Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Some of us don't know what we want to be
Speaker 1: when we grow up until well we're grown up. Many
Speaker 1: of us start out wanting to be a lawyer, or
Speaker 1: a doctor, or a firefighter, until we realized we're better
Speaker 1: suited as mechanics or sales reps or acrobats. Melvin Kaminsky
Speaker 1: knew what he wanted to be. He just took a
Speaker 1: little longer getting there than most. But he had a
Speaker 1: good reason. He had a war to fight. Kaminski was
Speaker 1: born in nineteen twenty six in a Brooklyn tenement. He
Speaker 1: literally popped out on the kitchen table. He didn't get
Speaker 1: to know his father, though, who died at the young
Speaker 1: age of thirty four when Melvin was only two. Instead,
Speaker 1: he was raised by his mother, three older brothers, and
Speaker 1: his uncle Joe. Joe was a cab driver who would
Speaker 1: often shuttle the doormen at Broadway theaters back to their
Speaker 1: homes in Brooklyn in exchange for free tickets to the shows.
Speaker 1: Melvin saw a performance of Anything Goes starring ethel Merman,
Speaker 1: and he was hooked. He knew he didn't want to
Speaker 1: work in the garment industry like other young Jewish men
Speaker 1: at the time. He wanted something more glamorous, so he
Speaker 1: started performing for guests at the Belt Hotel, while he
Speaker 1: was also learning to play drums from fellow Brooklyn night
Speaker 1: Buddy Rich. But before he had a chance to really
Speaker 1: break into show business, all hell broke loose. World War
Speaker 1: Two to be exact, Kaminski was invited by an army
Speaker 1: recruiter to take an aptitude test and scored high enough
Speaker 1: to be sent to the Virginia Military Institute, where he
Speaker 1: was educated in specific fields, namely electrical engineering, saber fighting,
Speaker 1: and horse back riding. These would come in handy weeks
Speaker 1: later after he turned eighteen and was enlisted to serve
Speaker 1: in the army. He moved around from Fort Dixon, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: to Fort Sill in Oklahoma for radio operator training. Then
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty four, Kaminsky made it to France and
Speaker 1: Belgium as a forward artillery observer in the seventy eighth
Speaker 1: Infantry Division, but nineteen forty five saw him take on
Speaker 1: perhaps the most dangerous job of his military career after
Speaker 1: being transferred to the eleven oh fourth Engineer Combat Battalion.
Speaker 1: He was tasked with scouting ahead of the tanks, searching
Speaker 1: for and clearing land mines along the terrain. He even
Speaker 1: participated in the Battle of the Bulge, and more than
Speaker 1: once he was forced to fight for his life against
Speaker 1: Nazi troops as infantry, but the anti Semitism he faced
Speaker 1: wasn't just from the Germans. Being a Jewish kid from
Speaker 1: Brooklyn made him a punching bag for even his own
Speaker 1: fellow soldiers. One time, in particular, he found himself on
Speaker 1: the receiving end of some nasty insults from one of
Speaker 1: his comrades, which prompted an angry Kaminsky to remove the
Speaker 1: soldier's helmet and bash him over the head with the
Speaker 1: mess kit. That little stunt earned him a little time
Speaker 1: in the stockade, but he never forgot his roots and entertainment.
Speaker 1: At the end of the war, Kaminski joined these Special Services,
Speaker 1: where he became a corporal and performed for the troops
Speaker 1: at Fort Dix. After his service had ended, I came
Speaker 1: time to find a real job. His mother had lined
Speaker 1: up a position for him at the Brooklyn Navy Yard,
Speaker 1: but Kaminsky couldn't imagine working there for the rest of
Speaker 1: his life. Rather than work on ships, he hopped into
Speaker 1: a taxi and took it to the Catskills. He cut
Speaker 1: his teeth as a drummer and a pianist in various
Speaker 1: hotels and nightclubs until one night, a comedian scheduled to
Speaker 1: perform at one of the clubs called in Sick. That
Speaker 1: was Kaminsky's chance to really shine. He took to the
Speaker 1: stage and made the audience laugh with impressions of famous celebrities.
Speaker 1: He found his calling as a comedian. Come to nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: he left the Borsch Belt for television, where he got
Speaker 1: a job writing for a popular variety show run by
Speaker 1: an old friend from his youth, Sid Caesar. It was
Speaker 1: called Your Show of Shows, and Kaminsky worked right alongside
Speaker 1: writers who would go on to great acclaim, including playwright
Speaker 1: Neil Simon and lifelong friend Carl Reiner. But eventually the
Speaker 1: world would come to know him as much more than
Speaker 1: a television writer. He'd create iconic characters like the two
Speaker 1: thousand year Old Man, as well as some of the
Speaker 1: funniest and most enduring films and TV shows of the
Speaker 1: last sixty years, including Get Smart, The Producers, Blazing Saddles,
Speaker 1: Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs, and so many more. He was born
Speaker 1: Melvin James Kaminski, but when he was a teenager he
Speaker 1: adopted a much catchier stage name, which he'd borrowed from
Speaker 1: his mother's maiden name of Brookman. Who is he? He's
Speaker 1: comedy legend mel Brooks. A good invention shouldn't just solve
Speaker 1: a problem, It should improve upon the previous solution. When
Speaker 1: Henry Ford was asked if customers had to say in
Speaker 1: the development of the Model T, he famously said, if
Speaker 1: I had asked people what they wanted, they would have
Speaker 1: said faster horses. The goal of a new invention is
Speaker 1: to make life easier and reduce friction in completing a task.
Speaker 1: Edison accomplished this numerous times with items like his incandescent
Speaker 1: light bulb, phonograph, and mimeograph. He built his career on
Speaker 1: quality of life improvements, unless that life happened to belong
Speaker 1: to an elephant, of course, but one invention that never
Speaker 1: really got off the ground involved in upgrade to the
Speaker 1: common pen. It was part of a complete system meant
Speaker 1: to make duplicating documents and drawings much easier. Edison developed
Speaker 1: the idea over the summer of eighteen seventy five. The
Speaker 1: pen really wasn't a pen filled with ink. It was
Speaker 1: a pen shaped shaft with a needle at the tip.
Speaker 1: As the user moved it across a piece of paper,
Speaker 1: a small motor at the top would drive the needle
Speaker 1: back and forth like a piston, poking holes to create
Speaker 1: a stencil. Once the stencil was completed, it would be
Speaker 1: placed in a press and a roller would push ink
Speaker 1: through the holes a copy underneath. Now, if you think
Speaker 1: about it, the electric pen was the precursor to the
Speaker 1: photocopiers that we used today. Edison even marketed it mainly
Speaker 1: to law firms, insurance companies, and other offices that required
Speaker 1: documentation drafted in duplicates and triplicates. He called it the
Speaker 1: electro Autographic Press. After two years of making and selling
Speaker 1: them himself, Edison contracted Western Electric Manufacturing Company to begin
Speaker 1: producing them going forward. By eighteen seventy seven, he expected
Speaker 1: Western Electric to make at least two hundred electric pens
Speaker 1: each month. Edison would then earn a royalty on each
Speaker 1: pen sold to broaden his audience, though he even pitched
Speaker 1: his electric pens toward average buyers with promises of all
Speaker 1: kinds of flyers, blueprints, contracts, and personal correspondence that would
Speaker 1: be so much easier to produce with his invention rather
Speaker 1: than using the current analog tools. Of course, Unfortunately, the
Speaker 1: device didn't find much footing. Office clerks found it cumbersome
Speaker 1: and unwieldy, while the wet cell battery that power it
Speaker 1: required too much maintenance. Five years after its debut, competing
Speaker 1: mechanical pens started to hit the market, ones that didn't
Speaker 1: need batteries to operate. They quickly overtook Edison's invention and
Speaker 1: relegated it to nothing more than a historical footnotes until
Speaker 1: Samuel O'Reilly got his hands on it. O'Reilly was from Waterbury, Connecticut's,
Speaker 1: and had moved to New York sometime in the eighteen eighties,
Speaker 1: where he had started working as an illustrator of sorts.
Speaker 1: He took one of Edison's automatic pens and realized that
Speaker 1: it could be modified for his own purposes, and so
Speaker 1: over the course of fifteen years, O'Reilly tweaked and updated
Speaker 1: Edison's original design, developing a new kind of tool that
Speaker 1: incorporated an ink reservoir directly into the pen. Now the
Speaker 1: needle wouldn't just punch a hole, it would push the
Speaker 1: ink into it as well. He earned a new patent
Speaker 1: for his contraption as well in eighteen ninety one. This
Speaker 1: made O'Reilly's job much easier on his hands and on
Speaker 1: his clients. What used to take him hours now only
Speaker 1: took minutes, with the ability to perforate his canvas of
Speaker 1: choice fifty times a second. Though he didn't work with
Speaker 1: paper or wood or linen, he exclusively illustrated on skin, forearms, legs, chests, necks,
Speaker 1: anything the client wanted inc You see, Samuel O'Reilly was
Speaker 1: a tattoo artist, and his brand new invention, the tattoo
Speaker 1: machine or tattoo gun, was based on Edison's electric pen,
Speaker 1: and it not only turned O'Reilly into an overnight success,
Speaker 1: but it changed the future of the tattoo industry. In fact,
Speaker 1: the tattoo guns used today aren't too far removed from
Speaker 1: what Samuel invented back in eighteen ninety one. Thomas Edison
Speaker 1: didn't create his motorized pen with the intention of revolutionizing
Speaker 1: how tattoos are made, but, to paraphrase a old saying,
Speaker 1: one person's trash is another person's tattoo gun. I hope
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.