Speaker 1: Get in test with technology with text stuff from half
Speaker 1: stuff dot com. Everyone, and welcome to text Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren, both of them, and today
Speaker 1: our episode, part one of a two part episode comes
Speaker 1: to us courtesy of a listener request. Richard on Facebook said,
Speaker 1: how about doing a show on Perkin Elmer from optics
Speaker 1: for the war, computers, medical devices, etcetera. And can't forget
Speaker 1: the fault faulty Hubble lends that was never tested it
Speaker 1: before sending up to space. A show could have been
Speaker 1: made just on this blooper. We agree, we could have
Speaker 1: done a show really probably about the Hubble space telescope
Speaker 1: in general, but we're going to cover the Perkin Elmer
Speaker 1: part of that in the second part of this episode
Speaker 1: because it's complex, y'all. Yeah, they really do have their
Speaker 1: hands in a lot of different projects, partially because, uh,
Speaker 1: because we're talking about multiple companies and all kinds of
Speaker 1: mergers and corporate shenanigans to go on over the course
Speaker 1: of this company's history. But the more that we started
Speaker 1: researching that, the more we realized exactly how much they've
Speaker 1: had their fingers in, how many really important historical events
Speaker 1: they've had their fingers in right, and and part of
Speaker 1: that complicated nature comes to us from the the the
Speaker 1: the fact that two big companies merged together, or at
Speaker 1: least parts of two big companies merged together to form
Speaker 1: the modern day Perkin Elmer. So the very the Perkin
Speaker 1: Elmer that exist today is not exactly the same company
Speaker 1: that made the the ill fated mirror for the Hubble
Speaker 1: space telescope um. And in fact, we have to go
Speaker 1: pretty far back and look at these two individual companies
Speaker 1: that remained individual companies for a really long time to
Speaker 1: get a real handle on what this company is all about.
Speaker 1: And also the stuff that each company makes really complicated
Speaker 1: science and technology stuff. So that's why this episode is
Speaker 1: doubly complicated. You got the Shenanigans, and you got the
Speaker 1: technolo oology. We could also, I mean, we could really
Speaker 1: do stories on any one of these technological innovations that
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about. And uh so, you know,
Speaker 1: let us know if any of them, uh sporks spark
Speaker 1: your interest. Were I would like it if they would
Speaker 1: spark the interest. Yeah, I um, it's true. We could
Speaker 1: take any one of these and make a full episode
Speaker 1: about it. Uh So, we're giving you the cliffs notes
Speaker 1: version of a lot of these. We will be giving
Speaker 1: you some science one oh one, which was very important
Speaker 1: for me because it's been a long time since I've
Speaker 1: taken any chemistry classes physics classes, so I needed the reminder.
Speaker 1: I'm sure some of our listeners do too. Okay, So
Speaker 1: before we get into all of this, what what is
Speaker 1: Perkin Elmer? What did they do? Uh? You know, I
Speaker 1: wish there were an easy, simple, like one sentence. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the elevator pitch for Perkin Elmer is
Speaker 1: other than to say it's an international, multibillion dollar company
Speaker 1: and it calls itself a global leader focused on improving
Speaker 1: human and environmental health. But that that does not give
Speaker 1: you a full indication of all the stuff they do.
Speaker 1: And it's pretty heavily geared toward making scientific equipment and
Speaker 1: process SATs. So sort of the if you think of
Speaker 1: the stuff that whenever you see like complicated things happening
Speaker 1: in laboratories, they have their hands in that. So a
Speaker 1: lot of it in the health industry in particular, especially
Speaker 1: more recently. But you know, it's kind of funny because
Speaker 1: you look back at the origins of all this and
Speaker 1: you would never imagine that this incredibly complicated company would
Speaker 1: spring up from from from what it did. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so Perkin Elmer was indeed started by two dudes named
Speaker 1: Parking and Elmer. But due to the aforementioned of vultron
Speaker 1: like combination of multiple corporations that we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking about, we're kicking off by talking about some important
Speaker 1: people who are neither Perkin nor Elmer, right, but they
Speaker 1: are just as important to the company as it exists
Speaker 1: today as anyone else. And so back in nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 1: Professor Harold doc Edgerton of m i T partnered with
Speaker 1: two students, Kenneth Germshalsen and Herbert Greyer to study high
Speaker 1: speed photography and stroboscopic techniques. So the idea here was
Speaker 1: that they wanted to, you know, photography was still a
Speaker 1: fairly young uh art and science at this time, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to be able to make cameras that could
Speaker 1: take photos of stuff that's in motion without it being
Speaker 1: really blurry. And so they really began to put their
Speaker 1: minds to this, and they all kind of formed this
Speaker 1: sort of research partnership, uh not necessarily thinking about making
Speaker 1: a full company at this point, but that was the
Speaker 1: origin of their part Meanwhile, in seven another partnership would form,
Speaker 1: and that was between banker Richard S. Perkin, who was
Speaker 1: thirty one at the time, and a court reporter by
Speaker 1: the name of Charles w Elmer, who was sixty five
Speaker 1: at the time. And I find their age difference just
Speaker 1: interesting in the fact that they would go on to
Speaker 1: do so many things together and what if they bond
Speaker 1: over They were both really interested in astronomy. UM. The
Speaker 1: company first helped import and then design optics and procedures
Speaker 1: with with a primary interest in astronomical equipment UM and
Speaker 1: and this was due to Okay, so so perkins childhood
Speaker 1: passion was astronomy. He was putting together his own telescopes
Speaker 1: by the age of eleven and grinding his own lenses
Speaker 1: by the age of thirteen. I don't even want to
Speaker 1: talk about the things I did at age thirteen. They
Speaker 1: seemed so incredibly trivial in comparison. Yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: was playing a lot of Donkey Kong Country at the time. Um.
Speaker 1: But he he studied chemical engineering for a year at college,
Speaker 1: then left for Wall Street, hence the banker thing. UM.
Speaker 1: The two of them actually met when Elmer was delivering
Speaker 1: an amateur astronomy lecture at the Brooklyn Institute UM. By
Speaker 1: the way, the the Custer Institute and Observatory in New
Speaker 1: York was named for Elmer's wife. They were really serious
Speaker 1: amateur astronomers and would begin construction of that public observatory
Speaker 1: that the Custer Observatory UM in ninety eight. So Perkin
Speaker 1: and Elmer began importing optical instruments from Europe because the
Speaker 1: US wasn't manufacturing a whole lot of that at the time,
Speaker 1: But within a year they would begin manufacturing their own
Speaker 1: out of New Jersey. And then in nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: Perkin Elmer incorporates. So there's something else that happened right
Speaker 1: around nineteen thirty nine. Yeah, little thing you might have
Speaker 1: heard of World War two um it, but basically broke
Speaker 1: out around the same time and started creating a huge
Speaker 1: demand for for field optics, you know, periscopes and range finders, uh,
Speaker 1: gun sights and cameras and all kinds of stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And so Perkin Elmer began to branch out at the
Speaker 1: same time that group that I talked about earlier, Edgerton
Speaker 1: and germ Shausen and Greer, and I apologize if I'm
Speaker 1: totally misspelling or mispronouncing rather their names that that became
Speaker 1: known as E. G and G, which makes life so
Speaker 1: much easier. And they also were being, uh, pretty instrumental
Speaker 1: in the war effort. We'll talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: that in just a couple of seconds. But nineteen forty
Speaker 1: one we get into one of the first major products
Speaker 1: from Perkin Elmer. It was a spectra photometer. So what
Speaker 1: the heck does that mean? I mean, you hear spectro photometer,
Speaker 1: and you start to try and break it down, and
Speaker 1: there's only so much that an ignorant person such as
Speaker 1: myself can do before I say, okay, I is it
Speaker 1: a ghost light meter. No, it is not a specter photometer,
Speaker 1: spectro photometer. I'm gonna go need to take some different notes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll be right back. Okay, we're back, and now
Speaker 1: we understand what this is kind of now, So, a
Speaker 1: spectra photometer measures the amount of light that's either absorbed
Speaker 1: or transmitted reflected from a sample object. So you pass
Speaker 1: a beam of light through a sample and then by
Speaker 1: observing the intensity of the light that reaches a detector
Speaker 1: on the other side, you can determine exactly how much
Speaker 1: of a particular material happens to be, say, in in
Speaker 1: that sample. Usually you're talking about solution of some sort.
Speaker 1: So you shine the light through and by observing that,
Speaker 1: by by measuring the light, you can really determine what
Speaker 1: sort of stuff is in there and how much of
Speaker 1: a concentration there is. Because different materials absorb different kinds
Speaker 1: of light, different wavelengths, different colors of light. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you can figure out what type of material you're
Speaker 1: dealing with or um or detect particular materials in like
Speaker 1: a blood sample for example. Yeah, really really useful technology.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen six the United States government awards herald
Speaker 1: Doc Edgerton the Medal of Freedom for his work in
Speaker 1: developing technology for night time photography. And you might wonder, well,
Speaker 1: what's the big deal there, Well, when you're talking about wartime,
Speaker 1: when you have to go on these missions to try
Speaker 1: and determine what the enemy uh fortifications are, what they're
Speaker 1: where they are, and you want to be able to
Speaker 1: take these these images at night, it became incredibly important.
Speaker 1: And so his work with E. G and G became
Speaker 1: something that was so notable that the government ended up
Speaker 1: awarding him the Medal of Freedom after World War Two.
Speaker 1: Now we move on to nineteen and E G and
Speaker 1: G Incorporates. So Perkin Elmer had already incorporated E G
Speaker 1: and G Incorporates. And the only real reason I could
Speaker 1: find that they incorporated was not because they had intended
Speaker 1: to make a big company, but was because a certain
Speaker 1: governmental agency urged them to incorporate. And that would be
Speaker 1: the Atomic Energy Commission or a e C. Now a
Speaker 1: e C formed after the end of World War two
Speaker 1: and had the goal of developing atomic energy for peace
Speaker 1: time applications. So that raises the question what sort of
Speaker 1: peaceful applications was E G m G working on. How
Speaker 1: about creating timed and triggered nuclear bomb. Yeah, that's super peaceful.
Speaker 1: So they were really looking at a triggering systems. Um
Speaker 1: that not the bombs themselves. They didn't build bombs, but
Speaker 1: they build the systems that either would allow a bomb
Speaker 1: to trigger or a timed system that would then have
Speaker 1: a bomb go off. And they weren't necessarily thinking of
Speaker 1: bombs just for military purposes, as we'll find a little
Speaker 1: bit later, although I think at this time it was
Speaker 1: primarily for military purposes. Ah. Yeah, all of those bombs
Speaker 1: for private sector purposes are I'm I'm not sure where
Speaker 1: that's going. I mean, however, in better news late in
Speaker 1: in in that same year, Edgerton would publish his first
Speaker 1: article in National Geographic Magazine called Hummingbirds in Action. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fantastic contrast to making trigger systems for nuclear bombs. And
Speaker 1: if you're wondering what the whole hummingbirds and action thing was. Again,
Speaker 1: he kept working on creating better and better high speed photography,
Speaker 1: and he was able at this point to take pictures
Speaker 1: of hummingbirds and get a clear view of their wings
Speaker 1: while they were in flight instead of just that blur
Speaker 1: that you would usually see. So again, more examples of
Speaker 1: him working in that field. Okay, this is a lovely
Speaker 1: pleasant note. While we are in this terrific mood, let's
Speaker 1: take just a quick break for a word from our sponsor. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back nineteen nine. We get a the PE model
Speaker 1: five to a flame photometer from Brokin Elmer. There So,
Speaker 1: flame photometer, flame photometer, yep, what what's a flame photogram?
Speaker 1: Oh boy, I had to do so much research in
Speaker 1: this episode. So this is another instrument that helps you
Speaker 1: analyze materials. Okay, so you essentially burned them to analyze them.
Speaker 1: So I hope you don't need it after you analyze it,
Speaker 1: because you're going to be out of luck. So what
Speaker 1: you usually would do is you would spray a solution
Speaker 1: of metallic salts. You would have these metallic ions in
Speaker 1: a solution that you you spray into a chamber that
Speaker 1: has an extremely hot flame. We're talking like degrees celsius
Speaker 1: hot enough to vaporize the sample YEA, and then the
Speaker 1: light given off by the vaporized solution can be analyzed. Uh,
Speaker 1: and certain elements will give off certain types of light
Speaker 1: during this vaporization process of exactly, so you'll get different
Speaker 1: colors that way, and by analyzing those colors, you can
Speaker 1: determine exactly what those elements are and their concentration within
Speaker 1: that mixture. So it's usually used in inorganic chemistry applications
Speaker 1: because again you're looking at metallic ions, you're not you're
Speaker 1: not looking at organics like carbon based material. So let's
Speaker 1: move on to nineteen fifty. That's when E. G and
Speaker 1: G perfects an ultra high speed photography technique that allows
Speaker 1: a camera with no moving mechanical parts to take images
Speaker 1: with an exposure time as short as four millions of
Speaker 1: a second, So there was a very specific reason they
Speaker 1: wanted to develop this camera. That was around the same
Speaker 1: time that that nuclear blast testing was going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're we're talking about areas in the South Pacific,
Speaker 1: uninhabited areas in the South Pacific where the United States
Speaker 1: was testing nuclear bombs, and they needed to be able
Speaker 1: to take images of this. But the problem was that
Speaker 1: those bombs give off a little bit of light, and
Speaker 1: by a little bit of light, I mean a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of light, so much light. So finding a way
Speaker 1: to have a camera that could take that image with
Speaker 1: stand that much light was really challenging. And they found
Speaker 1: this way of creating a camera where as soon as
Speaker 1: that that light hit the camera, it would then activate
Speaker 1: the shutter without any mechanical parts, so it could take
Speaker 1: that picture that instant and they could get a really
Speaker 1: good look at what happens the moment after a bomb explodes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: A couple of years later, Edgerton would be the photographer
Speaker 1: who who went to the South Pacific to take pictures
Speaker 1: of the h bomb there. Yeah. He uh, he stood
Speaker 1: always away several miles. Yeah, it's not not good to
Speaker 1: be right at ground zero. For that ninety one, Perkin
Speaker 1: Elmer offers an infrared spectra photometer. So essentially we're talking
Speaker 1: about just uh an additional tool here for chemical analysis,
Speaker 1: and it allows you to use a different, different part
Speaker 1: of the spectrum of light, the infrared spectrum, in that
Speaker 1: type of analysis, which gave you a broader range of
Speaker 1: materials you could use that that particular process on so
Speaker 1: important development. I have nothing more to say of at it,
Speaker 1: but I do have a lot to say about this one,
Speaker 1: so let's see if I can say it correctly. Nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four, Perkin Elmer introduces the TI Celius electrophoresis instrument. Wow,
Speaker 1: I think I got that on the first try. You did,
Speaker 1: so I had to sit there. I saw electrophoresis and
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like spectro photometer. I see this word.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, I know what some of these syllables mean.
Speaker 1: What the heck is this? We we actually talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about this in our episode on how gene
Speaker 1: Therapy works, which was published on December. Come on, Lauren,
Speaker 1: I don't remember what episodes we do when I'm aware.
Speaker 1: That's why. That's why I'm reminding for it. For anyone
Speaker 1: else out there who perhaps has a vaguely faulty memory
Speaker 1: kind of like me. Yes, but so okay, So what
Speaker 1: is electrophoresis? This is actually really cool and it did
Speaker 1: start to sound familiar as I was looking more into it.
Speaker 1: I wish my brain would just hold onto information longer.
Speaker 1: So electrophoresis is a process where chemists use charged electric
Speaker 1: fields to manipulate molecules within a solution. So you've got
Speaker 1: a solution in there if you use this this uh,
Speaker 1: if you apply this um electric field to the fluid,
Speaker 1: you can actually move molecules around within a solution and
Speaker 1: thus start to sort them right. And by by tuning
Speaker 1: that field, yeah, you can you can select molecules for
Speaker 1: for their size, or their makeup, or or their charge exactly.
Speaker 1: So this means that within a solution itself, which may
Speaker 1: have lots of different types of molecules in it, you
Speaker 1: can start to sort things through. Again, very important in chemistry.
Speaker 1: Not something that I would necessarily ever use, or that
Speaker 1: anyone with the in the right mind would ever let
Speaker 1: me get near. But it's super cool. No, no electricity
Speaker 1: for you ever. No, I'm not even allowed to use
Speaker 1: a computer anymore. I get all my information by talking
Speaker 1: to this guy on the street. He's nice, though, breakin
Speaker 1: Elmer unveils the vapor fractometer. When am I going to
Speaker 1: land on an instrument that I understand immediately just based
Speaker 1: upon the name? I? How how many degrees do you have?
Speaker 1: In scientific I have zero degrees and never Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: probably never gonna happen. So this is the first commercially
Speaker 1: available gas chromatograph chromatograph. So now this case, I knew
Speaker 1: what a chromatograph was. That one I understood. Um, I've
Speaker 1: never used one, but I am familiar with what they're
Speaker 1: supposed to do. That's actually when I had to look
Speaker 1: up some good times. I'm glad. I'm glad that we
Speaker 1: flipped back and forth. So in order to understand exactly
Speaker 1: what a chromatograph is and why it's important, we need
Speaker 1: to do a little chemistry one oh one, right, all right,
Speaker 1: just to just to define some terms. So first we're
Speaker 1: gonna define the term mixture, and it's pretty much what
Speaker 1: you would think it is. A mixture is a substance
Speaker 1: of at least two or more components that are mixed
Speaker 1: together but do not in any way chemically combine. Right,
Speaker 1: you can physically separate the components of a mixture. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you if you thought of like, um, I
Speaker 1: don't know, iron filings and some non ferres material like sand,
Speaker 1: and you mix them together. If you had a magnet,
Speaker 1: you could pull the iron silings out of that without
Speaker 1: affecting the sand. There's no chemical common combining going on there. Right,
Speaker 1: Then you have solution. And a solution is sort of
Speaker 1: a subset of what a mixture is. So not all
Speaker 1: mixtures are solutions, but all solutions are mixtures, right, And
Speaker 1: in this one. In in a solution, you've got one
Speaker 1: substance that has been dissolved into another. That the solute
Speaker 1: is dissolved into the solvent. That's correct, And so it
Speaker 1: makes it look like it's a single substance because of
Speaker 1: that that dissolving factor. So saltwater, for example, looks like
Speaker 1: it's a single substance. It's just it's it's water that
Speaker 1: happens to be salty. But if you were to boil
Speaker 1: off the water, the salt would remain behind, once again
Speaker 1: showing that this is truly a mixture. The salt has
Speaker 1: not chemically bonded in this case, so you do have
Speaker 1: to go an extra step there by boiling it. You
Speaker 1: can't just physically remove it like you know. You could
Speaker 1: maybe filter it out the thousand times using very very
Speaker 1: fine filters, but that's it still is a lot more
Speaker 1: work than you know your basic macro exture. Sure. Sure, However,
Speaker 1: compounds are materials in which two or more elements have
Speaker 1: chemically combined. Right, So salt is an example. Salt water
Speaker 1: is a mixture, but salt is a compound. Salt is
Speaker 1: sodium and chloride that has been combined together chemically, and
Speaker 1: that changes the chemical composition. So you anyone who's done
Speaker 1: any chemistry knows sodium, for example, explosive when it comes
Speaker 1: in contact with water, uh, chlorine and it's and it's
Speaker 1: our chloride and all of those kind of a lovely materials,
Speaker 1: not so healthy to be around. But sodium chloride, when
Speaker 1: you add the two together, totally harmless, table salt delicious, yes,
Speaker 1: as moderate amounts people moderate amounts. So chromatography refers to
Speaker 1: this broad collection of physical methods that are used to
Speaker 1: separate and analyze complex mixtures, and it gets its name
Speaker 1: from the practice of using these methods to separate out
Speaker 1: the various pigments that were found in plants, and each
Speaker 1: pigment was different colors. So the process became known as chromatography,
Speaker 1: or if you were to translate, it would roughly mean
Speaker 1: to right colors right w R I T E. So
Speaker 1: we still use that term today, even if we're not
Speaker 1: really concerned about colors at all. We just want to
Speaker 1: be able to separate out a mixture. I think in
Speaker 1: most most cases these days, we're not concerned about colors.
Speaker 1: That's usually the case. Yet, So in gas chromatography, the
Speaker 1: process of separating these components of a mixture out is
Speaker 1: going to involve first again vaporizing the sample, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: which makes sense because you want it to be a
Speaker 1: gas example, happens to be liquid or solid. That's that's
Speaker 1: a problem right there. Um. Then you're going to pass
Speaker 1: the gas through this equipment and the different components in
Speaker 1: it are going to migrate at different rates based on
Speaker 1: on the size or some of the chemical uh chemical
Speaker 1: properties properties exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you have
Speaker 1: just just imagine you've got this gas, it's got different
Speaker 1: types of molecules in it by by applying some force
Speaker 1: to it, depending upon what you know, what method you're using,
Speaker 1: because again, chromatography is a collection of processes. Then these
Speaker 1: molecules of different components move at different speeds. Usually what
Speaker 1: they're moving through is this absorptive materials. And okay, that's
Speaker 1: ad absorptive. I did not mispronounce that. That's that's absorptive,
Speaker 1: not absorptive UM. And I just like saying that word
Speaker 1: now um and and adsorptive surface is um. I mean basically,
Speaker 1: it's something that stuff sticks to. It's a physical process,
Speaker 1: which differentiates it from absorption, which is either chemical or
Speaker 1: energetic UM. For for example, water sticks to sand or
Speaker 1: silica gel, which is essentially really fancy sand. And if
Speaker 1: you want to watch a whole video about that, I
Speaker 1: talked about it on brain stuff. So you can just
Speaker 1: search for silica gel brain stuff on your interweb's brows
Speaker 1: arab choice and then you can find out all about
Speaker 1: this stuff. So you then have these two or more
Speaker 1: components within a mixture moving at different speeds against this
Speaker 1: adsorptive material and so they're going and to stick at
Speaker 1: different points on this absorbative surface, which ultimately means you've
Speaker 1: separated out those materials. Very important in chemistry and the
Speaker 1: big benefit of the vapor fractometer. Ha ha, you thought
Speaker 1: we forgot about that that's the whole reason we had
Speaker 1: chemistry one on one people. But the vapor fractometer the important.
Speaker 1: The reason why it was important was because it didn't
Speaker 1: require specialists. It didn't require a highly trained chemist to
Speaker 1: operate it, so that you could separate out these materials
Speaker 1: within a complex mixture, which meant that you could have
Speaker 1: lab technicians running this instrument and then you could have
Speaker 1: your fancy schmancy scientists doing something else somewhere else. It
Speaker 1: was really kind of a labor saving device in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways in the laboratory. Sure, and if you're
Speaker 1: wondering what exactly this kind of thing is used for, um,
Speaker 1: it can be. It can it can automatically determine, say
Speaker 1: like the alcohol level and blood or um the flavors
Speaker 1: or pollutants or other chemical compounds and stuff like water
Speaker 1: or food or booze, which are all important to chemically.
Speaker 1: These are important things. So nineteen fifty six that's when E.
Speaker 1: G and G participates in programs to develop nuclear propulsion engines.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that to make people a mad nuclear
Speaker 1: propulsion engines for space vehicles. They also start to develop
Speaker 1: commercial products for the first time, including flash tubes and
Speaker 1: high speed measurement instruments. Those flash tubes will come really
Speaker 1: interesting in a few moments too. In nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: E G and G supports the a EC Plowshare program.
Speaker 1: This is where we're talking about the peaceful use of
Speaker 1: nuclear explosives. Yeah, so instead of trying to you know,
Speaker 1: weaponize nuclear bombs, they're talking about using it to do
Speaker 1: things like dig canals or harbors or look for natural gas. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was around that time that a treaty was signed
Speaker 1: to ban nuclear weapons testing. Yeah. Yeah, lasted about two years,
Speaker 1: so yea, yeah, nineteen fifty nine. This was a fun one,
Speaker 1: an interesting little bit. Edgerton joins of a famous fellow,
Speaker 1: Jacques Yes, and they use E. G and G underwater
Speaker 1: cameras and light sources to do ocean exploration. And I
Speaker 1: get the feeling that Edgerton was really was, you know,
Speaker 1: like an adventurous sort and truly brought his expertise in
Speaker 1: photography to lots of different fields. He sounds, you know,
Speaker 1: although I hadn't heard the name, I think before we
Speaker 1: started doing this episode, he sounds a little bit like
Speaker 1: a science rock star of the of the nineteen sixties era,
Speaker 1: kind of which that that I had heard of him before. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we might. Maybe one day we'll do a full episode
Speaker 1: just on his contributions, because they do go outside of
Speaker 1: just E. G and G. So, in nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: M I. T. Scientists use E. G. And G xenon
Speaker 1: flash tubes to shine a light on the surface of
Speaker 1: the Moon, like from Earth. Yeah, like flashlight on the moon, right, So,
Speaker 1: like you know, normally the light on the Moon is
Speaker 1: coming from the Sun. Not this time, it's coming from
Speaker 1: a xenon flash tube. That is amazing. Nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: Perk and Elmer introduces the atomic absorption spectra of the ptometer.
Speaker 1: And I know what you're thinking, Okay, what does that mean. Well,
Speaker 1: don't worry, I looked into it for you. So it's
Speaker 1: an instrument that atomizes a sample, usually by applying a
Speaker 1: whole lot of heat to it. Again we like burning
Speaker 1: stuff here in science, yep. And then the spectral photometer
Speaker 1: shines light through that atomized sample, and elemental atoms absorbed light,
Speaker 1: but only at a particular wavelength specific to that element.
Speaker 1: So sodium would absorb certain wavelengths and potassium would absorb
Speaker 1: other wavelengths. So once you know that once you know
Speaker 1: which elements absorb which wavelengths, then if you shine a
Speaker 1: light through this atomized mixture and have a detector on
Speaker 1: the other side, and you detect for specific wavelengths and
Speaker 1: you know you know how much should be coming through,
Speaker 1: and you see how much is actually coming through. That
Speaker 1: tells you subtract and figure out how much of any
Speaker 1: given element is in your sample. Exactly, Lauren, you beat
Speaker 1: me to it. That's exactly right. So it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where you know, it's a kind of an
Speaker 1: ingenious way of figuring out what was in that stuff
Speaker 1: you just blew up, uh, and in a much more
Speaker 1: specific atomic level way than any of the previous burning
Speaker 1: and or spectra of p autometer methods that we have
Speaker 1: previously described. Right, Okay, so we've got a lot more
Speaker 1: to talk about both e G and G and Perk
Speaker 1: and Elmer, including the point where these two companies shake
Speaker 1: hands and come buddy buddy with each other. But as
Speaker 1: you can already tell, this is very complicated. So we're
Speaker 1: going to take a break so we can get some
Speaker 1: cupcakes that are sitting outside the door for us and macarons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and now we're going to enjoy those immensely. Meanwhile, why
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