Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tex Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tex Stuff. My name is Chris Pellette
Speaker 1: and I am an editor here at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Sitting across from me as he always does,
Speaker 1: his senior writer, Jonathan Strickland, Happy two hundredth episode, Chris, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Jonathan. Happy two hundred episode to you two.
Speaker 1: And they said that after one hundred episodes it was
Speaker 1: too much already, but we kept going. Yes, we did.
Speaker 1: So today we're going to present our two hundredth episode spectacular. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: if you remember, on our one hundredth episode spectacular, we
Speaker 1: decided to do something that would require us to do
Speaker 1: absolutely no research whatsoever. We talked about our favorite technology,
Speaker 1: which was easy, right. We were like, Hey, this is great.
Speaker 1: I don't have to look anything up. I just think
Speaker 1: what kind of stuff do I like to play with? Well,
Speaker 1: we decided for the two hundred episode we'd go the
Speaker 1: opposite direction. We wanted something that would require lots and
Speaker 1: lots of research. So we've decided to talk about some
Speaker 1: of the biggest innovations and inventions over the last two
Speaker 1: hundred years, because why did we two? Why did I
Speaker 1: know the connection? But I'm just wondering why we decided
Speaker 1: to go with the whole let's research stuff. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and uh, well I don't know. Yeah, but in retrospect
Speaker 1: it seems like a silly Oh it's Ariel's fault. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was my friend Ariel who suggested that. Thanks Ariel,
Speaker 1: thanks so much. Okay, Well, we we should point out, though, um,
Speaker 1: that we just made a list of all the different
Speaker 1: technologies we thought were important, and we there there are
Speaker 1: tons and tons and tons of important technologies, and as
Speaker 1: the cases with science and engineering, um, one person builds
Speaker 1: on the work of someone else. So we sort of
Speaker 1: picked highlights here and there that we thought were important.
Speaker 1: We're probably gonna leave out, uh one or two of
Speaker 1: your favorites, in which case feel free to write in
Speaker 1: and she let us know what they are. Um, but
Speaker 1: we're gonna touch on some of the ones that we
Speaker 1: thought were important, maybe call out some some points on
Speaker 1: on a few of the most important ones, but definitely,
Speaker 1: you know, pick some of our favorites over the last
Speaker 1: couple hundred years. Yeah, what's a couple of centuries between friends.
Speaker 1: I kind of actually started at eighteen hundred, but I
Speaker 1: don't really have anything between eighteen under eighteen ten anyway,
Speaker 1: so I guess that's all right. So you know, let's
Speaker 1: just go straight to eighteen fourteen, Joey, that sounds good, okay.
Speaker 1: So in eighteen fourteen, and a man who had been
Speaker 1: working in coal mines pretty much his whole life, George Stevenson,
Speaker 1: built the first successful steam locomotive. Now we're including this
Speaker 1: on here because of course, steam locomotives ended up changing
Speaker 1: the face of much of the world and allowed for
Speaker 1: shipping on a scale and a speed that up to
Speaker 1: that point had never been seen before. So it was
Speaker 1: definitely a revolutionary development. Now, the first train was called
Speaker 1: Bluecker Bluer and uh that was a young Frankenstein reference,
Speaker 1: which is why Chris doesn't get it, um. But Bluecker
Speaker 1: was uh yeah, it pulled several cars of coal that
Speaker 1: wade several times up a hill at a maximum speed
Speaker 1: of a blistering four miles per hour. But you know,
Speaker 1: this is the first time that they've been able that
Speaker 1: anyone had been able to create a steam driven locomotive,
Speaker 1: and that didn't explode or you know that that actually worked.
Speaker 1: There had been some steam engines before that point, but
Speaker 1: this was the first one as use of a in
Speaker 1: a locomotive, so that was my first choice. Also in
Speaker 1: eighteen four team we had the first use of the
Speaker 1: camera obscia. Actually, no, not exactly. The camera obscarra had
Speaker 1: been around for quite some time before that well, but
Speaker 1: it was around that time that Joseph Nissa phone nyeps nice.
Speaker 1: Try no, actually I went to uh, by the way,
Speaker 1: four vote dot com for seriously, four vote dot com
Speaker 1: has if you're looking for difficult to pronounce words or
Speaker 1: a lot of cases um names for names, um, they
Speaker 1: have a service where you can contribute your pronunciation. Should
Speaker 1: hurry this up because it's not on topic, but very nice.
Speaker 1: So Joseph nia phone nieps or nissa phone nieps um.
Speaker 1: He was. He was an inventor who and he made
Speaker 1: the first permanent photographic image. So he's the first person
Speaker 1: to actually print out a photo UM and he sort
Speaker 1: of he had difficulty with He and his brother Claude
Speaker 1: Um they actually had an internal combustion engine. I found
Speaker 1: out in doing this uh and in poking around on
Speaker 1: on Britannica. We're gonna get to that in a minute. Um.
Speaker 1: But he ended up partnering with Louis Jacques Monday Daguerre,
Speaker 1: whom you might know from the Dagara type, um, and
Speaker 1: they refined the practice of putting photos on paper and
Speaker 1: really making modern photography uh more possible because before, I mean,
Speaker 1: you had the camera obscura, but it really wasn't able
Speaker 1: to make a print of an image. And now you
Speaker 1: you could take a photo and print it out, although
Speaker 1: it was a much more arduous and painful process than
Speaker 1: it is now, right because now what I do is
Speaker 1: I push a button and then it's digital, and then
Speaker 1: I pressed another button and then in prints. But I
Speaker 1: don't print because I post put them in my Facebook. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So in or skipping ahead a little bit, uhh, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna We're gonna jump around a little bit. It's
Speaker 1: not gonna be year by year that would take forever,
Speaker 1: because of course years or so. The last two hundred
Speaker 1: years happened to be during the Industrial Revolution, So it
Speaker 1: turns out there's quite a few things that were invented
Speaker 1: at that time. We're, like was said, we've tried to
Speaker 1: concentrate on things that we thought really changed the world.
Speaker 1: So not just something that was cool or interesting, but
Speaker 1: something that really did revolutionize the way we do things.
Speaker 1: I don't want to change the world. I'm not looking
Speaker 1: for New England. So in eighteen five William Sturgeon uh
Speaker 1: invinced the electro magnet. Now this was actually the culmination
Speaker 1: of several observations that that ended with the electro magnet.
Speaker 1: So back in eighteen twenty, Hans Christian erst Did discovered
Speaker 1: that UH, wire carrying a current generated by a magnetic field,
Speaker 1: or rather a wire that carries a current could generate
Speaker 1: a magnetic field. Okay, so we've talked about this before.
Speaker 1: You know, you electricity moves through a wire, and then
Speaker 1: you get a magnetic field because there's this interesting relationship
Speaker 1: between magnetism and electricity. Um. Then you have Andre Marie Ampere,
Speaker 1: who found that a helix of wire, also UH carrying
Speaker 1: a current would create a magnetic field. UM. And you
Speaker 1: had Dominique Francois Jean Arago. He found that you could
Speaker 1: magnetize an iron bar if you wrapped this coil of
Speaker 1: wire around it, ran the current through it creates the
Speaker 1: magnetic field. You can actually magnetize an iron bar. Take
Speaker 1: the iron bar out and it's a magnet. Uh. That
Speaker 1: leads us to Surgeon who discovered that if you kept
Speaker 1: the bar in there, if you did not remove the bar,
Speaker 1: it actually created a much stronger magnetic field. He bent
Speaker 1: that bar into a U shape and then uh you
Speaker 1: think of like the base of the U is is
Speaker 1: uh embedded in some sort of foundation. There's a coil
Speaker 1: of wire around each end. You've got two poles. Well,
Speaker 1: the two poles are close to each other, and that
Speaker 1: generated a particularly strong magnet magnetic field. This was essentially
Speaker 1: the first real electro magnet, which ended up being really
Speaker 1: really important in electronics later on. In fact, a lot
Speaker 1: of the developments that we're going to talk about shortly, Um,
Speaker 1: we're based upon the electro magnet. Without it, they don't work.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true. So um an nine the typewriter
Speaker 1: w a burt yep and we have we Uh this
Speaker 1: might be a good uh plug again for our podcast
Speaker 1: on the keyboard, the quarty keyboard when it got popular
Speaker 1: in the voort keyboard. UM. But yeah, this we're not
Speaker 1: talking like the IBM S electric here. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the manual uh mechanical typewriter. Right. Um, and then you
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about eight thirty one, the electric dynamo
Speaker 1: and mutter with Michael Faraday. Yes, okay, so this is
Speaker 1: another really important discovery. It's not so much an invention
Speaker 1: as a discovery. So we just started talking about the
Speaker 1: electro magnet where you create the magnetic field by running
Speaker 1: the current through the wire. Well, Faraday found out that
Speaker 1: the opposite was also true if you subjected a coiled
Speaker 1: or if you subject a wire to a magnetic field,
Speaker 1: it would induce electricity to flow through the wire. So, uh,
Speaker 1: this induction became the basis of things like electric motors, generators,
Speaker 1: and transformers. So that became extremely important later on. So
Speaker 1: you noticed that a lot of these developments are happening
Speaker 1: pretty close to each other, like a decade or so
Speaker 1: within each other. And um, and that's where we really
Speaker 1: saw the rapid development of technology take off. Once once
Speaker 1: we've got a real firm understanding of things like electromagnetism, Uh,
Speaker 1: it really made lots of uh, really cool developments possible.
Speaker 1: And that kind of goes back to my point earlier
Speaker 1: about how these different engineers and scientists were working off
Speaker 1: of each other's discoveries. I mean, fair Day was obviously
Speaker 1: interested interested in electromagnetism, and then you know, moved on
Speaker 1: from there. Right. So it's it's really kind of interesting
Speaker 1: to note just what you know, you discover and then
Speaker 1: you keep you just follow a different path as you
Speaker 1: make a new discoveries exactly. Um. Also where those transformers
Speaker 1: autobots are moving on in eighteen thirty five, you knew
Speaker 1: I was gonna do it in eighteen is you know,
Speaker 1: more than meets the ichris. In eighteen thirty five we
Speaker 1: have Charles Babbage creating his mechanical calculator. And of course
Speaker 1: you could argue in a way that the the Advocus
Speaker 1: was a type of mechanical calculator although you had to
Speaker 1: move the beads by hands. I would say that's a
Speaker 1: manual calculator. Yeah, yeah, we're being a little more technical
Speaker 1: than that. Um. But uh. And the of course Babbage
Speaker 1: made many many contributions that would later become extremely important
Speaker 1: in computer science definitely. Uh. And then eight seven Samuel
Speaker 1: Morse and the telegraph. Actually, this is one of those
Speaker 1: devices that the electromagnetic played a huge part in. Right,
Speaker 1: So Samuel Morris came up with this idea. Actually, the
Speaker 1: idea had been booted around by a few different people,
Speaker 1: but Morse was one of the folks who was able
Speaker 1: to actually put it to use and and get to
Speaker 1: to work properly. The idea was that you would be
Speaker 1: able to create an electric current with one device, send
Speaker 1: that electric current through a wire, so that would activate
Speaker 1: a second device, and you would get some sort of
Speaker 1: mechanical action out of it. That was just the very basics.
Speaker 1: So you you know, essentially think of it like if
Speaker 1: you've flip a switch, it would send on an electric
Speaker 1: current through a wire to another switch, which would then trip.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the basis for this. Well, that would
Speaker 1: give you the the very basics of being able to
Speaker 1: communicate with someone on the other end. Now, granted, uh,
Speaker 1: there were some limitations, of course. One was that you
Speaker 1: could only really communicate through clicks and to you could
Speaker 1: only communicate one way at a time. You couldn't have
Speaker 1: two way communications simultaneously. Yeah. Um, But that that is
Speaker 1: also a good point because Samuel Morse came up with
Speaker 1: the idea for Morse Code, probably uh, because you needed
Speaker 1: some way to send messages from one side to the
Speaker 1: other yep, yep, and then uh and and a few
Speaker 1: years after he had developed this, uh, there was the
Speaker 1: infamous Morse code message sent from DC to Baltimore. What
Speaker 1: hath God wrought? Yes, yep, Morse code. No wait, that
Speaker 1: was Samuel at any rate. So again, now that revolutionized
Speaker 1: communication because, of course, up to that point, the way
Speaker 1: that we communicated was sending a piece of paper with
Speaker 1: a messenger from one place to another right either on
Speaker 1: train or on horseback pony express type stuff. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was slow to communicate between cities or between countries. Definitely,
Speaker 1: it was very slow. And but the the invention of
Speaker 1: the telegraph completely revolutionized communication. Now we've got a few
Speaker 1: that we're just going to kind of jump on. First
Speaker 1: of all, one of the most important inventions of all
Speaker 1: time created in eighteen forty one by Samuel Slocum, the stapler. Yes,
Speaker 1: please don't touch mine, Milton will be very pleased. Yes,
Speaker 1: and told I could listen to my music at a
Speaker 1: reasonable volume between the end of ten and eleven. Um.
Speaker 1: So then we've got around eighteen eighteen sixties when subways
Speaker 1: actually first became practical and uh launched in London, and yeah,
Speaker 1: and now it's you know, pretty popular all over the
Speaker 1: world and in many major cities. Um. But that really
Speaker 1: I think helped solidify the urban area, you know, being
Speaker 1: able to spread people out and still get them in
Speaker 1: and a form a mass transit um that would enable
Speaker 1: people to uh to move a little bit more quickly
Speaker 1: without having to rely on horseback or foot. Because we
Speaker 1: don't have something yet that we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: in a minute. Um. In eighteen fifty two, we have
Speaker 1: the gyroscope, Yes, invented by a Jean Bernard Leon for Colt.
Speaker 1: I have no idea four vo dot com is what
Speaker 1: I'm saying you. All right, Well, very useful, see Chris,
Speaker 1: here's here's a little hint. Yeah, your tips are a
Speaker 1: lot more useful before we go into the studio. While
Speaker 1: we're in the studio, let me point out that it
Speaker 1: didn't really help my pronunciation, even I didn't listen to
Speaker 1: it beforehand. Okay, all right, Well at any ray, Um,
Speaker 1: the gyroscope extremely important in navigation, space travel, YEP, accelerometers,
Speaker 1: things like that, I mean gyroscopes like yes, space travel
Speaker 1: in particular, it was extremely important, I mean gyroscopes and
Speaker 1: and gimbals together where some of the Yeah, they seem
Speaker 1: like they're pretty basic to us now, but really play
Speaker 1: an integral role in those technologies. So while it seems like,
Speaker 1: you know, you might look at a gyroscope, is like
Speaker 1: especially the ones that you see in like toy stores
Speaker 1: or hobby stores, like it's a little kids toy. No,
Speaker 1: that's it's very important. No, I don't. I don't shop
Speaker 1: at Gimbal's. Maybe. And now we have a Jean Lenoire
Speaker 1: that one I knew I could say, so Jean Lenoire
Speaker 1: invented Well apparently not since it pre existed by forty
Speaker 1: years according to you. Well, from what I understand, this
Speaker 1: is the first successful gas powered engine internal combustion engine.
Speaker 1: Now we should kind of explain what the internal combustion
Speaker 1: engine means. So when you're talking about things like steam
Speaker 1: powered or or even coal powered engines from before, you
Speaker 1: generally were heating up an element really really high and
Speaker 1: then using the pressure from say the steam like steam
Speaker 1: locomotives the steam to power pistons. Uh So, but you
Speaker 1: had a chamber where all the combustion took place, and
Speaker 1: then the steam was then transported to wherever it needs
Speaker 1: to go to to push pistons. To make things move.
Speaker 1: Internal combustion has a the the combustion take place within
Speaker 1: a cylinder, that where the piston actually is. So that's
Speaker 1: that's the internal part. Because people say, well, what was it?
Speaker 1: Were there external combustion engines before that kind of in
Speaker 1: that the combustion didn't take place within the cylinder. In
Speaker 1: this case, the cylinders contained a mixture of air and
Speaker 1: gas from coal, and then a spark from a little
Speaker 1: electrode spark plug essentially would ignite the gas. Uh, and
Speaker 1: that would cause is the guest to expand very quickly,
Speaker 1: pushing a piston which generated the power you needed to
Speaker 1: move things. Yes. Uh. And in case you're wondering the
Speaker 1: difference between Joseph Nissaphone niepps uh and his brother Clode
Speaker 1: Uh there there their system was a little different. It
Speaker 1: did use pistons, but what they were using for fuel
Speaker 1: was um. Their their machine, by the way, was called
Speaker 1: the Pirae la four. Why did you even try? I
Speaker 1: don't know. But he used like a podium powder as
Speaker 1: fuel and he theoretical he theoretically a power to boat
Speaker 1: with it um. But Britannic I said he claimed to
Speaker 1: have so I guess we don't know for sure. All right,
Speaker 1: Well they were finding other people we find it. Nicolas
Speaker 1: Otto in eighty eight, Um, you know made it a
Speaker 1: little better. And that's when people really, you know, really
Speaker 1: took off when they had an opportunity to do that. Sure,
Speaker 1: So moving ahead, eighteen sixty two, man made plastic thanks
Speaker 1: to Alexander Parker's parks rather uh and then eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine we had ball bearings. Yes, you you wanted to
Speaker 1: add that to the list. I did want to add
Speaker 1: that to the list. There are very many things. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're extremely important, and it's the kind of thing where
Speaker 1: I think previously to that they hadn't been able to
Speaker 1: machine them fine enough to make them available to many
Speaker 1: different things. And uh, you know, and I know it
Speaker 1: had a lot to do to improve the a lot
Speaker 1: of industry because they were able to make different kinds
Speaker 1: of machinery on different scales with the advent of the
Speaker 1: ball bearing. So it's a small thing and if you
Speaker 1: have a lot of them on the floor, they will
Speaker 1: make you fase. It plays a pivotal role in many
Speaker 1: early comedies. Yes it does. But you know that's the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that it shows up and you go, huh, yeah,
Speaker 1: well that does little things, do you make a difference sometimes?
Speaker 1: All right? Eighteen seventy six, this is a big one.
Speaker 1: The telephone Alexander Graham Bell. Now this was, of course,
Speaker 1: this is you know, the next evil ouan for the
Speaker 1: whole telegraph technology. Bell at the time was working on
Speaker 1: a harmonic telegraph, the idea being that you would be
Speaker 1: able to have multiple lines of communication going over the
Speaker 1: same through the same medium. Yes, sort of to solve
Speaker 1: the earlier problem you mentioned of only being able to
Speaker 1: stand one communication in one direction of time exactly, but
Speaker 1: in secret more or less in secrets probably too strong
Speaker 1: a term. But he was working on this idea of
Speaker 1: being able to transmit voice over an electrical line. So
Speaker 1: you would speak into a device, The device would convert
Speaker 1: the sound waves into electricity. The electricity would travel over
Speaker 1: a line to another device, which would decode the electrical
Speaker 1: signals and then play them back as sound using various membranes. Yes. Uh,
Speaker 1: he was actually granted a patent for and that quote
Speaker 1: the method of an apparatus for transmitting vocal or other
Speaker 1: sounds telegraphically by causing electrical undulation similar informed to the
Speaker 1: vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sounds.
Speaker 1: That's what you said, yeah, and of course his fancy
Speaker 1: ways saying it. The first sentence broadcast over telephone or
Speaker 1: a what would become the telephone was, of course, can
Speaker 1: you pick up some milk? Now it was Mr Watson,
Speaker 1: come here, I want to see you. The second sentence
Speaker 1: was I would like cheese, pepperoni, and shovies and extra
Speaker 1: crispy crust. Uh. Yeah, Actually Watson, Thomas Watson was a
Speaker 1: big part of the success of the telephone because his
Speaker 1: help was really key to um getting Bell's telephone together.
Speaker 1: He apparently was really good working with the different parts
Speaker 1: of the mechanical stuff, where Bill less, so he was
Speaker 1: more of the theoretical and and like the electrical engineering
Speaker 1: behind it. But also we should point out that Watson
Speaker 1: was not Charlotte Holmes as assistant, Not that Watson, No,
Speaker 1: that would that would be John Watson to be the
Speaker 1: other one. Eight seven, eighteen seventy seven. The phonograph Thomas Edison. Yes,
Speaker 1: he's gonna pop up again in a second. Those are
Speaker 1: those big well not, I guess sort of at that time,
Speaker 1: the big vinyl plastic things. This one. At this point
Speaker 1: he dated CDs. This one actually predated vinyl. This one
Speaker 1: was on aluminum. This is a cylindrical phonograph that was
Speaker 1: that was still the cylinders. So yeah, this was before
Speaker 1: even they were using wax um. This was so but
Speaker 1: it was one of the earliest examples of the technology
Speaker 1: um socially want I put it down there. And also
Speaker 1: moving pictures were first invented then, which is not that
Speaker 1: you don't take it's not that you take a picture
Speaker 1: down from the wall and then go to move it around.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I didn't know Rush was still around.
Speaker 1: Back we're talking about movies, you know, like like animation,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, that album. And then eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine we get back to Edison, Yes with the lightbulb.
Speaker 1: Lightbulb very important. Yeah, it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: I I you know, otherwise you wouldn't have a way
Speaker 1: to get picked it when somebody has an idea, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: we would all be without ideas for the rest of
Speaker 1: you know, it's amazing. Nothing would have happened now, Okay,
Speaker 1: so light bulb, it's very simple, simple idea. The idea
Speaker 1: here is that you use electricity to heat up some
Speaker 1: sort of elements so that it gives off light very
Speaker 1: thin filament of of metal, right, and some of the
Speaker 1: earliest ones were platinum. And Edison found that he could
Speaker 1: make the light bulbs last longer if he encased or
Speaker 1: if he encased the filament in a vacuumed sealed tube,
Speaker 1: which in this case was the light bulb to the glass.
Speaker 1: And he actually would uh did glassblowing himself, and he
Speaker 1: would form the light bulbs and put it all together.
Speaker 1: And um, the first one he had, I think it
Speaker 1: lasted maybe like four hours, and then he was able
Speaker 1: to make some improvements and gradually the lifetime of the
Speaker 1: light bulb began to to get to a point where
Speaker 1: it was actually a useful thing. And this really did
Speaker 1: revolutionize the world. I mean you think about the world
Speaker 1: was dark before the light bulb. I mean the when
Speaker 1: night came you had you had candles and fireplaces and
Speaker 1: that was about it. Yes, so you can move on.
Speaker 1: I was just looking at the time, we need to
Speaker 1: move on. And five Carl Benz he was the he's
Speaker 1: credited with creating the first automobile with an internal combustion
Speaker 1: engine that was a practical vehicle. Um, I mean there
Speaker 1: had been some vehicles that used internal combustion engines for
Speaker 1: uh to propel propelled themselves. Cush, It's been a long
Speaker 1: day before that, but his was the first really practical one.
Speaker 1: Also the year when the safety bicycle was invented. Yes,
Speaker 1: there had been all kinds of bone shakers and velocipedes
Speaker 1: and unsafety bicycles, unsafety bicycles, you know, those ones with
Speaker 1: the giant front wheel and the tiny back wheelac But
Speaker 1: in five the Rover safety was released, designed by John
Speaker 1: Kemp Stanley, and uh it, you know, basically equalized the
Speaker 1: size of the wheels and introduce some other revisions to
Speaker 1: to the design and people dia A few years later
Speaker 1: when pneumatic tires came out. We're gonna get to eighty
Speaker 1: eight in a minute. But that really made a difference
Speaker 1: because then they weren't so painful to ride. So reminds
Speaker 1: me have a joke, but it's dirty, so I have
Speaker 1: to skip it. E seven. Radar, Heinrich hurts, well, then
Speaker 1: he should take never mind. You're gonna be like that
Speaker 1: with the Avengers too, are you thor yes it hurts?
Speaker 1: Uh eight We get back to our buddy Nikola Tesla. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: this is when his A C motor and transformer invention
Speaker 1: starts to take off. Now, Tesla, of course was a
Speaker 1: contemporary and sometimes UM antagonists kind of to Edison. I
Speaker 1: would say Edison was more of the antagonist Edison didn't
Speaker 1: get along. Let's say Edison did everything in his power
Speaker 1: to make Tesla look bad and even though and probably
Speaker 1: because the fact that Tesla's approach was the superior. UH.
Speaker 1: Edison was backing direct current, which was great except for
Speaker 1: the fact that you needed the generator every two miles
Speaker 1: if you wanted to be able to transmit it over distance,
Speaker 1: whereas Tesla's alternating current, where the current would move one
Speaker 1: way and then move another way and then cycle through
Speaker 1: those different ways like sixty times a second. His variation
Speaker 1: would allow you to transmit electricity over huge distances without
Speaker 1: losing power, which is why Tesla's method one out in
Speaker 1: the long run. Yes. UH. In the in the late
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties, UM Graham had introduced a way of generating
Speaker 1: power that basically helped people warm up to the idea
Speaker 1: of using electricity, but his UH were DC only dynamos
Speaker 1: and UH. It was in eight when Tesla's version for
Speaker 1: alternating current became available that people you know, really helped
Speaker 1: it make a difference because you could send power over
Speaker 1: longer distances with a C so it made it more useful.
Speaker 1: And then years later he would be played by David Bowie. Okay,
Speaker 1: then shall we go to your next one? Yes. One
Speaker 1: of the most important patents to ever be patented. Patent
Speaker 1: was the year note was the year that Edwin Prescott
Speaker 1: patented the roller coaster rock on Edwin, I bet it
Speaker 1: works better with Baul bearings. In nineteen o one, we
Speaker 1: had the Transatlantic radio. Thank you Marconi. Yes, I'm sorry, Tesla.
Speaker 1: Marconi also was a contemporary and sometimes antagonist to Tesla,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, um, though he probably didn't wasn't
Speaker 1: as aware of it. Nineteen o three, we have the
Speaker 1: motor powered airplane. Do you remember who it was that
Speaker 1: had that infamous flight at Kitty Hawk? Uh? Should well,
Speaker 1: considering it's my home stage, that would be the Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is right, Yes, the right brothers, Orville and Red
Speaker 1: and Bucker. No wait, I'm Soilber Wilbur Orville and Wilbur
Speaker 1: so I had a little popcorn on the brain there. Um, Yes,
Speaker 1: they had their famous flight in the first flight in
Speaker 1: nineteen o three where Orville piloted it the first time
Speaker 1: for about It was about twenty ft above the ground.
Speaker 1: It lasted all of twelve seconds, but it covered about
Speaker 1: twenty feet so went a pretty good distance. Then they
Speaker 1: made three more flights with Wilbur piloting the record flight,
Speaker 1: which lasted one second shy of a minute fifty nine seconds,
Speaker 1: went two ft. You can go a lot faster and
Speaker 1: a lot farther now, But of course, yes, airplanes revolutionized travel.
Speaker 1: Moving on splitting the atom in nineteen nineteen Lord Rutherford. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he had a very fine fine knife. Uh. Nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: seven television, All right, now, this is one of technology's
Speaker 1: great controversies. Who invented television? Uh? Well, if you if
Speaker 1: you look at patents, you're gonna see Philo T. Farnsworth.
Speaker 1: And in fact he did successfully demonstrate h television working
Speaker 1: through using an electron scanning too. But a Russian Vladimir's
Speaker 1: Vorkian uh managed to first patented back in the twenties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is one of the situations. We're sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 1: This is one of the situations when both men were
Speaker 1: working on it independently at the same time, so they
Speaker 1: both you know, really have a legitimate claim. Now, who's first? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Land Most people just think Lad got a little ahead
Speaker 1: of Philo, But Vlad's Lad's invention never or it didn't work.
Speaker 1: He couldn't get to work before Philo got his to work.
Speaker 1: So even though Lad may have come up with the
Speaker 1: idea first, and I say, I stress may, because the
Speaker 1: truth is still so Murky um Filo was the one
Speaker 1: who got to work, and that's what kind of counted
Speaker 1: in the eyes of history. Really, so we we credit
Speaker 1: Philo as the inventor of television and h he the
Speaker 1: first television picture was transmitted on September seven. N Yes,
Speaker 1: moving over to nine yep uh. Nuclear fission. That's splitting
Speaker 1: yes atoms so that you can get energy from them. Now,
Speaker 1: they're two different ways you can get energy from by
Speaker 1: splitting atoms. One is a very controlled method, which would
Speaker 1: be the way that we create nuclear power plants and
Speaker 1: clear power plants still exists on fission there explaining these
Speaker 1: in orders to generate heat, which then creates usually steam
Speaker 1: to create power. The other way is an uncontrolled release
Speaker 1: of energy, which we also call a bomb, yes, which
Speaker 1: tragically we've also used atoms to do yes, yes, but
Speaker 1: this uh Ottohn and Fritz Strassmann in Germany uh finally
Speaker 1: proved that you could, uh that trans urentic elements are
Speaker 1: are actual pieces of the radioisotopes of barium, lendenium and
Speaker 1: other elements. According to Britannica. Yeah, and there were a
Speaker 1: lot of so they could actually prove for a fact
Speaker 1: that you could split or create fission, and there were
Speaker 1: lots of that was really really famous names that were
Speaker 1: connected to this because of course this is also during
Speaker 1: World War Two and you have both the Germans and
Speaker 1: the Americans and other countries as well working feverishly to
Speaker 1: try and master the power of the atom in order
Speaker 1: to put it to use in the war. So we
Speaker 1: had everyone from like Niels Borne and Robert Oppenheimer, like
Speaker 1: famous names, where all very much focused on nuclear fission
Speaker 1: at the time. UM I would ask to point out
Speaker 1: to really quickly that keep in mind that this is
Speaker 1: after and I'll tell you why that's important at the
Speaker 1: end of the podcast. UM. Then in ENIAC the first
Speaker 1: electronic computer yep, yep. We talked about that in the
Speaker 1: History of Computers ninet forty seven. We've talked about this before.
Speaker 1: Bell Labs creates the transistor. Yep, yep. We we've talked
Speaker 1: about a lot of these things towards the end of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, so we're gonna kind of uh yeah,
Speaker 1: hop forward seven the things that went deep sput Nick
Speaker 1: sput Nick. Of course, the first man made satellite launched
Speaker 1: into orbit, launched by the ussr uh completely sent America
Speaker 1: into a tizzy because if the Russians could launch a
Speaker 1: satellite into space, they could also launch a missile at
Speaker 1: the United States, or so was the thinking at the time.
Speaker 1: And uh, it didn't do much other than beep, but
Speaker 1: it was the first of many satellites, and of course
Speaker 1: that has truly revolutionized technology. Speaking of those satellites, in
Speaker 1: ninets come three was the first geo state g O
Speaker 1: stationary satellite. You can't even look up, you know, pronounced
Speaker 1: the words that, hey, I don't know how to look
Speaker 1: at thank you need to look thank you Mr clark Yes,
Speaker 1: but that's thank you to h Arthur C. Clark Um,
Speaker 1: the famous writer and science dude. So in uh in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, actually April third, nineteen seventy three, we
Speaker 1: can nail this down to the day. The first cell
Speaker 1: phone was used by Martin Cooper, who used it to
Speaker 1: call a competitor from across the street and wave in, say,
Speaker 1: nanny ninni, boo boo, we have a horrible phone. The
Speaker 1: home computer, Yeah, that's when we first start seeing computers
Speaker 1: actually marketed for home use. And then in the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties we see the development of the Internet. The Internet
Speaker 1: kind of evolved over time, so it's hard to you
Speaker 1: can't really nail it down to a single year because
Speaker 1: again it's predated the of course, if you talk about
Speaker 1: Arpanett being the grandfather Shore, but that wasn't when people
Speaker 1: in the general public was using the service, and you
Speaker 1: could argue that arpin net was a single network, in
Speaker 1: which case it would not be an Internet because an
Speaker 1: Internet is an interconnected series of networks. So Arpanet would
Speaker 1: just be one network. You would have to add a
Speaker 1: second network before could call it an Internet. But that's
Speaker 1: being a little picky compact, discs Tim berners Lee. He
Speaker 1: creates the Worldwide Web, which is one of the most
Speaker 1: important tools I think in the last century. Um, it's
Speaker 1: how a lot of us managed to get information stay
Speaker 1: in touch with each other. Everything from social networking to
Speaker 1: uh researching recipes to getting a job. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: really become something we heavily depend upon. And uh, you
Speaker 1: know what he wrote the program on what's that he
Speaker 1: used a next computer? Just thought you think that was
Speaker 1: kind of cool? Yes, I do think that he used
Speaker 1: a next computer. We should do a podcast on that
Speaker 1: on the next Yeah, sure, and uh or maybe other
Speaker 1: computer platforms that didn't survive, you know, we can do
Speaker 1: that one next DVD SEP, the Digital Versatile disc, and
Speaker 1: then there's all kinds of other discs that have followed
Speaker 1: since into and we could go on. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are obviously dozens and dozens of other technologies that we
Speaker 1: could talk about, but that was HD and three players,
Speaker 1: and lots of the developments are so fast now that
Speaker 1: it's hard to even keep a track on. I mean,
Speaker 1: we didn't talk about B A VHS, we didn't talk
Speaker 1: about cassettes, we didn't talk about magnetic tape at all really,
Speaker 1: or you know, in solid state drives anything like that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, when you get down to it,
Speaker 1: there's way too much to cover In two years. We
Speaker 1: wanted to hit the really really big points, and there
Speaker 1: are tons and tons of others that deserve mentioned so
Speaker 1: you know, please feel free to let us know if
Speaker 1: we missed one of your favorites. But as I, as
Speaker 1: I said before, you have to tell us one other
Speaker 1: thing to everything after we mentioned otto Frederick row Wedder
Speaker 1: invented the bread slicing machine, So everything after you have
Speaker 1: to tell us which is the best thing since sliced
Speaker 1: bread from roller Coaster? Okay, well that wraps up our
Speaker 1: two hundred episode. And that's what happens. I know, that's
Speaker 1: what happens. Would they do lots and lots and lots
Speaker 1: of research would go way over time? You know, you
Speaker 1: start finding fun stuff and then we investigator. In my defense,
Speaker 1: the one episode also went over time. So if you
Speaker 1: guys have any questions or suggestions for podcast topics or
Speaker 1: you just want to, you know, say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us. Our address is tech Stuff at how supports
Speaker 1: dot com Chris and I will talk to you again
Speaker 1: probably two hundred more times really soon if you're a
Speaker 1: tech stuff and be sure to check us out on
Speaker 1: Twitter text stuff hs ws R handle, and you can
Speaker 1: also find us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash
Speaker 1: tech Stuff h s W for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com and be sure to check out the New Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff blog. Now I'm on the House off Works homepage,
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