WEBVTT - The Fire Extinguisher, Part 2 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:09.800 Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, 0:00:09.840 --> 0:00:12.720 welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:15.000 Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of our 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:19.040 exploration of the fire extinguisher. Now a brief refresher. On 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:22.479 the last episode, we talked about firefighting techniques that would 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:25.400 have been available to ancient people's. We talked about firefighting 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:31.760 in ancient Rome, real estate, hustles, crassus, pumps, axes, ballistas. 0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:35.600 We talked about anti fire grenades, those that had gunpowder 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:38.720 elements and tried to stop fires through explosions, and those 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:41.640 that were just basically glass light bulbs full of water 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:48.240 or seawater or not seawater, saltwater or other very dangerous chemicals. Yeah, 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:50.520 And of course in all of that we really didn't 0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:55.080 get to something that would even really be recognizable as 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:58.240 as like a modern fire extinguisher. But that's where we're 0:00:58.240 --> 0:01:01.800 getting to in this episode. We're going to discuss where 0:01:01.880 --> 0:01:05.800 this more or less modern fire extinguisher emerges. Right, because 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:07.679 when you think of a modern fire extinguisher, what do 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:09.920 you picture? It's some kind of tank, right, You've kind 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:13.880 of tank with contents under pressure, and you operate some 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:17.880 kind of leaver nozzle to spray the pressurized contents out 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:20.440 onto a fire to put it out. Where does that 0:01:20.520 --> 0:01:23.000 come in? I guess the closest we actually got in 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:26.000 the last episode would have been the pumps based on 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:29.959 Tacibius of Alexandria's model, which, uh, some of the historians 0:01:29.959 --> 0:01:32.440 we looked at last time or or engineers thought would 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:35.360 not have been very effective, right, right, Yeah, it was 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:38.720 pretty pretty much agreed that they would have been more 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:41.640 you know, I mean, maybe useful for very specific small 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:44.200 fires you needed to put out, but certainly when a 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:46.039 blaze got out of hand, it was out of hand, 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:48.160 and that's when you have to bring in the siege equipment. Right, 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:52.360 But but maybe not much more effective than a bucket. Right, 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:56.640 We're talking about the the handheld but powerful units that 0:01:57.160 --> 0:01:59.440 I don't know about everybody else, but my my earliest 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:03.680 exposure two was watching the original horror film The Blob, 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:07.120 because they used the fire extinguishers on the Blob in 0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:10.239 order to like drive it back. I don't remember that detail. 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:13.920 I've seen The Blob, but I've forgotten about that. I 0:02:13.960 --> 0:02:16.520 know as a child a movie scene that really stuck 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:20.040 in My memory was in one of the bad James 0:02:20.120 --> 0:02:23.280 Bond movies. I think it was in Diamonds Are Forever 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:26.720 that Sean Connery uses a fire extinguisher to murder a man. 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:28.880 I think he just kind of sprays him in the 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:32.119 face until he dies. Oh man. Yeah, they are occasionally 0:02:32.200 --> 0:02:34.120 used his way. Usually you see them used as more 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:36.000 of a bulk weapon, you know, it just as a 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:39.160 means of braining somebody. I think there's some of that too. Yeah, 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:42.040 it's a general fight. It ends with a lot of spraying. 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:45.239 But we're not We're not gonna be using fire extinguishers 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:48.120 to kill people today. We're gonna be talking about the 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:51.880 origins of the portable pressurized fire extinguisher. And in order 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:55.120 to do that, I discovered that we would have to 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:58.880 end up looking at a very interesting fellow named George 0:02:58.960 --> 0:03:03.680 William Man who lives seventeen sixty five to eighteen fifty four, 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:07.760 who was an English inventor, a naval officer, and a 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:11.160 I sort of think of as a boreal obsessive, a 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:14.720 man with the Arctic on the brain. I think obsession 0:03:14.800 --> 0:03:16.480 is a is a key thing to keep in mind 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:19.400 with this character. Uh, just across the board because his 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:22.679 life does seem to be just a series of obsessions 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:27.720 after obsessions, sometimes very fruitful obsessions, other times not so much. 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:30.280 But but I guess that's like perhaps that sort of 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:32.959 mind he had, like once it had latched onto something, 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:35.760 it was not going to let go until it had, 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:38.960 you know, until it had reached the end of the journey. 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:42.760 I really did not expect as interesting a biography as 0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:45.400 this to lie at the origins of the portable pressurized 0:03:45.440 --> 0:03:48.280 fire extinguisher. So I'm very excited. So I was looking 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:50.800 at several sources about man best life. I couldn't find 0:03:50.800 --> 0:03:54.160 a book about him or anything that seemed appropriate, like 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:56.200 you know, the ultimate authority on the subject. But the 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:59.160 best thing I came across was a paper by a 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:02.800 historian and scholar named William Barr, no relation at all 0:04:02.880 --> 0:04:05.280 to the current U. S. Attorney General William Barr. This 0:04:05.320 --> 0:04:08.320 William Barr is a research fellow in residence at the 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:11.480 Arctic Institute of North America at the University of Calgary. 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:14.520 He's sort of an Arctic researcher and historian. And this 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:17.440 paper was written in two thousand one for the journal 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:21.360 Polar Record, which is apparently a publication of Cambridge University Press. 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:26.120 It's called Harpoon Guns, the Lost Greenland Settlement and Penal Colonies. 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:31.200 George Manby's Arctic obsessions so man be as recounted by 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:35.080 William Barr here. George William Manby was born on November 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:38.480 seventeen sixty five. He was the son of a captain 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.719 in the Welsh Few Silly Years. I hope I'm saying 0:04:41.720 --> 0:04:44.320 that right, but basically these would be troops that used 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:48.160 few sills, a type of musket. And he grew up 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:51.920 at a family estate called wood Hall in Norfolk, East Anglia. 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:53.719 So if you're trying to picture this, this is on 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:57.120 the east coast of England, sort of up north of 0:04:57.160 --> 0:05:00.279 London and to the east. When George was twelve, his 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:03.359 father had him enrolled at a prep school for future 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:06.680 artillery officers. I think he wanted George to follow in 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:09.640 his military footsteps. He's like, okay, you know you can 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:12.599 command the guns. You'll be the artillery officer of tomorrow. 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:16.800 And this prep school for artillery boys was housed at 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:19.920 the Tower of London, which seems like a very strange 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:22.520 place to hold a prep school for young boys of 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:26.080 calls Dungeon. Yeah, well, it calls to mind the fates 0:05:26.120 --> 0:05:29.520 of like Edward the fifth and his brother Richard. Apparently, 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:34.760 young George in artillery school absolutely hated math, which is 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:37.600 a surprising fact to learn about a young inventor, and 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:41.320 he ultimately failed to pass the qualification tests to be 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:44.320 an officer in the Royal Artillery. So he's got this 0:05:44.400 --> 0:05:46.599 career path laid out for him, but it involves a 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:48.719 lot of math, because you know, to be an artillery 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:50.839 officer at the time, you didn't have a computer to 0:05:50.880 --> 0:05:53.560 do it. You had to calculate trajectories and know how 0:05:53.560 --> 0:05:55.240 to aim the guns and all that. It was a 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:57.560 very math heavy and he couldn't hack it. It kind 0:05:57.600 --> 0:05:59.960 of had to be uh, some version of an art 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:04.040 childery meant hat to handle the computations. So instead he 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:07.359 became an officer in the less math heavy branch of 0:06:07.400 --> 0:06:11.279 the armed forces, the Cambridgeshire Militia, where he ultimately became 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:15.239 a captain. But even here he ran into trouble again 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:18.080 because he could not keep up with the physical demands 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:21.880 of the job because of some unspecified problems with his feet. 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:24.480 And I don't know if this amounts to a real 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:27.440 disease or real disability, or if it was just him 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:30.080 complaining that his feet hurt. I can't suss out the 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:31.880 source of this complaint because it could have been any 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:33.680 if it were a legitimate ailment there. It could have 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:36.960 been any number of ailment ranging from you know, gut 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:40.800 to bone spurs to flat feet, etcetera. So he had 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:44.480 to resign his militia post in seventeen nine, so he 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:47.240 did not qualify for artillery, even though he'd been planning 0:06:47.240 --> 0:06:49.760 on it. Then he got disappointment, but then couldn't hack 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:53.839 the physical requirements and done there too. So George William 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:57.159 Manby's first wife was named Jane Preston, and she was 0:06:57.200 --> 0:06:59.680 the daughter of an Anglican rector who had been friends 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:03.320 with George his father. George married her just before Christmas 0:07:03.360 --> 0:07:06.440 of seventeen again, the same year he got forced out 0:07:06.440 --> 0:07:10.560 of his his military service. Apparently they both had issues 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:15.240 with money. Jane was described as spoiled and extremely extravagant, 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:20.400 and George was, in Bar's words, totally unbusinesslike. Within within 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:23.240 like five years, they were completely out of cash, deep 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:26.000 in arrears, and to settle their debts they had to 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:29.440 sell Manby's family estate, so by by Wood Hall that's gone. 0:07:29.760 --> 0:07:32.560 And after this, man Bey tried to make a living 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:36.160 writing guide books. And just as a side note, I 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:40.080 love outdated travel books. They are so often full of 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:42.920 weird lies, and I'm sure these would be amazing to read. 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:46.120 I think he was writing them mostly about his own region, 0:07:46.200 --> 0:07:48.880 about like you know, guide books to places in East 0:07:48.960 --> 0:07:52.360 East Anglia, to Clifton or whatever. And while he was 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:56.000 doing that, meanwhile Jane began an affair with an officer 0:07:56.080 --> 0:07:59.920 of the East India Company named Captain Pogson. And here 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:02.240 things get crazy and I'll just have to read a 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:07.240 quote from bar quote. Under circumstances that remain rather confused, 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:10.280 Pogson shot man Be in the back of the head. 0:08:10.920 --> 0:08:13.160 One story is that they had fought a duel and 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:16.960 that man Bey had started running away. The wound, although serious, 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:19.960 was not fatal, but the bullet had driven pieces of 0:08:20.000 --> 0:08:23.520 the felt hat Manby had been wearing deep into his skull. 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:27.120 Well Over a year later, man Be underwent a series 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:30.800 of operations to remove the bullet and rotting pieces of felt. 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:34.439 The operation was a success and that man Be survived, 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:37.320 but damage was done to his brain and his behavior 0:08:37.400 --> 0:08:41.920 thereafter was somewhat peculiar. Now this is interesting. We we 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:44.280 spoke recently in an episode of Stuff to Blow Your 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:47.400 Mind about changes to the brain, injuries to the brain, 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:52.640 and their their effect on personality, but sometimes even on 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:57.320 one's ability to to excel at certain tasks. So I 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:00.640 wonder if would be going too far to to wonder 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:04.240 about those possibilities here with Mandy. Yeah, obviously nothing here 0:09:04.240 --> 0:09:06.439 can be proved, but it does appear it's at least 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:09.360 interesting that he suffered traumatic brain injury. He got a 0:09:09.400 --> 0:09:13.280 bullet in the brain, survived it, and then after this 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:17.320 was before his inventing career began, right, Yeah, I guess 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:20.840 it's more realistic to to state that he simply went 0:09:20.920 --> 0:09:24.120 on to become a noted inventor in spite of having 0:09:24.120 --> 0:09:26.200 been shot in the back of the head, rather cause 0:09:26.320 --> 0:09:30.720 of it. But but anyway, the sidebar for a further 0:09:30.760 --> 0:09:34.640 discussion on brain injuries and other episodes. But he wasn't 0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:38.280 there yet. So after being shot in the head, having 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:42.240 the bullet and the rotting felt removed Manby's old friend 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:45.839 Charles Yorke, who happened to have become Secretary of War 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:48.200 at the time or Secretary for War. I think it 0:09:48.240 --> 0:09:50.760 was called I'm not quite sure, maybe out of pity 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:53.720 or for whatever reason, granted man be a position that 0:09:53.800 --> 0:09:57.880 bar calls a near sinecure, as a barrack master of 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:00.680 the Yarmouth Barracks. Now sinecure up, you know, like a 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:02.839 position where you don't really have to do much work. 0:10:02.880 --> 0:10:05.559 You know, you're kind of getting getting paid for not much. 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:08.760 So why a near sinecure? Why would it be this 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:12.240 easy job to be barrack master of the Armouth Barracks. Well, 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:15.480 it seems this is because there were rarely any troops 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:19.040 in the Armouth Barracks, only occasionally during training or when 0:10:19.040 --> 0:10:21.160 they were being moved from one place to another, so 0:10:21.200 --> 0:10:22.920 a lot of the time he didn't have much to do. 0:10:23.720 --> 0:10:27.400 And during his time in this role, Manby was technically 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:30.320 still married to Jane, but he apparently spent most of 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:34.160 his attention, energy and time cultivating the the persona of 0:10:34.200 --> 0:10:37.200 a gentleman about town. He would go entertaining, he would 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:40.600 go to social functions with naval officers, and he really 0:10:40.600 --> 0:10:43.600 liked to dress up and show off his cool clothes. 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:45.560 He was the kind of person that at this time 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:48.840 would have been derisively called a dandy. But for the 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:51.160 most part he's he's really not doing much at this point, 0:10:51.240 --> 0:10:54.679 like he barely has a has any responsibilities. He's just 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:58.520 having a good time around town. He's partying, yeah, yeah, 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:02.120 living the party life. But then around the year eighteen 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:06.200 o seven, something happened that changed Manby's life, and it 0:11:06.280 --> 0:11:10.360 was that he witnessed a shocking calamity. So off the 0:11:10.400 --> 0:11:13.520 coast of East Anglia there are these long stretches of 0:11:13.640 --> 0:11:18.720 coastal bars, and a bar is essentially a shallow submerged 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:22.680 bank or coast running parallel to the real bank or 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:25.480 coast right so it can be made of sand or 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:28.400 gravel or something that kind of comes up pretty close 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:31.760 to the waterline but stays below it at a distance 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:34.559 from the actual shore. And these of course can cause 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:38.080 strange types of wave activity around them. Uh, they can 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:40.640 pose a couple of hazards to ships. Ships can run 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:44.080 aground on them and become stuck. But also waves can 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:46.680 be very high and very powerful in the bar zone, 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:50.720 easily capsizing even larger vessels. And on one night in 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:55.040 February eighteen o seven, during bad weather, several ships were 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:58.240 all wrecked on the bar off the coast of Yarmouth, 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:02.319 including a gun brig called the HMS Snipe. Now, according 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:05.240 to some resources I was reading from the Norfolk Museums 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:09.559 and Archaeology Service, these wrecks would have been approximately sixty 0:12:09.720 --> 0:12:14.720 yards or like fifty five meters offshore. Imagine how maddeningly 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:18.160 close that is. Uh. And so, along with most of 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:20.840 the citizens of the town, man be spent that night 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:24.760 on the beach trying to find or watching people try 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:27.080 to find a way to rescue the people from the 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:30.280 wreck who were drowning in the waves, like within clear sight. 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:32.040 But there was no way to help them. I mean, 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:35.000 imagine that they're right there. If it was across ground, 0:12:35.400 --> 0:12:37.240 you could run to them in a matter of seconds. 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:40.000 But because of the surf and the bars and the 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:42.840 heavy wind, bad weather, you couldn't just go out to them. 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:44.840 You couldn't go out and rescue boats. So what can 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:48.800 you do? Bar rights that The next morning quote the 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:51.280 beach at Yarmouth was littered with a hundred and forty 0:12:51.280 --> 0:12:54.320 four corpses, sixty seven of which had come from the 0:12:54.440 --> 0:12:57.800 HMS Snipe. According to the Norfolk Museums, a total of 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:00.559 two hundred and fourteen people died in the disaster. So 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:04.200 it was a huge disaster, I mean hundreds dead. But 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:07.240 out of this tragedy an idea began to form in 0:13:07.320 --> 0:13:10.440 Manby's head. So he thought, okay, if you could just 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:13.560 get a strong rope out to the wreckage of the 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:16.400 boat and anchor one end at the shore secure the 0:13:16.440 --> 0:13:18.960 other end to the ship, you'd have a chance to 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:22.560 get people in safely along the line. And in fact, 0:13:22.679 --> 0:13:25.040 this is what rescuers on the beach at Yarmouth had 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:27.240 been trying in vain to do to to get a 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:29.600 line out to the boat, but they couldn't do it. 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:31.959 The distance was too far, Like how would you get 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:34.960 a line secured to the ship from the shore. But 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:38.440 man Be thought back to his artillery school training. This 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:40.600 is the subject in which he had been you know, 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:43.880 like he'd kicked and screamed against the arc trajectory equations. 0:13:43.880 --> 0:13:46.199 He didn't like the math. Uh, he had failed to 0:13:46.280 --> 0:13:49.559 qualify as an officer, but he still of course had 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:52.199 the knowledge of what you basically do when you're working 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:55.720 with artillery, and he thought, if you could essentially load 0:13:55.880 --> 0:13:59.480 a rescue line into a mortar, you could fire it 0:13:59.520 --> 0:14:02.520 from the or to the wreck secured it both ends 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:05.640 and then maybe use that line to carry a heavy 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:08.600 rope from the shore to the wreck and bring the 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:12.000 victims onto the beach across that suspended rope or cable. 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:14.520 And of course, anybody who's ever watched say, a bunch 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:17.240 of Batman cartoons that this should sound rather familiar. This 0:14:17.280 --> 0:14:20.240 is exactly the sort of thing Batman is liable to 0:14:20.320 --> 0:14:25.080 do with his uh, his little grappling hook launcher device, 0:14:25.320 --> 0:14:28.440 the back claw or the zip line. Yea, yeah, But 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:31.520 of course they didn't have whatever you know, pneumatic magic 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:34.800 Batman is using. They did have cannons, So maybe we 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:36.440 should take a break and then we come back. We 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:45.120 can explore the idea of the life saving cannon. Alright, 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:50.800 we're back, so um yeah. Obviously cannon technology was already 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:55.720 um you know, well established, but generally for the purposes 0:14:55.800 --> 0:14:59.880 of of bringing about death and destruction, not preventing it. Right, 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:03.120 So Manby has this idea for a life saving gun 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:06.080 to rescue people from shipwrecks trapped out on a bar 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:09.760 out from the shore. Now, again, math was not man 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:12.520 be strong suit, but due to his role at the 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:16.680 Armouth Barracks, he fortunately had access to artillery where he 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:20.160 could perform hands on experimentation, and that's what he did. 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:24.000 He tried attaching lines to cannon shot and then firing 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:27.080 these lines across the fields. And at first this didn't 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:30.560 work because the heat of the cannon shot inevitably burned 0:15:30.640 --> 0:15:33.560 through the rope material that he attached to it. But 0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:36.520 he discovered that if he attached the line to the 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:40.480 shot with an intermediate length of braided leather, the leather 0:15:40.760 --> 0:15:44.080 was not burned away. It would hold fast. And so 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:48.040 basically he discovered, yeah, this invention would work. He gave 0:15:48.040 --> 0:15:51.520 a demonstration on it on a beach near low Stofft 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:53.960 in August eight, ten oh seven, and he got a 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:58.320 metal from the Sufful Humane Society. So this this rescue 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:01.480 line mortar, sometimes known as a man be mortar. It 0:16:01.560 --> 0:16:04.280 achieved half of the goal, right, But just getting a 0:16:04.320 --> 0:16:07.920 line in place wasn't everything you needed, Like what what 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:10.200 are the crew supposed to do? Then? Like shimmy across 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:14.000 at cliffhanger style? Was I mentioning that? So Manby's next 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:17.080 invention was basically the bottom half of this. Once you 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:19.760 have a line secured, you need something to move back 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:23.160 and forth underneath the line to get people to and 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:26.720 from the boat, and what he created was the other 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:30.320 half of the equation here. Essentially, it was an unsinkable lifeboat. 0:16:30.840 --> 0:16:33.760 This would be a tiny vessel secured with casks on 0:16:33.760 --> 0:16:37.640 its sides for really high buoyancy. It would be super floaty, 0:16:37.840 --> 0:16:40.680 it would be really hard to sink. So you what 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:42.680 you would do is you'd fire a line from the 0:16:42.720 --> 0:16:44.720 mortar out to the wreck. You'd attach it to the 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:47.560 wreck somehow, I think naturally. They said it would often 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:50.320 wrap around the rigging or you know part if part 0:16:50.320 --> 0:16:52.400 of the mast was left, it could wrap around that. 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:54.720 It would get tangled on the wreck. And then you 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:58.400 would attach the unsinkable lifeboat to the line and send 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:00.480 it back and forth along the line and to bring 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:04.320 crew members to shore. Then, in February eighteen o eight, 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:06.359 this would have been just about a year after the 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:09.040 wreck of the HMS Snipe and the other boats that 0:17:09.040 --> 0:17:12.520 that inspired this idea, Manby got a chance to try 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:14.840 his inventions out in the field because on the night 0:17:14.880 --> 0:17:17.640 of February twelve that year, there was a small ship 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:20.440 called the Elizabeth that was again wrecked on the bar, 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:23.520 and within half an hour man Bey had a rescue 0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:26.440 line shot out to the boat, and the entire crew 0:17:26.520 --> 0:17:30.120 was successfully brought in on board Manby's unstakable lifeboat along 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:33.440 the line of life. UH. And then man be demonstrated 0:17:33.480 --> 0:17:36.159 the life saving power of this invention on other occasions. 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:39.720 Eventually he began pairing the mortar with something known as 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:43.160 a breaches booy instead of a lifeboat. So if you're 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:45.439 trying to picture this, UH, the way you would be 0:17:45.480 --> 0:17:49.000 brought in on the line was in a kind of suspended, 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:53.919 floaty diaper type thing. UH. Imagine a life preserver, you know, 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:56.400 the ring shaped ones. But in the middle of this 0:17:56.480 --> 0:17:59.159 life preserver there is a huge pair of underwear and 0:17:59.200 --> 0:18:01.480 that's what your life and I think that's an accurate description. 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:05.719 And by all accounts, Manby's invention here was incredibly successful. 0:18:05.760 --> 0:18:09.600 It worked, it saved lives, and after these inventions, Manby 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:14.120 became generally obsessed with the idea of creating a national 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:18.200 life saving service in Britain. UH. He was eventually given 0:18:18.240 --> 0:18:21.280 a stipend by the British government to survey the eastern 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:24.280 coast of England and identify the best places to have 0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:28.160 his life saving mortar line installed. But we mentioned earlier 0:18:28.200 --> 0:18:32.200 that Manby would not be satisfied just having invented one 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:37.320 life saving device. He kind of got stuck on the subject. 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:41.080 It seemed like he just wanted to frantically turn his 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:44.760 attention from one type of life threatening scenario to another, 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:47.760 asking could there be an invention to stop people from 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:50.960 dying here? Or how about here? And I wish I 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:53.840 had more insight into the psychology that brings that about, 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:55.879 Like what's going on with him? Like how does he 0:18:55.920 --> 0:18:59.320 get is does he just become addicted to the idea 0:18:59.359 --> 0:19:03.280 of having in intoed a device for the good of humankind? Yeah? Yeah, 0:19:03.680 --> 0:19:05.400 it makes you wonder. I mean part of it also 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:07.280 could just be the success of it, right, I mean 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:09.800 I've done, I've done, like this is what I'm capable of, 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:13.240 and I actually saved lives I I need In a way, 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:16.040 he kind of perhaps becomes a kind of Batman, right, 0:19:16.960 --> 0:19:20.360 you know, he's saving people and and let's see where 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:22.800 else I can I can work this magic. I wonder 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:26.040 if it's especially potent, like having achieved that, like he 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:29.840 made the thing and it worked and it saved people's lives, 0:19:29.880 --> 0:19:33.120 like after having been pretty much a total screw up 0:19:33.160 --> 0:19:35.800 for like the first half of his life and then 0:19:35.800 --> 0:19:38.520 nearly losing his life as well. Yeah. So then he 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:40.520 turned to another one and we will get to the 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:43.080 fire extinguisher, but we're not there yet. Before he got 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:47.879 to that, another interesting, uh, life or death scenario he 0:19:47.920 --> 0:19:51.520 explored was a problem that William Barr identifies as surprisingly 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:55.000 common as a mode of death in the early eighteen hundreds, 0:19:55.000 --> 0:19:59.000 and this was falling through thin ice on frozen lakes. Uh. 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:02.080 I guess the frozen body of water, you know, or rivers, 0:20:02.920 --> 0:20:06.040 ponds and all that. People, especially he talks about in Scotland, 0:20:06.359 --> 0:20:08.480 people just going out on the ice, falling through and 0:20:08.560 --> 0:20:11.520 dying all the time. That strikes me as a rare 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:14.520 and exotic form of death today. But maybe I don't know. 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:16.240 I mean, part of that could could be due to 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:19.760 the region in which we live, where frozen lakes are 0:20:19.800 --> 0:20:24.160 not that common. Um, but certainly in places where where 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:26.679 lakes are commonly frozen over, I mean, people venture out 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:29.600 into the ice for a number of reasons, for recreation, 0:20:29.800 --> 0:20:33.240 for ice fishing. Uh. It is a way to travel 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:37.000 between point A and point B. Uh. As I've probably 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:39.400 mentioned in the show before, I spent some of my 0:20:39.600 --> 0:20:45.440 childhood in Newfoundland, Canada, where certainly like the bay's freeze over, 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:48.119 And there were lots of stories that are a call 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:50.320 of you know, people you know, driving on the ice 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:54.080 and losing a car into it. You know, people either 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:57.560 falling through the ice or like young people jumping from 0:20:57.600 --> 0:21:01.400 ice flow to ice flow and sometimes encountering mishaps. So 0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:03.800 I guess it basically comes down to the question is 0:21:03.840 --> 0:21:08.639 there enough uh, frozen lakes or bays, et cetera, that 0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:12.040 are accessible to people and are they there long enough 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:13.840 for people to get out there and fall through it, 0:21:14.320 --> 0:21:17.840 because people inevitably will. The ice that seems solid at 0:21:17.840 --> 0:21:21.040 first will end up the you know, actually being less so, 0:21:21.160 --> 0:21:23.359 and then once it starts breaking, it can can become 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:27.080 very difficult to navigate. Yeah, so many actually created a 0:21:27.080 --> 0:21:29.680 couple of different inventions for dealing with people who had 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:33.680 fallen through ice. One was this was interesting. I've never 0:21:33.720 --> 0:21:35.959 seen anything like this. It was a kind of sectional 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:40.119 ladder with buoys at the top. So imagine a ladder 0:21:40.160 --> 0:21:43.040 that floats on the water where the ice has broken, 0:21:43.440 --> 0:21:46.960 and it also has hinged sections so it can, or 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:48.720 at least one version of it did, so you know, 0:21:48.800 --> 0:21:50.680