Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
Speaker 1: much for tuning it. This is an accidental invention called
Speaker 1: a podcast, and we couldn't do it without the help
Speaker 1: of our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2: I know there was that time that that scientist spilled
Speaker 2: chemical X and then a podcast sprang forth fully formed.
Speaker 1: Yeah. By that time, I got a bit by a
Speaker 1: radioactive microphone and then ended up doing this as a living.
Speaker 2: Hey man, you know there are worse ways to make
Speaker 2: a living and worse radioactive things to get bitten by.
Speaker 2: Accidental inventions intentional two parter.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yes, well done.
Speaker 3: I will say, I don't know if you guys have
Speaker 3: heard this, but it was an accidental chemical spill that
Speaker 3: caused Ira Glass to be like formed.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't doubt it. Yeah, I've read a good Glass.
Speaker 1: I've read his biography. And who was reading that biography, Well,
Speaker 1: they call me Ben Bullen. That's none other than mister
Speaker 1: Noel Brown. And as you might tell with our incredibly
Speaker 1: subtle foreshadowing this this week, we are dedicating some time
Speaker 1: to the wonderful, wacky, inspiring, dare we say, at times
Speaker 1: terrifying world of invention. Humans aren't the only living creatures
Speaker 1: that can quote unquote event things, but so far humans
Speaker 1: have the best track record.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you know, we always talk about on
Speaker 2: this show and on our sister show Stuff they don't
Speaker 2: want you to know about this idea of firsts of
Speaker 2: like who was the first person that figured out you
Speaker 2: could get high on on this weird herb, you know,
Speaker 2: Or or that figured out this slimy, disgusting shelled thing
Speaker 2: from the water could be sucked down and it's called
Speaker 2: an oyster, you know. I mean, it's fascinating.
Speaker 1: How many people died discovering edible mushass. Right, So this one,
Speaker 1: what's the old joke? This one will make you see
Speaker 1: God for a week, this one will kill you, and
Speaker 1: this one just goes great in pasta.
Speaker 2: One of them makes you see God real quick, you know,
Speaker 2: more like visions and definitely mushrooms and pasta one of
Speaker 2: my favorite things in the whole white culinary world.
Speaker 1: I guess those are maybe technically more discoveries. It's true,
Speaker 1: and that is a very important point to bring up.
Speaker 2: And we we do have an episode on inventors that
Speaker 2: were killed by.
Speaker 1: Their own invention.
Speaker 2: Yes, but I think we can't argue that discovery isn't
Speaker 2: a seed of invention.
Speaker 1: Huh, how about that? There we go, because often when
Speaker 1: looking for one thing, you find the other thing. That's
Speaker 1: classic human, right, you lose your car keys searching for
Speaker 1: your car keys, and all of a sudden you find
Speaker 1: the journal you wrote in middle school or you Uh,
Speaker 1: let's say you are an alchemist and you want to
Speaker 1: transmute metal to gold and you accidentally invent pesticides. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say.
Speaker 2: I thought you were going to say something like you
Speaker 2: lose your car keys and all of a sudden, bam,
Speaker 2: you invent the atomic bomb.
Speaker 1: That's how it happened. Everybody watch Oppenheimer went down. The
Speaker 1: guy was a little bit. He'd be the kind of
Speaker 1: dude that would lose his car keys. Yeah, he would
Speaker 1: not only lose preoccupy, not only the kind of dude
Speaker 1: who would lose his car keys, but he would get
Speaker 1: furious at his assistant for not fixing the situation.
Speaker 2: Look, you can't get over that nude scene in that
Speaker 2: movie felt really.
Speaker 1: Really weird to me. I don't know why. I did
Speaker 1: feel like an excuse to uh for the chairs. Correct.
Speaker 3: That was where the sex scene from earlier is like
Speaker 3: not as much the in the chair as one. It
Speaker 3: was that, yeah, there's a choice, but it was say, affleck,
Speaker 3: amazing actor. He's in like one scene and he steals
Speaker 3: the entire show.
Speaker 1: It was one of those things where it's pretty clear
Speaker 1: that the director, the screenwriter or the cinematographer said, I
Speaker 1: can get away with this.
Speaker 2: Hey, her contract gives us two nude scenes, so we.
Speaker 1: Can't live that second one on the table. And so
Speaker 1: film and fiction aside. What we can tell you is
Speaker 1: a thesis statement for this week is that invention is
Speaker 1: often a macrocosmic historical example of what Bob Ross would
Speaker 1: call a happy accident. You put the paint in the
Speaker 1: wrong place, and boom, you have created a beautiful tree
Speaker 1: or a mountainscape or a cumulus cloud, yeah, or a
Speaker 1: Jesus you know in your toast. Yes, right, right, right,
Speaker 1: always waiting to be discovered. Bred has done a lot
Speaker 1: for religion. Actually, now that I think about that, that's
Speaker 1: a pretty deep in accurate statement. You're absolutely right, man,
Speaker 1: I'm with you.
Speaker 2: It's true, And I mean, what do they say necessity
Speaker 2: is the mother of invention and all that. But I
Speaker 2: would argue that discovery, which can't often be accidental, is
Speaker 2: the seed of invention.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I would argue that curiosity is the impetus
Speaker 1: but behind yeah, discovery and invention. And that's one of
Speaker 1: the things that humans are great at, not so much
Speaker 1: planning ahead, but more so curiosity. Right, Ted Lasso is
Speaker 1: correct in that respect. Can't recommend that show well enough.
Speaker 1: We want to start this with a shout out to
Speaker 1: our research associate Jeff, who points out, quoting our alma
Speaker 1: matter How Stuff Works, that not every wonderful, world changing
Speaker 1: invention was created intentionally. Some came, as you said, Noel,
Speaker 1: through accidental discovery. Some came through straight up like three
Speaker 1: stooges left clumsiness, Some came out of laziness. What we
Speaker 1: do know is that almost every invention stands on the
Speaker 1: shoulders of giants of precedent. Right. A spontaneous discovery is
Speaker 1: an amazing pivotal moment in history, but often the credit
Speaker 1: where it's due needs to be assigned to the people
Speaker 1: who learned of a discovery and then spent years, decades,
Speaker 1: perhaps their entire lives, trying to make it applicable and
Speaker 1: benefit to the rest of civilization.
Speaker 2: Well, it's about recognizing the discovery first and foremost. And
Speaker 2: I think this is a great follow up to the
Speaker 2: episode we just did on tupperware, which we'll recall was
Speaker 2: invented based on a byproduct, a stinky, icky byproduct of
Speaker 2: plastic manufacturing that nobody else in the industry knew what
Speaker 2: to do with. But mister tupper he had big ideas
Speaker 2: around it. They started a revolution of leftover storage.
Speaker 1: Please do check out that story, especially because we all
Speaker 1: have tupperware in our fridges right now very much.
Speaker 2: Some of them need to be I need to be examined.
Speaker 2: I think I need to do a refresh.
Speaker 1: And going back to our idea of bread, let's pop
Speaker 1: the top on one of history's greatest accidental inventions slash discoveries. No,
Speaker 1: we're going to treat those as kissing cousins, right, if
Speaker 1: that's synonymous, they're a venn diagram. We are alive today,
Speaker 1: all of us, including you ridiculous historian listening to the show,
Speaker 1: We are alive today because of something called antibiotics. Now
Speaker 1: at the at the top, this feels like a really
Speaker 1: gross idea.
Speaker 2: It sure does, especially when you consider how it was
Speaker 2: discovered and where it comes from. According to I Believe
Speaker 2: the American Chemistry Society at their website ACS dot org,
Speaker 2: antibiotics are compounds produced by bacteria and fun guy which
Speaker 2: are capable of killing or inhibiting competing microbial species.
Speaker 1: This phenomenon has long been known. It may explain why
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians had the practice of applying a poultice
Speaker 1: of moldy bread to infected one. I don't like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm familiar with pult Well it's have you
Speaker 1: ever used one? And maybe, like my old Appalachian background.
Speaker 2: Isn't it where you literally shoved dirt and stuff like
Speaker 2: into your wound, or like grass or a mixture of
Speaker 2: like really gouey herbs and stuff.
Speaker 1: Like a sloppy kind of wela. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: This is the story of antibiotics and penicillin. The world's
Speaker 1: first acknowledged antibiotic was less the It was less a
Speaker 1: matter of some mad genius uh secreted away in a
Speaker 1: tower learning the art of alchemy. It was more an
Speaker 1: accidental byproducts out out tupperware of a messy workstation.
Speaker 2: Right, how stuff works? Again, our almud butter writes. One
Speaker 2: of the most widely used antibiotics, penicillin, was first developed
Speaker 2: by Scottish researchers for Alexander Fleming in nineteen twenty eight,
Speaker 2: the careless type. Fleming departed for a two week vacation,
Speaker 2: having left out a petri dish containing Stapholococcus. So, if
Speaker 2: I'm not mistaken, is what is the bacteria that forms
Speaker 2: or that is responsible for what they call a staff infection?
Speaker 1: Right? I think that's right? AnyWho?
Speaker 2: Continuing upon returning, Fleming discovered that Staphylococcus had developed a
Speaker 2: layer of mold which had prevented it from growing any further.
Speaker 2: So see it's did an accidental discovery the ikey workplace,
Speaker 2: and then the like what does this mean?
Speaker 1: And the recognition of how this could be applied? M
Speaker 1: M yeah, yeah, what he stumbled across is something we
Speaker 1: call penicillium. Let's let's get into it. Yes, so our guy,
Speaker 1: our Scottish guy again standing on the shoulders of giants.
Speaker 1: Various ancient civilizations had sort of a spidey sense about
Speaker 1: the the hidden benefits of mold. So Fleming starts to
Speaker 1: do the work and he sorts through his messy counter
Speaker 1: Peachtree dishes. They all had Stafflococcus stafflecoccus. Nasty customer. It
Speaker 1: can give you a sore throat, boils, abscesses, all the hits.
Speaker 1: And then, like you were saying, he looks at one dish,
Speaker 1: one dish out of his collection and he says, hang on,
Speaker 1: this is dotted with these colonies of this nasty customer
Speaker 1: I know to be Stafleococcus. But there's one area that's
Speaker 1: untouched by anything except for this blob of gross, fuzzy
Speaker 1: looking mold.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, exactly untouched. Fleming figured out that this mold
Speaker 2: juice was capable of killing a wide range of very
Speaker 2: harmful bacteria that were pesky and tough customers to your point, Ben,
Speaker 2: for the you know, human race, things like Streptococcus, men
Speaker 2: in ja, caucus and diphtheria, bacillus bacterium that up to
Speaker 2: this point could have been fatal for folks.
Speaker 1: Right right, fatal on the far end, at the very
Speaker 1: least severely inconvenient and unpleasant. What this was later identified
Speaker 1: as this mold. And let me just take a second
Speaker 1: and say, mold and fung guy, they're amazing, they're amazing.
Speaker 2: We talked on stuff that I want you to know about,
Speaker 2: how the way they communicate in networks, neural networks underground.
Speaker 2: There's an incredible documentary called Fantastic Fungi that we've recommended
Speaker 2: as well, A bunch with what's like a Paul Steinmetz
Speaker 2: I think is his name? Is a mycologist. I think
Speaker 2: is the term fascinating? Sorry, I'm excited.
Speaker 1: I'm into it too.
Speaker 3: I get to jump in here really quick. Paul Stammets,
Speaker 3: which is a joke because in the now finished Star
Speaker 3: Trek Discovery series where they travel over fungus, it's complicatem
Speaker 3: I gonna expect to the name of the guy who
Speaker 3: invents it is uh Stamos. That's the name of the
Speaker 3: engineer who invents it.
Speaker 1: So there you go. Yeah, it's just not very cool.
Speaker 1: Good I told.
Speaker 3: I told my friend Merret that one recently blew her mind.
Speaker 3: She goes, what, that's a real guy. I'm yeah, he's
Speaker 3: a live and live and well he's a he's the
Speaker 3: expert on mushrooms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's about eighty five percent mold now by content.
Speaker 1: But that's just you know, like Marikore, that's just something
Speaker 1: that comes with the job of being illuminary. If we
Speaker 1: go back to our our noble Scott Fleming, uh, we
Speaker 1: find that he, you know, he's smart enough to clock
Speaker 1: something unusual. And he's got two assistants, Frederick Ridley and
Speaker 1: Stuart Krattick, and he says, all right, you guys, you're
Speaker 1: real and comers here in this super messy hoarder lab.
Speaker 1: I need you to take this mold juice, and I
Speaker 1: need you to isolate whatever the heck it is that
Speaker 1: is killing these pesky bacterium. And they said, okay, we're
Speaker 1: going to do our best. Fleming and what they were
Speaker 1: able to create something, but it was very unstable because
Speaker 1: they were trying to purify something for the first time.
Speaker 1: They were only able to make solutions of very crude material.
Speaker 1: And that comes to us again from the American Chemical Society.
Speaker 1: So Fleming has the honor in naming this mould juice,
Speaker 1: and he calls it penicillin because he's naming it after
Speaker 1: that fungus we mentioned earlier, Penicillium notatum.
Speaker 2: Right, And he publishes a paper about this in nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty nine. But it wasn't really sure yet he knew.
Speaker 1: What it could do. But I guess maybe I was
Speaker 1: given him a little too much credit.
Speaker 2: He wasn't quite sure yet if it had any practical
Speaker 2: use because it was a bit difficult to purify and
Speaker 2: to stabilize and to like mass produce in a way
Speaker 2: that would potentially have a huge impact on humanity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of like inventing a rocket that can
Speaker 1: sometimes go to space but not all the time. Do
Speaker 1: you really want to put people on the rocket just yet? No,
Speaker 1: definitely not, Katie Perry.
Speaker 2: It was Howard Florey and his teamwork making the dream
Speaker 2: work and Earnest Chain and their colleagues at the Sir
Speaker 2: William Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford University, you know
Speaker 2: slouches there who figured out how to turn penicillin from
Speaker 2: this kind of you know, haphazard discovery. And again all
Speaker 2: credit to Fleming. He did see there were potentially big
Speaker 2: things ahead. He just I guess didn't stop short, right,
Speaker 2: You didn't quite know what to.
Speaker 1: Do with it.
Speaker 2: So he was able to turn this from a kind
Speaker 2: of a was described at ACS dot org as a
Speaker 2: laboratory curiosity into a life saving drug. In their efforts
Speaker 2: to purify and find tune the chemistry of penicillin, which
Speaker 2: is a process that began as far back as nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent, and this is this is weird.
Speaker 1: So as nineteen thirty nine is going through, it's nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine US. The Second World War is ramping up,
Speaker 1: and these wartime conditions on multiple levels are making research
Speaker 1: increasingly difficult. So we all know the game. At this point,
Speaker 1: you start experimenting with clinical trials. You want to do
Speaker 1: some animal experiments, and they start trying to figure out
Speaker 1: where they can grow enough mold filtrate they call it.
Speaker 1: To conduct these trials and experiments. They need five hundred
Speaker 1: leaders of this stuff. So they start growing everywhere they can.
Speaker 1: We're talking bathtubs, bedpans, empty cans for grow. Oh way,
Speaker 1: this super mold juice. And what they did is they
Speaker 1: built this thing that allows you to you know, how
Speaker 1: you like when you're cooking some stuff, you gotta skim
Speaker 1: the froth off the top. They wanted the broth beneath
Speaker 1: the surface of the mold. That's the mold juice. And
Speaker 1: to do this they hire a group of people they
Speaker 1: call the Penicillin Girls, and for two pounds a week,
Speaker 1: these this team inoculates and sort of continually stays at
Speaker 1: these containers making sure the fermentation is fermenting. Eventually, as
Speaker 1: a result of this, that Oxford laboratory that was doing
Speaker 1: other stuff, it is turned into the world's first on
Speaker 1: purpose penicillin factory and then goes on to save millions
Speaker 1: and millions of lives. Now this can sound kind of
Speaker 1: sensitive now in a world of you know, superbug and
Speaker 1: livestock problems with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and issues and controversy surrounding vaccination as well,
Speaker 2: of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the that's the point I was going to
Speaker 1: say as well, Like here in twenty twenty five, the
Speaker 1: idea might seem elementary or maybe even controversial to some
Speaker 1: people if we're being honest, but we have to remember
Speaker 1: a ton of folks were dying because of this. This
Speaker 1: was a lifesaver and it was completely by accident.
Speaker 2: And if anybody out there is looking for an interesting
Speaker 2: watch other than that documentary that we talked about, I'm
Speaker 2: sure you're familiar with this. To Ben, there's a new
Speaker 2: ish adult swim cartoon called what is It? Common Side
Speaker 2: Effects that I believe one of the characters is sort
Speaker 2: of like a fantasy version, kind of of like the
Speaker 2: type of work that Paul Stemmets does, and just this
Speaker 2: sort of like idea of mushrooms being a secret alien
Speaker 2: thing that have huge potential ramifications, you know, for the
Speaker 2: human race beyond, like in terms of like healing and transcending,
Speaker 2: you know, this mortal coil and stuff. It's a fabulous
Speaker 2: show by the same studio created the sci fi cartoon
Speaker 2: Scavenger's Reign, which I know that you also were a
Speaker 2: fan of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I enjoyed that. I appreciate that. I appreciate that
Speaker 1: mention there, because we can without spoiling it further than
Speaker 1: what you said in the excellent setup, we can tell
Speaker 1: you it's not what you're expecting for sure. And this
Speaker 1: takes us to another amazing accidental invention common to so
Speaker 1: many kitchens.
Speaker 2: Beep, that wasn't an editorial beat as the sound of
Speaker 2: the thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yes, the microwave street name, microwave, technical name microwave oven.
Speaker 1: You know it. It's used for like whenever you want
Speaker 1: something to like whenever you're cooking or reheating tupperware and
Speaker 1: you're like, man, I wish this tupperware was really hot
Speaker 1: and the stuff inside it was still sort of cold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if only and and and if only I could
Speaker 2: find a way for I get to get all the
Speaker 2: microplastics out of it into into every bite, maximize microplastics
Speaker 2: per bite.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the microwave oven. Simply put. You can find more
Speaker 1: about this on history of microwave dot com, which is
Speaker 1: a real sight. Uh knocked one down. The microwave Bombard's
Speaker 1: food with microwaves that make dipole molecules of water and
Speaker 1: other substances revolve and collide rapidly. This creates heat.
Speaker 2: It's like a it's a it's like a small Hadron collider,
Speaker 2: your very own, you know.
Speaker 1: And we owe it all to a guy named Percy Spencer,
Speaker 1: who was just uh, I love this story. We talked
Speaker 1: about it in a previous series that we made years
Speaker 1: and years ago. Stuff genius good stuff. We ah man,
Speaker 1: I missed this show. It was weirh You were a
Speaker 1: huge part of that. It was incredible. Oh well, well
Speaker 1: credit where due are pow? Paul Decant did the majority
Speaker 1: of the animations and I was just writing it. We had,
Speaker 1: but you appeared in some of them.
Speaker 2: It was like a rotating cast of like how stuff works,
Speaker 2: folks talking about in a very stylish, you know, package,
Speaker 2: like various how stuff works the kind of things. But
Speaker 2: it was definitely an evolution of in the YouTube days
Speaker 2: of healthy on YouTube days of how stuff works.
Speaker 1: Right right, Well, I appreciate that. If we go back
Speaker 1: to Maine in eighteen ninety four, we're joining Percy Spencer
Speaker 1: in Howland. Percy doesn't have Holland how oh Howland. Like
Speaker 1: I'm joking, it's funny.
Speaker 2: It's like saying Holland with a with a weird Southern accent.
Speaker 1: It's like a werewolf version of Holland.
Speaker 2: How old it is in Maine. So this is all
Speaker 2: very appropriate. They talk a little funny in Maine. I've
Speaker 2: never seen Stephen King adaptation. The soil is it's so Howland.
Speaker 2: The soil is so no.
Speaker 1: All eastuff so Spencer. Yeah, again, he doesn't have the
Speaker 1: best upbringing. He is only eighteen months old when his
Speaker 1: father passes away and his mom. Let's keep in mind,
Speaker 1: this is, you know, the late eighteen hundreds. His mom
Speaker 1: is going to have a very difficult time as a
Speaker 1: single parent, so she brings the kid to his aunt
Speaker 1: and uncle to take care of him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, And this, sadly was just the next
Speaker 2: kind of setup for tragedy for young Spencer. His uncle
Speaker 2: passed away as well when he was only seven, so
Speaker 2: he and his aunt kind of banded together in grief,
Speaker 2: I guess, and started kind of traveling around New England.
Speaker 2: And this maybe I'm making this sound more charming than
Speaker 2: it was. I think it was a lot of it
Speaker 2: had to do with survival. But she was what you'd
Speaker 2: call an itinerant weaver, which that ain't good, right, Ben,
Speaker 2: That's almost like being an indentured servant.
Speaker 1: It's not good. It's the benefit is not in your corner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like the cast the side notions of healthcare worker protections.
Speaker 1: You're you're on a contract, make work basis. And he
Speaker 1: is traveling with his aunt and good on her, by
Speaker 1: the way, for not abandoning this poor child, and he's
Speaker 1: working whatever odd jobs he can pick up as he ages.
Speaker 1: He would later go on to recall that this taught
Speaker 1: him a degree of self reliance and he was a
Speaker 1: huge fan of what he called Yankee ingenuity, which he
Speaker 1: said served him well in later life. And this is
Speaker 1: coming to us with thanks to Emily Conover writing for
Speaker 1: American Physicist Society. Yep, good stuff.
Speaker 2: Another really great rundown of this incredible and happenstanceacle invention.
Speaker 1: Happenstancechool is a great word. I like it. So look,
Speaker 1: he becomes Spencer is a smart kid by any means,
Speaker 1: And yeah, he's bootstrapped himself and paid attention and learned
Speaker 1: the hard way that you got to kind of make
Speaker 1: your own way. And he, you know, he paid attention.
Speaker 1: Let's just say that Yankee ingenuity served him well. Indeed,
Speaker 1: I would argue that a lot of his there's definitely
Speaker 1: some trauma to his story, and a lot of his
Speaker 1: brilliance is informed by tragedy. When the Titanic the unsinkable
Speaker 1: Titanic spoiler.
Speaker 2: We got a good one coming up about that too,
Speaker 2: in its own weird way.
Speaker 1: At another spoiler spoiler, the Titanic sinks, Abraham Lincoln doesn't
Speaker 1: have a great time at the Fario So nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1: Titanic sinks, and Spencer, with the rest of the American
Speaker 1: public and the European public, is fascinated darkly by this story,
Speaker 1: and he is especially inspired by the heroism of radio
Speaker 1: operators on board that doomed vessel, and this gives him
Speaker 1: a lifelong interest in a technology that we would now call.
Speaker 2: Wire yeah, the Golden Age of wireless exactly. So pretty
Speaker 2: soon we've got wartime research funding flowing, so you start
Speaker 2: to see some advancements in this kind of technology. One
Speaker 2: thing in particular the cavity magnetron, which is a high
Speaker 2: frequency tube with built in resonant cavities that is designed
Speaker 2: to produce a focused beam of microwave energy.
Speaker 1: This is a big deal in.
Speaker 2: Radar technology and communications, long range communications, I believe with
Speaker 2: the British.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, this is also part of how part of
Speaker 1: the origin story for the myth about eating carrots to
Speaker 1: improve your eyesight and night vision because the British at
Speaker 1: the time, we mentioned this before. The British at the
Speaker 1: time did not want their enemies in Germany to know
Speaker 1: that radar was a thing, so instead they were just saying,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, our pilots, I eat a lot of carrots,
Speaker 1: and everybody just went with it. History is so ridiculous, dude. Anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should start a podcast. That's a good idea. I
Speaker 1: hope we get bitten by some radioactive microphones. Spencer is
Speaker 1: messing with energy beyond human can he figures out how
Speaker 1: to mass produce these magnetrons. And because Rida helps win
Speaker 1: the war, and because this guy figured out how to
Speaker 1: mass produce these things, he receives the US Navy's highest
Speaker 1: honor that can be bestowed upon a civilian, the Distinguished
Speaker 1: Public Service Award, which it's I know, I know it's
Speaker 1: a history of beige, but it's yeah, the musical, perhaps
Speaker 1: the musical.
Speaker 2: Check out our recent episode of Strange News and stuff
Speaker 2: that I want you to know if you want to
Speaker 2: catch the reference.
Speaker 1: So this idea is, you know, not his original invention,
Speaker 1: but here's his accidental invention. Here's where things get beautifully wacky. Uh,
Speaker 1: the idea idea of heating stuff with high frequency electromagnetic waves.
Speaker 1: People have thought about that since nineteen thirty four, and
Speaker 1: we know that Bell Labs even filed a patent to
Speaker 1: that effect, just to that idea in nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: but no one took it as far as Spencer, because
Speaker 1: we must assume no one in this rarefied Air liked
Speaker 1: a little snack as much as him. He's a guy
Speaker 1: who walks around with snacks.
Speaker 2: I have a PRESD snacker. Yeah, he would have multiple snacks.
Speaker 2: It seems this is all This is a very snack
Speaker 2: based discovery. He was hanging around near an active radar
Speaker 2: situation and noticed that a candy bar in his pocket
Speaker 2: had melted, and presuming this is just like a traditional
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties like chocolate ration bar, right, and realized that
Speaker 2: the microwaves might actually be a potential for cooking food.
Speaker 2: So he takes it a step further to test this
Speaker 2: theory or this hypothesis.
Speaker 1: He places popcorn kernel.
Speaker 2: Near the magnetron, uh, and just as he suspected, they
Speaker 2: start to pop pop pop.
Speaker 1: So next he decides to kind.
Speaker 2: Of build out a bit of a prototype, right, like
Speaker 2: a quick and dirty prototype.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He takes a kettle and he cuts a hole in
Speaker 1: the side of it, and then he puts an egg
Speaker 1: in the kettle, and he uses the equipment that they
Speaker 1: have on hand to direct this magnetron energy through that
Speaker 1: hole that he's just cut. This is like the world's
Speaker 1: first microwave. It works again kind of, but just like
Speaker 1: the melty chocolate in the pocket, the egg explodes rhyme,
Speaker 1: you drop the bat, the egg explodes, And this is
Speaker 1: I love it egg on face moment very much so
Speaker 1: literally literally, this is ridiculous history cinema because when the
Speaker 1: egg pops, it splats in the.
Speaker 4: Face to these astonished irritated all over him literally like
Speaker 4: the skeptical yeah, the doubting Thomas and the lab is like,
Speaker 4: you're crazy.
Speaker 1: Let me take a look at this. Yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker 1: Man oh boy. Yep.
Speaker 2: And Whirlpool that's pretty funny. The company I believe that
Speaker 2: makes like dryers and microwaves and stuff. Can we just
Speaker 2: really quickly to give a shout out to thirty Rock
Speaker 2: for its microwave content. I believe the character of Jack
Speaker 2: doneghe who is like a CEO type of General Electric.
Speaker 2: He's like the head of microwave oven Technology or that division,
Speaker 2: and he's always cooking up no pun, attend to some
Speaker 2: new you know, implementation of microwave technology.
Speaker 1: And it is advertising for it because in charge of boat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got Yes, it's really great. If you haven't
Speaker 2: seen that holds up a joke a second.
Speaker 1: It's so dense.
Speaker 2: With Donald lover Root that doesn't surprise me. He's sharp
Speaker 2: and all of the writing is sharp. Tinfa for the win.
Speaker 2: But what is he How does he pivot from this
Speaker 2: potential embarrassing, dejected moments into microwave greatness.
Speaker 1: Before we get to that, and that's a great question.
Speaker 1: Before we get to that, we do have to doff
Speaker 1: our caps to one of the most amazing throwaway lines
Speaker 1: in thirty Rock, which is it when Tracy Jordan's wife says,
Speaker 1: my new single, my new single is dropping. Is dropping.
Speaker 1: It's just the language of it. Anyway, Oh, it's fantastic.
Speaker 2: There's also great he has some great conspiracy kind of lines.
Speaker 2: You know, there's one where he's talking about how the
Speaker 2: government's injecting black people's chicken nuggets with cancer or something
Speaker 2: like that. Anyway, just worth your time. Started from scratch,
Speaker 2: we highly recommend yes.
Speaker 1: And ed back to our guy, Percy Spencer, who would
Speaker 1: have just been beautiful at thirty Rock.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a real beautiful boy. He's good looking man too.
Speaker 2: I don't this in my mind he is. We'll cast
Speaker 2: him beautiful, Okay, we'll cast energetic. So he is a
Speaker 2: self taught engineer, right. It was that kind of time
Speaker 2: in the world in the West, and he is able
Speaker 2: to file the first patent for this thing called the
Speaker 2: microwave oven in nineteen forty five, So hitting right there
Speaker 2: as the US is beginning to emerge as the world's
Speaker 2: pre eminent superpower.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And this was also that like Age of the Atom
Speaker 2: kind of era where this was like where you're living
Speaker 2: in the future. They literally, I mean, I don't know
Speaker 2: if this is in the America as well, but in
Speaker 2: the UK, and I think they still do.
Speaker 1: Actually they called it robot cooking.
Speaker 2: There was like this sense that the microwave was this
Speaker 2: like futuristic device, you know, like meals in pill form
Speaker 2: level you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it. When those things still had the
Speaker 1: new car smell. They would sometimes tell kids, this is
Speaker 1: astronaut food. This is how the astronaut.
Speaker 2: Remember the actual astronaut food we got or you got
Speaker 2: it space camp. I wasn't invited, or actually I just
Speaker 2: didn't have what it takes, but I'd buy it at
Speaker 2: the planetarium, you know, that crunchy, delightful stuff.
Speaker 1: Love it, man, Let's go get astronaut food together.
Speaker 2: Maybe we can get your Besis to send this up
Speaker 2: in a space capsule, and then we'll call ourselves astronauts and.
Speaker 1: Then anything we eat will be astronaut food. All right, Okay,
Speaker 1: I was going to pass until you nailed the logic
Speaker 1: at the end of that one. That was well, so
Speaker 1: all right, his patent is exactly what you might picture
Speaker 1: in your kitchen. Here metal box that contains the microwaves.
Speaker 1: There's an opening where this magnetron tube can poke through.
Speaker 1: Spencer also has another innovation. He adds a door to
Speaker 1: the metal box. This is the granddaddy the pattern familia.
Speaker 1: So every microwave that you have ever seen, the defining
Speaker 1: moment of Jack Donneghi's life.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, truly, because really that's another thing that's great
Speaker 2: about that character. He's like passionate about microwave. Yesh, he's
Speaker 2: into it. He's all in, as you would say, ten
Speaker 2: toes down on my toes.
Speaker 1: Yes, shout out to Jack ed, shout out to Jack
Speaker 1: the character. We're still on the fence about the actor
Speaker 1: who portrays him. I think that's fair to say. The
Speaker 1: next one, maybe the last one for this episode, has
Speaker 1: got to be one of the coolest named inventions ever.
Speaker 1: X rays good X rays You remember did you ever
Speaker 1: have X ray glasses? That's funny.
Speaker 2: You should mention that, Ben And maybe I'll save this
Speaker 2: for later, but remember, yeah, X ray specs they would
Speaker 2: call don't did they do anything?
Speaker 1: I remember now?
Speaker 2: They just had swirly lines on them in a little pinhole,
Speaker 2: and was there some any kind of lens or something
Speaker 2: in there?
Speaker 1: Were they? For a few there were lenses that that
Speaker 1: played with light a bit, but it wouldn't let you,
Speaker 1: you know, see beneath people's clothing or see through walls. Correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was actually googling because there was the
Speaker 2: thing I was I'm just gonna go ahead and drop it. Uh.
Speaker 2: All this talk about these weird inventions, not weird inventions,
Speaker 2: but like you know, circumstantial accidental inventions made me think
Speaker 2: of a funny invention story that I was sharing with
Speaker 2: Max before you joined Ben.
Speaker 1: Did you know that whiteout.
Speaker 2: Was invented by the mother of The Monkey's lead singer,
Speaker 2: Jason Naismith. Yeah, it's incredible and like he he inherited
Speaker 2: like fifty million dollars from her, and it is fascinating stuff,
Speaker 2: Like she was a typist and invented this material that
Speaker 2: then went on to be you know, hugely influential back
Speaker 2: when you know, typing was still much much more of
Speaker 2: a thing unrelated. But when I was googling that, the
Speaker 2: inventor of the X ray specs came up, and he
Speaker 2: also invented sea monkeys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a couple of other things too. Right, we're
Speaker 1: talking about novel. He was a bit of a Yes,
Speaker 1: he was a bit of a huckster.
Speaker 4: You know what.
Speaker 2: I think at their best, X ray Spex created some
Speaker 2: sort of optical illusion. I think there was some sort
Speaker 2: of refraction situation going on, right, I can't.
Speaker 1: Play with the light, but I think that's right. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't let you see under clothing, and they wouldn't let
Speaker 1: you see through walls.
Speaker 2: And there's actually also a fantastic post punk UK post
Speaker 2: punk band called x ray Spex, which I highly recommend.
Speaker 2: How the ex x ray sp e X incredible front
Speaker 2: person named Polystyrene, which is wow, is it polystyrene connected
Speaker 2: to Tupperware? Wasn't that the name of the stuff that
Speaker 2: was polyethylene? Polyethylene?
Speaker 1: Anyway? Either way, full circle, probably not their legal Christian
Speaker 1: But we're talking about not the X ray Spex. We're
Speaker 1: talking about actual X rays, right, which do give you
Speaker 1: a If you have ever had the misfortune of having
Speaker 1: a broken bone or something where a doc needs to
Speaker 1: pop the hood on your body without actually opening the
Speaker 1: hood just yet, then you will get an X ray
Speaker 1: like the standard screening method for breast cancer, the mammogram
Speaker 1: uses X rays, and nowadays we barely think about it.
Speaker 1: But for a long long time, for the majority of
Speaker 1: human history, if you had a broken bone, a tumor,
Speaker 1: you swallowed something, you were getting cut, Yeah, people wouldn't
Speaker 1: know unless they got in those guts. Terrified.
Speaker 2: I've never had surgery, y'all, and I am deathly terrified
Speaker 2: of going under the knife. It's something I know, and
Speaker 2: it really freaks me out. And maybe as I'm getting older,
Speaker 2: I'm warming up to the idea. Didn't even used to
Speaker 2: like getting blood drawn, which I'm about to have to
Speaker 2: go do today, and I got over that, so we'll
Speaker 2: see once the time comes for me to go under
Speaker 2: the knife.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was a.
Speaker 2: Big deal that they could preemptively check something out before
Speaker 2: you know, having to like open you up, like you said, Ben,
Speaker 2: get in those guts.
Speaker 1: So our story of X rays begins with a guy
Speaker 1: named Villehem road to Jen who was a professor of
Speaker 1: physics over in Bavaria, and he is a serious dude.
Speaker 1: He's not trying to make you know, wacky X race
Speaker 1: FECs to see pandodize yeah, or hypnotized He discovers the
Speaker 1: concept of X rays in eighteen ninety five, so it's
Speaker 1: older than a lot of people might assume, and he
Speaker 1: does it by accident. He's looking into something totally different.
Speaker 1: He's like, uh, hey, can cathode raise pass through glass?
Speaker 1: Au row? Yeah, I was definitely the question he was asking.
Speaker 2: And he was a super cool dude as well, would
Speaker 2: have been right at home in the movie Point Break.
Speaker 2: His cathode tube that he created to test this theory
Speaker 2: he covered in heavy black paper, so he was kind
Speaker 2: of surprised when an incandescent green light escaped and was
Speaker 2: projected on this nearby fluorescent screen.
Speaker 1: And so us like just like spencer and just like flipping.
Speaker 1: He says, I'm going to tick because he's in wealth
Speaker 1: of accents, and uh, what's a way? And uh so
Speaker 1: he decides to conduct a series of experiments and he says,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever this mysterious light is, it passes through
Speaker 1: so many other substances, but it always leaves shadows of
Speaker 1: solid objects. And the reason he calls the X rays
Speaker 1: is because he doesn't know what the rays are.
Speaker 2: He could have yi name because it sounds cool.
Speaker 1: He could have called M A Z rays or n
Speaker 1: rays or I don't know. Yes, rays the the phenomenon
Speaker 1: formerly known as rays.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, because all bets are off. Now we thought
Speaker 2: we knew all the rays, but now we got this
Speaker 2: new one. Where do we even go from here?
Speaker 1: We're gonna really need to rethink our lives. And so, uh,
Speaker 1: this is this is weird because, uh, we see how
Speaker 1: casual dare I say, cavalier science could be at the time. Uh,
Speaker 1: he puts an X ray over his wife's hand, right,
Speaker 1: and uh and she her name's Annabetha Ludwig, and she
Speaker 1: looks at the shadows cast by the bones and yeah,
Speaker 1: and she says to it, I have seen my death,
Speaker 1: which you know is understandable. Actually it's a big deal.
Speaker 1: This was not a thing.
Speaker 2: This was the one had seen this, like to view
Speaker 2: your own skeleton without you know, being dead, right, that
Speaker 2: is that association was was serious.
Speaker 1: There's a skeleton in all of us, there really is.
Speaker 1: And oh yeah, yeah, yeah, be upfront with him. Look,
Speaker 1: this is amazing for all sorts of applications, especially in
Speaker 1: the world of medicine. So within a year, doctors throughout
Speaker 1: Europe and the US are using X rays to prevent
Speaker 1: cutting people open they're finding gunshots, bone fractures, broken bones,
Speaker 1: swallowed stuff, kidney stones.
Speaker 2: By the way, there's some hilarious memes of X rays
Speaker 2: the thing that shouldn't be up people's butts.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. Oh, doctor, sorry, I fell on that bad
Speaker 1: and they're like, yeah, well you keep following on it.
Speaker 1: Actual game is really good. So he gets the first
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize in physics in nineteen oh one. Now we
Speaker 1: do have to do one bit of historical diligence here.
Speaker 1: This is before people realize over time. Yeah that too Yeah,
Speaker 1: too much exposure to X rays can have deleterious effects
Speaker 1: on human body.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask, we're talking cancer, We're talking
Speaker 2: cell abnormality type stuff, right, Like, it can cause mutations
Speaker 2: because this bombard it's sort of like radiation, which is
Speaker 2: why when you go to get an X ray now,
Speaker 2: they like put a lead vest over you and make
Speaker 2: sure that you're not getting too much of it.
Speaker 1: And they tell you everything's fined right before. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: hit up the cover. Also, there was a brief period
Speaker 1: of time in US history where X rays were such
Speaker 1: a novelty that shoe stores would have them, and so
Speaker 1: you would put your foot in the X ray machine. Okay,
Speaker 1: just like as a fun little thing.
Speaker 2: That's that that is so interesting because now we think
Speaker 2: of like the cost of getting medical to perceived tests
Speaker 2: even you know, and obviously X rays aren't the only
Speaker 2: game in town anymore. We have like MRIs and things
Speaker 2: that are much more you know, like she can show
Speaker 2: three dimensional things.
Speaker 1: But yet the X rays still popping.
Speaker 2: You know that it's the most cost effective and efficient
Speaker 2: way in certain situations like you're talking about with gunshot
Speaker 2: wounds and bone fractures. You know, they still do an
Speaker 2: X ray because an MRI is so damn expense.
Speaker 1: I love an X ray man.
Speaker 2: You know, remember those bone recordings, the X ray records
Speaker 2: we talked to, really cool episode if you want to
Speaker 2: do a deep dive back into ridiculous history. History but
Speaker 2: well deserved Nobel prize, Yes, yes.
Speaker 1: Very much so definitely not the most controversial of Nobel prizes.
Speaker 1: We could say with.
Speaker 2: Something we're good with X rays even if you get
Speaker 2: a little kids at least, Yeah, we could say with
Speaker 2: some we could say, with some certitude, is not the
Speaker 2: most controversial Nobel Prize.
Speaker 1: And we can say with some optimism that we very
Speaker 1: much hope you enjoy today's show. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us, folks speak thanks to our super producer
Speaker 1: mister Max Williams, our research associate Jeff and uh oh
Speaker 1: tuned in later this week We've got even more accidental inventions.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm with a marvelous, marvelous toy, A wonderful, wonderful toy,
Speaker 2: fun for a girl and a boy.
Speaker 1: You know, the one nice tease. Yeah, big thanks of course,
Speaker 1: aj Bahamas, Jay Reluctant. Thanks to of course Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: aka the Quistern.
Speaker 2: Mm hm yeah, a bit of a byproduct of the
Speaker 2: evil in the universe.
Speaker 1: If we're talking about a manifestation of our own car.
Speaker 1: There you go, exactly. He's a mirror in the dark mirror,
Speaker 1: dare we say big thanks to Alex Williams who composed
Speaker 1: a slap and bop the rude Dudes a ridiculous crime
Speaker 1: and Noel, big thanks to you. I think maybe we
Speaker 1: could get into this in part too, but uh we
Speaker 1: peek behind the curtain in our in our next installment
Speaker 1: and tell people how ridiculous history itself is kind of
Speaker 1: an accidental invention, Oh we must. Yeah, that's a very
Speaker 1: good point. Ben, what'll see your next that books.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.