker 1: wheel to use, Like the wheel is already in a
Speaker 1: sense marking the distance in its revolution, and in that
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the heavens. It's like the sun,
Speaker 1: it's like the moon, it's like the cyclical movements all
Speaker 1: around us that mark the passage of time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just need to correlate something with like a
Speaker 2: fixed number of teeth that you can count to those
Speaker 2: pre existing revolutions, and then you take those teeth to
Speaker 2: do some kind of war that will help you keep
Speaker 2: the count, like dropping a bean in a bucket or
Speaker 2: advancing a dial on a fixed face that has a
Speaker 2: number printed on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can imagine that in the ancent mindset,
Speaker 1: like you would have realized if we could harness this,
Speaker 1: like this is better than counting your steps. There's a
Speaker 1: regularity to this that would be harder to achieve through
Speaker 1: other means.
Speaker 2: Totally.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: Vitruvius describes a machine roughly like that. Hero later describes
Speaker 2: a similar machine, but there are some interesting differences in
Speaker 2: how the two authors present their explication. For example, Vitruvius
Speaker 2: describes his odometer with fixed dimensions. The wheel is four
Speaker 2: Roman feet in diameter, the circumference is approximately twelve point
Speaker 2: five feet, and so forth. And here I want to
Speaker 2: read a passage from roby quote. Rather than providing a
Speaker 2: mathematical formula whereby the odometer could be adapted to any
Speaker 2: desirable or available wheel size, as Hero does for his
Speaker 2: own description of an odomo, Vitruvius avoids formulas and geometrical
Speaker 2: language by specifying the wheel diameter and circumference as fixed numbers.
Speaker 2: That is to say, the version of the odometer he
Speaker 2: gives his reader is presented as the exact device transmitted
Speaker 2: from his quote predecessors, not a jumping off point for
Speaker 2: experimentation with the type of device. And she goes on
Speaker 2: to explain this as typical of the difference between Latin
Speaker 2: language technical literature from this period and Hellenistic technical literature.
Speaker 2: Works in Latin tended to be exact descriptions of existing devices,
Speaker 2: rather than demonstrations of principles and scalable instructions for building
Speaker 2: new machines. The latter. The scalable instructions and explication of
Speaker 2: principles is more like what Hero of Alexandria presents. Instead
Speaker 2: of having fixed dimensions, his explanation is about how to
Speaker 2: apply the idea of an odometer to different scales and use,
Speaker 2: with the numerical figures being ratios rather than measurements. So
Speaker 2: Hero's goal was to represent these relationships between the different
Speaker 2: sizes of the wheels and the connected gears, and then
Speaker 2: to read one final passage from Roby quote. Hero's description
Speaker 2: allows mechanical flexibility as well. He suggests how to extend
Speaker 2: the number of cogs in the odometer, which can radically
Speaker 2: enhance its measuring capacity. On the other hand, he notes
Speaker 2: that it is pointless to make an odometer that measures
Speaker 2: a greater distance than its vehicle could cover in a
Speaker 2: single day, as it is easiest to just start the
Speaker 2: count over each morning, which I like. That's very practical,
Speaker 2: but it also flags an interesting difference here. They're just
Speaker 2: different assumptions about the reader the text. In a more
Speaker 2: Hellenistic tradition, or as Hero does, it might be geared
Speaker 2: more toward a select audience of highly educated polymaths who
Speaker 2: would be expected to take the engineering principle and then
Speaker 2: vary it to their needs, whereas the Latin Roman tradition
Speaker 2: is describing an exact device in a more accessible way
Speaker 2: that's easy to replicate but offers less deep understanding and flexibility.
Speaker 2: But I wanted to come back to a kind of
Speaker 2: a lingering question about Alexander's bemtists, whether they used a
Speaker 2: mechanical odometer or not, And the question is which is
Speaker 2: actually more accurate. You might assume a mechanical odometer is
Speaker 2: more accurate, but I've read some arguments that actually human
Speaker 2: pacers would be less prone to error over a long
Speaker 2: distance than a primitive mechanical device would be. Now, obviously
Speaker 2: the best possible scenario would be like to have the
Speaker 2: odometer on a modern car. You know, something that is
Speaker 2: highly accurate, very well calibrated, a highly accurate modern device
Speaker 2: that's going to give you the best reading. But obviously
Speaker 2: something built in the fourth century BCE would have significant
Speaker 2: enough inaccuracy in its measurements that this would cause problems
Speaker 2: over great distances. And so the idea is that any
Speaker 2: inaccurate measurement in a mechanical device would just build up
Speaker 2: and up over many, many miles on a great journey,
Speaker 2: like if the circumference of your wheel is slightly too
Speaker 2: long over thousands of miles, it will start to significantly
Speaker 2: underestimate the distance traveled. Meanwhile, I think the idea at
Speaker 2: least is that human biobemitists literally counting their steps will
Speaker 2: also have inaccuracy, maybe inaccuracy relative to some reference length
Speaker 2: of a single pace, but that inaccuracy will go both ways.
Speaker 2: Steps that are too long and then steps that are
Speaker 2: too short, and those will average out over time. That's
Speaker 2: the argument at least, and I see the logic here,
Speaker 2: and I admit that I'm not a genius at statistics,
Speaker 2: so I could be wrong. But my reaction is that
Speaker 2: I think this could also be mistaken because it would
Speaker 2: tend to assume that the human pacers inaccuracy will not
Speaker 2: be consistently biased, either above or below whatever the reference
Speaker 2: pace length being used is. So I think this logic
Speaker 2: might work if you had like a group of a
Speaker 2: thousand people walking, and then you had all of them
Speaker 2: count their steps, and then you averaged all of those together.
Speaker 2: But if it was just a single person, I would
Speaker 2: tend to think that their personal count might be biased
Speaker 2: more in one direction or another. They would just tend
Speaker 2: to have longer than average or shorter than average steps,
Speaker 2: and that even a pretty primitive machine would be better.
Speaker 2: But I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. Yeah, I don't quite know what to make it, because, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see what they're getting at with the idea
Speaker 1: that some sort of a basic mechanical flaw in an
Speaker 1: ancient odometer device that you would just consistently get the
Speaker 1: wrong number, and then that would build up over time,
Speaker 1: and then yeah, when it comes to the actual steps
Speaker 1: and the counting of those steps by an individual or individuals,
Speaker 1: you'd have, you know, a little in one direction, a
Speaker 1: little another direction, but it would sort of even out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fascinating to think about.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it would be more likely to
Speaker 2: even out if you were talking about a group of people,
Speaker 2: like a large group of people all average together. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know if that'd be the case for a
Speaker 2: single person. Anyway, whether or not they were using mechanical odometers,
Speaker 2: ancientdematists did a not at all bad job of measuring
Speaker 2: different distances between milestones between cities, and it's possible they
Speaker 2: were helped in this task by devices like the ones
Speaker 2: described by Vitruvius and Hero. But ultimately, I think we
Speaker 2: don't know for sure if they use these devices or not,
Speaker 2: and if they did, we don't know for sure who
Speaker 2: invented these ancient odometers. It's one of those questions, you know,
Speaker 2: there are many inventions where we just don't know where
Speaker 2: they came from.
Speaker 1: I wonder too if it might have been a situation
Speaker 1: where they use both where they're specialist in their field.
Speaker 1: So perhaps like specialist in other fields, they're using more
Speaker 1: than one method and then comparing the numbers and figuring
Speaker 1: out some sort of more accurate measurement based on the two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that could be. I don't know, But anyway, it's
Speaker 2: really impressive that in what is like the third or
Speaker 2: fourth century BCE, we've got people getting like really accurate
Speaker 2: estimates of travel distances that are on the order of
Speaker 2: hundreds of miles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fascinating. Now, all this is going on in
Speaker 1: the Greco Roman world, but as we've partially alluded to already,
Speaker 1: there's also a history of the odometer in Chinese civilization
Speaker 1: as well. In particular, the device in question is the
Speaker 1: Lee recording drum carriage. Now, this is sometimes attributed as
Speaker 1: an invention of Zhonghang, who lived seventy eight through one
Speaker 1: thirty nine C. This is a Chinese polymath and court
Speaker 1: astronomer in the Eastern Han dynasty. This is an individual
Speaker 1: we've talked about before because there are a number of
Speaker 1: different inventions that are attributed to him, one of which
Speaker 1: was an early form of earthquake detection device. He had
Speaker 1: an important role tending calendars and celestial events, aiding the emperor,
Speaker 1: who of course ruled at the mandate of heaven, so,
Speaker 1: you know, maintaining the balance between cosmos and civil life.
Speaker 1: And this is a period of time that sometimes referred
Speaker 1: to as the Golden Age of Chinese history, for centuries
Speaker 1: of economic prosperity that saw the traffic of goods and
Speaker 1: ideas across the Silk Road. He was an inventor, a poet,
Speaker 1: and an early scientist. We have an older invention episode
Speaker 1: about the earthquake detection device, and I was looking back
Speaker 1: at some of our notes and I'm reminded that you
Speaker 1: shared some of his poetry in that episode.
Speaker 2: Oh I don't remember that now. Was it good poetry?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, yeah, it's good stuff. So he's credited with
Speaker 1: a number of inventions innovations and achievements. He wrote a
Speaker 1: treatise on mystical law the Cosmos, which included the theory
Speaker 1: that the moon did not emit light, but reflected the
Speaker 1: light of the sun. And he's also sometimes attributed as
Speaker 1: the inventor of the Lee recording drum carriage, which again
Speaker 1: is this odometer of sorts in Chinese history. Now it
Speaker 1: is worth noting that kind of like the situation with
Speaker 1: Hero and Archimedes, we have a very famous historical inventor here,
Speaker 1: and he's attributed with a number of inventions. And so
Speaker 1: I guess the question always lingers, is this an invention
Speaker 1: that this individual invented? Is it something that they described
Speaker 1: it is something? Is it something that just ends up
Speaker 1: being attributed to them because the technology was known during
Speaker 1: that time, or it's based on surviving records, etc.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So I ended up looking at some of the writings
Speaker 1: of Joseph Needhaim on this. So. Needham lived nineteen hundred
Speaker 1: through nineteen ninety five. He was a British biochemist, historian
Speaker 1: of science and sonologists who wrote rather extensively on the
Speaker 1: history of science and technology in China. His second wife
Speaker 1: Lu gives him as a Chinese historian and biochemist, and
Speaker 1: she was an important co researcher and co author in
Speaker 1: his work. So we're talking multiple volumes that he wrote
Speaker 1: during his lifetime. Very very much is life work. So
Speaker 1: before we get to the carriage itself, I thought we
Speaker 1: might stop to just consider roads in ancient China. So
Speaker 1: Needham writes about roads in general in the short Science
Speaker 1: and Civilization in China, and he points out that they
Speaker 1: were quite comparable to the famous roads of the Romans.
Speaker 1: Both empires had extensive road systems that served as a
Speaker 1: means of logistically connecting their vast landholdings for travel and trade,
Speaker 1: as well as playing an important part is just in
Speaker 1: just communication through the empire. That's always something to keep
Speaker 1: in mind that the road is also a lane for communication. Now,
Speaker 1: both systems, the Roman and the Chinese, fell into long
Speaker 1: periods of decay after the third century CE, he points out,
Speaker 1: though he writes that while the collapse of Roman roads
Speaker 1: had more of a fracturing effect in China, natural and
Speaker 1: artificial waterways and some surviving mountain road systems enabled these
Speaker 1: far reaching routes of communication to remain open. He also
Speaker 1: points out something very interesting about these two independent systems
Speaker 1: that this rather awe inspiring and I thought really nicely written,
Speaker 1: and it also kind of ties into some of the
Speaker 1: stuff we talked about in our previous episode about the
Speaker 1: Roman military the Dethroned Emperor series quote. Should the Romans
Speaker 1: have ever succeeded in conquering the Parthians and the Persians,
Speaker 1: the two road systems might have met, perhaps somewhere west
Speaker 1: of Shinjang, but this was not to be. The octopus
Speaker 1: like arms expanded independently, each in a world of its own,
Speaker 1: their builders, troubled only occasionally by the vaguest rumors of
Speaker 1: another system too far away to matter. Zinjohn, by the way,
Speaker 1: is in northwest China. That's where he's talking about here.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is such a I love this quote
Speaker 1: because it's just imagining these two independent road systems like octopuses,
Speaker 1: each doing their own thing, and if you know, world
Speaker 1: history had gone a different way, there could have been
Speaker 1: a situation where they met. It's crazy to think about,
Speaker 1: like roads, I've often thought about. You know, you encounter
Speaker 1: a road and where does that road end? You know
Speaker 1: that basically goes It's not infinite, but it stretches on
Speaker 1: for such a great distance, and to imagine these two
Speaker 1: vast systems almost but not quite coming together. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like I don't know if you've ever
Speaker 1: played around with us to see like how far one
Speaker 1: can drive on a given continent or unconnected continents, Like
Speaker 1: at what point do things seem to break down? And
Speaker 1: you would have to find some other route to connect
Speaker 1: with another road. And I know when you get into
Speaker 1: your Asia and Africa, like there are some pretty long
Speaker 1: travels by road that are that are possible today. The
Speaker 1: road is not going to be necessarily be great the
Speaker 1: whole way, but you can do quite a lot. So anyway,
Speaker 1: Needam points out that with the odometer or the way measures,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty simple proposition from a mechanical standpoint. If
Speaker 1: you have the wheel already, and you have row, and
Speaker 1: you have if you have roads, you have wheels, then
Speaker 1: all it is is quote a system of toothed wheels
Speaker 1: constituting a reduction gear train so that one or more
Speaker 1: pins revolve slowly, releasing catches at predetermined intervals, and in
Speaker 1: the case of this invention, striking drums or gongs, so
Speaker 1: the lee recording drum carriage. What is a lee. A
Speaker 1: lee is the traditional Chinese measure of distance. Today's standard
Speaker 1: eye at five hundred meters or one thousand, six d
Speaker 1: and forty feet, but as with the mile in Western traditions,
Speaker 1: historically there's some drift over exactly how far it is
Speaker 1: supposed to be. But it's standardized today and would have
Speaker 1: been standardized under different rules in different dynasties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, standardization of measures does seem like such an important
Speaker 2: part of this too, because when I kept thinking about
Speaker 2: the idea of a bimitist potentially trying to measure distance
Speaker 2: with paces, I'm like, what is So you've got to
Speaker 2: have something that's like a reference pace, right, if you
Speaker 2: say something is x number of paces long, you've got
Speaker 2: to either know how much your pace typically relates to
Speaker 2: a standard measure like a mile, or you've got to
Speaker 2: be using your paces as some kind of literal standard measure,
Speaker 2: like people would know what that number meant.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's the history of measurements alone would be
Speaker 1: something interesting to come back to, because, of course you
Speaker 1: get into use of various parts of the human body
Speaker 1: to form your base measurements, the creation of tools, and
Speaker 1: certainly when you're getting into weights for goods and trade,
Speaker 1: like some of our oldest data and oldest examples are
Speaker 1: all related to that. But then when you start thinking
Speaker 1: about these larger measurements, like the measurement between you know,
Speaker 1: the fort in the frontier, that sort of thing, like
Speaker 1: you can't just count, You can't just have someone go
Speaker 1: out there with essentially a ruler and say, all right,
Speaker 1: start measuring it off, like you've got to have some
Speaker 1: other system. Yeah, yeah, all right. Sonam gets more into
Speaker 1: the subject of the Lee measuring card here in Science
Speaker 1: and Civilization in China, Volume for Physics and Physical Technology,
Speaker 1: Part two Mechanical Engineering, and yeah, it gets into the
Speaker 1: nature and origins of the Lee recording drum carriage. He
Speaker 1: cites several sources and pose in Some of these are
Speaker 1: sources that go into more detail, others just kind of
Speaker 1: mention it in passing and points out that that many
Speaker 1: of them of the carriage, yet they don't actually describe
Speaker 1: the mechanism employed. In at least one case, it shows
Speaker 1: up as a math problem. It's something along the lines
Speaker 1: of if the Lee recording drum carriage were to travel
Speaker 1: between this city and this city, how many times would
Speaker 1: the gong sound? That sort of thing. The concept seems
Speaker 1: to date back to the Han dynasty, and this is
Speaker 1: where the attribution to Zunghing seems to come into play.
Speaker 1: But when the carriage is described, it's generally described as
Speaker 1: a carriage drawn by four horses, and it works based
Speaker 1: on multiple cogged wheels, some vertical and some horizontal, you know,
Speaker 1: all of course, much like the earlier example and the
Speaker 1: Greco Roman traditions we were discussing, you know, it's tied
Speaker 1: to the movement of the wheels. In the simpler version
Speaker 1: of this carriage, it's said that there is a wooden
Speaker 1: man in the carriage who is mechanically made to strike
Speaker 1: a drum with the passage of each lee. So the
Speaker 1: wheels are turning, the cogs are turned, learning there's a
Speaker 1: mechanical wooden man inside who like a music box, he
Speaker 1: is going to mechanically strike a drum. In this case,
Speaker 1: every time one lee has.
Speaker 2: Passed, beat that. Vitruvius, you did not have a wooden man,
Speaker 2: did you.
Speaker 1: Later, a more complex version is described as being two
Speaker 1: stories in height, so it's a carriage that has two stories,
Speaker 1: and each story has its own wooden figure. The lower
Speaker 1: figure strikes a drum every lee, while the higher figure
Speaker 1: rings a bell every ten lee.
Speaker 2: Okay, So one difference that occurs to me here is
Speaker 2: this would still if it's keeping track of the distance
Speaker 2: in an accurate way, but doing so by making a
Speaker 2: sound instead of by say, accumulating pebbles or beads in
Speaker 2: a container. It's something that you would to some extent
Speaker 2: need to continuously keep track of as you're traveling, Like
Speaker 2: it would still require effort, full engagement of the memory
Speaker 2: by somebody doing the traveling, right.
Speaker 1: That's right. That's based on my reading here of Needham.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any indication that it was spitting
Speaker 1: out like you know, balls or pebbles that could then
Speaker 1: be counted later, or that was anyway recording how many
Speaker 1: les it passed. It was just a you know, a
Speaker 1: ringing of a bell or the striking of a drum
Speaker 1: based on the intervals traveled.
Speaker 2: Which would still be useful, but would require more work
Speaker 2: than or at least work spread out over a longer
Speaker 2: period of time, rather than say like a single counting
Speaker 2: activity in between travel segments.
Speaker 1: And in this we get into one of the big
Speaker 1: questions about the lee recording drum carriage, and that is
Speaker 1: was this a device that was at all originally intended
Speaker 1: to measure distances? Or was it you? Or was it
Speaker 1: more about music? Was it more about novelty? Was it
Speaker 1: why was the technology employed so again this These writings
Speaker 1: are typically revolving around the Han period or perhaps a
Speaker 1: little earlier, but the lee measuring drum carriage was not
Speaker 1: known as such until later, and Needham discusses that this
Speaker 1: might mean that the invention was in fact more expressly
Speaker 1: for musical performance rather than the measurement of distances. Again,
Speaker 1: at least during this time period. It may have changed
Speaker 1: later when someone realized, oh yeah, we can just count
Speaker 1: how many strikes of the drum, we can count how
Speaker 1: many rings of the bell, and then that's data that
Speaker 1: could prove useful. But he stresses that you know, these
Speaker 1: are still interconnect interconnected possibilities and if you're if you're asking, well,
Speaker 1: why would they do that? Like why build a carriage
Speaker 1: like this? And why does it remain something other than
Speaker 1: just like a one time novelty, Like why is it
Speaker 1: written about so much? And he points out that music,
Speaker 1: of course, is often part of a procession, and he
Speaker 1: stresses that quote carriages for musicians whether mechanized or not
Speaker 1: survived in imperial processions through many subsequent dynasties. So the
Speaker 1: idea here is that the mechanical version here develops from
Speaker 1: non mechanical carriages with human musicians inside them. Imperial fleets
Speaker 1: of vehicles, as he refers to them, would have likely
Speaker 1: included palace officials and so forth, but also entertainers musicians.
Speaker 1: So as everyone's traveling down the road, there's music, and
Speaker 1: at some point someone says, hey, well, we could build
Speaker 1: some gears. We could make a mechanical musical man inside
Speaker 1: one of the carriages.
Speaker 2: Putting those flesh musicians out of the job.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know if they'd be completely out of
Speaker 1: the job, because you know, these the mechanical musicians can
Speaker 1: only do so much here. But yeah, for a modern comparison,
Speaker 1: we might think of a parade float as a counterpart
Speaker 1: to something like this. It does sound a lot like
Speaker 1: a parade float. It would have been, according to one account,
Speaker 1: painted red and decorated with flowers and birds. It's described
Speaker 1: as being escorted by eighteen men, and there would have
Speaker 1: been a phoenix headed carriage pole on it. So this
Speaker 1: was not clearly not something that was like a Google
Speaker 1: Maps vehicle that was out there just to perform a task.
Speaker 1: It also it said that it looked marvelous. It's a
Speaker 1: joyous vehicle. And once more Needum stress is that we
Speaker 1: don't know for sure if it was ever used by cartographers.
Speaker 1: It's possible that later on cartographers may make use of
Speaker 1: the data that could be provided by this, but we're
Speaker 1: not sure. Interesting, so Needham points out that Hero's description
Speaker 1: of thedometer did not claim it as a new invention.
Speaker 1: He mentions Vitruvius and then mentions that after Hero Vitruvius,
Speaker 1: the odometer appears in Western Europe during the fifteenth century.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of not really on the Western European
Speaker 1: radar for a long period of time, or doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be based on surviving histories, and then it re emerges.
Speaker 1: Quote the pattern is therefore the same as that which
Speaker 1: we have repeatedly met with i e. Greek antecedent paralleled
Speaker 1: or followed by followed at short distance by Chinese developments
Speaker 1: which continue throughout the medieval period, and then a reawakening
Speaker 1: of the subject in Europe. So in this he's touching
Speaker 1: on something that was kind of a career spanning question
Speaker 1: for him is often referred to as the need Him question,
Speaker 1: and that the question is basically why didn't China beat
Speaker 1: Europe to the scientific revolution. He's been a fair amount
Speaker 1: of his work thinking over this and looking to answers
Speaker 1: and Chinese social institutions and more. Though as reading that,
Speaker 1: synologist Nathan Sivin, who would have been I think at
Speaker 1: times a collaborator with Needham, pointed out that, you know,
Speaker 1: the whole thing is basically a why did an X
Speaker 1: happen in history? Question, which, by some estimates is less
Speaker 1: than a fruitful enterprise. You know, you get into all
Speaker 1: sorts of complex butterfly winging, flapping concerns when you start
Speaker 1: asking questions like that. They can be kind of nifty
Speaker 1: head scratchers, but perhaps they are not the best exercise
Speaker 1: for an historian. But at any rate, the need Hum question,
Speaker 1: you see it mentioned a lot in discussions of the
Speaker 1: history of Chinese science. Now, I do want to note
Speaker 1: in reading about all this, I also read some material
Speaker 1: for Needum about another interesting wheeled vehicle in Chinese history,
Speaker 1: and that is the South Pointing chariot. But that's one
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to come back to. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: idea of a chariot with another mechanical man on it,
Speaker 1: but this mechanical man always points south ominous.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So we're not going to go through the exhaustive history
Speaker 1: of the odometer in recent centuries, but I thought it
Speaker 1: might be useful to point out a few different later
Speaker 1: innovations that kind of bring us up to the modern odometer.
Speaker 1: There's Pascal's calculator. This would have been an invention or
Speaker 1: an innovation by Blaise Pascal. This was sixteen forty five,
Speaker 1: not in a dometer per se, but it was a
Speaker 1: computation mechanism that entailed rotating toothed gears, and much like
Speaker 1: a modern odometer, one complete cycle of one gear caused
Speaker 1: the movement of the next gear.
Speaker 2: Okay, So this would have been taking the same principle
Speaker 2: by which the ancient odometer worked, but applying it to
Speaker 2: general calculation rather than just the movement of a vehicle wheel.
Speaker 1: Right now, in the late sixteen hundreds early seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 1: we also see Thomas Savory's nautical odometer. Savory's most famous
Speaker 1: invention was the steam engine, but he also devised a
Speaker 1: nautical odometer. I actually couldn't find out much about this,
Speaker 1: so I don't know. I'm I have to come back
Speaker 1: to this one in the future, but because I was
Speaker 1: curious on how exactly it would have functioned. Oh interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: supposedly there was a patent, so it seems like I
Speaker 1: should be able to find that patent somewhere. So I
Speaker 1: don't know, I'll have to come back to that one.
Speaker 1: But this is a fun part because our old friend
Speaker 1: Ben Franklin also enters the fray here when it comes
Speaker 1: to the odometer. He's come up in more than one
Speaker 1: invention come resition, I believe.
Speaker 2: So what was his take?
Speaker 1: So in seventeen seventy five, he was serving as Postmaster
Speaker 1: General for the British Previously he had been postmaster of Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: and he wanted more data on the shortest routes for
Speaker 1: mail delivery. So he basically devised a simple odometer to
Speaker 1: attach to his own carriage. And this will for this
Speaker 1: reason you'll sometime see, especially some online sources, saying Ben
Speaker 1: Franklin invented the odometer. No, it's not accurate in the
Speaker 1: least to say Ben Franklin invented the odometer. You could
Speaker 1: say he invented unodometer. He certainly whipped one up on
Speaker 1: the fly. Here. It seems so every four hundred revolutions
Speaker 1: it would register a mile, and the results were apparently
Speaker 1: pretty accurate based on what I was reading here. So
Speaker 1: at any rate, he was able to use the data
Speaker 1: to figure out which route was best for mail delivery.
Speaker 2: Now, one thing I know I saw reference to on
Speaker 2: the internet and I didn't know what to make of
Speaker 2: this was the idea of a a Mormon odometer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was one that that came up for me
Speaker 1: as well. The rohdometer from Clayton and Pratt. This would
Speaker 1: have been eighteen forty seven. They were pioneers of the
Speaker 1: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, and they
Speaker 1: apparently crafted a simple odometer to measure how far a
Speaker 1: wagon train had traveled. So that's it's interesting again. You're
Speaker 1: getting into this area where it sounds like people would
Speaker 1: find themselves in situations where they could really use an odometer.
Speaker 1: And since the knowledge was known, you could create one.
Speaker 1: You couldn't go to the store and buy one, but
Speaker 1: the principles were out there. The principles were part of
Speaker 1: the technological canon, so you could draw on that and
Speaker 1: make yourself a functional odometer. In eighteen ninety five Curtis
Speaker 1: h Veder came up with a bicycle mounted odometer, the cyclometer,
Speaker 1: and then in nineteen oh three we have the Warner autometer,
Speaker 1: which I think like the average versions of this, this
Speaker 1: was like an actual product. It was a combined odometer, speedometer,
Speaker 1: and clock, but it made use of magnetism as opposed
Speaker 1: to just pure gear work. So like those are some
Speaker 1: of the big more big innovations in the odometer in
Speaker 1: recent centuries. And yeah, today the odometer again is something
Speaker 1: we tend to just take for granted or we don't
Speaker 1: even read it. It just sort of clicks by there
Speaker 1: and maybe we check in on it every you know, however,
Speaker 1: many thousands of miles, I guess it varies. Some people
Speaker 1: are probably more into keeping a close eye in their odometer,
Speaker 1: or you have to for work. Obviously.
Speaker 2: I think about seeing those surveyors who have the wheel,
Speaker 2: they use the surveyors wheel.
Speaker 1: The surveyor's wheel. Of course I didn't think about that.
Speaker 1: That's an obvious innovation to compare to some of these
Speaker 1: discussions of the odometer, like harnessing the power of the
Speaker 1: wheel for measurement. All right, Well, we're going to go
Speaker 1: and close it out here, but we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from everyone out there. Perhaps you have particular thoughts about
Speaker 1: the odometer, it's ancient history, it's recent history, tree, or
Speaker 1: our modern use of the technology. Write in We would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. As a reminder, our core
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind published on Tuesdays
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Speaker 1: do a short form artifact or monster fact, and on
Speaker 1: Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time to
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Speaker 1: strange film huge.
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