Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. It might be a
Speaker 1: blur in the sky or a strange round craft zooming
Speaker 1: by that captures the attentions of people on the ground.
Speaker 1: The authorities try to pass them off as weather balloons
Speaker 1: and military training exercises, but not Everyone can be dissuaded
Speaker 1: so easily. They know what they've seen. The problem is
Speaker 1: while everyone is looking up, they miss what's going on
Speaker 1: down below them. You see not all unidentified objects. Why.
Speaker 1: In eighteen oh three, Japanese fishermen off the coast of
Speaker 1: Hitachi Province notice something floating adrift in the ocean. It
Speaker 1: was a ship of some kind, though it didn't resemble
Speaker 1: any ship they'd ever seen before. It was about eleven
Speaker 1: feet tall and eighteen feet wide. It resembled a giant
Speaker 1: wooden pot more than a boat. It was also fitted
Speaker 1: with rectangular crystal windows around its rosewood top half. The
Speaker 1: bottom half was coated in copper plates. The fisherman hooked
Speaker 1: it and brought it to shore, with them. Now that
Speaker 1: they could get close enough, they were able to peek inside.
Speaker 1: Strange writing had been scribbled on the inner walls of
Speaker 1: the vessel. There were also bedsheets, some meat, a bit
Speaker 1: of cake, and a bottle of water. And there was
Speaker 1: also a woman. She was around twenty years old, they said,
Speaker 1: pale and small, just under five feet tall, with long
Speaker 1: red hair. Within her hair, she had weaved streaks of
Speaker 1: white fur, and she wore long, flowing clothes, unlike anything
Speaker 1: the fisherman had ever seen before. The woman looked up
Speaker 1: at them through the window and spoke, but her language
Speaker 1: was foreign to them, and she could not understand them either.
Speaker 1: She emerged from the vessel clutching a box roughly twenty
Speaker 1: four inches in size. No one else was allowed near
Speaker 1: the box, and she would not open it under any circumstances.
Speaker 1: Villagers had their theories about where the girl had come from,
Speaker 1: of course, and what she was carting around in that box.
Speaker 1: One possibility was that she was a queen from a
Speaker 1: far away land who had been unfaithful to her husband.
Speaker 1: Her lover had been executed for his misdeeds. The young
Speaker 1: woman was exiled from her country, set afloat in the
Speaker 1: wooden vessel with enough food to last for a few days.
Speaker 1: Whatever happened to her afterward would be left to fate
Speaker 1: and the box well. One reason why she might not
Speaker 1: have wanted anyone to touch it is that because it
Speaker 1: held the head of her lover. Though the box could
Speaker 1: also have contained any number of untold objects, like a
Speaker 1: that the virus, or a powerful weapon. No one knew
Speaker 1: for sure, and no one in the village could communicate
Speaker 1: with a girl to find out the truth. All of
Speaker 1: these unknowns put the villagers on edge, so to spare
Speaker 1: them of a potential threat, they placed her back in
Speaker 1: her round vessel, sealed her inside, and then set her
Speaker 1: adrift again on the ocean. Today, there are three prominent
Speaker 1: versions of this legend. These stories have been passed down
Speaker 1: for hundreds of years, but each one varies only slightly
Speaker 1: from the other. Sometimes place names are different, or certain
Speaker 1: descriptions are changed, but each iteration always has the same
Speaker 1: basic characteristics. A young girl, far from her homeland is
Speaker 1: found in possession of a box that no one is
Speaker 1: meant to open. Scholars have attempted to explain the legend
Speaker 1: as a simple folk tale meant to highlight a time
Speaker 1: when Japan was isolated from the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: There are even ancient stories that could have served as
Speaker 1: the basis for this tale. However, the lack of variation
Speaker 1: among the three versions tells us a different story of
Speaker 1: an encounter with a being from another world. Given the
Speaker 1: roundness of the girl's vessel, the strange text written on
Speaker 1: its walls, and her unknown language, some people believe that
Speaker 1: she was a visitor not from another country, but from
Speaker 1: another planet, and a craft she i'ved in was one
Speaker 1: of the first recorded cases of a UFO and unidentified
Speaker 1: floating object. They say that necessity is the mother of invention.
Speaker 1: Entrepreneurs and inventors come up with all manner of devices
Speaker 1: to make our lives easier. The incandescent light bulb brought
Speaker 1: a safe form of light into every home. The steam
Speaker 1: engine revolutionized multiple industries, including travel and textiles. Even something
Speaker 1: as ubiquitous as paper was once considered a seismic change
Speaker 1: in how people communicated. We remember people like Guttenberg and
Speaker 1: his printing press, or Marconi and his wireless radio, and
Speaker 1: of course Thomas Edison's moving camera. But there's one person
Speaker 1: who predates all of them, and he's kind of a
Speaker 1: hero to inventors everywhere. Literally, his name was here on
Speaker 1: Hero for short, and he wore a variety of hats. Mathematician, engineer,
Speaker 1: and professor. He was also a student of the greats
Speaker 1: that came before him, taking their teachings and using them
Speaker 1: as a springboard for his own work. Hero's interests varied
Speaker 1: as widely as his professions. He wrote extensively about topics
Speaker 1: like physics and pneumatics, and was among the first to
Speaker 1: discuss how animals and machines communicated with each other, known
Speaker 1: today as the study of cybernetics. But above all else,
Speaker 1: Hero like to experiment using simple technology. From his day,
Speaker 1: he would build complex machines to accomplish different tasks. For example,
Speaker 1: he developed a kind of steam engine called an aola pile,
Speaker 1: which stored water in an enclosure vented on two opposite sides.
Speaker 1: When the water was heated, steam would escape through the
Speaker 1: vents and spin the enclosure like a rocket engine. This
Speaker 1: knowledge led to another engine that used water heated to
Speaker 1: pull ropes and open doors. If there was a way
Speaker 1: to simplify daily life, Hero searched high and low for it.
Speaker 1: One of his devices was a large box with a
Speaker 1: slot in the top, a silver coin could be inserted
Speaker 1: and would land on a plate inside the box. The
Speaker 1: weight of a coin on the plate tripped a lever
Speaker 1: that would open a valve and allow holy water to
Speaker 1: flow from a small spout inside. As the plate continued
Speaker 1: to tilt, the coin would slide off and the plate
Speaker 1: would rise up and turn off the lever, closing the valve.
Speaker 1: With his box, Hero had invented the first vending machine.
Speaker 1: There was also an organ which utilized a large wheel
Speaker 1: of paddles that spun as they caught the wind. The
Speaker 1: wheel would share in a pump that forced air through
Speaker 1: the organs pipes to create music. Hero had been the
Speaker 1: first person in history to harness the power of the wind.
Speaker 1: He brought his ingenuity to the theater, too, where he
Speaker 1: incorporated advanced mechanics to create an automated puppet show. Sand
Speaker 1: would flow from one central chamber through holes into different
Speaker 1: weights that pulled levers and turned wheels attached to the
Speaker 1: puppets on stage. They'd move and perform for the audience
Speaker 1: for up to ten minut it's at a time. But
Speaker 1: Hero didn't stop there. His creations benefited the public in
Speaker 1: ways beyond entertainment and vending machines. He developed a fire engine.
Speaker 1: It's attached pump used compressed air to shoot streams of water.
Speaker 1: There was also an endless cup of wine, a goblet
Speaker 1: attached to a reservoir of wine that automatically refilled as
Speaker 1: the person drank from it. And unlike inventors who patented
Speaker 1: their creations to make money, Hero made all of the
Speaker 1: instructions for building his inventions public. Over a dozen volumes
Speaker 1: on topics ranging from pneumatics to mechanical engineering to automata
Speaker 1: were published. The principles behind his inventions are still used
Speaker 1: today in their modern counterparts. Jet engines, vending machines that
Speaker 1: dispense candy, bars and soda, and big red fire trucks
Speaker 1: can all trace their origins to this one man and
Speaker 1: his amazing mind. Perhaps even more amazing, though, was that
Speaker 1: Hero didn't develop any of these things during the twenty century,
Speaker 1: or the nineteenth century, or even the eighteenth century. Hero
Speaker 1: lived between ten a d and seventy a d. During
Speaker 1: the period when Rome controlled Egypt. He also taught at
Speaker 1: the Great Library of Alexandria, home to tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of texts from cultures all over the world before fires
Speaker 1: and war reduced it to rubble. Here On of Alexandria
Speaker 1: was a man way ahead of his time, though he'd
Speaker 1: laid the groundwork for devices that made our lives easier
Speaker 1: and faster. Today, very few know his name, making him
Speaker 1: truly an unsung hero. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
Speaker 1: tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting
Speaker 1: Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me
Speaker 1: Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make
Speaker 1: another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,