Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you. I'd like to thank our sponsor for
Speaker 1: this episode, Nissan. Thanks so much, Nissan. I have decided
Speaker 1: to do an episode about special innovations in text. See
Speaker 1: once in a while, a person or a group of
Speaker 1: people come up with an invention that defines a new standard. Right.
Speaker 1: It could be an entirely new idea, or it could
Speaker 1: be refining a concept to a point where everyone treats
Speaker 1: it as if it were a brand new idea. So
Speaker 1: today we're going to talk about some of the technologies
Speaker 1: that gave us abilities and opportunities that before we hadn't
Speaker 1: even imagined were possible. And I thought it would start
Speaker 1: with one that's near and dear to my heart, the
Speaker 1: Victor Talking Machine. Not that I own a Victor Talking machine,
Speaker 1: and I do not have one of these antiques. As
Speaker 1: old as I am, this is way before my time,
Speaker 1: but it's an important invention, I would argue, not just
Speaker 1: because it would lead to the modern turntable and the
Speaker 1: modern album, but it would completely shape society and culture.
Speaker 1: So our story really starts back around eighteen seventy seven
Speaker 1: with Thomas Edison. Now, if you wanted to be really picky,
Speaker 1: you would have to go even further back and start
Speaker 1: going to stuff like the telegraph. But if we keep
Speaker 1: doing that, we're going to eventually end up in the
Speaker 1: Stone Age, and we don't have that kind of time,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna actually begin with old Tommy Boy Edison.
Speaker 1: So he and many of the people working for his
Speaker 1: lab had been working on a device that could potentially
Speaker 1: record the sound playing through a telephone so that it
Speaker 1: would be possible to play that back later. This experimentation
Speaker 1: led to the cylindrical phonogra. Now, this gadget had a
Speaker 1: diaphragm that would flex as it encountered sounds, so you
Speaker 1: would talk into like a trumpet essentially, and it would
Speaker 1: cause this diaphragm to move, and that would move a
Speaker 1: pointed stylus against a turning metal cylinder covered in tinfoil,
Speaker 1: doing these sort of vertical grooves in this tinfoil coated cylinder.
Speaker 1: So Edison's version actually had a secondary stylus and a
Speaker 1: secondary diaphragm for playback, so you had one set to
Speaker 1: record and another set to play it back. So you
Speaker 1: would set this playback stylus on the grooves carved by
Speaker 1: the recording stylus. You would again have the cylinder rotate
Speaker 1: and you would get to hear the recorded sound. It
Speaker 1: was faint, and the cylinders weren't terribly resilient, nor were
Speaker 1: they easy to manufacture. They would switch to other materials
Speaker 1: besides tenfoil and use things like wax, but still not great.
Speaker 1: You could, however, now record sound for posterity, which was huge.
Speaker 1: The ephemeral came less, so I wouldn't say permanent, because
Speaker 1: these cylinders were also delicate and they could only be
Speaker 1: played back a certain number of times before the quality
Speaker 1: of the recording would degrade to a point where you
Speaker 1: couldn't understand what it was. You know what the original
Speaker 1: audio was. So while Edison's invention had made it possible
Speaker 1: records sound for later playback, it wasn't practical. The cylinders
Speaker 1: were really delicate. They weren't suitable for mass manufactures, so
Speaker 1: it was very slow to produce them, and other inventors
Speaker 1: would come along to make some refinements that would usher
Speaker 1: in a new way to experience audio, and those inventors
Speaker 1: were Emil Berliner and Eldridge Johnson. But let's start with Berlinner.
Speaker 1: So he was born in eighteen fifty one in Hanover, Germany,
Speaker 1: So I guess I should say Berlina, since there's no
Speaker 1: hard r in German. He immigrated to the United States
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy and he became interested in engineering, and
Speaker 1: so he and Edison would actually end up in a
Speaker 1: patent battle over microphone technology before Berlinner turned his attention
Speaker 1: to creating a disc based record player, so like a
Speaker 1: flat disc as opposed to a vertical cylinder. So like
Speaker 1: Edison's cylinder based phonograph, his record player would use a
Speaker 1: stylist traveling through a groove, this time with horizontal grooves
Speaker 1: rather than vertical grooves, and it would play back sound,
Speaker 1: but this groove would be on a flat disc instead
Speaker 1: of on a cylinder, and the disc had a distinct
Speaker 1: advantage because Berlinner could mass produce recordings. He could make
Speaker 1: a master recording and then use that to press copies,
Speaker 1: so you could suddenly make lots of copies in a
Speaker 1: fraction of the time it would take you if you
Speaker 1: were trying to produce this using Thomas Edison's cylinder based phonograph.
Speaker 1: So Berlinner's invention had one little drawback, well more than one,
Speaker 1: but one distinct one. To power it, the listener would
Speaker 1: have to turn a crank, and you'd have to keep
Speaker 1: turning the crank in order to provide the rotational power
Speaker 1: to keep the record turning. So Berlinner wanted to find
Speaker 1: a way to motorize the turntable, both to free up
Speaker 1: the listener and to maybe create a slightly more uniform
Speaker 1: rotational speed, because if you're changing your speed at how
Speaker 1: you're cranking the crank, then the record's going to turn
Speaker 1: at different speeds and it may sound funny. So Berliner
Speaker 1: met Eldritch, Johnson, and Johnson suggested a wind up spring
Speaker 1: motor system, so you would still have to wind up
Speaker 1: the device, which at this point was called the gramophone,
Speaker 1: but then the motor would take care of the rotation
Speaker 1: for you until you needed to wind it up again.
Speaker 1: That is now. The Gramophone would go on to be
Speaker 1: a huge success, and the model would stand for future turntables.
Speaker 1: They would all become disc based turntables. But more importantly
Speaker 1: for our story, it meant that customers could purchase a
Speaker 1: record and have a copy of music to play at
Speaker 1: home whenever they liked. It's pretty hard for us to
Speaker 1: imagine it now. Right, we have our ability to access
Speaker 1: pretty much any media on demand from devices ranging from
Speaker 1: smartphones to televisions to refrigerators for goodness sakes, But this invention,
Speaker 1: the VIC talking machine or gramophone had a massive impact,
Speaker 1: a huge change. No longer did you have to go
Speaker 1: to a performance venue and listen to musicians play something
Speaker 1: one time and then you may never hear that again.
Speaker 1: You certainly won't hear the same performance. It would be different,
Speaker 1: even if they played it back to back. Now you
Speaker 1: could enjoy a specific performance over and over and over
Speaker 1: again from the comfort of your home. And these days,
Speaker 1: with vinyl albums enjoying a resurgence and popularity, we can
Speaker 1: thank Berliner's ingenuity for forging a path that we still
Speaker 1: follow today. That is a very powerful invention. And again,
Speaker 1: this invention would have a massive impact on culture and
Speaker 1: the way music would develop and the way music companies
Speaker 1: would come to be. The very format of vinyl albums
Speaker 1: would have a big impact. Right, you would have your
Speaker 1: forty fives versus your full length long play vinyl albums.
Speaker 1: It was really a huge moment in tech, this development
Speaker 1: of the Victor talking machine and having access to recorded
Speaker 1: music again, such a huge change in culture. It's hard
Speaker 1: for us to take into account these days because we
Speaker 1: can take for granted the fact that we can access
Speaker 1: music whenever we like, but that wasn't always the case. Now,
Speaker 1: on a related note, let's talk about an invention that
Speaker 1: wasn't a physical gadget, but more of an innovation in
Speaker 1: how to encode data and how that in turn created
Speaker 1: an entirely new market. So I'm talking about the Motion
Speaker 1: Picture or Moving Picture Expert Group Audio Layer three, better
Speaker 1: known as the MP three. Now, this story dates back
Speaker 1: to the late nineteen eighties. There was a need to
Speaker 1: encode audio data in such a way that you could
Speaker 1: have a relatively high level of quality, but you didn't
Speaker 1: want to have all the information that would come along
Speaker 1: with a raw audio file because the files were huge.
Speaker 1: And the reason for this was that data transmission throughout
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties was limited. You didn't have gigafiber connections
Speaker 1: back then or anything like that, so transmitting a digital
Speaker 1: audio file would take a very long time unless you
Speaker 1: found some way to compress it to reduce it in size.
Speaker 1: The MP three standard would create a compression method, and
Speaker 1: the way it did this was really innovative. The MP
Speaker 1: three compression rates come to us courtesy of psychoacoustic masking,
Speaker 1: which sounds scary but it's not. It's actually means that
Speaker 1: the inventors of the MP three wanted to reduce digital
Speaker 1: audio file sizes largely by eliminating sounds that humans aren't
Speaker 1: likely to hear in the first place. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if you're listening to something and there is a very
Speaker 1: loud noise and it's followed immediately by a quiet sound,
Speaker 1: you're not going to hear the quiet sound. You'll only
Speaker 1: perceive the loud noise. So that means that if you
Speaker 1: were encoding an audio file into an MP three and
Speaker 1: it detected a quiet noise following a very loud no well,
Speaker 1: it would essentially eliminate the quiet noise data because you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to hear it anyway. Why keep it
Speaker 1: in there if you can't perceive it. As another example,
Speaker 1: we generally described the range of human hearing for frequencies
Speaker 1: in you know, if we're talking about like pitches From
Speaker 1: around twenty hurts to twenty killer hurts or twenty thousand
Speaker 1: herts in other words, so that's the lowest of the
Speaker 1: low to the highest of the high that humans typically
Speaker 1: can perceive. Obviously, there's always exceptions, so for pitches lower
Speaker 1: than twenty hurts or pitches that are higher than twenty
Speaker 1: killer hurts, we usually can't perceive them, at least not
Speaker 1: through hearing, though we might feel them, like if you
Speaker 1: have a fifteen hertz sound playing at a very high volume.
Speaker 1: You may not hear it, but you might feel it.
Speaker 1: And as we get older, we also typically lose some
Speaker 1: of this range of hearing, usually in the upper range. Well,
Speaker 1: that means that if there are any sounds in a
Speaker 1: recording that are outside the range of human hearing, you
Speaker 1: can theoretically just lose that data too, because humans wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to hear those sounds. Right now, this does
Speaker 1: get a little whibbly wobbly. There are arguments about how
Speaker 1: imperceptible sounds might actually affect the stuff we can here,
Speaker 1: but when you're trying to save space by compressing a
Speaker 1: digital file, you got to make some hard choices anyway.
Speaker 1: The MP three method is actually something of a sliding scale,
Speaker 1: So when you're encoding an MP three, you can actually
Speaker 1: choose how you want to optimize the file. Maybe you
Speaker 1: want to really conserve space, so you get really brutal
Speaker 1: with the settings, which is going to affect the audio
Speaker 1: quality of the file. You know, it might sound like
Speaker 1: something that's been recorded off a fairly weak radio signal,
Speaker 1: or maybe you want to optimize it for quality. Well,
Speaker 1: then you can choose to have the MP three be
Speaker 1: a pretty close to the original quality of the recorded audio.
Speaker 1: You're just not going to conserve as much file space
Speaker 1: that way. So usually we aim for a sweet spot
Speaker 1: in the middle where the hit to quality isn't typically
Speaker 1: that perceptible. I mean, some people argue they can pick
Speaker 1: it out nine times out of one hundred, and I
Speaker 1: guess it depends on the quality of the encoding. But
Speaker 1: the key is that we do get the benefit of
Speaker 1: a smaller file size this way, which makes it easier
Speaker 1: to transmit these files. And the MP three format would
Speaker 1: enable the creation of MP three players, then turn leads
Speaker 1: to the creation of the Apple iPod and a spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: that won't be the only Apple product that we'll talk
Speaker 1: about in this list, but not only would the iPod
Speaker 1: introduce digital music players to the mainstream at large. It
Speaker 1: would also help secure my career. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a podcast, right, tech Stuff's a podcast? Well, where do
Speaker 1: we get the word podcast? We get it from the
Speaker 1: Apple iPod. Even though the iPod was not the first
Speaker 1: digital media player on the market, right, they weren't the
Speaker 1: innovators in that sense. They just made a product that
Speaker 1: really took off. Apple's amazing product design, coupled with the
Speaker 1: very savvy development of iTunes and the iTunes store, would
Speaker 1: secure its place in history. It actually take a couple
Speaker 1: of generations of the iPod for that particular invention to
Speaker 1: really take off. Now, the development of the MP three
Speaker 1: had a massive impact on culture. In the late nineties,
Speaker 1: we saw the rise of peer to peer file sharing
Speaker 1: networks that were largely trafficking in MP three files, and yes,
Speaker 1: a lot of those files, perhaps most of those files
Speaker 1: were shared without permission from the copyright holder, which meant
Speaker 1: we were then in the era of digital piracy. The
Speaker 1: MP three also created new challenges. For example, it created
Speaker 1: challenges and how artists can expect to be paid for
Speaker 1: their work. This was really complicated by the shift to
Speaker 1: streaming media. But the digital file formats raised questions as
Speaker 1: to how much an artist should receive per sale, right
Speaker 1: because you weren't talking about sales of albums necessarily, you
Speaker 1: might be talking about specific tracks. And while there were
Speaker 1: you know, there's a history of singles that dates back
Speaker 1: to the earliest days of records, but it wasn't like
Speaker 1: you could buy an album track by track in the past,
Speaker 1: or just by you know, two or three tracks off
Speaker 1: an album. That was not possible before this digital file
Speaker 1: format really unless you just lucked out with the singles.
Speaker 1: So it would end up shining a light on the
Speaker 1: music industry's economics, and that gets pretty hairy hit times.
Speaker 1: But that's a matter for a different kind of episode.
Speaker 1: So the MP three certainly deserves to be on this
Speaker 1: list of inventions that would break the mold or perhaps
Speaker 1: create an all new mold. And that's just scratching the
Speaker 1: surface of how MP three's have really made a change
Speaker 1: in how we experience audio. But let's go even further
Speaker 1: back for our next invention. Now, like a lot of innovations,
Speaker 1: it can actually be tricky to say definitively this is
Speaker 1: the first of its kind, but broadly speaking, historians agree
Speaker 1: that George Bauschamp deserves credit for the next entry on
Speaker 1: our list, and that is for the electrically amplified pickup.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not talking about pickup trucks. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: what makes an electric guitar and electric guitar. It's the pickup.
Speaker 1: So the pickup's job is to convert the energy from
Speaker 1: a vibrating guitar string into an electric signal that, once
Speaker 1: it's amplified, can then be sent to a speaker and
Speaker 1: then play back the tone of that vibrating string. And
Speaker 1: Beauchamp gets the credit for making the first one. He
Speaker 1: built it into a guitar, and eventually this guitar became
Speaker 1: an actual model of guitar that was sold. It was
Speaker 1: called the Rickenbacher Electro A twenty two. This first hit
Speaker 1: the market way back in nineteen thirty four. So how
Speaker 1: do these things work? What's going on? Well, it has
Speaker 1: to do with magnetic fields and electrical charges. So we
Speaker 1: know there's a special relationship between electrical fields and magnetic fields, right,
Speaker 1: That's why we talk about electro magnetism. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if you run a conductive wire through a magnetic field,
Speaker 1: the magnetic field will induce an electrical current to flow
Speaker 1: through the conductive wire. Similarly, if you wrap a conductive
Speaker 1: wire around something like an iron nail and then you
Speaker 1: run an electric current through the wire, then you will
Speaker 1: generate a magnetic field and you will have an electro
Speaker 1: magnet on your hands. Well, a guitar pickup typically consists
Speaker 1: of one or more magnets, though not always with conductive
Speaker 1: wire wrapped around them, and the permanent magnet or magnets
Speaker 1: generates a magnetic field, and the guitar strings made of
Speaker 1: material like steel and nickel or brass or bronze, will
Speaker 1: disrupt that magnetic field when you strum them, and it
Speaker 1: induces an electrical current to flow through the wire, and
Speaker 1: that current will correspond to the frequency of the vibrating
Speaker 1: string or strings. So if you're playing the E string,
Speaker 1: then it's going to produce an E because the frequency
Speaker 1: is going to create an electrical current that corresponds with
Speaker 1: that E. Note. Again, you have to pass the current
Speaker 1: through an amplifier, amplifying the signal, and then it gets
Speaker 1: sent to a speaker and then you get the replication.
Speaker 1: But it's brilliant and it was actually necessary at the
Speaker 1: time because in the nineteen thirties when Beauchamp made this innovation,
Speaker 1: Big jazz were becoming popular and guitars were seen as
Speaker 1: useful instruments, but they could really only provide a little
Speaker 1: flavor and fullness to the sound because they were far
Speaker 1: too quiet against the rest of the band's instruments in
Speaker 1: order to stand out and be really versatile, So amplification
Speaker 1: was necessary to get guitars to have enough oomph to
Speaker 1: really stand out and give more opportunities to explore an
Speaker 1: experiment with music. The invention of the pickup opened up
Speaker 1: new doors for musicians to make new sounds with guitars,
Speaker 1: and it led to huge innovations in jazz and rock
Speaker 1: and roll, tons of other genres, my favorites being like
Speaker 1: glam rock, punk rock, new wave and garage rock. And
Speaker 1: then we would get a lot of experimentations with the
Speaker 1: pickups themselves. This meant we would end up with guitars
Speaker 1: that had very distinct sounds to them. Right, Brian May's
Speaker 1: guitars don't sound like anyone else's guitars because he wound
Speaker 1: his pickups himself, at least in his early guitars he did.
Speaker 1: So you might be talking about like big brands like
Speaker 1: Fender and Gibson, or he might be talking about competitors
Speaker 1: that have their own distinct elements that set them apart.
Speaker 1: And it's all due to the invention of these pickups
Speaker 1: along with the construction of the guitars themselves. So to me,
Speaker 1: like the electric pickup really ushered in an entire new
Speaker 1: way of making music and expressing yourself, something that just
Speaker 1: was not possible before. So I had to put it
Speaker 1: on the list. Plus, like, I started playing guitar during
Speaker 1: the pandemic, and now I have two Fender guitars. I've
Speaker 1: got a stratocaster and a telecaster, and I also have
Speaker 1: a bass guitar. So I got pulled in y'all. And
Speaker 1: let me tell you. When you get a guitar and
Speaker 1: you start learning those chords and you get your first
Speaker 1: like amplifier and pedal, like maybe adding a little effects
Speaker 1: to that sound as you're processing the signal that's being
Speaker 1: sent to the amplifier. Wow, it's just such an incredible feeling.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say I achieved rock god status, but it
Speaker 1: sure is fun to play with. Okay, that's a good
Speaker 1: start for a list of incredible pioneering technologies. We've got
Speaker 1: several more to talk about before we get to that.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break to thank Nissan.
Speaker 1: All right, So we're back. And recently I did an
Speaker 1: episode about the history of the digital camera. Now I
Speaker 1: don't want to go through that entire episode again, but
Speaker 1: I do think it's important to acknowledge the development of
Speaker 1: two different types of sensors, the charge coupled device aka
Speaker 1: the CCD and the complementary metal oxide semiconductor or sea moss.
Speaker 1: Both of these trace their history to the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: and both are important in technology that we use today.
Speaker 1: The first out of the gate was actually sea moss.
Speaker 1: Researchers at Fairchild's Research and Development Laboratory created the C
Speaker 1: MOSS sensor. They build a semiconductor, which I'll remind you
Speaker 1: semiconductor is something that under certain conditions operates as an
Speaker 1: electrical conductor and in other conditions it operates as an
Speaker 1: electrical insulator. This type of semiconductor was incredibly useful for
Speaker 1: low power applications because it would draw next to no
Speaker 1: power if it was just in standby mode. But we're
Speaker 1: more concerned with a subset of sea moss sensors, namely
Speaker 1: image sensors. So these sensors take light in the form
Speaker 1: of photons and they transform the energy of light into
Speaker 1: a different kind of energy, electrical current. The sensors consists
Speaker 1: of photodiodes and these correspond to the pixels in a
Speaker 1: digital image. The intensity of light hitting each photodiode determines
Speaker 1: the amplitude of electrical charge that each photodiode generates. This
Speaker 1: in turn goes through an analog to digital converter to
Speaker 1: be processed into a digital image. There's a lot more
Speaker 1: to it than that, but you get the general idea.
Speaker 1: With sea MAS sensors, each photodiode has its own amplifier,
Speaker 1: so the photodiode captures the light, converts it to electrical current,
Speaker 1: It goes through an amplifier for that specific photodiode and
Speaker 1: then continues on through the path to the analog to
Speaker 1: digital converter. That's important because the charge couple device or
Speaker 1: CCD works in a slightly different way. Now. It followed
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine, so it was the second of
Speaker 1: the two sensors to be developed, and it came out
Speaker 1: of the work of scientists who are at Bell Labs. So,
Speaker 1: like a sea MAS sensor, the CCD also consists of
Speaker 1: a grid or mosaic of photodiodes, but the CCD can
Speaker 1: have as few as just one amplifier, So instead of
Speaker 1: each photodiode wired to its own amplifier, the overall CCD
Speaker 1: stores a collection of charges. Then it shifts those charges
Speaker 1: off that are then amplified and processed, and they're shifted
Speaker 1: row by row if you think of it as a grid, right,
Speaker 1: So you shift everything over one step up and then
Speaker 1: you process that and go it through the amplifier. Then
Speaker 1: you do it again and again until you've transferred the
Speaker 1: entire grid of charges. The reason why this is important
Speaker 1: is because using just the one amplifier the one pathway,
Speaker 1: reduces the amount of noise generated through electrical leakage, which
Speaker 1: leads to better images. You don't have problems like striation
Speaker 1: in your digital photos, at least not to the level
Speaker 1: that you would with old seamos digital cameras. Now, in
Speaker 1: more recent years, improvements in seams technology has really changed
Speaker 1: the scene. So now seamos has come to dominate technologies
Speaker 1: like VR and AR headsets, and that's due in part
Speaker 1: to the fact that seamos is far more power efficient
Speaker 1: than CCD. It's also far less expensive, so it helps
Speaker 1: bring costs down. But these innovations led to the development
Speaker 1: of digital cameras and digital headsets, and that also means
Speaker 1: they had a huge impact on an establish industry, namely
Speaker 1: the film industry. And you want to talk about disruptive.
Speaker 1: Digital cameras were incredibly disruptive to the film industry and
Speaker 1: still are today. So I'm talking about film as in
Speaker 1: motion pictures as well as film as in the physical
Speaker 1: medium that we used to depend upon if we were
Speaker 1: taking photos or filming something. Digital photography would have a
Speaker 1: massive impact on that industry, particularly once it became standard
Speaker 1: for our phones to have digital image sensors in them.
Speaker 1: That was truly a game changer. Now we're entering into
Speaker 1: an era of mixed reality headsets that use these types
Speaker 1: of image sensors to help interpret and recontextualize the visual
Speaker 1: world around us, like we're able to augment our experience,
Speaker 1: and in large part it's due to the fact that
Speaker 1: we have these types of sensors. It's hard to put
Speaker 1: into words how powerful this is now. At the moment,
Speaker 1: we're still in an era where the tech is pretty
Speaker 1: expensive for things like VR and mixed reality, and therefore
Speaker 1: it is very much limited to a niche audience, right,
Speaker 1: not everybody has a mixed reality headset, But the potential
Speaker 1: of this technology to really augment our experiences is really
Speaker 1: mind blowing. We may not ever reach the levels of
Speaker 1: something like Ready Player one, but we're already seeing the
Speaker 1: tech implemented into everything from smart glasses to car displays. Now,
Speaker 1: if we're talking about tech that forged a new path,
Speaker 1: I think we have to give a nod to Doug
Speaker 1: Ingelbart and his team at what was at the time
Speaker 1: called the Stanford Research Institute. These days we call it
Speaker 1: SRI International. So back in nineteen sixty four, Inglebart presented
Speaker 1: a technology that would have a gargantuan impact on computers
Speaker 1: and specifically computer interfaces, and it was when he introduced
Speaker 1: the humble computer mouse. Now, the original computer mouse was
Speaker 1: inside a little wooden chassis and had wheels to allow
Speaker 1: you to move it across the table top. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like based on a little track ball, but rather these
Speaker 1: little wheels. It also had a single button to use
Speaker 1: to select things and using a mouse single Bart showed
Speaker 1: how it was easy to convert movements across an x
Speaker 1: y axis in one plane like the horizontal plane as
Speaker 1: in your desktop, and to have that connect to the
Speaker 1: movements of a cursor on a different plane, you know,
Speaker 1: a vertical display. And if you think about that ver
Speaker 1: a second, I think it's really remarkable. We take it
Speaker 1: for granted today, right, We take it for granted that
Speaker 1: if you have your hand on a mouse, you're moving
Speaker 1: it around the table, you're moving a cursor across your screen.
Speaker 1: But you got to remember that that's a flip of
Speaker 1: a plane of ninety degrees. Today, it's second nature to
Speaker 1: use a computer mouse. We don't even consider for a
Speaker 1: moment that we're making movements along one set of axes
Speaker 1: in order to control elements on a totally different set
Speaker 1: of axis. It's just natural. But there was a time
Speaker 1: before the computer mouse where that wasn't a foregone conclusion. Now,
Speaker 1: the computer mouse, along with the graphical user interface or
Speaker 1: gy or guy, would define computer interfaces in the future,
Speaker 1: though it would admittedly take a few decades. The first
Speaker 1: personal computers focused on text and keyboard inputs. Right. They
Speaker 1: didn't have a mouse, they didn't have graphic user interfaces.
Speaker 1: But the Apple Macintosh and the birth of Microsoft Windows
Speaker 1: would usher in a new era of computer interfaces and
Speaker 1: control systems, and it's stuck around ever since. Even in
Speaker 1: the era of touch based interfaces, the history of the
Speaker 1: mouse is still there. We still have guy phones and such,
Speaker 1: so even in devices that don't have a computer mouse,
Speaker 1: the impact of the mouse is still felt because the
Speaker 1: design of the interface dates back to when we were
Speaker 1: using a computer mouse. But you know, talking about guy
Speaker 1: phones is fun. Now. I'm fascinated with the longevity of
Speaker 1: the computer mouse, while the invention dates back to the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. For personal computers, we can really point to
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four as being the real beginning with the
Speaker 1: debut of the Macintosh computer. But considering all the other
Speaker 1: methods that we have to interface with computers, from gestures
Speaker 1: to voice, it is telling to me that the keyboard
Speaker 1: and who else combo is still the dominant method, at
Speaker 1: least for desktop computers, which is really saying something. Now,
Speaker 1: I think there's no better way to conclude this episode
Speaker 1: than with a discussion about the iPhone. Now, let's be clear,
Speaker 1: the iPhone was not the first smartphone. It wasn't the
Speaker 1: first device to even have a multi touch display. There
Speaker 1: were prototypes that were out there that already were working
Speaker 1: in that field. However, it was the first smartphone to
Speaker 1: bring the smartphone form factor to the mainstream public. Before
Speaker 1: the iPhone, smartphones were more utilitarian. They were relegated to
Speaker 1: folks like executives and early adopters who had deep pockets.
Speaker 1: They typically had physical keyboards, and they stressed function over form.
Speaker 1: The iPhone would change all of that. So when Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs first unveiled the iPhone back in early two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, he emphasized how it was the combination of
Speaker 1: a widescreen iPod would touch controls, a quote revolutionary mobile
Speaker 1: phone end quote, and a break through Internet communications device.
Speaker 1: And perhaps at the time you might be forgiven for
Speaker 1: thinking some of this was marketing hyperbole, right, it was
Speaker 1: all razzle dazzle. But I would say that calling it
Speaker 1: a breakthrough Internet communications device turned out to be a
Speaker 1: massive understatement. The iPhone would transform the Web as we
Speaker 1: know it, and I actually saw this unfold in real
Speaker 1: time because in early two thousand and seven, I started
Speaker 1: my job at HowStuffWorks dot com, which is a website
Speaker 1: dedicated to explaining the mysteries of the universe one topic
Speaker 1: at a time. I started just a month after Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs had unveiled the iPhone. He did so in January
Speaker 1: ninth of two thousand and seven, and my first day
Speaker 1: was February fifteenth, two thousand and seven, but the phone
Speaker 1: wouldn't actually launch until that summer. It launched on June
Speaker 1: twenty ninth, so it still had six months to go
Speaker 1: before it would come out, So we had no clue
Speaker 1: at the time that it was going to change everything.
Speaker 1: But that launch started a trend, and that trend was
Speaker 1: that lots of people would end up buying a smartphone,
Speaker 1: and if it wasn't an iPhone, then it might be
Speaker 1: an Android device, because those came out the following year
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, or you know, maybe they
Speaker 1: were one of those poor folks who ended up with
Speaker 1: a Windows phone. I say poor folks because Windows phones
Speaker 1: just didn't stick around very much. They weren't very well supported,
Speaker 1: they had a very small user base. But the point
Speaker 1: I'm making is that the consumer smartphone era had arrived
Speaker 1: and it meant that people were shifting their behavior. So
Speaker 1: instead of using desktop or laptop computers to access the web,
Speaker 1: more folks were using their mobile devices. But that presented
Speaker 1: a major challenge to website developers. The design and layout
Speaker 1: of web pages often didn't mesh well with the mobile experience.
Speaker 1: Either everything would appear to be far too small, or
Speaker 1: navigating the page was just way too clunky and required
Speaker 1: too much swiping and dragging your finger on the screen.
Speaker 1: The change in behaviors necessitated a change in design practices
Speaker 1: for the entire web. It was clear that if you
Speaker 1: wanted to remain real event on the web, you needed
Speaker 1: to make sure your website was optimized for different methods
Speaker 1: of accessing that site, including mobile phones. So companies spent
Speaker 1: millions of dollars in order to catch up, and there
Speaker 1: were entire careers that came into being as a result
Speaker 1: of this, with new generations of web developers specializing and optimization.
Speaker 1: Beyond this change, which I assure you was enough to
Speaker 1: justify putting the iPhone on this list, Apple's smartphone would
Speaker 1: lead to other massive transformations. So having a digital camera
Speaker 1: incorporated into the design of the iPhone would mean that
Speaker 1: you could leave your normal camera at home and just
Speaker 1: rely on your smartphone to snap a pick or even video.
Speaker 1: The evolution of streaming media would mean you wouldn't even
Speaker 1: have to carry a standalone digital media player. You could
Speaker 1: just listen to your music on your smartphone. While the
Speaker 1: iPhone and other smartphones might not be superior to these
Speaker 1: individual gadgets, the convenience of having just a single device
Speaker 1: that did it all really made up for it. The
Speaker 1: rival of the App Store was another massive shift, again
Speaker 1: thanks to Apple's iPhone. We used to talk about programs
Speaker 1: back in the day. We don't really say the word
Speaker 1: programmed that much anymore. Now. We talk about applications innovation
Speaker 1: in the app space, where developers figured out new ways
Speaker 1: to leverage smartphone features like geolocation, data or connectivity. They
Speaker 1: really opened up opportunities like never before. I mean, billion
Speaker 1: dollar companies emerged out of these opportunities, and while not
Speaker 1: all of them would stick around, some would change our lives.
Speaker 1: So I'm excited to see what other devices in my
Speaker 1: lifetime will make this kind of huge impact, some of
Speaker 1: which we may not notice until after the fact. So
Speaker 1: is it possible that Apple will pull it off again?
Speaker 1: Is it possible that the vision pro will one day
Speaker 1: join a list like this one? Or is it going
Speaker 1: to take some other huge leap for that kind of
Speaker 1: technology to grow beyond early adopters who have big old
Speaker 1: wallets and what other innovations are going to stand out
Speaker 1: as game changers. Can't wait to find out. To me,
Speaker 1: that's one of the really exciting things about covering technology.
Speaker 1: I like talking about improvements that happen over time and
Speaker 1: the gradual evolution of technologies as well, but it's really
Speaker 1: exciting to zero in on a specific technology that would
Speaker 1: ultimately have a massive impact on us, either directly or indirectly.
Speaker 1: And I really do believe that the ones I've mentioned
Speaker 1: today fall into that category. Well that's it for this episode.
Speaker 1: Thanks again to Nissan for sponsoring us to explore this
Speaker 1: world of pioneering technology, and I'm sure I'll do more
Speaker 1: episodes in the future talking about other examples, because this
Speaker 1: is just a small collection. I hope you are all well,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: thee heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.