Humans have always been compelled by curiosity -- sometimes, this leads to misfortune, but other times... curiosity and accident can also lead to world-changing innovations. In part one of this week's special two-part series, Ben, Noel and Max explore the origin stories of history's greatest accidental inventions, from penicillin to the microwave oven and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning it. This is an accidental invention called
a podcast, and we couldn't do it without the help
of our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I know there was that time that that scientist spilled
chemical X and then a podcast sprang forth fully formed.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah. By that time, I got a bit by a
radioactive microphone and then ended up doing this as a living.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Hey man, you know there are worse ways to make
a living and worse radioactive things to get bitten by.
Accidental inventions intentional two parter.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Mm hmm, yes, well done.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
I will say, I don't know if you guys have
heard this, but it was an accidental chemical spill that
caused Ira Glass to be like formed.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Okay, I don't doubt it. Yeah, I've read a good Glass.
I've read his biography. And who was reading that biography, Well,
they call me Ben Bullen. That's none other than mister
Noel Brown. And as you might tell with our incredibly
subtle foreshadowing this this week, we are dedicating some time
(01:34):
to the wonderful, wacky, inspiring, dare we say, at times
terrifying world of invention. Humans aren't the only living creatures
that can quote unquote event things, but so far humans
have the best track record.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Well, I mean, you know, we always talk about on
this show and on our sister show Stuff they don't
want you to know about this idea of firsts of
like who was the first person that figured out you
could get high on on this weird herb, you know,
Or or that figured out this slimy, disgusting shelled thing
from the water could be sucked down and it's called
an oyster, you know. I mean, it's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
How many people died discovering edible mushass. Right, So this one,
what's the old joke? This one will make you see
God for a week, this one will kill you, and
this one just goes great in pasta.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
One of them makes you see God real quick, you know,
more like visions and definitely mushrooms and pasta one of
my favorite things in the whole white culinary world.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I guess those are maybe technically more discoveries. It's true,
and that is a very important point to bring up.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
And we we do have an episode on inventors that
were killed by.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Their own invention.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yes, but I think we can't argue that discovery isn't
a seed of invention.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Huh, how about that? There we go, because often when
looking for one thing, you find the other thing. That's
classic human, right, you lose your car keys searching for
your car keys, and all of a sudden you find
the journal you wrote in middle school or you Uh,
let's say you are an alchemist and you want to
(03:10):
transmute metal to gold and you accidentally invent pesticides. Yeah,
I was gonna say.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I thought you were going to say something like you
lose your car keys and all of a sudden, bam,
you invent the atomic bomb.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
That's how it happened. Everybody watch Oppenheimer went down. The
guy was a little bit. He'd be the kind of
dude that would lose his car keys. Yeah, he would
not only lose preoccupy, not only the kind of dude
who would lose his car keys, but he would get
furious at his assistant for not fixing the situation.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Look, you can't get over that nude scene in that
movie felt really.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Really weird to me. I don't know why. I did
feel like an excuse to uh for the chairs. Correct.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
That was where the sex scene from earlier is like
not as much the in the chair as one. It
was that, yeah, there's a choice, but it was say, affleck,
amazing actor. He's in like one scene and he steals
the entire show.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
It was one of those things where it's pretty clear
that the director, the screenwriter or the cinematographer said, I
can get away with this.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Hey, her contract gives us two nude scenes, so we.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Can't live that second one on the table. And so
film and fiction aside. What we can tell you is
a thesis statement for this week is that invention is
often a macrocosmic historical example of what Bob Ross would
call a happy accident. You put the paint in the
wrong place, and boom, you have created a beautiful tree
(04:43):
or a mountainscape or a cumulus cloud, yeah, or a
Jesus you know in your toast. Yes, right, right, right,
always waiting to be discovered. Bred has done a lot
for religion. Actually, now that I think about that, that's
a pretty deep in accurate statement. You're absolutely right, man,
I'm with you.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
It's true, And I mean, what do they say necessity
is the mother of invention and all that. But I
would argue that discovery, which can't often be accidental, is
the seed of invention.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah, And I would argue that curiosity is the impetus
but behind yeah, discovery and invention. And that's one of
the things that humans are great at, not so much
planning ahead, but more so curiosity. Right, Ted Lasso is
correct in that respect. Can't recommend that show well enough.
(05:30):
We want to start this with a shout out to
our research associate Jeff, who points out, quoting our alma
matter How Stuff Works, that not every wonderful, world changing
invention was created intentionally. Some came, as you said, Noel,
(05:54):
through accidental discovery. Some came through straight up like three
stooges left clumsiness, Some came out of laziness. What we
do know is that almost every invention stands on the
shoulders of giants of precedent. Right. A spontaneous discovery is
(06:16):
an amazing pivotal moment in history, but often the credit
where it's due needs to be assigned to the people
who learned of a discovery and then spent years, decades,
perhaps their entire lives, trying to make it applicable and
benefit to the rest of civilization.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well, it's about recognizing the discovery first and foremost. And
I think this is a great follow up to the
episode we just did on tupperware, which we'll recall was
invented based on a byproduct, a stinky, icky byproduct of
plastic manufacturing that nobody else in the industry knew what
to do with. But mister tupper he had big ideas
(07:00):
around it. They started a revolution of leftover storage.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Please do check out that story, especially because we all
have tupperware in our fridges right now very much.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Some of them need to be I need to be examined.
I think I need to do a refresh.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
And going back to our idea of bread, let's pop
the top on one of history's greatest accidental inventions slash discoveries. No,
we're going to treat those as kissing cousins, right, if
that's synonymous, they're a venn diagram. We are alive today,
all of us, including you ridiculous historian listening to the show,
(07:39):
We are alive today because of something called antibiotics. Now
at the at the top, this feels like a really
gross idea.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
It sure does, especially when you consider how it was
discovered and where it comes from. According to I Believe
the American Chemistry Society at their website ACS dot org,
antibiotics are compounds produced by bacteria and fun guy which
are capable of killing or inhibiting competing microbial species.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
This phenomenon has long been known. It may explain why
the ancient Egyptians had the practice of applying a poultice
of moldy bread to infected one. I don't like, uh,
you know, I'm familiar with pult Well it's have you
ever used one? And maybe, like my old Appalachian background.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Isn't it where you literally shoved dirt and stuff like
into your wound, or like grass or a mixture of
like really gouey herbs and stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Like a sloppy kind of wela. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
This is the story of antibiotics and penicillin. The world's
first acknowledged antibiotic was less the It was less a
matter of some mad genius uh secreted away in a
tower learning the art of alchemy. It was more an
(08:58):
accidental byproducts out out tupperware of a messy workstation.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Right, how stuff works? Again, our almud butter writes. One
of the most widely used antibiotics, penicillin, was first developed
by Scottish researchers for Alexander Fleming in nineteen twenty eight,
the careless type. Fleming departed for a two week vacation,
having left out a petri dish containing Stapholococcus. So, if
I'm not mistaken, is what is the bacteria that forms
(09:25):
or that is responsible for what they call a staff infection?
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Right? I think that's right? AnyWho?
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Continuing upon returning, Fleming discovered that Staphylococcus had developed a
layer of mold which had prevented it from growing any further.
So see it's did an accidental discovery the ikey workplace,
and then the like what does this mean?
Speaker 1 (09:46):
And the recognition of how this could be applied? M
M yeah, yeah, what he stumbled across is something we
call penicillium. Let's let's get into it. Yes, so our guy,
our Scottish guy again standing on the shoulders of giants.
Various ancient civilizations had sort of a spidey sense about
(10:10):
the the hidden benefits of mold. So Fleming starts to
do the work and he sorts through his messy counter
Peachtree dishes. They all had Stafflococcus stafflecoccus. Nasty customer. It
can give you a sore throat, boils, abscesses, all the hits.
(10:31):
And then, like you were saying, he looks at one dish,
one dish out of his collection and he says, hang on,
this is dotted with these colonies of this nasty customer
I know to be Stafleococcus. But there's one area that's
untouched by anything except for this blob of gross, fuzzy
(10:54):
looking mold.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Uh huh, exactly untouched. Fleming figured out that this mold
juice was capable of killing a wide range of very
harmful bacteria that were pesky and tough customers to your point, Ben,
for the you know, human race, things like Streptococcus, men
in ja, caucus and diphtheria, bacillus bacterium that up to
(11:20):
this point could have been fatal for folks.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Right right, fatal on the far end, at the very
least severely inconvenient and unpleasant. What this was later identified
as this mold. And let me just take a second
and say, mold and fung guy, they're amazing, they're amazing.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
We talked on stuff that I want you to know about,
how the way they communicate in networks, neural networks underground.
There's an incredible documentary called Fantastic Fungi that we've recommended
as well, A bunch with what's like a Paul Steinmetz
I think is his name? Is a mycologist. I think
is the term fascinating? Sorry, I'm excited.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
I'm into it too.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
I get to jump in here really quick. Paul Stammets,
which is a joke because in the now finished Star
Trek Discovery series where they travel over fungus, it's complicatem
I gonna expect to the name of the guy who
invents it is uh Stamos. That's the name of the
engineer who invents it.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
So there you go. Yeah, it's just not very cool.
Good I told.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
I told my friend Merret that one recently blew her mind.
She goes, what, that's a real guy. I'm yeah, he's
a live and live and well he's a he's the
expert on mushrooms.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yeah, he's about eighty five percent mold now by content.
But that's just you know, like Marikore, that's just something
that comes with the job of being illuminary. If we
go back to our our noble Scott Fleming, uh, we
find that he, you know, he's smart enough to clock
(12:51):
something unusual. And he's got two assistants, Frederick Ridley and
Stuart Krattick, and he says, all right, you guys, you're
real and comers here in this super messy hoarder lab.
I need you to take this mold juice, and I
need you to isolate whatever the heck it is that
(13:12):
is killing these pesky bacterium. And they said, okay, we're
going to do our best. Fleming and what they were
able to create something, but it was very unstable because
they were trying to purify something for the first time.
They were only able to make solutions of very crude material.
(13:34):
And that comes to us again from the American Chemical Society.
So Fleming has the honor in naming this mould juice,
and he calls it penicillin because he's naming it after
that fungus we mentioned earlier, Penicillium notatum.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Right, And he publishes a paper about this in nineteen
twenty nine. But it wasn't really sure yet he knew.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
What it could do. But I guess maybe I was
given him a little too much credit.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
He wasn't quite sure yet if it had any practical
use because it was a bit difficult to purify and
to stabilize and to like mass produce in a way
that would potentially have a huge impact on humanity.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, it's kind of like inventing a rocket that can
sometimes go to space but not all the time. Do
you really want to put people on the rocket just yet? No,
definitely not, Katie Perry.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
It was Howard Florey and his teamwork making the dream
work and Earnest Chain and their colleagues at the Sir
William Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford University, you know
slouches there who figured out how to turn penicillin from
this kind of you know, haphazard discovery. And again all
credit to Fleming. He did see there were potentially big
(14:44):
things ahead. He just I guess didn't stop short, right,
You didn't quite know what to.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Do with it.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
So he was able to turn this from a kind
of a was described at ACS dot org as a
laboratory curiosity into a life saving drug. In their efforts
to purify and find tune the chemistry of penicillin, which
is a process that began as far back as nineteen
thirty nine.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yeah, one hundred percent, and this is this is weird.
So as nineteen thirty nine is going through, it's nineteen
thirty nine US. The Second World War is ramping up,
and these wartime conditions on multiple levels are making research
(15:27):
increasingly difficult. So we all know the game. At this point,
you start experimenting with clinical trials. You want to do
some animal experiments, and they start trying to figure out
where they can grow enough mold filtrate they call it.
To conduct these trials and experiments. They need five hundred
(15:50):
leaders of this stuff. So they start growing everywhere they can.
We're talking bathtubs, bedpans, empty cans for grow. Oh way,
this super mold juice. And what they did is they
built this thing that allows you to you know, how
you like when you're cooking some stuff, you gotta skim
(16:13):
the froth off the top. They wanted the broth beneath
the surface of the mold. That's the mold juice. And
to do this they hire a group of people they
call the Penicillin Girls, and for two pounds a week,
these this team inoculates and sort of continually stays at
(16:34):
these containers making sure the fermentation is fermenting. Eventually, as
a result of this, that Oxford laboratory that was doing
other stuff, it is turned into the world's first on
purpose penicillin factory and then goes on to save millions
and millions of lives. Now this can sound kind of
(16:56):
sensitive now in a world of you know, superbug and
livestock problems with.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah, well, and issues and controversy surrounding vaccination as well,
of course.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yeah, that's the that's the point I was going to
say as well, Like here in twenty twenty five, the
idea might seem elementary or maybe even controversial to some
people if we're being honest, but we have to remember
a ton of folks were dying because of this. This
was a lifesaver and it was completely by accident.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
And if anybody out there is looking for an interesting
watch other than that documentary that we talked about, I'm
sure you're familiar with this. To Ben, there's a new
ish adult swim cartoon called what is It? Common Side
Effects that I believe one of the characters is sort
of like a fantasy version, kind of of like the
type of work that Paul Stemmets does, and just this
(17:44):
sort of like idea of mushrooms being a secret alien
thing that have huge potential ramifications, you know, for the
human race beyond, like in terms of like healing and transcending,
you know, this mortal coil and stuff. It's a fabulous
show by the same studio created the sci fi cartoon
Scavenger's Reign, which I know that you also were a
fan of.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yeah, I enjoyed that. I appreciate that. I appreciate that
mention there, because we can without spoiling it further than
what you said in the excellent setup, we can tell
you it's not what you're expecting for sure. And this
takes us to another amazing accidental invention common to so
(18:27):
many kitchens.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Beep, that wasn't an editorial beat as the sound of
the thing.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
Yeah, yes, the microwave street name, microwave, technical name microwave oven.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
You know it. It's used for like whenever you want
something to like whenever you're cooking or reheating tupperware and
you're like, man, I wish this tupperware was really hot
and the stuff inside it was still sort of cold.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Yeah, if only and and and if only I could
find a way for I get to get all the
microplastics out of it into into every bite, maximize microplastics
per bite.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yeah, the microwave oven. Simply put. You can find more
about this on history of microwave dot com, which is
a real sight. Uh knocked one down. The microwave Bombard's
food with microwaves that make dipole molecules of water and
other substances revolve and collide rapidly. This creates heat.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
It's like a it's a it's like a small Hadron collider,
your very own, you know.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
And we owe it all to a guy named Percy Spencer,
who was just uh, I love this story. We talked
about it in a previous series that we made years
and years ago. Stuff genius good stuff. We ah man,
I missed this show. It was weirh You were a
(19:58):
huge part of that. It was incredible. Oh well, well
credit where due are pow? Paul Decant did the majority
of the animations and I was just writing it. We had,
but you appeared in some of them.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
It was like a rotating cast of like how stuff works,
folks talking about in a very stylish, you know, package,
like various how stuff works the kind of things. But
it was definitely an evolution of in the YouTube days
of healthy on YouTube days of how stuff works.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Right right, Well, I appreciate that. If we go back
to Maine in eighteen ninety four, we're joining Percy Spencer
in Howland. Percy doesn't have Holland how oh Howland. Like
I'm joking, it's funny.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
It's like saying Holland with a with a weird Southern accent.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
It's like a werewolf version of Holland.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
How old it is in Maine. So this is all
very appropriate. They talk a little funny in Maine. I've
never seen Stephen King adaptation. The soil is it's so Howland.
The soil is so no.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
All eastuff so Spencer. Yeah, again, he doesn't have the
best upbringing. He is only eighteen months old when his
father passes away and his mom. Let's keep in mind,
this is, you know, the late eighteen hundreds. His mom
is going to have a very difficult time as a
single parent, so she brings the kid to his aunt
(21:20):
and uncle to take care of him.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Yeah, that's right, And this, sadly was just the next
kind of setup for tragedy for young Spencer. His uncle
passed away as well when he was only seven, so
he and his aunt kind of banded together in grief,
I guess, and started kind of traveling around New England.
And this maybe I'm making this sound more charming than
it was. I think it was a lot of it
(21:44):
had to do with survival. But she was what you'd
call an itinerant weaver, which that ain't good, right, Ben,
That's almost like being an indentured servant.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
It's not good. It's the benefit is not in your corner. Yeah,
it's like the cast the side notions of healthcare worker protections.
You're you're on a contract, make work basis. And he
is traveling with his aunt and good on her, by
the way, for not abandoning this poor child, and he's
(22:13):
working whatever odd jobs he can pick up as he ages.
He would later go on to recall that this taught
him a degree of self reliance and he was a
huge fan of what he called Yankee ingenuity, which he
said served him well in later life. And this is
(22:33):
coming to us with thanks to Emily Conover writing for
American Physicist Society. Yep, good stuff.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Another really great rundown of this incredible and happenstanceacle invention.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Happenstancechool is a great word. I like it. So look,
he becomes Spencer is a smart kid by any means,
And yeah, he's bootstrapped himself and paid attention and learned
the hard way that you got to kind of make
your own way. And he, you know, he paid attention.
Let's just say that Yankee ingenuity served him well. Indeed,
(23:08):
I would argue that a lot of his there's definitely
some trauma to his story, and a lot of his
brilliance is informed by tragedy. When the Titanic the unsinkable
Titanic spoiler.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
We got a good one coming up about that too,
in its own weird way.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
At another spoiler spoiler, the Titanic sinks, Abraham Lincoln doesn't
have a great time at the Fario So nineteen twelve.
Titanic sinks, and Spencer, with the rest of the American
public and the European public, is fascinated darkly by this story,
and he is especially inspired by the heroism of radio
(23:50):
operators on board that doomed vessel, and this gives him
a lifelong interest in a technology that we would now call.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Wire yeah, the Golden Age of wireless exactly. So pretty
soon we've got wartime research funding flowing, so you start
to see some advancements in this kind of technology. One
thing in particular the cavity magnetron, which is a high
frequency tube with built in resonant cavities that is designed
to produce a focused beam of microwave energy.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
This is a big deal in.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Radar technology and communications, long range communications, I believe with
the British.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Yes, yeah, this is also part of how part of
the origin story for the myth about eating carrots to
improve your eyesight and night vision because the British at
the time, we mentioned this before. The British at the
time did not want their enemies in Germany to know
that radar was a thing, so instead they were just saying,
(24:52):
oh yeah, our pilots, I eat a lot of carrots,
and everybody just went with it. History is so ridiculous, dude. Anyway, Yeah,
we should start a podcast. That's a good idea. I
hope we get bitten by some radioactive microphones. Spencer is
messing with energy beyond human can he figures out how
to mass produce these magnetrons. And because Rida helps win
(25:17):
the war, and because this guy figured out how to
mass produce these things, he receives the US Navy's highest
honor that can be bestowed upon a civilian, the Distinguished
Public Service Award, which it's I know, I know it's
a history of beige, but it's yeah, the musical, perhaps
(25:41):
the musical.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Check out our recent episode of Strange News and stuff
that I want you to know if you want to
catch the reference.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
So this idea is, you know, not his original invention,
but here's his accidental invention. Here's where things get beautifully wacky. Uh,
the idea idea of heating stuff with high frequency electromagnetic waves.
People have thought about that since nineteen thirty four, and
(26:09):
we know that Bell Labs even filed a patent to
that effect, just to that idea in nineteen thirty seven,
but no one took it as far as Spencer, because
we must assume no one in this rarefied Air liked
a little snack as much as him. He's a guy
who walks around with snacks.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
I have a PRESD snacker. Yeah, he would have multiple snacks.
It seems this is all This is a very snack
based discovery. He was hanging around near an active radar
situation and noticed that a candy bar in his pocket
had melted, and presuming this is just like a traditional
nineteen thirties like chocolate ration bar, right, and realized that
(26:50):
the microwaves might actually be a potential for cooking food.
So he takes it a step further to test this
theory or this hypothesis.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
He places popcorn kernel.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Near the magnetron, uh, and just as he suspected, they
start to pop pop pop.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
So next he decides to kind.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Of build out a bit of a prototype, right, like
a quick and dirty prototype.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
He takes a kettle and he cuts a hole in
the side of it, and then he puts an egg
in the kettle, and he uses the equipment that they
have on hand to direct this magnetron energy through that
hole that he's just cut. This is like the world's
first microwave. It works again kind of, but just like
(27:34):
the melty chocolate in the pocket, the egg explodes rhyme,
you drop the bat, the egg explodes, And this is
I love it egg on face moment very much so
literally literally, this is ridiculous history cinema because when the
egg pops, it splats in the.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
Face to these astonished irritated all over him literally like
the skeptical yeah, the doubting Thomas and the lab is like,
you're crazy.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Let me take a look at this. Yeah, it's incredible.
Man oh boy. Yep.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
And Whirlpool that's pretty funny. The company I believe that
makes like dryers and microwaves and stuff. Can we just
really quickly to give a shout out to thirty Rock
for its microwave content. I believe the character of Jack
doneghe who is like a CEO type of General Electric.
He's like the head of microwave oven Technology or that division,
(28:37):
and he's always cooking up no pun, attend to some
new you know, implementation of microwave technology.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
And it is advertising for it because in charge of boat.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Yeah, he's got Yes, it's really great. If you haven't
seen that holds up a joke a second.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
It's so dense.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
With Donald lover Root that doesn't surprise me. He's sharp
and all of the writing is sharp. Tinfa for the win.
But what is he How does he pivot from this
potential embarrassing, dejected moments into microwave greatness.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Before we get to that, and that's a great question.
Before we get to that, we do have to doff
our caps to one of the most amazing throwaway lines
in thirty Rock, which is it when Tracy Jordan's wife says,
my new single, my new single is dropping. Is dropping.
(29:31):
It's just the language of it. Anyway, Oh, it's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
There's also great he has some great conspiracy kind of lines.
You know, there's one where he's talking about how the
government's injecting black people's chicken nuggets with cancer or something
like that. Anyway, just worth your time. Started from scratch,
we highly recommend yes.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
And ed back to our guy, Percy Spencer, who would
have just been beautiful at thirty Rock.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yeah, a real beautiful boy. He's good looking man too.
I don't this in my mind he is. We'll cast
him beautiful, Okay, we'll cast energetic. So he is a
self taught engineer, right. It was that kind of time
in the world in the West, and he is able
to file the first patent for this thing called the
microwave oven in nineteen forty five, So hitting right there
(30:20):
as the US is beginning to emerge as the world's
pre eminent superpower.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
You know what I mean, Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
And this was also that like Age of the Atom
kind of era where this was like where you're living
in the future. They literally, I mean, I don't know
if this is in the America as well, but in
the UK, and I think they still do.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Actually they called it robot cooking.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
There was like this sense that the microwave was this
like futuristic device, you know, like meals in pill form
level you know.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Yeah, I love it. When those things still had the
new car smell. They would sometimes tell kids, this is
astronaut food. This is how the astronaut.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Remember the actual astronaut food we got or you got
it space camp. I wasn't invited, or actually I just
didn't have what it takes, but I'd buy it at
the planetarium, you know, that crunchy, delightful stuff.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Love it, man, Let's go get astronaut food together.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Maybe we can get your Besis to send this up
in a space capsule, and then we'll call ourselves astronauts and.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Then anything we eat will be astronaut food. All right, Okay,
I was going to pass until you nailed the logic
at the end of that one. That was well, so
all right, his patent is exactly what you might picture
in your kitchen. Here metal box that contains the microwaves.
There's an opening where this magnetron tube can poke through.
(31:40):
Spencer also has another innovation. He adds a door to
the metal box. This is the granddaddy the pattern familia.
So every microwave that you have ever seen, the defining
moment of Jack Donneghi's life.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Yes, yeah, truly, because really that's another thing that's great
about that character. He's like passionate about microwave. Yesh, he's
into it. He's all in, as you would say, ten
toes down on my toes.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yes, shout out to Jack ed, shout out to Jack
the character. We're still on the fence about the actor
who portrays him. I think that's fair to say. The
next one, maybe the last one for this episode, has
got to be one of the coolest named inventions ever.
X rays good X rays You remember did you ever
(32:33):
have X ray glasses? That's funny.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
You should mention that, Ben And maybe I'll save this
for later, but remember, yeah, X ray specs they would
call don't did they do anything?
Speaker 1 (32:43):
I remember now?
Speaker 2 (32:45):
They just had swirly lines on them in a little pinhole,
and was there some any kind of lens or something
in there?
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Were they? For a few there were lenses that that
played with light a bit, but it wouldn't let you,
you know, see beneath people's clothing or see through walls. Correct.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Yeah, And I was actually googling because there was the
thing I was I'm just gonna go ahead and drop it. Uh.
All this talk about these weird inventions, not weird inventions,
but like you know, circumstantial accidental inventions made me think
of a funny invention story that I was sharing with
Max before you joined Ben.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Did you know that whiteout.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Was invented by the mother of The Monkey's lead singer,
Jason Naismith. Yeah, it's incredible and like he he inherited
like fifty million dollars from her, and it is fascinating stuff,
Like she was a typist and invented this material that
then went on to be you know, hugely influential back
when you know, typing was still much much more of
(33:45):
a thing unrelated. But when I was googling that, the
inventor of the X ray specs came up, and he
also invented sea monkeys.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yeah, and a couple of other things too. Right, we're
talking about novel. He was a bit of a Yes,
he was a bit of a huckster.
Speaker 4 (34:01):
You know what.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
I think at their best, X ray Spex created some
sort of optical illusion. I think there was some sort
of refraction situation going on, right, I can't.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Play with the light, but I think that's right. I
wouldn't let you see under clothing, and they wouldn't let
you see through walls.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
And there's actually also a fantastic post punk UK post
punk band called x ray Spex, which I highly recommend.
How the ex x ray sp e X incredible front
person named Polystyrene, which is wow, is it polystyrene connected
to Tupperware? Wasn't that the name of the stuff that
(34:38):
was polyethylene? Polyethylene?
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Anyway? Either way, full circle, probably not their legal Christian
But we're talking about not the X ray Spex. We're
talking about actual X rays, right, which do give you
a If you have ever had the misfortune of having
a broken bone or something where a doc needs to
(35:01):
pop the hood on your body without actually opening the
hood just yet, then you will get an X ray
like the standard screening method for breast cancer, the mammogram
uses X rays, and nowadays we barely think about it.
But for a long long time, for the majority of
(35:21):
human history, if you had a broken bone, a tumor,
you swallowed something, you were getting cut, Yeah, people wouldn't
know unless they got in those guts. Terrified.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
I've never had surgery, y'all, and I am deathly terrified
of going under the knife. It's something I know, and
it really freaks me out. And maybe as I'm getting older,
I'm warming up to the idea. Didn't even used to
like getting blood drawn, which I'm about to have to
go do today, and I got over that, so we'll
see once the time comes for me to go under
the knife.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
But yeah, it was a.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Big deal that they could preemptively check something out before
you know, having to like open you up, like you said, Ben,
get in those guts.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
So our story of X rays begins with a guy
named Villehem road to Jen who was a professor of
physics over in Bavaria, and he is a serious dude.
He's not trying to make you know, wacky X race
FECs to see pandodize yeah, or hypnotized He discovers the
(36:18):
concept of X rays in eighteen ninety five, so it's
older than a lot of people might assume, and he
does it by accident. He's looking into something totally different.
He's like, uh, hey, can cathode raise pass through glass?
Au row? Yeah, I was definitely the question he was asking.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
And he was a super cool dude as well, would
have been right at home in the movie Point Break.
His cathode tube that he created to test this theory
he covered in heavy black paper, so he was kind
of surprised when an incandescent green light escaped and was
projected on this nearby fluorescent screen.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
And so us like just like spencer and just like flipping.
He says, I'm going to tick because he's in wealth
of accents, and uh, what's a way? And uh so
he decides to conduct a series of experiments and he says,
you know, whatever this mysterious light is, it passes through
(37:24):
so many other substances, but it always leaves shadows of
solid objects. And the reason he calls the X rays
is because he doesn't know what the rays are.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
He could have yi name because it sounds cool.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
He could have called M A Z rays or n
rays or I don't know. Yes, rays the the phenomenon
formerly known as rays.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Yes, exactly, because all bets are off. Now we thought
we knew all the rays, but now we got this
new one. Where do we even go from here?
Speaker 1 (37:59):
We're gonna really need to rethink our lives. And so, uh,
this is this is weird because, uh, we see how
casual dare I say, cavalier science could be at the time. Uh,
he puts an X ray over his wife's hand, right,
and uh and she her name's Annabetha Ludwig, and she
(38:23):
looks at the shadows cast by the bones and yeah,
and she says to it, I have seen my death,
which you know is understandable. Actually it's a big deal.
This was not a thing.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
This was the one had seen this, like to view
your own skeleton without you know, being dead, right, that
is that association was was serious.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
There's a skeleton in all of us, there really is.
And oh yeah, yeah, yeah, be upfront with him. Look,
this is amazing for all sorts of applications, especially in
the world of medicine. So within a year, doctors throughout
Europe and the US are using X rays to prevent
(39:10):
cutting people open they're finding gunshots, bone fractures, broken bones,
swallowed stuff, kidney stones.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
By the way, there's some hilarious memes of X rays
the thing that shouldn't be up people's butts.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Right exactly. Oh, doctor, sorry, I fell on that bad
and they're like, yeah, well you keep following on it.
Actual game is really good. So he gets the first
Nobel Prize in physics in nineteen oh one. Now we
do have to do one bit of historical diligence here.
(39:42):
This is before people realize over time. Yeah that too Yeah,
too much exposure to X rays can have deleterious effects
on human body.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
I was going to ask, we're talking cancer, We're talking
cell abnormality type stuff, right, Like, it can cause mutations
because this bombard it's sort of like radiation, which is
why when you go to get an X ray now,
they like put a lead vest over you and make
sure that you're not getting too much of it.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
And they tell you everything's fined right before. Yeah, they
hit up the cover. Also, there was a brief period
of time in US history where X rays were such
a novelty that shoe stores would have them, and so
you would put your foot in the X ray machine. Okay,
(40:29):
just like as a fun little thing.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
That's that that is so interesting because now we think
of like the cost of getting medical to perceived tests
even you know, and obviously X rays aren't the only
game in town anymore. We have like MRIs and things
that are much more you know, like she can show
three dimensional things.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
But yet the X rays still popping.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
You know that it's the most cost effective and efficient
way in certain situations like you're talking about with gunshot
wounds and bone fractures. You know, they still do an
X ray because an MRI is so damn expense.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
I love an X ray man.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
You know, remember those bone recordings, the X ray records
we talked to, really cool episode if you want to
do a deep dive back into ridiculous history. History but
well deserved Nobel prize, Yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Very much so definitely not the most controversial of Nobel prizes.
We could say with.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Something we're good with X rays even if you get
a little kids at least, Yeah, we could say with
some we could say, with some certitude, is not the
most controversial Nobel Prize.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
And we can say with some optimism that we very
much hope you enjoy today's show. Thank you so much
for joining us, folks speak thanks to our super producer
mister Max Williams, our research associate Jeff and uh oh
tuned in later this week We've got even more accidental inventions.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Mm hmm with a marvelous, marvelous toy, A wonderful, wonderful toy,
fun for a girl and a boy.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
You know, the one nice tease. Yeah, big thanks of course,
aj Bahamas, Jay Reluctant. Thanks to of course Jonathan Strickland
aka the Quistern.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Mm hm yeah, a bit of a byproduct of the
evil in the universe.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
If we're talking about a manifestation of our own car.
There you go, exactly. He's a mirror in the dark mirror,
dare we say big thanks to Alex Williams who composed
a slap and bop the rude Dudes a ridiculous crime
and Noel, big thanks to you. I think maybe we
could get into this in part too, but uh we
(42:32):
peek behind the curtain in our in our next installment
and tell people how ridiculous history itself is kind of
an accidental invention, Oh we must. Yeah, that's a very
good point. Ben, what'll see your next that books.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning it. This is an accidental invention called
a podcast, and we couldn't do it without the help
of our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I know there was that time that that scientist spilled
chemical X and then a podcast sprang forth fully formed.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah. By that time, I got a bit by a
radioactive microphone and then ended up doing this as a living.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Hey man, you know there are worse ways to make
a living and worse radioactive things to get bitten by.
Accidental inventions intentional two parter.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Mm hmm, yes, well done.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
I will say, I don't know if you guys have
heard this, but it was an accidental chemical spill that
caused Ira Glass to be like formed.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Okay, I don't doubt it. Yeah, I've read a good Glass.
I've read his biography. And who was reading that biography, Well,
they call me Ben Bullen. That's none other than mister
Noel Brown. And as you might tell with our incredibly
subtle foreshadowing this this week, we are dedicating some time
(01:34):
to the wonderful, wacky, inspiring, dare we say, at times
terrifying world of invention. Humans aren't the only living creatures
that can quote unquote event things, but so far humans
have the best track record.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Well, I mean, you know, we always talk about on
this show and on our sister show Stuff they don't
want you to know about this idea of firsts of
like who was the first person that figured out you
could get high on on this weird herb, you know,
Or or that figured out this slimy, disgusting shelled thing
from the water could be sucked down and it's called
an oyster, you know. I mean, it's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
How many people died discovering edible mushass. Right, So this one,
what's the old joke? This one will make you see
God for a week, this one will kill you, and
this one just goes great in pasta.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
One of them makes you see God real quick, you know,
more like visions and definitely mushrooms and pasta one of
my favorite things in the whole white culinary world.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I guess those are maybe technically more discoveries. It's true,
and that is a very important point to bring up.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
And we we do have an episode on inventors that
were killed by.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Their own invention.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yes, but I think we can't argue that discovery isn't
a seed of invention.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Huh, how about that? There we go, because often when
looking for one thing, you find the other thing. That's
classic human, right, you lose your car keys searching for
your car keys, and all of a sudden you find
the journal you wrote in middle school or you Uh,
let's say you are an alchemist and you want to
(03:10):
transmute metal to gold and you accidentally invent pesticides. Yeah,
I was gonna say.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I thought you were going to say something like you
lose your car keys and all of a sudden, bam,
you invent the atomic bomb.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
That's how it happened. Everybody watch Oppenheimer went down. The
guy was a little bit. He'd be the kind of
dude that would lose his car keys. Yeah, he would
not only lose preoccupy, not only the kind of dude
who would lose his car keys, but he would get
furious at his assistant for not fixing the situation.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Look, you can't get over that nude scene in that
movie felt really.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Really weird to me. I don't know why. I did
feel like an excuse to uh for the chairs. Correct.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
That was where the sex scene from earlier is like
not as much the in the chair as one. It
was that, yeah, there's a choice, but it was say, affleck,
amazing actor. He's in like one scene and he steals
the entire show.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
It was one of those things where it's pretty clear
that the director, the screenwriter or the cinematographer said, I
can get away with this.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Hey, her contract gives us two nude scenes, so we.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Can't live that second one on the table. And so
film and fiction aside. What we can tell you is
a thesis statement for this week is that invention is
often a macrocosmic historical example of what Bob Ross would
call a happy accident. You put the paint in the
wrong place, and boom, you have created a beautiful tree
(04:43):
or a mountainscape or a cumulus cloud, yeah, or a
Jesus you know in your toast. Yes, right, right, right,
always waiting to be discovered. Bred has done a lot
for religion. Actually, now that I think about that, that's
a pretty deep in accurate statement. You're absolutely right, man,
I'm with you.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
It's true, And I mean, what do they say necessity
is the mother of invention and all that. But I
would argue that discovery, which can't often be accidental, is
the seed of invention.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah, And I would argue that curiosity is the impetus
but behind yeah, discovery and invention. And that's one of
the things that humans are great at, not so much
planning ahead, but more so curiosity. Right, Ted Lasso is
correct in that respect. Can't recommend that show well enough.
(05:30):
We want to start this with a shout out to
our research associate Jeff, who points out, quoting our alma
matter How Stuff Works, that not every wonderful, world changing
invention was created intentionally. Some came, as you said, Noel,
(05:54):
through accidental discovery. Some came through straight up like three
stooges left clumsiness, Some came out of laziness. What we
do know is that almost every invention stands on the
shoulders of giants of precedent. Right. A spontaneous discovery is
(06:16):
an amazing pivotal moment in history, but often the credit
where it's due needs to be assigned to the people
who learned of a discovery and then spent years, decades,
perhaps their entire lives, trying to make it applicable and
benefit to the rest of civilization.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well, it's about recognizing the discovery first and foremost. And
I think this is a great follow up to the
episode we just did on tupperware, which we'll recall was
invented based on a byproduct, a stinky, icky byproduct of
plastic manufacturing that nobody else in the industry knew what
to do with. But mister tupper he had big ideas
(07:00):
around it. They started a revolution of leftover storage.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Please do check out that story, especially because we all
have tupperware in our fridges right now very much.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Some of them need to be I need to be examined.
I think I need to do a refresh.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
And going back to our idea of bread, let's pop
the top on one of history's greatest accidental inventions slash discoveries. No,
we're going to treat those as kissing cousins, right, if
that's synonymous, they're a venn diagram. We are alive today,
all of us, including you ridiculous historian listening to the show,
(07:39):
We are alive today because of something called antibiotics. Now
at the at the top, this feels like a really
gross idea.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
It sure does, especially when you consider how it was
discovered and where it comes from. According to I Believe
the American Chemistry Society at their website ACS dot org,
antibiotics are compounds produced by bacteria and fun guy which
are capable of killing or inhibiting competing microbial species.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
This phenomenon has long been known. It may explain why
the ancient Egyptians had the practice of applying a poultice
of moldy bread to infected one. I don't like, uh,
you know, I'm familiar with pult Well it's have you
ever used one? And maybe, like my old Appalachian background.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Isn't it where you literally shoved dirt and stuff like
into your wound, or like grass or a mixture of
like really gouey herbs and stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Like a sloppy kind of wela. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
This is the story of antibiotics and penicillin. The world's
first acknowledged antibiotic was less the It was less a
matter of some mad genius uh secreted away in a
tower learning the art of alchemy. It was more an
(08:58):
accidental byproducts out out tupperware of a messy workstation.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Right, how stuff works? Again, our almud butter writes. One
of the most widely used antibiotics, penicillin, was first developed
by Scottish researchers for Alexander Fleming in nineteen twenty eight,
the careless type. Fleming departed for a two week vacation,
having left out a petri dish containing Stapholococcus. So, if
I'm not mistaken, is what is the bacteria that forms
(09:25):
or that is responsible for what they call a staff infection?
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Right? I think that's right? AnyWho?
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Continuing upon returning, Fleming discovered that Staphylococcus had developed a
layer of mold which had prevented it from growing any further.
So see it's did an accidental discovery the ikey workplace,
and then the like what does this mean?
Speaker 1 (09:46):
And the recognition of how this could be applied? M
M yeah, yeah, what he stumbled across is something we
call penicillium. Let's let's get into it. Yes, so our guy,
our Scottish guy again standing on the shoulders of giants.
Various ancient civilizations had sort of a spidey sense about
(10:10):
the the hidden benefits of mold. So Fleming starts to
do the work and he sorts through his messy counter
Peachtree dishes. They all had Stafflococcus stafflecoccus. Nasty customer. It
can give you a sore throat, boils, abscesses, all the hits.
(10:31):
And then, like you were saying, he looks at one dish,
one dish out of his collection and he says, hang on,
this is dotted with these colonies of this nasty customer
I know to be Stafleococcus. But there's one area that's
untouched by anything except for this blob of gross, fuzzy
(10:54):
looking mold.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Uh huh, exactly untouched. Fleming figured out that this mold
juice was capable of killing a wide range of very
harmful bacteria that were pesky and tough customers to your point, Ben,
for the you know, human race, things like Streptococcus, men
in ja, caucus and diphtheria, bacillus bacterium that up to
(11:20):
this point could have been fatal for folks.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Right right, fatal on the far end, at the very
least severely inconvenient and unpleasant. What this was later identified
as this mold. And let me just take a second
and say, mold and fung guy, they're amazing, they're amazing.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
We talked on stuff that I want you to know about,
how the way they communicate in networks, neural networks underground.
There's an incredible documentary called Fantastic Fungi that we've recommended
as well, A bunch with what's like a Paul Steinmetz
I think is his name? Is a mycologist. I think
is the term fascinating? Sorry, I'm excited.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
I'm into it too.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
I get to jump in here really quick. Paul Stammets,
which is a joke because in the now finished Star
Trek Discovery series where they travel over fungus, it's complicatem
I gonna expect to the name of the guy who
invents it is uh Stamos. That's the name of the
engineer who invents it.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
So there you go. Yeah, it's just not very cool.
Good I told.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
I told my friend Merret that one recently blew her mind.
She goes, what, that's a real guy. I'm yeah, he's
a live and live and well he's a he's the
expert on mushrooms.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yeah, he's about eighty five percent mold now by content.
But that's just you know, like Marikore, that's just something
that comes with the job of being illuminary. If we
go back to our our noble Scott Fleming, uh, we
find that he, you know, he's smart enough to clock
(12:51):
something unusual. And he's got two assistants, Frederick Ridley and
Stuart Krattick, and he says, all right, you guys, you're
real and comers here in this super messy hoarder lab.
I need you to take this mold juice, and I
need you to isolate whatever the heck it is that
(13:12):
is killing these pesky bacterium. And they said, okay, we're
going to do our best. Fleming and what they were
able to create something, but it was very unstable because
they were trying to purify something for the first time.
They were only able to make solutions of very crude material.
(13:34):
And that comes to us again from the American Chemical Society.
So Fleming has the honor in naming this mould juice,
and he calls it penicillin because he's naming it after
that fungus we mentioned earlier, Penicillium notatum.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Right, And he publishes a paper about this in nineteen
twenty nine. But it wasn't really sure yet he knew.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
What it could do. But I guess maybe I was
given him a little too much credit.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
He wasn't quite sure yet if it had any practical
use because it was a bit difficult to purify and
to stabilize and to like mass produce in a way
that would potentially have a huge impact on humanity.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, it's kind of like inventing a rocket that can
sometimes go to space but not all the time. Do
you really want to put people on the rocket just yet? No,
definitely not, Katie Perry.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
It was Howard Florey and his teamwork making the dream
work and Earnest Chain and their colleagues at the Sir
William Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford University, you know
slouches there who figured out how to turn penicillin from
this kind of you know, haphazard discovery. And again all
credit to Fleming. He did see there were potentially big
(14:44):
things ahead. He just I guess didn't stop short, right,
You didn't quite know what to.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Do with it.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
So he was able to turn this from a kind
of a was described at ACS dot org as a
laboratory curiosity into a life saving drug. In their efforts
to purify and find tune the chemistry of penicillin, which
is a process that began as far back as nineteen
thirty nine.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yeah, one hundred percent, and this is this is weird.
So as nineteen thirty nine is going through, it's nineteen
thirty nine US. The Second World War is ramping up,
and these wartime conditions on multiple levels are making research
(15:27):
increasingly difficult. So we all know the game. At this point,
you start experimenting with clinical trials. You want to do
some animal experiments, and they start trying to figure out
where they can grow enough mold filtrate they call it.
To conduct these trials and experiments. They need five hundred
(15:50):
leaders of this stuff. So they start growing everywhere they can.
We're talking bathtubs, bedpans, empty cans for grow. Oh way,
this super mold juice. And what they did is they
built this thing that allows you to you know, how
you like when you're cooking some stuff, you gotta skim
(16:13):
the froth off the top. They wanted the broth beneath
the surface of the mold. That's the mold juice. And
to do this they hire a group of people they
call the Penicillin Girls, and for two pounds a week,
these this team inoculates and sort of continually stays at
(16:34):
these containers making sure the fermentation is fermenting. Eventually, as
a result of this, that Oxford laboratory that was doing
other stuff, it is turned into the world's first on
purpose penicillin factory and then goes on to save millions
and millions of lives. Now this can sound kind of
(16:56):
sensitive now in a world of you know, superbug and
livestock problems with.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah, well, and issues and controversy surrounding vaccination as well,
of course.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yeah, that's the that's the point I was going to
say as well, Like here in twenty twenty five, the
idea might seem elementary or maybe even controversial to some
people if we're being honest, but we have to remember
a ton of folks were dying because of this. This
was a lifesaver and it was completely by accident.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
And if anybody out there is looking for an interesting
watch other than that documentary that we talked about, I'm
sure you're familiar with this. To Ben, there's a new
ish adult swim cartoon called what is It? Common Side
Effects that I believe one of the characters is sort
of like a fantasy version, kind of of like the
type of work that Paul Stemmets does, and just this
(17:44):
sort of like idea of mushrooms being a secret alien
thing that have huge potential ramifications, you know, for the
human race beyond, like in terms of like healing and transcending,
you know, this mortal coil and stuff. It's a fabulous
show by the same studio created the sci fi cartoon
Scavenger's Reign, which I know that you also were a
fan of.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yeah, I enjoyed that. I appreciate that. I appreciate that
mention there, because we can without spoiling it further than
what you said in the excellent setup, we can tell
you it's not what you're expecting for sure. And this
takes us to another amazing accidental invention common to so
(18:27):
many kitchens.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Beep, that wasn't an editorial beat as the sound of
the thing.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
Yeah, yes, the microwave street name, microwave, technical name microwave oven.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
You know it. It's used for like whenever you want
something to like whenever you're cooking or reheating tupperware and
you're like, man, I wish this tupperware was really hot
and the stuff inside it was still sort of cold.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Yeah, if only and and and if only I could
find a way for I get to get all the
microplastics out of it into into every bite, maximize microplastics
per bite.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yeah, the microwave oven. Simply put. You can find more
about this on history of microwave dot com, which is
a real sight. Uh knocked one down. The microwave Bombard's
food with microwaves that make dipole molecules of water and
other substances revolve and collide rapidly. This creates heat.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
It's like a it's a it's like a small Hadron collider,
your very own, you know.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
And we owe it all to a guy named Percy Spencer,
who was just uh, I love this story. We talked
about it in a previous series that we made years
and years ago. Stuff genius good stuff. We ah man,
I missed this show. It was weirh You were a
(19:58):
huge part of that. It was incredible. Oh well, well
credit where due are pow? Paul Decant did the majority
of the animations and I was just writing it. We had,
but you appeared in some of them.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
It was like a rotating cast of like how stuff works,
folks talking about in a very stylish, you know, package,
like various how stuff works the kind of things. But
it was definitely an evolution of in the YouTube days
of healthy on YouTube days of how stuff works.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Right right, Well, I appreciate that. If we go back
to Maine in eighteen ninety four, we're joining Percy Spencer
in Howland. Percy doesn't have Holland how oh Howland. Like
I'm joking, it's funny.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
It's like saying Holland with a with a weird Southern accent.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
It's like a werewolf version of Holland.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
How old it is in Maine. So this is all
very appropriate. They talk a little funny in Maine. I've
never seen Stephen King adaptation. The soil is it's so Howland.
The soil is so no.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
All eastuff so Spencer. Yeah, again, he doesn't have the
best upbringing. He is only eighteen months old when his
father passes away and his mom. Let's keep in mind,
this is, you know, the late eighteen hundreds. His mom
is going to have a very difficult time as a
single parent, so she brings the kid to his aunt
(21:20):
and uncle to take care of him.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Yeah, that's right, And this, sadly was just the next
kind of setup for tragedy for young Spencer. His uncle
passed away as well when he was only seven, so
he and his aunt kind of banded together in grief,
I guess, and started kind of traveling around New England.
And this maybe I'm making this sound more charming than
it was. I think it was a lot of it
(21:44):
had to do with survival. But she was what you'd
call an itinerant weaver, which that ain't good, right, Ben,
That's almost like being an indentured servant.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
It's not good. It's the benefit is not in your corner. Yeah,
it's like the cast the side notions of healthcare worker protections.
You're you're on a contract, make work basis. And he
is traveling with his aunt and good on her, by
the way, for not abandoning this poor child, and he's
(22:13):
working whatever odd jobs he can pick up as he ages.
He would later go on to recall that this taught
him a degree of self reliance and he was a
huge fan of what he called Yankee ingenuity, which he
said served him well in later life. And this is
(22:33):
coming to us with thanks to Emily Conover writing for
American Physicist Society. Yep, good stuff.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Another really great rundown of this incredible and happenstanceacle invention.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Happenstancechool is a great word. I like it. So look,
he becomes Spencer is a smart kid by any means,
And yeah, he's bootstrapped himself and paid attention and learned
the hard way that you got to kind of make
your own way. And he, you know, he paid attention.
Let's just say that Yankee ingenuity served him well. Indeed,
(23:08):
I would argue that a lot of his there's definitely
some trauma to his story, and a lot of his
brilliance is informed by tragedy. When the Titanic the unsinkable
Titanic spoiler.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
We got a good one coming up about that too,
in its own weird way.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
At another spoiler spoiler, the Titanic sinks, Abraham Lincoln doesn't
have a great time at the Fario So nineteen twelve.
Titanic sinks, and Spencer, with the rest of the American
public and the European public, is fascinated darkly by this story,
and he is especially inspired by the heroism of radio
(23:50):
operators on board that doomed vessel, and this gives him
a lifelong interest in a technology that we would now call.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Wire yeah, the Golden Age of wireless exactly. So pretty
soon we've got wartime research funding flowing, so you start
to see some advancements in this kind of technology. One
thing in particular the cavity magnetron, which is a high
frequency tube with built in resonant cavities that is designed
to produce a focused beam of microwave energy.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
This is a big deal in.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Radar technology and communications, long range communications, I believe with
the British.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Yes, yeah, this is also part of how part of
the origin story for the myth about eating carrots to
improve your eyesight and night vision because the British at
the time, we mentioned this before. The British at the
time did not want their enemies in Germany to know
that radar was a thing, so instead they were just saying,
(24:52):
oh yeah, our pilots, I eat a lot of carrots,
and everybody just went with it. History is so ridiculous, dude. Anyway, Yeah,
we should start a podcast. That's a good idea. I
hope we get bitten by some radioactive microphones. Spencer is
messing with energy beyond human can he figures out how
to mass produce these magnetrons. And because Rida helps win
(25:17):
the war, and because this guy figured out how to
mass produce these things, he receives the US Navy's highest
honor that can be bestowed upon a civilian, the Distinguished
Public Service Award, which it's I know, I know it's
a history of beige, but it's yeah, the musical, perhaps
(25:41):
the musical.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Check out our recent episode of Strange News and stuff
that I want you to know if you want to
catch the reference.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
So this idea is, you know, not his original invention,
but here's his accidental invention. Here's where things get beautifully wacky. Uh,
the idea idea of heating stuff with high frequency electromagnetic waves.
People have thought about that since nineteen thirty four, and
(26:09):
we know that Bell Labs even filed a patent to
that effect, just to that idea in nineteen thirty seven,
but no one took it as far as Spencer, because
we must assume no one in this rarefied Air liked
a little snack as much as him. He's a guy
who walks around with snacks.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
I have a PRESD snacker. Yeah, he would have multiple snacks.
It seems this is all This is a very snack
based discovery. He was hanging around near an active radar
situation and noticed that a candy bar in his pocket
had melted, and presuming this is just like a traditional
nineteen thirties like chocolate ration bar, right, and realized that
(26:50):
the microwaves might actually be a potential for cooking food.
So he takes it a step further to test this
theory or this hypothesis.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
He places popcorn kernel.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Near the magnetron, uh, and just as he suspected, they
start to pop pop pop.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
So next he decides to kind.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Of build out a bit of a prototype, right, like
a quick and dirty prototype.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
He takes a kettle and he cuts a hole in
the side of it, and then he puts an egg
in the kettle, and he uses the equipment that they
have on hand to direct this magnetron energy through that
hole that he's just cut. This is like the world's
first microwave. It works again kind of, but just like
(27:34):
the melty chocolate in the pocket, the egg explodes rhyme,
you drop the bat, the egg explodes, And this is
I love it egg on face moment very much so
literally literally, this is ridiculous history cinema because when the
egg pops, it splats in the.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
Face to these astonished irritated all over him literally like
the skeptical yeah, the doubting Thomas and the lab is like,
you're crazy.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Let me take a look at this. Yeah, it's incredible.
Man oh boy. Yep.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
And Whirlpool that's pretty funny. The company I believe that
makes like dryers and microwaves and stuff. Can we just
really quickly to give a shout out to thirty Rock
for its microwave content. I believe the character of Jack
doneghe who is like a CEO type of General Electric.
He's like the head of microwave oven Technology or that division,
(28:37):
and he's always cooking up no pun, attend to some
new you know, implementation of microwave technology.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
And it is advertising for it because in charge of boat.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Yeah, he's got Yes, it's really great. If you haven't
seen that holds up a joke a second.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
It's so dense.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
With Donald lover Root that doesn't surprise me. He's sharp
and all of the writing is sharp. Tinfa for the win.
But what is he How does he pivot from this
potential embarrassing, dejected moments into microwave greatness.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Before we get to that, and that's a great question.
Before we get to that, we do have to doff
our caps to one of the most amazing throwaway lines
in thirty Rock, which is it when Tracy Jordan's wife says,
my new single, my new single is dropping. Is dropping.
(29:31):
It's just the language of it. Anyway, Oh, it's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
There's also great he has some great conspiracy kind of lines.
You know, there's one where he's talking about how the
government's injecting black people's chicken nuggets with cancer or something
like that. Anyway, just worth your time. Started from scratch,
we highly recommend yes.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
And ed back to our guy, Percy Spencer, who would
have just been beautiful at thirty Rock.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yeah, a real beautiful boy. He's good looking man too.
I don't this in my mind he is. We'll cast
him beautiful, Okay, we'll cast energetic. So he is a
self taught engineer, right. It was that kind of time
in the world in the West, and he is able
to file the first patent for this thing called the
microwave oven in nineteen forty five, So hitting right there
(30:20):
as the US is beginning to emerge as the world's
pre eminent superpower.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
You know what I mean, Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
And this was also that like Age of the Atom
kind of era where this was like where you're living
in the future. They literally, I mean, I don't know
if this is in the America as well, but in
the UK, and I think they still do.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Actually they called it robot cooking.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
There was like this sense that the microwave was this
like futuristic device, you know, like meals in pill form
level you know.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Yeah, I love it. When those things still had the
new car smell. They would sometimes tell kids, this is
astronaut food. This is how the astronaut.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Remember the actual astronaut food we got or you got
it space camp. I wasn't invited, or actually I just
didn't have what it takes, but I'd buy it at
the planetarium, you know, that crunchy, delightful stuff.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Love it, man, Let's go get astronaut food together.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Maybe we can get your Besis to send this up
in a space capsule, and then we'll call ourselves astronauts and.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Then anything we eat will be astronaut food. All right, Okay,
I was going to pass until you nailed the logic
at the end of that one. That was well, so
all right, his patent is exactly what you might picture
in your kitchen. Here metal box that contains the microwaves.
There's an opening where this magnetron tube can poke through.
(31:40):
Spencer also has another innovation. He adds a door to
the metal box. This is the granddaddy the pattern familia.
So every microwave that you have ever seen, the defining
moment of Jack Donneghi's life.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Yes, yeah, truly, because really that's another thing that's great
about that character. He's like passionate about microwave. Yesh, he's
into it. He's all in, as you would say, ten
toes down on my toes.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yes, shout out to Jack ed, shout out to Jack
the character. We're still on the fence about the actor
who portrays him. I think that's fair to say. The
next one, maybe the last one for this episode, has
got to be one of the coolest named inventions ever.
X rays good X rays You remember did you ever
(32:33):
have X ray glasses? That's funny.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
You should mention that, Ben And maybe I'll save this
for later, but remember, yeah, X ray specs they would
call don't did they do anything?
Speaker 1 (32:43):
I remember now?
Speaker 2 (32:45):
They just had swirly lines on them in a little pinhole,
and was there some any kind of lens or something
in there?
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Were they? For a few there were lenses that that
played with light a bit, but it wouldn't let you,
you know, see beneath people's clothing or see through walls. Correct.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Yeah, And I was actually googling because there was the
thing I was I'm just gonna go ahead and drop it. Uh.
All this talk about these weird inventions, not weird inventions,
but like you know, circumstantial accidental inventions made me think
of a funny invention story that I was sharing with
Max before you joined Ben.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Did you know that whiteout.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Was invented by the mother of The Monkey's lead singer,
Jason Naismith. Yeah, it's incredible and like he he inherited
like fifty million dollars from her, and it is fascinating stuff,
Like she was a typist and invented this material that
then went on to be you know, hugely influential back
when you know, typing was still much much more of
(33:45):
a thing unrelated. But when I was googling that, the
inventor of the X ray specs came up, and he
also invented sea monkeys.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yeah, and a couple of other things too. Right, we're
talking about novel. He was a bit of a Yes,
he was a bit of a huckster.
Speaker 4 (34:01):
You know what.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
I think at their best, X ray Spex created some
sort of optical illusion. I think there was some sort
of refraction situation going on, right, I can't.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Play with the light, but I think that's right. I
wouldn't let you see under clothing, and they wouldn't let
you see through walls.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
And there's actually also a fantastic post punk UK post
punk band called x ray Spex, which I highly recommend.
How the ex x ray sp e X incredible front
person named Polystyrene, which is wow, is it polystyrene connected
to Tupperware? Wasn't that the name of the stuff that
(34:38):
was polyethylene? Polyethylene?
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Anyway? Either way, full circle, probably not their legal Christian
But we're talking about not the X ray Spex. We're
talking about actual X rays, right, which do give you
a If you have ever had the misfortune of having
a broken bone or something where a doc needs to
(35:01):
pop the hood on your body without actually opening the
hood just yet, then you will get an X ray
like the standard screening method for breast cancer, the mammogram
uses X rays, and nowadays we barely think about it.
But for a long long time, for the majority of
(35:21):
human history, if you had a broken bone, a tumor,
you swallowed something, you were getting cut, Yeah, people wouldn't
know unless they got in those guts. Terrified.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
I've never had surgery, y'all, and I am deathly terrified
of going under the knife. It's something I know, and
it really freaks me out. And maybe as I'm getting older,
I'm warming up to the idea. Didn't even used to
like getting blood drawn, which I'm about to have to
go do today, and I got over that, so we'll
see once the time comes for me to go under
the knife.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
But yeah, it was a.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Big deal that they could preemptively check something out before
you know, having to like open you up, like you said, Ben,
get in those guts.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
So our story of X rays begins with a guy
named Villehem road to Jen who was a professor of
physics over in Bavaria, and he is a serious dude.
He's not trying to make you know, wacky X race
FECs to see pandodize yeah, or hypnotized He discovers the
(36:18):
concept of X rays in eighteen ninety five, so it's
older than a lot of people might assume, and he
does it by accident. He's looking into something totally different.
He's like, uh, hey, can cathode raise pass through glass?
Au row? Yeah, I was definitely the question he was asking.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
And he was a super cool dude as well, would
have been right at home in the movie Point Break.
His cathode tube that he created to test this theory
he covered in heavy black paper, so he was kind
of surprised when an incandescent green light escaped and was
projected on this nearby fluorescent screen.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
And so us like just like spencer and just like flipping.
He says, I'm going to tick because he's in wealth
of accents, and uh, what's a way? And uh so
he decides to conduct a series of experiments and he says,
you know, whatever this mysterious light is, it passes through
(37:24):
so many other substances, but it always leaves shadows of
solid objects. And the reason he calls the X rays
is because he doesn't know what the rays are.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
He could have yi name because it sounds cool.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
He could have called M A Z rays or n
rays or I don't know. Yes, rays the the phenomenon
formerly known as rays.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Yes, exactly, because all bets are off. Now we thought
we knew all the rays, but now we got this
new one. Where do we even go from here?
Speaker 1 (37:59):
We're gonna really need to rethink our lives. And so, uh,
this is this is weird because, uh, we see how
casual dare I say, cavalier science could be at the time. Uh,
he puts an X ray over his wife's hand, right,
and uh and she her name's Annabetha Ludwig, and she
(38:23):
looks at the shadows cast by the bones and yeah,
and she says to it, I have seen my death,
which you know is understandable. Actually it's a big deal.
This was not a thing.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
This was the one had seen this, like to view
your own skeleton without you know, being dead, right, that
is that association was was serious.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
There's a skeleton in all of us, there really is.
And oh yeah, yeah, yeah, be upfront with him. Look,
this is amazing for all sorts of applications, especially in
the world of medicine. So within a year, doctors throughout
Europe and the US are using X rays to prevent
(39:10):
cutting people open they're finding gunshots, bone fractures, broken bones,
swallowed stuff, kidney stones.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
By the way, there's some hilarious memes of X rays
the thing that shouldn't be up people's butts.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Right exactly. Oh, doctor, sorry, I fell on that bad
and they're like, yeah, well you keep following on it.
Actual game is really good. So he gets the first
Nobel Prize in physics in nineteen oh one. Now we
do have to do one bit of historical diligence here.
(39:42):
This is before people realize over time. Yeah that too Yeah,
too much exposure to X rays can have deleterious effects
on human body.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
I was going to ask, we're talking cancer, We're talking
cell abnormality type stuff, right, Like, it can cause mutations
because this bombard it's sort of like radiation, which is
why when you go to get an X ray now,
they like put a lead vest over you and make
sure that you're not getting too much of it.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
And they tell you everything's fined right before. Yeah, they
hit up the cover. Also, there was a brief period
of time in US history where X rays were such
a novelty that shoe stores would have them, and so
you would put your foot in the X ray machine. Okay,
(40:29):
just like as a fun little thing.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
That's that that is so interesting because now we think
of like the cost of getting medical to perceived tests
even you know, and obviously X rays aren't the only
game in town anymore. We have like MRIs and things
that are much more you know, like she can show
three dimensional things.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
But yet the X rays still popping.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
You know that it's the most cost effective and efficient
way in certain situations like you're talking about with gunshot
wounds and bone fractures. You know, they still do an
X ray because an MRI is so damn expense.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
I love an X ray man.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
You know, remember those bone recordings, the X ray records
we talked to, really cool episode if you want to
do a deep dive back into ridiculous history. History but
well deserved Nobel prize, Yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Very much so definitely not the most controversial of Nobel prizes.
We could say with.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Something we're good with X rays even if you get
a little kids at least, Yeah, we could say with
some we could say, with some certitude, is not the
most controversial Nobel Prize.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
And we can say with some optimism that we very
much hope you enjoy today's show. Thank you so much
for joining us, folks speak thanks to our super producer
mister Max Williams, our research associate Jeff and uh oh
tuned in later this week We've got even more accidental inventions.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Mm hmm with a marvelous, marvelous toy, A wonderful, wonderful toy,
fun for a girl and a boy.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
You know, the one nice tease. Yeah, big thanks of course,
aj Bahamas, Jay Reluctant. Thanks to of course Jonathan Strickland
aka the Quistern.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Mm hm yeah, a bit of a byproduct of the
evil in the universe.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
If we're talking about a manifestation of our own car.
There you go, exactly. He's a mirror in the dark mirror,
dare we say big thanks to Alex Williams who composed
a slap and bop the rude Dudes a ridiculous crime
and Noel, big thanks to you. I think maybe we
could get into this in part too, but uh we
(42:32):
peek behind the curtain in our in our next installment
and tell people how ridiculous history itself is kind of
an accidental invention, Oh we must. Yeah, that's a very
good point. Ben, what'll see your next that books.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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