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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hi, brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: I'm Lauren voke Bam, and I've got a classic brain

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Speaker 1: Stuff episode for you today. This one is on how

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Speaker 1: tattoo machines sometimes called tattoo guns work. Our former host,

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Speaker 1: Christian Sager, will explain ay brain Stuff, it's Christian Sager.

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Speaker 1: If you like art, permanence or shallow wounds, you may

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Speaker 1: have a tattoo or I don't know seven and you're

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Speaker 1: not alone. A Harris pull from indicates that here in

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Speaker 1: the US almost fort of adults under the age of

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Speaker 1: forty have at least one tattoo. So our question for

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Speaker 1: the day is how do tattoo machines work? And yes,

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Speaker 1: the preferred industry term is tattoo machines, not tattoo guns.

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Speaker 1: As it turns out, the technology used to apply tattoos

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Speaker 1: hasn't changed all that much since the eighteen nineties. Before then,

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Speaker 1: tattoos were given by tapping or just coaking needles into

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Speaker 1: the skin by hand. But at the turn of the

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Speaker 1: twentieth century, two groundbreaking patents were filed. Each is basically

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Speaker 1: a motorized array of solid needles connected to an ink reservoir.

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Speaker 1: When the needles pierced the skin. The tips pull ink

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Speaker 1: from the reservoir into the skin and deposited there. This

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Speaker 1: happens because of surface tension and capillary action, you know,

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Speaker 1: the way that water will stick a little bit higher

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Speaker 1: up to the sides of a glass than its level

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Speaker 1: in the middle. The close set needles of a tattooing

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Speaker 1: device act the same way, pulling the ink down. Some

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Speaker 1: of it gets trapped in the skin and eventually forms

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Speaker 1: the tattoo. But let's look at these two different machines,

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Speaker 1: which we should note probably weren't the first of their

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Speaker 1: kind ever used, just the first to be patented. First,

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Speaker 1: we've got New York City tattoo artist Samuel O'Reilly's rotary machine,

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Speaker 1: patented on December eight He based the design on an

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Speaker 1: electric pen patented by Thomas Edison in eighteen seventy six.

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Speaker 1: The pen would punch through paper to create a stencil

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Speaker 1: of your writing, and O'Reilly realized it could just as

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Speaker 1: easily punch through skin to create a tattoo. O'Reilly's motor

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Speaker 1: is a rotary type, meaning that when electricity is applied,

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Speaker 1: a flywheel spins a cam which pushes a follower to

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Speaker 1: convert the spinning motion into a reciprocating linear motion of

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Speaker 1: the needles. Basically, the needles move up and down. It's

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Speaker 1: called reciprocating motion because every push down rotates the flywheel

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Speaker 1: with enough force that it will keep spinning just enough

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Speaker 1: to pull the needles back up to their starting position,

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Speaker 1: ready to be pushed down again. This lets the needles

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Speaker 1: move up and down very smoothly and rapidly, applying the

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Speaker 1: tattoo more easily than most artists could manage via the

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Speaker 1: traditional poking method. However, this machine probably isn't what you

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Speaker 1: think of when you think of tattooing. Imagine the soundscape

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Speaker 1: of a tattoo parlor in your mind's ear. Do you

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Speaker 1: hear a deep, piercing buzz. Well, that's the noise made

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Speaker 1: by a coil tattoo machine, the second design we're going

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Speaker 1: to discuss today. The first patent for it was granted

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Speaker 1: on August twenty three, nineteen o four, to Charles Wagner.

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Speaker 1: He was another New York City tattoo artist who based

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Speaker 1: his device on an Edison electric pen, this one driven

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Speaker 1: by electromagnetic coils. These coil designs lean heavily on other machines.

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Speaker 1: From the eighteen sixties and seventies telegraphs, doorbells, and dental pluggers,

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Speaker 1: which were used to push gold into cavities. Believe it

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Speaker 1: or not, the idea is simple. You attach a group

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Speaker 1: of needles perpendicular to an armature bar. That bar is

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Speaker 1: spring loaded so that it can vibrate up and down.

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Speaker 1: When it's in its up position, it completes a circuit

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Speaker 1: in the machine that sends electricity through dual electromagnetic coils

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Speaker 1: and that create it's an electromagnetic field that pulls the

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Speaker 1: bar down, which breaks the circuit and releases the bar

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Speaker 1: back to its up position, starting the cycle over again.

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Speaker 1: Since the tattoo needles are attached to the bar, the

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Speaker 1: vibrations push and pull them up and down. Lots of

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Speaker 1: innovators have built on these concepts, making tattoo machines safer,

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Speaker 1: more precise, and less painful for both the client and

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Speaker 1: the operator, and artists use a few other mechanical designs too,

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Speaker 1: Rotaries and coils are just the most common. Today's episode

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Speaker 1: was produced by Tyler Clang and written by me for

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Speaker 1: Brainstuff's YouTube series. If you enjoy our show and want

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Speaker 1: to support us directly, check out our online store at

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Speaker 1: t public dot com, slash brain stuff, and of course,

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Speaker 1: for more on this and lots of other topics with

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Speaker 1: serious staying power, visit our home planet, how stuff Works

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