October 8, 2020 • 11 mins
Some things take a while to get right, whether it's a device or a proper natural observation. The stories of that journey, though, can be curious indeed.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production
of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world
is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an
open book, all of these amazing tales are right there
on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to
(00:26):
the Cabinet of Curiosities. Jacques Gusto once said, the sea,
once it casts its spell, holds one in its net
of wonder forever. And it's true. The sea is at
(00:49):
once mysterious and graceful, like another planet below the waves.
And although we don't know yet if life exists beyond
the stars, there is a rich ecosystem of plants and
animals waiting for us beneath the water surface. Or of course,
sometimes the fish don't like to wait. Once in a while,
they come up to see us for themselves, like what
(01:10):
happened in the Baltic Sea in the mid four hundreds.
According to the story, a particular fish had been captured
and brought to the king of Poland, Sigismund, the first Sigismund,
was fascinated by the creature, and he decided to keep it.
The fish was described as being large larger than any
fish anyone had ever seen before, with scales all over
its mid section and flippers like a man's hands. It's
(01:33):
pointed head resembled a miter or the head dress donned
by bishops in the church, earning at the nickname the
Bishop Fish. A wild animal, however, had no interest in
living with the king. It longed to return to the
open water where it belonged. No one quite knows how
it happened, but a small group of Roman Catholic bishops
managed to meet with the fish. Any records that existed
(01:55):
regarding their interactions have been lost, or are maybe stored
deep within the in archives. However, even without the official
written account, one thing is clear. The Bishop fish did
not want to be there. In fact, it said as
much in a way only a fish could. It may
have been how it flapped its flipper hands or splashed
the men with water. Whatever it did, it inspired them
(02:17):
to go to the king and plead for the creatures
released back into the wild. Sigismund, though, was unsure. After all,
how could a fish, even one as strange as the
Bishop fish tell them it wanted to go home? But
after some time he agreed to set it free, The
bishops carried it to the sea and released it into
the water. Now, most animals don't think their captors when
(02:39):
they're released. They run or swim as fast as they
can away from the perceived danger, but the Bishop fish
didn't do that. Instead, it turned around and made the
sign of the Cross to the men before it disappeared
into the water. Almost a century later, another bishop fish
was caught in the waters off the coast of Germany.
It was offered food by the sailors who had captured
(03:00):
at it, but it wouldn't eat. They kept it for
three days, hoping to coax it into eating something. Sadly,
its protests ended up costing it its life, and it
died in captivity. It's captors then placed its body back
in the sea where they had found it. Around the
time as the second Bishop fish sighting, another bizarre fish
was caught, this time in the Sound between Denmark and Sweden.
(03:21):
The creature was depicted in a sixteenth century illustration as
being half fish half man. One academic at the time,
Guillonne rand Lay, described it as both a fish in
a monk'st habits and a merman, giving it the name
the Sea Monk or monk fish. Its face looked more
human than that of the Bishop fish too. His observations
were based on artist renderings of the creature that had
(03:44):
made its way from the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the
Fifth to France's Queen Marguerite of Navarre, who had in
turn gifted it to Randelais. A gift from such a
prominent member of the French royalty was to be taken
as confirmation that the drawing was authentic, and although Ronda
was incorrect about such details as where the sea monk
had been captured, the story behind his sketch only added
(04:06):
to its mythos. French naturalist Pierre Belan elaborated on the
history of the sea monk with ancient tales of other creatures,
such as sirens and Triton's. He wasn't so quick to
dismiss Rondelay's opinions as wild speculation, although many others were.
Since then, scientists and scholars have attempted to ground the
sea monk in reality by making educated guesses as to
(04:29):
the creature's true identity. One zoologist in the eighteen hundreds
proposed the idea that it had really been a giant squid,
and not some fish man hybrid. Today, marine biologists believe
what Rondelay and the sailors had seen was actually an
angel shark, also known as the monkfish. Whatever it was,
it's clear that the sea continues to present us with
(04:50):
more questions than answers, and it will always leave us
feeling just a little curious. A new invention doesn't just
(05:12):
appear out of nowhere. Years of research and development go
into the creation of a brand new product. In his
many attempts to find the perfect filament for his incandescent
light bulb, Thomas Edison famously said, I have not failed.
I've just found ten thousand ways that don't work. The
inventors of the typewriter might have said the same thing.
(05:32):
Today's modern computers can trace the roots all the way
back to the mid sixteenth century, when an Italian printmaker
named Francesco Rampazetto wanted an easier way to press letters
into paper. Gutenberg's printing press was a massive machine that
took time to set up and maintain. Rampazetto's invention would
have simplified the process. Unfortunately, there is no evidence he
(05:52):
ever built one. Over one years later, Henry Mill in
England carried the baton a little closer to the finished line.
He actually built his version of an automatic typing machine
and was issued a patent for it. Over the coming decades,
other inventors and engineers came up with their own designs
on the typewriter. Augustino Fantoni built one in eighteen o
two so his blind sister could be able to write,
(06:15):
and William Austin Bert's eighty nine concept was so cumbersome
and slow to use most people who tried it chose
to write by hand instead. It wasn't until eighteen sixty
eight when an early version of the typewriter as we
know it today made its debut. Its creation was the
work of Wisconsin residents Christopher Schulz, Frank Hall, Carlos Sklitten,
(06:35):
and Samuel Soul. Schulz had come to Milwaukee to take
a position as the editor of a local newspaper. His
job was soon made harder by a strike at the
printing press, so he started investigating a workaround. However, after
one failed prototype of an automatic type setting machine, Eat
pivoted to building a smaller, simpler device. Rather than making
(06:56):
newspaper printing easier, Jolls focused on books well. One specific
part of books, the page numbers. He wanted to make
a machine that would stamp a number on anything made
of paper, so he took his plans to Klein Stubor
Machine Shop, where he and Samuel Soul began working on it.
Once they had a working model, the men demonstrated it
(07:17):
to Carlos Glidden, another inventor at the shop, who was
in the midst of developing a mechanical plow. Glidden was
intrigued by the numbering machine and its possibilities. He asked
if it could do more than stamp numbers onto a page,
could it also make letters. Scholes set to work along
with Soul. Glidden provided them with a funding they needed,
earning a spot on the project as a third partner.
(07:39):
The men built the frame for their prototype out of wood.
The letters and numbers were arranged in two rows, resembling
a piano, with the first row of even numbers two
through eight and the letters A through M made of ivory.
The second row was made of ebony and included the
odd numbers three through nine along with the letters and
through Z. The numbers one and zero were left out
(07:59):
as they would easily be replaced by the letters I
and OH, respectively. The patents for shoals typewriting Machine, or
typewriter as he called it, were issued in June and
July of eight, and the device worked beautifully. Shoals, also
the city's comptroller, used it to draft an official contract
as part of his duties. It was the first document
(08:20):
ever typed on a typewriter. His contemporaries were more mixed
in their reviews, though. A Pennsylvania businessman named James Densmore
bought a quarter of the patent site unseen after receiving
a letter from Shoals that had been typed using the device.
After finally testing one for himself, though Densmore told them
that it was useless. If they wanted to sell it commercially,
(08:41):
they had to make it better. Stenographer James Clappin also
found flaws with the device. For one, it couldn't stand
up to the intense punishment doled out by his furious fingers.
He worked them so hard he destroyed several keys during
his tests. The opinions of people like Densmore and Clappain
were discouraged, but Shoals kept at it. In fact, their
(09:02):
observations had shed light on another flaw of the original design,
the key layout. While an alphabetical arrangement made sense at first,
fast typists found that the keys would jam when common
letter combinations were typed in rapid succession. So Shoals went
back to the drawing board, trying all kinds of different
letter pairings to see what worked best. In one layout,
(09:23):
the numbers were moved to a new top row with
the vowels directly beneath them. The remaining continents were split
across two more rows below them. For five years, Shoals
toiled over the arrangement of his letters. However, it was
with the help of James Densmore's brother Amos, when he
finally figured it out. Amos had done research into bigram frequency,
(09:44):
or how often two letters appeared together in words. By
the end of their collaboration, Shoals and Densmore had found
the perfect way to lay out the keys for letters, numbers,
and symbols. In eighteen seventy three, the manufacturing rights to
the Shoals and glit Entie brighter were sold to the
rifle company E. Remington and Sons. They tweaked the key
(10:04):
arrangement by repositioning just a few of the characters, resulting
in a wholy unique layout named for the first five
letters in the second row, Q W, E, R T.
And why we still use this layout today, nearly a
hundred and fifty years later. It can be seen on
everything from computer keyboards to tablets, right down to the
(10:25):
smartphones in our pockets, though today we call this un
alphabetic arrangement of letters by a far simpler name, the
cordy keyboard. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
(10:47):
dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey
in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
and television show, and you can learn all about it
over at the World of Lore dot Come and until
next time, stay curious. Yeah,
Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production
of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world
is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an
open book, all of these amazing tales are right there
on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to
(00:26):
the Cabinet of Curiosities. Jacques Gusto once said, the sea,
once it casts its spell, holds one in its net
of wonder forever. And it's true. The sea is at
(00:49):
once mysterious and graceful, like another planet below the waves.
And although we don't know yet if life exists beyond
the stars, there is a rich ecosystem of plants and
animals waiting for us beneath the water surface. Or of course,
sometimes the fish don't like to wait. Once in a while,
they come up to see us for themselves, like what
(01:10):
happened in the Baltic Sea in the mid four hundreds.
According to the story, a particular fish had been captured
and brought to the king of Poland, Sigismund, the first Sigismund,
was fascinated by the creature, and he decided to keep it.
The fish was described as being large larger than any
fish anyone had ever seen before, with scales all over
its mid section and flippers like a man's hands. It's
(01:33):
pointed head resembled a miter or the head dress donned
by bishops in the church, earning at the nickname the
Bishop Fish. A wild animal, however, had no interest in
living with the king. It longed to return to the
open water where it belonged. No one quite knows how
it happened, but a small group of Roman Catholic bishops
managed to meet with the fish. Any records that existed
(01:55):
regarding their interactions have been lost, or are maybe stored
deep within the in archives. However, even without the official
written account, one thing is clear. The Bishop fish did
not want to be there. In fact, it said as
much in a way only a fish could. It may
have been how it flapped its flipper hands or splashed
the men with water. Whatever it did, it inspired them
(02:17):
to go to the king and plead for the creatures
released back into the wild. Sigismund, though, was unsure. After all,
how could a fish, even one as strange as the
Bishop fish tell them it wanted to go home? But
after some time he agreed to set it free, The
bishops carried it to the sea and released it into
the water. Now, most animals don't think their captors when
(02:39):
they're released. They run or swim as fast as they
can away from the perceived danger, but the Bishop fish
didn't do that. Instead, it turned around and made the
sign of the Cross to the men before it disappeared
into the water. Almost a century later, another bishop fish
was caught in the waters off the coast of Germany.
It was offered food by the sailors who had captured
(03:00):
at it, but it wouldn't eat. They kept it for
three days, hoping to coax it into eating something. Sadly,
its protests ended up costing it its life, and it
died in captivity. It's captors then placed its body back
in the sea where they had found it. Around the
time as the second Bishop fish sighting, another bizarre fish
was caught, this time in the Sound between Denmark and Sweden.
(03:21):
The creature was depicted in a sixteenth century illustration as
being half fish half man. One academic at the time,
Guillonne rand Lay, described it as both a fish in
a monk'st habits and a merman, giving it the name
the Sea Monk or monk fish. Its face looked more
human than that of the Bishop fish too. His observations
were based on artist renderings of the creature that had
(03:44):
made its way from the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the
Fifth to France's Queen Marguerite of Navarre, who had in
turn gifted it to Randelais. A gift from such a
prominent member of the French royalty was to be taken
as confirmation that the drawing was authentic, and although Ronda
was incorrect about such details as where the sea monk
had been captured, the story behind his sketch only added
(04:06):
to its mythos. French naturalist Pierre Belan elaborated on the
history of the sea monk with ancient tales of other creatures,
such as sirens and Triton's. He wasn't so quick to
dismiss Rondelay's opinions as wild speculation, although many others were.
Since then, scientists and scholars have attempted to ground the
sea monk in reality by making educated guesses as to
(04:29):
the creature's true identity. One zoologist in the eighteen hundreds
proposed the idea that it had really been a giant squid,
and not some fish man hybrid. Today, marine biologists believe
what Rondelay and the sailors had seen was actually an
angel shark, also known as the monkfish. Whatever it was,
it's clear that the sea continues to present us with
(04:50):
more questions than answers, and it will always leave us
feeling just a little curious. A new invention doesn't just
(05:12):
appear out of nowhere. Years of research and development go
into the creation of a brand new product. In his
many attempts to find the perfect filament for his incandescent
light bulb, Thomas Edison famously said, I have not failed.
I've just found ten thousand ways that don't work. The
inventors of the typewriter might have said the same thing.
(05:32):
Today's modern computers can trace the roots all the way
back to the mid sixteenth century, when an Italian printmaker
named Francesco Rampazetto wanted an easier way to press letters
into paper. Gutenberg's printing press was a massive machine that
took time to set up and maintain. Rampazetto's invention would
have simplified the process. Unfortunately, there is no evidence he
(05:52):
ever built one. Over one years later, Henry Mill in
England carried the baton a little closer to the finished line.
He actually built his version of an automatic typing machine
and was issued a patent for it. Over the coming decades,
other inventors and engineers came up with their own designs
on the typewriter. Augustino Fantoni built one in eighteen o
two so his blind sister could be able to write,
(06:15):
and William Austin Bert's eighty nine concept was so cumbersome
and slow to use most people who tried it chose
to write by hand instead. It wasn't until eighteen sixty
eight when an early version of the typewriter as we
know it today made its debut. Its creation was the
work of Wisconsin residents Christopher Schulz, Frank Hall, Carlos Sklitten,
(06:35):
and Samuel Soul. Schulz had come to Milwaukee to take
a position as the editor of a local newspaper. His
job was soon made harder by a strike at the
printing press, so he started investigating a workaround. However, after
one failed prototype of an automatic type setting machine, Eat
pivoted to building a smaller, simpler device. Rather than making
(06:56):
newspaper printing easier, Jolls focused on books well. One specific
part of books, the page numbers. He wanted to make
a machine that would stamp a number on anything made
of paper, so he took his plans to Klein Stubor
Machine Shop, where he and Samuel Soul began working on it.
Once they had a working model, the men demonstrated it
(07:17):
to Carlos Glidden, another inventor at the shop, who was
in the midst of developing a mechanical plow. Glidden was
intrigued by the numbering machine and its possibilities. He asked
if it could do more than stamp numbers onto a page,
could it also make letters. Scholes set to work along
with Soul. Glidden provided them with a funding they needed,
earning a spot on the project as a third partner.
(07:39):
The men built the frame for their prototype out of wood.
The letters and numbers were arranged in two rows, resembling
a piano, with the first row of even numbers two
through eight and the letters A through M made of ivory.
The second row was made of ebony and included the
odd numbers three through nine along with the letters and
through Z. The numbers one and zero were left out
(07:59):
as they would easily be replaced by the letters I
and OH, respectively. The patents for shoals typewriting Machine, or
typewriter as he called it, were issued in June and
July of eight, and the device worked beautifully. Shoals, also
the city's comptroller, used it to draft an official contract
as part of his duties. It was the first document
(08:20):
ever typed on a typewriter. His contemporaries were more mixed
in their reviews, though. A Pennsylvania businessman named James Densmore
bought a quarter of the patent site unseen after receiving
a letter from Shoals that had been typed using the device.
After finally testing one for himself, though Densmore told them
that it was useless. If they wanted to sell it commercially,
(08:41):
they had to make it better. Stenographer James Clappin also
found flaws with the device. For one, it couldn't stand
up to the intense punishment doled out by his furious fingers.
He worked them so hard he destroyed several keys during
his tests. The opinions of people like Densmore and Clappain
were discouraged, but Shoals kept at it. In fact, their
(09:02):
observations had shed light on another flaw of the original design,
the key layout. While an alphabetical arrangement made sense at first,
fast typists found that the keys would jam when common
letter combinations were typed in rapid succession. So Shoals went
back to the drawing board, trying all kinds of different
letter pairings to see what worked best. In one layout,
(09:23):
the numbers were moved to a new top row with
the vowels directly beneath them. The remaining continents were split
across two more rows below them. For five years, Shoals
toiled over the arrangement of his letters. However, it was
with the help of James Densmore's brother Amos, when he
finally figured it out. Amos had done research into bigram frequency,
(09:44):
or how often two letters appeared together in words. By
the end of their collaboration, Shoals and Densmore had found
the perfect way to lay out the keys for letters, numbers,
and symbols. In eighteen seventy three, the manufacturing rights to
the Shoals and glit Entie brighter were sold to the
rifle company E. Remington and Sons. They tweaked the key
(10:04):
arrangement by repositioning just a few of the characters, resulting
in a wholy unique layout named for the first five
letters in the second row, Q W, E, R T.
And why we still use this layout today, nearly a
hundred and fifty years later. It can be seen on
everything from computer keyboards to tablets, right down to the
(10:25):
smartphones in our pockets, though today we call this un
alphabetic arrangement of letters by a far simpler name, the
cordy keyboard. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
(10:47):
dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey
in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
and television show, and you can learn all about it
over at the World of Lore dot Come and until
next time, stay curious. Yeah,
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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