WEBVTT - Fried Egg Stories: The Ball, Part 1 - Gutty 0:00:00.880 --> 0:00:03.400 This episode of Fried Egg Stories is brought to you 0:00:03.440 --> 0:00:06.800 by Rio Mar Shoes. All right, it's getting hot out there. 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:09.280 You need a shoe that fits a number of situations 0:00:09.320 --> 0:00:13.080 while being nice and breathable. Rio maur Shoes definitely fit 0:00:13.160 --> 0:00:15.760 that bill. They're casual enough so you don't look like 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:18.800 you're taking yourself too seriously, nice enough so you don't 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:21.800 look like a shlub, and the waterproof leathers and non 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:24.640 smell insides will hold up to the elements of the season. 0:00:25.320 --> 0:00:27.880 So there really shoes for all occasions. Great for the summer, 0:00:28.080 --> 0:00:30.960 great for the office, great for the home office, and 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:33.479 great for heading out to the golf course. Go to 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:37.559 Riomarshoes dot com and use code TFE to get fifteen 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:40.600 percent off your whole order. If you're worried about sizing 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:43.760 and fit, no need. Rio Mar Shoes does do exchanges, 0:00:44.240 --> 0:00:46.960 so get after that discount Rio Mar Shoes. That's r 0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:52.680 i omaar Shoes dot com, code TFE fifteen percent at checkout. 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:57.200 The fried egg requires a different technique. What you need 0:00:57.240 --> 0:01:00.360 to do is actually square the face so they'll dig 0:01:00.440 --> 0:01:04.040 down underneath that bad lie and propel that ball right 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:04.759 out onto the green. 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:07.840 Here's the take Playing out of a buried lion of 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:10.360 bunker is completely different than playing out of a night 0:01:10.560 --> 0:01:13.840 and clean lion of greenside bunker. You need to be 0:01:13.880 --> 0:01:16.880 aggressive on any shop weather it's sitting cleanly for its 0:01:17.160 --> 0:01:17.680 Friday egg. 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:19.440 Well, we've all faced it. 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:20.880 The dreaded Frida egg. 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:23.640 Not to be feared, though, it's actually a pretty easy 0:01:23.640 --> 0:01:31.039 shot to hit. When Harry Brown was eight years old, 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:34.600 he lived in rural Pennsylvania. One day, at the end 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:37.360 of a neighbor's driveway, he found a big pile of 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:41.480 golf balls abandoned next to the trash. Harry didn't play golf. 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:43.680 None of his friends played golf, but as eight year 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:46.520 olds do, they found a use for Harry's discovery. 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:49.720 Yeah, we threw them at each other. We we hit them, 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:52.520 We hit them with baseball bats. We treated them as 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:54.760 any other kind of cool thing that you would find 0:01:54.800 --> 0:01:57.920 on the bottom of somebody's driveway, and just made do 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:00.200 improvised right away. 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:02.640 Harry's eight year old mind was struck by the unique 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:03.920 properties of the golf ball. 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:06.800 It was like a super ball. I couldn't figure out 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:10.079 how an object that hard could have that lively abounce, 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:13.760 have that much life that kind of interested me, and 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:17.200 maybe that's what made me wonder unconsciously what was going 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:20.120 on inside this thing that almost made it magical, like 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:23.400 a piece of rock that behaved like a piece of rubber. 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:28.320 So one rainy afternoon, young Harry became bored enough to investigate. 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:30.960 He picked up one of the golf balls and took 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:31.840 it to his basement. 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:35.000 In the basement there was a hacksaw, and then there 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:40.320 was a vice. Vice plus hacksaw plus golf ball equals. 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:43.680 I wouldn't call it scientific, but I was just purely 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:45.880 curious about what was going on inside this thing. 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:49.240 First, Harry put the ball in the vice and he 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:50.519 began cranking. 0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:55.320 As you can imagine, it started to compress and distort. 0:02:56.360 --> 0:02:58.320 As it became compressed, I kind of saw it had 0:02:58.360 --> 0:03:02.000 a plasticity that maybe he wasn't apparent when when you 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:04.359 see it kind of rolling around in the street or 0:03:04.440 --> 0:03:08.160 in the fairway that it's it did compress like rubber. 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:12.040 It bulged out, but it didn't break open. So it 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:15.480 was time for the hacksaw. And as he started cutting 0:03:15.480 --> 0:03:17.799 through the ball, just you know. 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:21.560 Layers and layers of wound rubber bands, you know, popping. 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:23.799 It was It was kind of cool, obviously. I mean, 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:27.000 as you saw and they pop, you know, the tension releases, 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:28.560 it almost crackles. 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:32.440 This was a wound golf ball, of the type that 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:35.960 skilled golfers preferred for much of the twentieth century. Underneath 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:39.640 its firm white cover were rubber bands pulled tight around 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:42.800 a core, and inside that core was liquid. 0:03:43.400 --> 0:03:46.360 I didn't expect it to shoot water into my face, 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:50.000 which it did so. 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:51.440 So all of that tension that the ball contained, that 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:54.640 pent up power that made it so lively, was released, 0:03:55.400 --> 0:03:57.920 and what was left on the floor was just a 0:03:57.960 --> 0:04:01.920 dead lump of rubber threads and ballata. It was satisfying, 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:05.880 and it also just weird, all this complexity inside something 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:09.960 so simple. His mind started to race and make analogies. 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:12.960 It did seem to me immediately like a miniature planet, 0:04:13.040 --> 0:04:16.599 because on the surface, all you see is the surface. 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:19.560 But then you cross section into it, like the way 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:22.120 a textbook cross sections into a planet, and you see 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:25.120 there's all kinds of things going on inside it. 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:28.359 About thirty years later, Harry Brown was an English professor 0:04:28.360 --> 0:04:31.640 at the Paw University, and he became fascinated once again 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:34.560 with the nature of the golf ball, its ability to 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:37.679 be both rock like and rubber like. It's plain skin 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:41.320 and intricate guts. But now he was thinking about those 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:44.479 traits of the ball like an English professor. He was 0:04:44.520 --> 0:04:45.080 reading them. 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:48.719 And then you can read these things going on inside 0:04:48.720 --> 0:04:51.640 it as a kind of language that tells the story, 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:53.760 a code that tells the story of where the object 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:57.400 came from. And then it becomes connected and embedded within 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:01.120 a new network. It becomes disconnec from the network of 0:05:01.400 --> 0:05:03.719 playing the game of golf, and it becomes embedded in 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:08.920 this new network of rubber and plastic and the factory 0:05:08.920 --> 0:05:11.280 that produced it, and the history that kind of leads 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:12.679 up to that particular design. 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:15.680 In other words, once you cut a golf ball open, 0:05:16.320 --> 0:05:19.320 once you render it useless for golf, you begin to 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:22.440 understand a lot more about it, what it's made of, 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:29.360 where it came from, and what history produced it. This 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:33.560 is Friday Stories. I'm Garrett Morrison. This episode is the 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:36.039 first of three to take a closer look at the 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:39.200 golf ball, to cut it open, so to speak, and 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:43.160 reveal all the weird complexity it contains. My hope is 0:05:43.400 --> 0:05:47.360 by understanding more about the golf ball, about its design, history, 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:50.159 and impact on the game, we can understand more about 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:54.080 golf itself. Each installment of the series will focus on 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:58.400 a different revolution in golf ball technology. We'll start with 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:01.279 the Guta percha ball, which appeared in the eighteen forties. 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:04.400 It was one of the great turning points in golf history. 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:07.240 As the historian Stephen Procter puts. 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:10.720 It, the single most revolutionary thing that has ever happened 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:13.240 in the history of golf is the introduction of the 0:06:13.240 --> 0:06:13.880 gutty ball. 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:18.200 Not the single most revolutionary ball or piece of equipment, 0:06:18.800 --> 0:06:21.719 but the gutty, according to Stephen Procter, was the single 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:25.279 most revolutionary thing that has happened in the history of golf, 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:28.479 and in this episode we're going to try to figure 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:35.200 out why. First, though, you have to know something about 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:38.400 what came before the gutty, namely the feathery. 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:42.440 Yes, so a feather ball was made from mostly from 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:46.120 cow hide, and it would be three little leaves, almost 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:49.200 like an open flower. They would be sewn together from 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:52.400 the inside so that the seams were on the inside 0:06:52.839 --> 0:06:55.600 and stuffed inside out, so there would be a little 0:06:55.600 --> 0:06:59.240 tiny hole left in it. Through that a workman would 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:03.279 take a whole hatful of either duck down or goose down, 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:06.160 usually wetted down some to make it easier to work with, 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:09.479 and then stuff it in through the hole by hand. 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:12.360 Feathers would be flying everywhere. There was quite a bit 0:07:12.360 --> 0:07:15.160 of respiratory disease in these shops as a result of 0:07:15.200 --> 0:07:18.160 stuffing these balls all day. So once you got them 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:20.960 all stuffed in there, jammed up, jammed up, jammed up 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:22.880 so that it would create a tight enough fit to 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:25.320 make the ball work, then you would sew the hole 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:28.080 up and it would be painted white and left to 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:30.200 age and dry for a week or two while it 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:30.880 firmed up. 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:34.920 The result was an excellent ball. The feathery flew long 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:38.760 and straight, surprisingly so for an object made of farm animals, 0:07:39.320 --> 0:07:42.360 and for over two centuries, from the early sixteen hundreds 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:45.000 to the mid eighteen hundreds, it was the ball that 0:07:45.040 --> 0:07:48.840 serious golfers in Scotland used. But there were problems with 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:52.720 the feathery. For one, an experienced workman could make only 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:55.280 a few a day, which meant it was pricey. 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:58.520 A single feathery costs more than one of your clubs. 0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:02.240 To make matters. Worse, featheries had a way of unexpectedly 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:05.840 bursting open that meant to play frequently, you needed a 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:06.320 lot of them. 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:09.880 They were really confined the game as far as proper 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:12.320 golf goes. Golf with an actual ball like was used 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:14.880 in the game to people who were super wealthy who 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:16.840 could afford to buy multiple featheries. 0:08:17.360 --> 0:08:20.080 So you could say the feathery determined the social structure 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:22.840 of golf. At the top you had the wealthy gentlemen 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:25.200 who played on the links at Saint Andrews and Musselborough. 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:28.640 Then you had the professionals who caddied, repaired clubs and 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:32.720 made featheries. And among these professionals were the finest players 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:36.679 of the age, players like Alan Robertson and Old Tom Morris. 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:40.840 It was a very curious relationship. The gentlemen could not 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:44.920 really function at golf without the professionals, but mostly they 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:46.280 thought of them as ruffians. 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:46.840 Not Alan. 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:49.360 Alan was a shop owner, he was in a different class. 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:51.640 But the men who worked for Alan, the men who caddied, 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:54.600 you know, they were definitely considered low lifes by the 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:56.480 rich men who they worked for. 0:08:57.120 --> 0:09:00.840 So you had two classes, gentlemen golfers the workingmen who 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:04.080 served them, And in that way golf was a mirror 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:07.560 for Scottish society at large. Yet the game itself had 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:10.640 a way of turning things upside down because on the 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:13.960 links the professionals almost always had the upper hand on 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:14.520 the gentlemen. 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:18.920 They were vastly superior at that age to any amateur player, 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:22.400 and they could always humble them on the golf course, 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:24.280 and that sort of created a little bit of an 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:28.120 equilibrium that was pretty unusual class wise in that era. 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:29.319 In other pursuits. 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:33.200 This was essentially the golf world that the feathery created. 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:37.000 There were gentlemen and there were workingmen, but during the 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:41.120 matches that social order could be upended, with the likes 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:44.280 of Tom Morris taking control. It was a break from 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:47.800 the status quo, but a safe and temporary one. When 0:09:47.840 --> 0:09:50.840 the match was over, the gentlemen settled their bets and 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:55.400 the workingmen went back to work. That was golf until 0:09:55.480 --> 0:10:00.400 the gutty came along. Origin story number one. There was 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:03.679 a young man in Saint Andrews named Robert Patterson. He 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:08.040 loved golf, but he couldn't afford a regular supply of featheries. Well. 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:11.000 One day in the early eighteen forties, he received a 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:14.559 box from Southeast Asia. It was from his brother a missionary. 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:19.120 Inside was a statue of a Hindu deity, Vishnu, the preserver. 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:23.840 All around the idol for protection were dark shavings. These 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:26.840 turned out to be guttapercha, the dried sap of a 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:30.720 certain tree in Malaysia. It proved a useful substance. When 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:33.160 it was hot, you could mold it into anything, but 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:37.360 when it cooled it was firm and durable. Soon young 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:41.280 Robert had an inspiration. He heated up some guttapercha, rolled 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:43.199 it into a ball and took it out to the 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:49.560 old course, and golf was never the same origin story 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:53.440 number two. Listen, gutta percha was all over the place 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:56.560 in the eighteen forties in Britain there were entire factories 0:10:56.600 --> 0:10:59.920 devoted to producing guttapercha goods. Probably a bunch of factory 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:02.760 thought of mashing the stuff into a golf ball around 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:06.400 the same time Robert Patterson did, if not before, I 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:10.440 mean that feels like what actually happened. Right either way, 0:11:10.600 --> 0:11:14.480 By eighteen fifty, virtually no featheries were being sold anymore. 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:17.720 That was because the gutta percha ball, although it didn't 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:20.440 go much farther, was a big improvement. In a couple 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:21.240 of ways. 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:24.920 One was it was there was a certain instructibility about 0:11:24.920 --> 0:11:27.440 it which went right to the heart of the principal 0:11:27.440 --> 0:11:31.120 problem with the feathery. You know, the gutty very rarely 0:11:31.360 --> 0:11:34.040 burst apart. When it did, you could heat it up 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:36.400 and you could mold it back together and roll it 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:38.800 around in your palms and let it harden for a 0:11:38.800 --> 0:11:41.040 week or two, repaint it, and you'd be able to 0:11:41.040 --> 0:11:44.560 get it back into something like functioning order, which obviously 0:11:44.640 --> 0:11:46.160 was never possible with the feathery. 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:50.200 The gutty's durability wasn't just convenient, It also changed the 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:54.319 way the game was played. Remember, featheries often broke, especially 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:57.680 when struck by an iron headed club, so golfers used 0:11:57.720 --> 0:12:01.040 almost all wood headed clubs. But when the gutty arrived, 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:03.920 that changed, and the best player of the time was 0:12:04.000 --> 0:12:04.800 quick to catch on. 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:07.120 You know, young Tom Morris was one of the very 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:09.360 first people who realized, you know, you can just you 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:11.600 can just use an iron on this ball, no problem. 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:14.440 And once the gutty allowed golfers to use irons as 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:17.000 much as they wanted, they had access to a much 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:20.840 greater variety of approach shots. Young Tom Morris took full 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:21.760 advantage of these. 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:24.200 So there were two things that he did. One was, 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:26.240 if you were in front of a bunker and you 0:12:26.320 --> 0:12:28.920 had to carry it to get to the green, you know, 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:31.680 you couldn't hit a run up shot. Obviously, there was 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:34.040 a wooden club they called a baffing spoon that was 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:36.280 very highly loft, and you could hit with that, but 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:39.839 it was very difficult to control the landing. Tommy learned 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:42.319 the art of controlling the landing with the rud iron. 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:45.440 The red iron was small and roundish and had the 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:48.600 loft of a modern wedge. Before it had been used 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:51.240 mainly to get balls out of cart tracks, but with 0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:53.960 the more durable gutty, Tommy began to use the rud 0:12:54.000 --> 0:12:57.520 iron for all kinds of short lofted approaches. 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:00.880 And of course immediately everyone followed, and that was the 0:13:01.000 --> 0:13:05.040 very beginning of the use of iron clubs. The second 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:07.840 thing he did is he carried a lofted driving iron 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:09.800 in his bag that he had cut down the shaft 0:13:09.920 --> 0:13:12.680 on his father probably had in their golf shop. So 0:13:12.840 --> 0:13:15.760 he would bump the ball over rough ground in front 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:17.440 of the green if he didn't have anything in front 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:19.760 of him, and then master the art of making it 0:13:19.800 --> 0:13:22.520 stop a foot from the hole, and he was absolutely 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:26.520 deadly at that shot. And so those kinds of shots 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:30.360 were the beginning of a whole revolution that extended them 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:33.120 to mid iron. So then you would be developing what 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:34.839 they would call a wrist shot, you know, and it 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:37.080 would be a way of cutting the ball a little 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:38.720 bit as you hit it up to the green so 0:13:38.760 --> 0:13:40.800 that we had a little side spin on it and 0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:43.120 stop when it landed. But it was just one thing 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:46.720 following upon another, somebody else inventing something else. 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:51.839 All of this creative shot making represented a major departure 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:54.559 from the previous generation of golfers, you know. 0:13:54.559 --> 0:13:58.200 In the days before Tommy Alan Robertson. In his day, 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:01.240 they played the type of golf you'd call palky that's 0:14:01.240 --> 0:14:05.000 a Scottish word that means cunning in wit or strategy usually, 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:07.840 and what they would do is they would be maneuvering 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:10.240 the ball right, left, whatever to stay away from the 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:13.840 hazards the iron game, and Tommy in particular introduced the 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:16.440 idea with to heck with the hazards, Let's go for 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:19.800 the flag and if it lands someplace back, we'll get 0:14:19.800 --> 0:14:20.840 our red iron knocked it out. 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:25.320 The game. In other words became far more dynamic and aggressive. 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:28.960 That's all attributable to the Gutty. The Gutty made that possible. 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:31.440 But there was an even bigger set of changes that 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:33.840 they got a perch, a ball set off you see 0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:36.960 before the Gutty, and we covered this earlier. Golf played 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:39.480 on the links was limited mostly to gentlemen and those 0:14:39.520 --> 0:14:41.920 who caddied for them and sold them clubs and balls. 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:45.240 But golf did exist outside of golf courses. 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:48.680 People played in the churchyard, people played on their street. 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:52.040 People played golf wherever they were. That was the national 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:55.200 pastime of Scotland. So they did play a form. 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:58.160 Of golf, and they played with whatever was at hand. 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:00.280 You know. They made balls out of wood, made them 0:15:00.280 --> 0:15:02.200 out of champagne corks. They did whatever they had to 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:03.960 do to find a ball and a stick and play. 0:15:04.560 --> 0:15:07.280 But they didn't play the long game of golf, let's say. 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:10.520 David Hamilton, wonderful historian in Saint Andrews, has a book 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:13.600 called Scotland's Game in which he just points out that 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:15.720 there are two types of golf in very early Scotland. 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:17.880 The short game that you played wherever you could find 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:21.000 a spot, and the long game played properly on the links. 0:15:21.560 --> 0:15:25.240 That division, the long formal game versus the short local 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:28.840 casual game was created in large part by the feathery, 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:31.720 by how expensive it was, how brittle it could be. 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:34.360 But the gutty was instantly different. 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:37.200 You know, a gutty cost half the price of a feathery, 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:41.280 So that alone revolutionized the game more than almost any 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:43.640 single event in its history from that day to this one. 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:47.040 It really opened up the game to the masses for 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:48.960 the very first time, they could go out and play 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:52.440 proper golf, with proper equipment that they could afford to 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:53.400 buy and own. 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:56.640 And that old split between the long and short games 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:58.400 of golf began to break down. 0:15:59.080 --> 0:16:02.000 And what happened is that anyone could now play the 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:05.200 long game and the short game, of course, disappeared over time. 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:08.640 So it brought many, many thousands of people onto the 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:11.400 golf course from all walks of life. And that was 0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:14.400 probably the most revolutionary part about it, was the fact 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:18.600 that anyone could buy it and now anyone could play, maybe. 0:16:18.440 --> 0:16:21.800 Not literally anyone, but certainly the middle class. And in 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:25.360 the mid eighteen hundreds the middle classes of Britain were expanding, 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:28.520 So the gutty allowed a lot of people access for 0:16:28.560 --> 0:16:32.000 the first time to the official game of golf played 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:33.560 on an official course. 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:38.280 And that starts a whole series of changes that are 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:43.560 amazing and rippled down through the ages and fundamentally changed golf. 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:51.440 All right, So that's what the Guta percha ball did, 0:16:51.840 --> 0:16:55.480 but we haven't really talked about what it was. Well, 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:58.520 first of all, the ball was made entirely of guttapercha, 0:16:59.000 --> 0:17:01.680 which is actually one of the most important materials in 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:02.480 world history. 0:17:03.200 --> 0:17:05.719 So one thing I will say to you is, please 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:08.800 don't say that gutta percha is a type of rubber, 0:17:09.240 --> 0:17:12.920 because it's not. It's like saying hats are a type 0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:15.440 of dog, because they both happen to be fury animals. 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:18.240 That's ale In Godfrey, she wrote a book about gutta 0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:20.679 perche obviously knows a thing or two about it. 0:17:21.320 --> 0:17:27.320 Well, it's a gum from trees that were basically called palaquiuan, 0:17:27.480 --> 0:17:31.160 which is a bit technical botanical terms, the Palaquiuan genets 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:33.160 of the Sabatasi family. 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:35.840 That's a bit boring, isn't it. 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:41.240 These Pollaquium trees grew in specific parts of Southeast Asia, 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:44.800 especially on the island of Borneo. In the eighteen forties, 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:47.359 more and more Europeans were showing up in the region, 0:17:47.680 --> 0:17:51.960 competing for control of trade and natural resources. Natural resources 0:17:52.119 --> 0:17:56.160 like guttapercha. So it's no surprise that Robert Patterson's brother 0:17:56.320 --> 0:17:58.360 was in Singapore at the time and that he sent 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:01.560 home a box padded with guttapercha. In fact, a great 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:03.879 deal of got to purcha was traveling from east to 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:07.960 west back then. Soon factories in Britain were manufacturing all 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:11.240 sorts of gutta purcha based products. 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:15.440 Just about everything you could possibly think of, bit to frames, jewelry, 0:18:16.240 --> 0:18:21.040 soles of shoes. So basically what we would these days 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:24.040 make out of plastics, you know, using a term loosely, 0:18:24.680 --> 0:18:26.719 people would make out of gota percha. 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:30.320 What do you think it was about got to purchase 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:34.639 that made it so adaptable and so appealing for so 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:35.719 many different uses. 0:18:36.560 --> 0:18:39.920 I think partly because you could mold it into any 0:18:39.920 --> 0:18:42.480 shape you like, which because you can't do with the 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:45.720 rubber because it's sort of too flexible, and there wasn't 0:18:45.760 --> 0:18:46.840 anything else much. 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:50.359 You could mold. And you know, some of the things 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:51.159 they made I think. 0:18:51.000 --> 0:18:54.480 Were quite attractive because because it sets hard, you know 0:18:54.520 --> 0:18:56.920 you could get a very sharp finish. 0:18:57.600 --> 0:19:00.439 Basically, the same traits of gutta percha that suited it 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:03.760 to golf balls malleable when hot yet firm when cold, 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:07.040 also suited it to many other things, including what was 0:19:07.080 --> 0:19:10.200 maybe the biggest infrastructural project of the age. 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:14.119 I wonder if I could insulate some telegraph tables with this. 0:19:15.880 --> 0:19:19.760 The telegraph was a recent invention. It promised near instant 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:22.720 communication between different parts of the world, which was a 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:26.359 new idea and incredibly radical. But for there to be 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:29.440 an international telegraph network, there had to be a great 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:33.320 number of undersea telegraph cables, and those cables had to 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:37.159 be insulated with a material that was pliable yet strong. 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:41.560 And so the extra strength of guttaperchain meant that you 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:45.880 could make a stronger telegraph cable and it wouldn't bend 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:48.520 and stretch and twist and break and all. 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:49.040 That sort of thing. 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:52.639 The British industrial machine kicked into overdrive. 0:19:53.640 --> 0:19:58.760 I'll say the first successful international telegraph cable was probably 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:01.600 the one cross the English Channel in eighteen fifty one, 0:20:02.040 --> 0:20:03.000 so it wasn't very long. 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:04.760 What's that twenty miles or something. 0:20:05.000 --> 0:20:09.280 By nineteen oh three, when the longest ones had been laid. 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:12.840 I think the world total was about. 0:20:12.600 --> 0:20:18.200 Two hundred and thirty thousand nautical miles. Wow, so that's 0:20:18.240 --> 0:20:19.080 about enough. 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:20.880 To go from the Earth to the moon and halfway 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:25.080 back again. And all of that's coated with gut a purchase. 0:20:25.160 --> 0:20:28.120 So one of the calculations made at time was that's 0:20:28.240 --> 0:20:29.600 twenty seven million trees. 0:20:35.119 --> 0:20:37.919 It's worth taking a moment here to describe how guttapercha 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:41.760 was extracted. The indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia did the work, 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:45.240 and it wasn't easy. They were chopped down a Paloquim tree, 0:20:45.400 --> 0:20:48.160 cut strips into the bark and let the gums slowly 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:51.879 drip into a container. After a day or two, they'd 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:54.919 collect what they had and boil out the impurities. Then 0:20:54.960 --> 0:20:57.480 they'd mash it all together, twist it into a rope 0:20:57.760 --> 0:20:58.520