Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Cammeray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Greetings, programs,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Pellette, and
Speaker 1: I am an editor here at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as always a senior writer Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland Hale and well met Vedge and tools. Oh well,
Speaker 1: now that's a completely different era. Yeah, well that's where
Speaker 1: we're kind of going. We're gonna start this off with
Speaker 1: a little listener mail. This listener mail comes from Annette,
Speaker 1: and a net says dear John and Chris, but especially John. Hello,
Speaker 1: my name is Annette, and I'm a listener of Josh
Speaker 1: and Chuck's podcast. She left that bit out. I suggested
Speaker 1: that they do a podcast about the Renaissance fair phenomenon
Speaker 1: and creative anachronism. They referred me to you because you're
Speaker 1: going to star in a Renaissance Fair. I understand that
Speaker 1: this is not a typical tech stuff topic, but Josh
Speaker 1: seems certain that you can work it in somehow. What
Speaker 1: do you think by the way they say you guys
Speaker 1: smell their words not mine best, Annett. Of course, I
Speaker 1: think we've we've already fired back with the you smell
Speaker 1: uh volley that that went up a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. Frankly,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how we evolved into you smell, No,
Speaker 1: you smell, but I don't want to get into that.
Speaker 1: They started it, they started it well, Annette, thank you
Speaker 1: very much for the email, and yes it is true. Uh,
Speaker 1: I am in a local Renaissance festival. Um, just so
Speaker 1: you know, my character's name is Lord Admiral Edmund Vane
Speaker 1: Glory the third as not a joke. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk today about the tech of fifteen ten years ago.
Speaker 1: Does that mean we need to get in the machine.
Speaker 1: Let's not do that because it would be an entire
Speaker 1: episode in the past and I think Liz would kill us.
Speaker 1: But we are talking about the the technology of fifteen tens,
Speaker 1: so let's set the stage a bit. Fifteen ten. King
Speaker 1: Henry the Eighth has been on the throne for a
Speaker 1: full year. Really he should never mind, No, not King
Speaker 1: Henry the Eighth has ruled England for a full year. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he he was coordinated in fifteen o nine, got married
Speaker 1: to uh to Cat his first wife, Cat. We're really close.
Speaker 1: Actually no we're not, because he was divorced by the time.
Speaker 1: Well anyway, so fifteen o nine, fifteen ten, sorry, fifteen ten.
Speaker 1: We're what kind of technology was around at this time?
Speaker 1: And can we really call it technology? One of the uh,
Speaker 1: of course we could call it technology. I mean lots
Speaker 1: of things are technology, they just don't seem like it
Speaker 1: now that we live in an age where there are
Speaker 1: lots of circuits and things that beep. I thought that
Speaker 1: was an important point to make, and I'm glad you
Speaker 1: made it. Um Yeah, because I mean, thinking back to
Speaker 1: our what's better paper or digital podcasts? I was thinking, well,
Speaker 1: you know, paper is a technology. Before they had that,
Speaker 1: we really didn't have some kind of portable, lightweight method
Speaker 1: by which information could be preserved like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: tables were not lightweight, nor were they particularly uh strong.
Speaker 1: They didn't last forever, you know pretty yeah, yes, stone
Speaker 1: is pretty sturdy. Well, not the easiest thing to write on.
Speaker 1: Just just in making my point, I'll make this short.
Speaker 1: Thinking about things like data rot in where you have
Speaker 1: a DVD or a CD that lasts fifty years or
Speaker 1: something like that. A piece of paper with ink on
Speaker 1: that if you protect it can last longer than that.
Speaker 1: So these are I'm just saying, okay, so very good.
Speaker 1: The tricky part I found in researching this is all
Speaker 1: the stuff that was invented in fifteen ten. I really
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to find anything that was specifically
Speaker 1: invented in fifteen ten, but that lost lots of technology
Speaker 1: actually had been going on before that, because they in
Speaker 1: Europe we were going through the Renaissance right right now
Speaker 1: in England. Parts in England you would probably call this
Speaker 1: the High Middle Ages because really you get into the
Speaker 1: Elizabethan era, that's when you start talking about the Renaissance
Speaker 1: in England. But yes, other parts of the world were
Speaker 1: far more advanced than England at this point. In fact,
Speaker 1: if you look at places like China or or the
Speaker 1: Middle East, they had made advances in technology that put
Speaker 1: medieval Europe to shame. Um So, but we'll get into
Speaker 1: some of that. Let's talk a little bit about some
Speaker 1: of the things that you might have seen had you
Speaker 1: been walking around medieval Europe in fifteen ten, the kind
Speaker 1: of technologies you might encounter. All Right, So if you
Speaker 1: were a sailor and you were in England in fifteen ten,
Speaker 1: and you were one of the King's favorites, you might
Speaker 1: get a chance to serve aboard the fla bag ship
Speaker 1: of what was the brand new Royal Navy of England,
Speaker 1: the flagship being called the Mary Rose. Yes Mary m
Speaker 1: A r y not m E r r y uh
Speaker 1: named as far as we know, after Henry the eighth
Speaker 1: sister then, and the Mary Rose was a fairly new
Speaker 1: kind of vessel um in England at the time it was.
Speaker 1: It was had a carvel hull. Carvel hall, by the way,
Speaker 1: does not mean it was Fudgi the whale or cookie pus.
Speaker 1: It's not that kind of carvel Yeah, now I'm all
Speaker 1: hungry a lot. Sorry. Um No, The carvel hall was
Speaker 1: a specific way of building a ship previous to carvel
Speaker 1: hall or the the the clinker ships. A clinker ship
Speaker 1: was a made by making overland overlapping planks and then
Speaker 1: you had a little frame that you could attach to that.
Speaker 1: So the planks were the most important part. But the
Speaker 1: carvel hull was used a strong framework and then used
Speaker 1: planks that fit against each other, um in a more
Speaker 1: or less a seamless fashion. Um. They weren't really possible
Speaker 1: until you invented the saw. So it turns out the
Speaker 1: saw was very important as far as the development of
Speaker 1: naval warfare is concerned. High technology. Yeah, So you would
Speaker 1: put these planks next to each other, you would calk them.
Speaker 1: So that's water tight. Also very important as it turns out,
Speaker 1: for boats, and it provided the opportunity to introduce watertight
Speaker 1: gun poarts also very important. So the gun ports. That
Speaker 1: allows you to put the guns closer to the the waterline,
Speaker 1: you know, and you could close the gun ports and
Speaker 1: you uh they were since they were watertight, you didn't
Speaker 1: have to worry about water coming into the ship and
Speaker 1: having a capsize. And uh that was that was actually
Speaker 1: really important in that if you wanted to carry a
Speaker 1: lot of guns on your ship, you couldn't just them
Speaker 1: all on the deck. If you did, then that would
Speaker 1: make the deck, it would make the ship top heavy,
Speaker 1: so whenever you would turn, you would have the the
Speaker 1: the danger of capsizing. This actually happened. There was a
Speaker 1: a ship that was built about fifty or sixty years
Speaker 1: before the time we're talking about, where it was the
Speaker 1: most magnificent ship you had ever seen, tons and tons
Speaker 1: of guns on it. They put a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: men on it launched it immediately at capsized sank everyone
Speaker 1: died because it was too top heavy. Now, the mary
Speaker 1: Rose had a different design where you could have guns
Speaker 1: on the deck and guns on a gun deck beneath
Speaker 1: the the deck deck de yeah, okay deck and this
Speaker 1: this was that sounds like it's kind of you know,
Speaker 1: basic stuff, but this is the sort of technology that
Speaker 1: that Europeans began to depend upon in naval warfare, which
Speaker 1: started to play a larger role from about fifteen onward. Um.
Speaker 1: And when I say that the mary Rose was the
Speaker 1: flagship of the British Navy, you should keep in mind
Speaker 1: that the British Navy at that time consisted of about
Speaker 1: thirty ships total. Yeah, and a lot of those were
Speaker 1: merchant ships that had been conscripted into the navy. You know,
Speaker 1: cannon at that time were not made of cast iron.
Speaker 1: They were made of wrought iron and bronze um. But
Speaker 1: they did have exploding shot yes um, which would I
Speaker 1: imagine be pretty nasty if you happen to be on
Speaker 1: one of the other ships. Yeah, it's not something you
Speaker 1: want to get hit with. Uh. And and bronze cannon
Speaker 1: they were lighter than uh, than your iron cannon, but
Speaker 1: they were much more expensive than iron cannons. Uh. So
Speaker 1: you again, it would depend upon the wealth of the
Speaker 1: nation or ship owner as to what kind of cannon
Speaker 1: would be on that ship, as well as the the
Speaker 1: seaworthiness of the ship itself. I mean, if a ship
Speaker 1: couldn't carry that many iron cannon, they might choose to
Speaker 1: spend the money need to get the bronze cannon instead.
Speaker 1: And of course those those cannon were more likely to
Speaker 1: be a matchlock. Yeah, let's let's talk about matchlocks for
Speaker 1: a second. It's an interesting technology. So before the matchlock
Speaker 1: was invented, the way that guns worked in the Middle Ages, well,
Speaker 1: the earliest guns were essentially just a barrel with a
Speaker 1: hole in them on on well, you know, a little
Speaker 1: hole drilled at the top of the barrel on the
Speaker 1: the the end that the gun that the shot does
Speaker 1: not come out of handle basically yeah, where the stock is, yeah,
Speaker 1: or where the stock would be if we're talking, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, because we're not talking about about personal weapons.
Speaker 1: We're talking like a cannon cannon. There were some handheld
Speaker 1: weapons as well, but they were very difficult to use
Speaker 1: and required more than one person generally, Yeah, because you
Speaker 1: couldn't just yeah, exactly one hand. We haven't gotten to
Speaker 1: that part. We're gonna get to that part. So you've
Speaker 1: gotta you've gotta hold drilled that end and uh, this
Speaker 1: is where you would put a burning wick through the
Speaker 1: whole hole to ignite the gunpowder that's inside the barrel. Yes,
Speaker 1: because the shot is uh you know, closer to the end,
Speaker 1: the other end of the barrel, um and you have
Speaker 1: the gunpowder behind that pelt. Yeah, So the gunpowder ignites
Speaker 1: and as it ignites, it gives off quite a bit
Speaker 1: of gas, and that gas is what expels the shot
Speaker 1: from the barrel. Uh. So that meant that you had
Speaker 1: to have at least one hand to hold a a
Speaker 1: lit match or a wick of some sort to insert
Speaker 1: it in the hole. Which does mean that if you
Speaker 1: are just one single person and you have one of
Speaker 1: these rifles, you only have one hand to aim it
Speaker 1: with while you're using the other hand to light it.
Speaker 1: It's not the most accurate weapon. The matchlock kind of
Speaker 1: made this, uh, took that out of your hands and
Speaker 1: put it into a mechanical hand, so to speak. I mean,
Speaker 1: there was a there was something called a serpentine, which
Speaker 1: is an S shaped trigger and basely uh. At one
Speaker 1: end of the S you have your match and at
Speaker 1: the other end is where your finger goes, and when
Speaker 1: you move it, it basically pivoted in the center, so
Speaker 1: that when you pull the trigger, it would bring the
Speaker 1: match down and that would you know, and the flash
Speaker 1: pan and it would set off the charge essentially. So
Speaker 1: the way the flash pan works is that, you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about that that earlier example, you had a
Speaker 1: hole that you had to put the match through. The
Speaker 1: flash pan takes that part out of it. The flash
Speaker 1: pan holds a small amount of gunpowder that then leads
Speaker 1: from right, that leads in through a hole in the
Speaker 1: barrel to a larger charge of gunpowder. That's the part
Speaker 1: that actually propels the shot. And by lighting the flash pan,
Speaker 1: the you know, it's like those old movies where you know,
Speaker 1: you light the one end of the gunpowder and it
Speaker 1: goes down the line and the lights the big barrel
Speaker 1: at the end, singing sort of concept, except into much
Speaker 1: smaller space. You're you light the flash flash pan, the
Speaker 1: gunpowder lights through the hole in the barrel. Lighting the
Speaker 1: main charge in the barrel of the gun fires off
Speaker 1: the shot. So, yeah, the matchlock meant that you just
Speaker 1: pulled the little trigger and it would bring the the
Speaker 1: lit fuse in contact with the flashpan. Eventually, you would
Speaker 1: get a flashpan cover over that that would also be
Speaker 1: hooked up to the trigger, so that when you pulled
Speaker 1: the trigger, the flashpan cover would slide out of the
Speaker 1: way as the fuse comes down. And that was important
Speaker 1: to protect the powder because, of course, if the powder
Speaker 1: were to get wet, yes, that's a problem, your gun
Speaker 1: was useless exactly. Yeah, so even foggy conditions could mess
Speaker 1: up the effectiveness of a gun. And when we talk
Speaker 1: about guns, we're talking mainly we're talking about cannon. We're
Speaker 1: talking about the arquebus um, which was a a personal
Speaker 1: weapon you could it was essentially the the precursor to
Speaker 1: the musket and uh, which of course is precursor to
Speaker 1: the rifle, and it ended up revolutionizing warfare. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: the arquebus all so had a some people called it
Speaker 1: a heck butt because it had a basically a little
Speaker 1: hook on it. And uh, what would happen is, you know,
Speaker 1: castles were sort of going through a technological change too,
Speaker 1: because now that uh, people were beginning to use firearms,
Speaker 1: personal firearms, not just cannon. Um. You know, they needed
Speaker 1: a way too. They had all these arrow slits in
Speaker 1: the walls of the castle which needed to be you know,
Speaker 1: which people needed to use for their firearms. So the
Speaker 1: thing is is, as you mentioned before, Jonathan, they the
Speaker 1: powder and these weapons gave off a lot of gas
Speaker 1: and had you know, packed a bit of a wallop.
Speaker 1: We're talking about a you know, recoil, and so that's
Speaker 1: what the hook was for. Basically, you'd use the hook
Speaker 1: to hook over the uh the stone wall of the
Speaker 1: castle to keep it from you know, knocking you back
Speaker 1: as you fired the weapon wall of the castle. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: castles actually ended up becoming both castles and armor became
Speaker 1: less and less important as gunpowder became more important because
Speaker 1: they didn't provide much of a of a protection and
Speaker 1: so uh, countries had to readjust the way they conducted warfare. Um.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't like the old days where you just
Speaker 1: got a bunch of people all in various kinds of
Speaker 1: armor and then had them clashed together, or you hold
Speaker 1: up in a castle and tried to wait out a siege.
Speaker 1: You couldn't really do that in an arrow where the
Speaker 1: basic weapons could punch holes through your walls like there
Speaker 1: were nothing. Yeah, yeah, that's true. You know. It kind
Speaker 1: of bummed out that we didn't get to talk in
Speaker 1: great detail about flint lock and the wheel lock mechanisms yet. No. No,
Speaker 1: although the wheelock apparently was developed around fifteen fifteen, so
Speaker 1: it's not much in the future. And depending on who
Speaker 1: you asked, they might say that flintlocks were around. But
Speaker 1: really flintlocks, I mean, people didn't document stuff is accurately.
Speaker 1: It turns out it turns out the guy didn't wake
Speaker 1: up and July fourteen invented the flintlock. Today that doesn't
Speaker 1: turns out that didn't happen. But interesting bit of trivia.
Speaker 1: I found out the reason that these are called fill
Speaker 1: in the blank here lock was because locksmiths used to
Speaker 1: work with a lot of them mechanisms similar to what
Speaker 1: you know the kinds of technology used here. So if
Speaker 1: you wanted these things built for your weaponry, you would
Speaker 1: consult with a locksmith who would work on the little,
Speaker 1: tiny little pieces that you would need to add to
Speaker 1: your firearms. That makes it interesting. Yeah, it makes sense,
Speaker 1: you know, because you think you know that there were
Speaker 1: no our definitions hadn't really taken effect there. We don't.
Speaker 1: We don't have the same things like engineers the way
Speaker 1: we have engineers. Now, you had philosophers, you had scientists,
Speaker 1: a various uh rudimentary sciences at the time, although again
Speaker 1: if you go to the Middle East they were much
Speaker 1: further along and in China as well. Uh. Well, I
Speaker 1: was gonna talk also a couple of other things that
Speaker 1: are related to guns. Oh yeah, because because we're gotting crazy.
Speaker 1: Um well, it was. It was awfully prominent too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: A lot of the technology in the Middle Ages dealt
Speaker 1: with warfare. Yeah, I mean it just that was you
Speaker 1: think about invention and uh you know the whole necessity
Speaker 1: driving invention. Well, in the Middle Ages, it was pretty
Speaker 1: much necessary for you to be able to attack and
Speaker 1: defend um, because that's pretty much what the entire history
Speaker 1: was about in large part. So one of the interesting
Speaker 1: things that made cannon very possible actually a couple of
Speaker 1: different inventions. One of them was the trunyon. Trunion is
Speaker 1: a fancy word for the posts that stick out the
Speaker 1: side of a cannon that allow you to change the
Speaker 1: elevation of the cannon. Oh. I figured it was a
Speaker 1: combination of a truffle and an onion. No, but that
Speaker 1: does sound tasty. Now this, uh, this was just what
Speaker 1: allowed you to pivot a cannon upward or downward so
Speaker 1: that you can name it instead of it just pointing
Speaker 1: in a direction hoping that that's good enough, right, um.
Speaker 1: And then you had limbers. Limbers are these two wheeled
Speaker 1: devices that you could hook up to a carriage. You
Speaker 1: would mount a gun on them, and it just made
Speaker 1: it easier for you to um to transport artillery. That
Speaker 1: was another big change by this time in the Middle Ages.
Speaker 1: Earlier in the Middle Ages, if you wanted to lay
Speaker 1: siege to a castle, you either had to have large
Speaker 1: artillery pieces that you could assemble once you got there,
Speaker 1: or you were using things like um trebisches or even
Speaker 1: if you're using even older technology ballista and catapults. And
Speaker 1: just so you guys know, uh, those are technologies that
Speaker 1: use basic physics to propel a projectile a very far
Speaker 1: away with a lot of force. These days pumpkins, yes,
Speaker 1: so like a catapult would use uh rope, yes that
Speaker 1: had been wound very tightly a skein. Actually it's wound
Speaker 1: very very tightly, and that would be enough to you.
Speaker 1: You know, you stick one end of the catapult through
Speaker 1: that that rope and then you wind it really tight,
Speaker 1: and that provides the tension that when you release it,
Speaker 1: it makes the arm go up until it hits arrest,
Speaker 1: and then that propels a projectile. Ballista used two of those.
Speaker 1: It looked like a giant crossbow, but in fact used
Speaker 1: two um uh skeins to propel a projectile. And then
Speaker 1: the trebuche was a little different. It was a sling
Speaker 1: on the end of a long arm. Um it was
Speaker 1: actually a lever, So he had a long end of
Speaker 1: the lever which had the the sling attached to it,
Speaker 1: and then on the short end you had a counterweight,
Speaker 1: a very very heavy counterweight, and when you released the
Speaker 1: the mechanism on it, the counterweight would fall down, propelling
Speaker 1: the long arm up and flinging whatever the projectile was
Speaker 1: in the direction of your target. And those were all
Speaker 1: the older forms of projectile weaponry that essentially got phased
Speaker 1: out once cannon became a real player in the Middle Ages,
Speaker 1: but you probably still saw a few of them in
Speaker 1: depending on where you were. Um, so are we done
Speaker 1: with military type stuff? I was going to talk about
Speaker 1: plate armor. You want to talk about plate armor just
Speaker 1: a little bit. Go ahead in the iron is still king. Yes,
Speaker 1: you're gonna see a lot of iron armor. You're not
Speaker 1: going to see very much steel. Steel was being made,
Speaker 1: but it was incredibly difficult to make. UM. To make steel,
Speaker 1: you had to heat iron up quite quite hot, introduce
Speaker 1: carbon into it, but not too much carbon, because if
Speaker 1: you put too much carbon in it, you got pig iron,
Speaker 1: which is not great for armor. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: kind of shatters um details one enough carbon in there
Speaker 1: to make the iron hard, but not so much that
Speaker 1: it becomes brittle. Has to still be malleable. So steel
Speaker 1: is actually pretty complicated. It's really expensive. UM. Most armor
Speaker 1: is made out of iron. But at this point you
Speaker 1: do see full plate suits of armor, and full plate
Speaker 1: that means that there's there these various hinged plates that
Speaker 1: cover the entire body UM that provide as much freedom
Speaker 1: of movement as possible while still providing as much protection
Speaker 1: as possible, and full plate armor depending on you know
Speaker 1: what kind of the quality of the iron or steel
Speaker 1: that was used to make it. Could even ward off
Speaker 1: a shot from an arquebus at the right range if
Speaker 1: you're right up close to someone, chances are that SHOT's
Speaker 1: gonna go right through the armor and into you, which
Speaker 1: is bad news. But um, but that's still in. It
Speaker 1: was still fairly common to see soldiers wearing this kind
Speaker 1: of armor because the guns had not reached a point
Speaker 1: of sophistication where they had rendered it completely obsolete, and
Speaker 1: Henry the Eighth himself was known to wear it quite
Speaker 1: a few times. He actually entered a lot of attorneys
Speaker 1: um secretly in fact, uh, in fact, I think a
Speaker 1: year after he was coronated, he entered a tournament in
Speaker 1: secret and gained quite a bit of respect because he
Speaker 1: was a very gifted combatant. Wow, yeah, I had no idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not a great wrestler. But King of France beat him
Speaker 1: in a wrestling match that was at the the Fields
Speaker 1: of Cloth and Gold. Alright, now I'm done with the
Speaker 1: military stuff, okay, Because one one technology that I found
Speaker 1: that was apparently created fairly close to fifteen ten was
Speaker 1: the watch. Yes by Germany's Peter henlen Um. He was
Speaker 1: in a Nurnberg, Germany and um, which at that point
Speaker 1: wasn't technically Germany because Germany didn't technically exist as a country. Um.
Speaker 1: But some people say that I actually I had seen
Speaker 1: reports that it was in fact invented like the pocket
Speaker 1: watch invented in but there appeared to have been prototypes
Speaker 1: existing as early as maybe fifteen o five or so.
Speaker 1: That's pretty close. And again, this is something that I
Speaker 1: think of is having been around since, you know, forever
Speaker 1: and ever, so to speak in the case of this.
Speaker 1: But uh no, the the watches starting to make its
Speaker 1: appearance around the early sixteenth century, I imagine they would
Speaker 1: be very expensive and probably not very reliable. And the
Speaker 1: secret to the watch was the fuse, which is uh
Speaker 1: this is a little complicated. It's kind of hard to explain.
Speaker 1: But a watch is the thing that powers these classic
Speaker 1: watches as a spring inside the watch, and uh around
Speaker 1: the spring is a barrel. When the spring is wound tight,
Speaker 1: it then turns the barrel. So attached to this barrel
Speaker 1: is a little chain. The chain goes to a cone
Speaker 1: that has um grooves in it. Yeah, all right, So
Speaker 1: the attaches to at the top of the cone and
Speaker 1: the chain winds around all the way to the base
Speaker 1: of the cone. All right. As the spring unfurls and
Speaker 1: the barrel turns, it pulls the chain from this Uh,
Speaker 1: this fuse, this cone and the chain goes from the
Speaker 1: top down to the bottom. And once it gets to
Speaker 1: the bottom, that's when your watch has needs to be
Speaker 1: wound again. When you wind it, you're actually winding that
Speaker 1: chain around the cone again. This is what provides the
Speaker 1: power to the watch hands to to go around the
Speaker 1: clock face. Earliest earlier clocks, by the way, I only
Speaker 1: had one hand. They had one hand that indicated where
Speaker 1: in the hour it was, so you still had the
Speaker 1: twelve numbers, but you would look and if the hand
Speaker 1: was between the you know, one and the two, you'd think,
Speaker 1: all right, well it's about one thirty. It's about as
Speaker 1: as close as you would get. Um. But yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the fuse is what allowed both pocket watches and you know,
Speaker 1: table clocks to exist because before that you had to
Speaker 1: use weights to to power the clock. Theist watch came
Speaker 1: around much much later, Yeah, swatch even later. Imagine. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: another technology I was thinking about that would have been
Speaker 1: it had been out for a few decades, but you
Speaker 1: know that the movable type Gutenberg. Yes, so we're going
Speaker 1: back to fourteen fifty five or so. Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know it was making an impact and and was
Speaker 1: spreading very rapidly around the turn of the century. Now,
Speaker 1: movable type was new to the Western world, although in
Speaker 1: China they had they had had movable type for a
Speaker 1: few centuries, but um, but then in it did really
Speaker 1: revolutionize learning in medieval Europe. Of certainly made printing much
Speaker 1: more inexpensive. Right up to that point, you essentially would
Speaker 1: get printing by hiring monks to write a text for you.
Speaker 1: And that's where you got those beautiful illuminated scripts where
Speaker 1: it was amazing calligraphy, and you know, you figured that
Speaker 1: they must have been paid by the brushstroke. But the
Speaker 1: the movable type, yea, you took a lot of the
Speaker 1: maybe the artistry out of it. But in turn you
Speaker 1: made it much easier to produce lots and lots of copies.
Speaker 1: And so that that's really what propelled the whole renaissance
Speaker 1: in all of Europe, was the fact that you suddenly
Speaker 1: had this this easy access, relatively easy access to printed works.
Speaker 1: You know, althy're thinking about it. If the monks are
Speaker 1: copying a book word for word, wouldn't that be a
Speaker 1: form of desktop publishing. So anyway, uh, let's talk about
Speaker 1: a true renaissance. Man, Yes, Leonardo da Vinci, since I
Speaker 1: truly messed up the Renaissance. Uh, you should have stopped me.
Speaker 1: How did I how did you mess up the Renaissance? Well,
Speaker 1: then we weren't talking about anyway. The Renaissance man Leonard's
Speaker 1: Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci, of course was towards the
Speaker 1: end of his life. Yes, yes, he died in fifteen nineteen. Um,
Speaker 1: he was, uh a real genius. I mean not just
Speaker 1: an amazing artist, but an inventor. And of course he
Speaker 1: had that great code. So anyway, and then actually, and
Speaker 1: actually it turns out it was around uh some of
Speaker 1: the time when he was coming up with scientific ideas,
Speaker 1: he wasn't doing as much painting. He was teaching that.
Speaker 1: He did do the Mona Lisa towards that time period,
Speaker 1: but he had already done the Last Supper, and um,
Speaker 1: yeah he was. He was thinking of inventions. He had
Speaker 1: already kind of come up with the whole idea about
Speaker 1: powered flight, which never worked during his lifetime. But he
Speaker 1: did work out the basic principles of things like lift,
Speaker 1: which no one had really managed to do up to
Speaker 1: that point. Um, around fifteen he actually drew the first
Speaker 1: documented sketch of a fetus in the womb. Yeah, seven
Speaker 1: months old, I did that was the fetus his age.
Speaker 1: Leonardo was significantly older than that. I didn't notice that
Speaker 1: that period two was when he was really in did
Speaker 1: in the Anatomy of the human body, So that makes
Speaker 1: sense that that would have been was a little after
Speaker 1: he had drawn the Vitruvian Man, which is the infamous
Speaker 1: painting that he did to show the proportions of the
Speaker 1: human body. Did you know that for most people, the
Speaker 1: length of your pinkie is the same as the length
Speaker 1: of your nose if you lay it down on the
Speaker 1: bridge of your nose. Yeah, you know who? I learned
Speaker 1: that from Leonardo da Vinci really well, at least the
Speaker 1: one that works at the Georgia Renaissance Festival. I did, um,
Speaker 1: hey Houston, how are you doing so? But yeah, this
Speaker 1: time he also invented, at least according to the sources
Speaker 1: I was reading, a horizontal water wheel, which is kind
Speaker 1: of the the precursor to the turbine. Again, these are
Speaker 1: inventions that actually existed in other parts of the world,
Speaker 1: but in Europe were unheard of at the time. And
Speaker 1: uh also ball bearings, scissors. I was brilliant, so it
Speaker 1: have made a fortune. He could have. He got into
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble too. But he also he also
Speaker 1: drew up UH an invention which was never actually built.
Speaker 1: A lot of Leonardo's inventions were never built. They were
Speaker 1: just sketches or concepts. But he came up with a
Speaker 1: concept that would have essentially been the first tank. It
Speaker 1: was an armored vehicle to protect people withinside during warfare,
Speaker 1: and I think that's pretty impressive. A lot of his
Speaker 1: inventions had to do with various UH kinds of warfare.
Speaker 1: He also drew up plans for an enormous crossbow was
Speaker 1: according to some estimates, supposed to be as as wide
Speaker 1: as a hundred feet. Well, the crossbow was already falling
Speaker 1: out of fashion. The regular crossbow was calling out of
Speaker 1: fashion thanks to you know, the arquebus. I wanted to
Speaker 1: say that again, Yes, the crossbow was a very slow
Speaker 1: way of killing your rhynomes, but but I imagined that
Speaker 1: Leo's version, being much larger, would have more of an effect. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: it was never built, but it was definitely one of
Speaker 1: those things that you took a look at the design
Speaker 1: and you thought, wow, I hope nobody gets ahold of one.
Speaker 1: Of these things because if they do I want to move,
Speaker 1: you would have gotten the point and other The interesting
Speaker 1: thing about the Middle Ages and especially around this time,
Speaker 1: is that how slowly technology actually evolved. I mean you
Speaker 1: part of that is just because again before movable type,
Speaker 1: it was really hard to to pursue learning. It took
Speaker 1: real polymaths like da Vinci or uh, you know, other
Speaker 1: geniuses at the time or in other parts of the
Speaker 1: world to really push things forward, which meant that you know,
Speaker 1: you pretty much had to wait because there was just
Speaker 1: there was no way to dedicate your life to that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Most schools were of a religious nature,
Speaker 1: where you would learn math, and you would learn languages,
Speaker 1: you would learn philosophy, learn lots of important things. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't really you know, you weren't learning to be
Speaker 1: an engineer. You know, you learned on the job. If
Speaker 1: you wanted to be something like that, like an architect,
Speaker 1: you you would become an apprentice and learn your trade
Speaker 1: that way. Um, so progress was very slow. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until really the early Renaissance, when the the the printed
Speaker 1: word was really coming into full play, that you started
Speaker 1: to see the explosion and learning and then the rapid
Speaker 1: development of technology. Wow, you know, and I feel like
Speaker 1: as with as much as we talked about, you know,
Speaker 1: we're sort of running out of time here, but uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's still far more that we could cover.
Speaker 1: Of course, this is the stuff that our sister podcast
Speaker 1: usually talks about. Yeah, and speaking of which, recently, stuff
Speaker 1: you should know, recorded a podcast about castles, So if
Speaker 1: you have, if you have not had your fill of
Speaker 1: medieval tech, I recommend you check that out because yeah,
Speaker 1: the Castle's podcast. I'm sure we'll be really really interesting.
Speaker 1: I haven't heard it yet because they recorded it about
Speaker 1: an hour before we recorded this and I was not
Speaker 1: in the room. So um, but hopefully in that that
Speaker 1: that kind of fills that that need to hear stuff
Speaker 1: about Renaissance fairs and and create the Society of Creative Anachronism.
Speaker 1: That's s c A. Uh not really our field, but
Speaker 1: we decided to try try and tackle it anyway, although
Speaker 1: some of them have been spotted by the Google street
Speaker 1: view cameras. That's true, that's true. Yeah, we could way
Speaker 1: to rope that in. If any of you have any questions,
Speaker 1: hopefully dealing with technology, you can shoot us an email.
Speaker 1: That's tech stuff at how stuff works dot com and
Speaker 1: you might think, well, gosh, is any of this on
Speaker 1: the website? Actually yes, How Iron and Steel Work is
Speaker 1: an excellent article uh CO written by Marshall Brain and
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb. I recommend that it's a great article on
Speaker 1: the site if you want to learn more about the
Speaker 1: history of iron and steel. And we will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Does stuff works dot com and sure
Speaker 1: to check out the new tech stuff blog now on
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