April 29, 2021 • 10 mins
On display today are two objects that we might take for granted in the modern world. But how they got there...well, that's the curious part.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, 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 right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
In eighteen eighteen, civil engineer Sir William Cubitt invented a
form of torture. It didn't drip water, nor did it
stretch its victims to uncomfortable lengths. It didn't even draw
a single drop of blood, but it did cause a
lot of sweat and pain. He designed the device for
use in prisons as a means to reform criminals. If
(00:57):
incarceration wasn't incentive enough. He believed his method would surely
deter prisoners from becoming repeat offenders, and before long, prisons
across Britain installed their own, and they called it the
Eternal staircase. Prisoners were forced to climb the thin spokes
of a paddle wheel repeatedly. It was effective too. In fact,
(01:17):
the British Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline published
a guideline and rules for the House of Corrections and Penitentiaries,
in which Cubit's staircase was listed as a way for
prisoners to earn an honest day's work. You see, the
repetitive motion of climbing the large paddle wheel created enough
power to crush grains for mills or pump water. Up
(01:38):
to twenty four convicts climbed the large spokes at one
time for up to eight hours a day. The Surrey
House of Correction, home to one of the first devices,
turned a profit grinding corn, and that made the prison
mill system popular when it came to punishment. The guards
claimed the device terrorized prisoners by sheer monotony. Those who
(01:59):
endured the experiences often said they were scarred for life,
and it wasn't an exaggeration. Irish novelist Oscar Wilde, who
had been incarcerated for two years, never recovered from the cruelty,
passing away three years after his release. Though less common
in America, one institution did follow in Britain's footsteps, New
(02:19):
York's Bellevue Hospital. There, the machine developed a notorious reputation,
not so much as a medieval torture device. It wasn't
an iron maiden or Iraq. After all, no patients reported
the repetition of a pointless act was pure torture. Finally,
in British courts deemed cubits invention inhumane and abolished its
(02:41):
use in prisons. The labor was deemed too hard and
the psychological trauma too great. Decades later, in ninety nine,
flatter form of the device was patented by man named
John Richards as a means to exercise dogs, but that
also turned out to be a failure. The apparatus res
urpist again for human use just after the end of
(03:02):
World War Two, when a researcher at the University of
Washington needed a way to test cardiac function. The doctor
added a motor to the nineteen thirty nine dog walker
and hooked up test subjects to an e k G.
Aside from testing the patient's heart, other medical uses soon emerged.
In the nineteen sixties, Army and Air Force physician Dr
(03:22):
Kenneth Cooper used it to measure oxygen consumption in pilots.
Both Cooper and the cardiologist were able to find hidden
heart conditions, although given the device's history, their work remained controversial.
The medical community said that stressing healthy people's hearts was
reckless that it endangered lives. Cooper disagreed, though, stating that
(03:44):
Americans had become far too sedentary. As a runner, he
believed people could benefit from regular, strenuous activity. In nineteen
sixty eight, he published a book on fitness, detailing the
benefits from yoga to aerobics, along with his favorite exer,
size running. Before long running became exceptionally popular, people everywhere
(04:06):
took up the activity. Winters, though, presented a problem, so
a mechanical engineer named Bill Straub came up with a solution.
The same cardiovascular devices the doctors had used. Too big
and bulky for homes, the apparatus slowly found its way
into gym's that previously focused exclusively on weights. Straub called
(04:26):
the device the PaceMaster and sold it for four hundred
dollars roughly d dollars today, and it's fair to say
that the device worked. When Strab passed away in two
thousand twelve, he was nineties six years old. Along the way,
dozens of companies had emerged as competition. Sales reached nearly
one billion in two thousand seventeen. Today, approximately fifty three
(04:48):
million of Straub's devices are inside people's homes. Others flocked
to Jim's paying to use what once was a torture device,
and admittedly we still have a love hate relationship with them.
We no longer call them the Eternal staircase or Pacemasters. No,
the modern day version is simply known as the treadmill.
(05:21):
Ask anyone to rattle off a list of inventors and
their inventions, and you'll get plenty of replies. Edison and
the lightbulb, bell and the telephone, and the right brothers
and airplanes, just to name a few. And while some
inventors like Tesla were considered ahead of their time, there
were others lost to time. Such was the case for
Cornelius Drebble in he married and the couple went on
(05:45):
to have six children. To support his growing family, he
held down several jobs as a painter and engraver, although
he also dabbled in alchemy. The family moved to England
in sixteen o four by the invitation of King James
the First. The new King sought out explorers, alchemists and
economists for his court, and it was there under the
(06:05):
King's employ that Drebble demonstrated his newest invention, A perpetual
motion device that told the time, the season, and the weather.
The device not only impressed the king, but also caught
the attention of the Holy Roman Emperor, escalating Drebbel's reputation
as one of the most influential inventors in Europe. He
was prolific, creating things like moving statues for the Renaissance court,
(06:30):
along with harpsichords that played on their own using solar energy.
And art wasn't the inventor's only love. With an educational
background in chemistry and alchemy, he soon set to work
on other technologies for farming. He built an incubator for
hatching chicken eggs, and he created a regulator for use
with the portable stove. And it was that work with
(06:51):
incubators and stoves that led him to create early versions
of thermometers and a functional air conditioning system. Oh and
during his work with regulator, he accidentally discovered a new
scarlet dye by dropping chemicals onto a tin window cell.
A bright red color became an instant hit. The exact
chemicals and mixture of it, though, were kept secrets. Although
(07:13):
Drebble himself did not make a lot of money from
the die, his two daughters and their husbands did, operating
a prosperous business making the formula. There were more inventions too.
He created fountains that delivered fresh water, the first camera obscura,
and a method for grinding lenses for telescopes and microscopes.
And he also created the first lantern magica or magic lantern,
(07:36):
a device much like a projector using concave glass and
a mirror to project light onto a wall. He created
the first compound microscope with two convex lenses, although a
Dutch spectacle maker claimed that Drebble stole the idea from him.
Later in six four, an Italian scientist loved the lenses
so much that he improved upon Drebble's work his name Galileo.
(08:00):
But Drebble's best work was the stuff he saved for
the King. He worked on secret weapons, mostly bombs and
other methods of detonation. His floating bomb was a failure,
but in sixteen twenty he was hired to work with
the King's navy and began work on another invention that
became one of his biggest obsessions ever. He designed a
boat made with a wooden frame and then covered it
(08:21):
with greased leather to make it more water proof. The
first rendition had a basic rudder and four oars. Excited
by the possibilities, Drebble built two more, each larger than
the one before it. The final version of the boat
carried sixteen people at a time. The King's Navy viewed
the ship as an oddity, though as it carried no
cargo other than men. There were no cannons either. The
(08:44):
main purpose, according to Drebble, was to allow the King's
men to sneak up on their enemies. The idea of
such a covert vessel was not an original idea. William
Bourne had drawn up similar designs in fifteen seventy eight,
but Drebble had improved a on them enough to make
an actual working prototype. He named the craft after himself,
(09:05):
the Drebble, and organized a demonstration for the King and
the Navy right there in London on the Thames. Having
quite a reputation for his inventions, thousands of excited Londoners
flanked the river banks to see what Drebble had in store.
Absence of large sails and masts, the Drebble maintained a
low profile. There was very little deck to speak of either,
(09:25):
and the boat swam more than it sailed as it
made its way from Westminster to Greenwich and back. The
entire trip took the ship three hours. On one leg
of the trip, it said that King James himself rode
as a passenger. But although the boat had set out
to do what its inventor intended, the King and the
Royal Navy remained less than impressed. It would take another
(09:46):
few centuries before any military saw the value in using
a drebble, but they finally did catch on today, though
we call them by a different name, submarines. I hope
you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
(10:08):
the show by visiting Curiosities podcast 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 com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,
Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, 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 right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
In eighteen eighteen, civil engineer Sir William Cubitt invented a
form of torture. It didn't drip water, nor did it
stretch its victims to uncomfortable lengths. It didn't even draw
a single drop of blood, but it did cause a
lot of sweat and pain. He designed the device for
use in prisons as a means to reform criminals. If
(00:57):
incarceration wasn't incentive enough. He believed his method would surely
deter prisoners from becoming repeat offenders, and before long, prisons
across Britain installed their own, and they called it the
Eternal staircase. Prisoners were forced to climb the thin spokes
of a paddle wheel repeatedly. It was effective too. In fact,
(01:17):
the British Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline published
a guideline and rules for the House of Corrections and Penitentiaries,
in which Cubit's staircase was listed as a way for
prisoners to earn an honest day's work. You see, the
repetitive motion of climbing the large paddle wheel created enough
power to crush grains for mills or pump water. Up
(01:38):
to twenty four convicts climbed the large spokes at one
time for up to eight hours a day. The Surrey
House of Correction, home to one of the first devices,
turned a profit grinding corn, and that made the prison
mill system popular when it came to punishment. The guards
claimed the device terrorized prisoners by sheer monotony. Those who
(01:59):
endured the experiences often said they were scarred for life,
and it wasn't an exaggeration. Irish novelist Oscar Wilde, who
had been incarcerated for two years, never recovered from the cruelty,
passing away three years after his release. Though less common
in America, one institution did follow in Britain's footsteps, New
(02:19):
York's Bellevue Hospital. There, the machine developed a notorious reputation,
not so much as a medieval torture device. It wasn't
an iron maiden or Iraq. After all, no patients reported
the repetition of a pointless act was pure torture. Finally,
in British courts deemed cubits invention inhumane and abolished its
(02:41):
use in prisons. The labor was deemed too hard and
the psychological trauma too great. Decades later, in ninety nine,
flatter form of the device was patented by man named
John Richards as a means to exercise dogs, but that
also turned out to be a failure. The apparatus res
urpist again for human use just after the end of
(03:02):
World War Two, when a researcher at the University of
Washington needed a way to test cardiac function. The doctor
added a motor to the nineteen thirty nine dog walker
and hooked up test subjects to an e k G.
Aside from testing the patient's heart, other medical uses soon emerged.
In the nineteen sixties, Army and Air Force physician Dr
(03:22):
Kenneth Cooper used it to measure oxygen consumption in pilots.
Both Cooper and the cardiologist were able to find hidden
heart conditions, although given the device's history, their work remained controversial.
The medical community said that stressing healthy people's hearts was
reckless that it endangered lives. Cooper disagreed, though, stating that
(03:44):
Americans had become far too sedentary. As a runner, he
believed people could benefit from regular, strenuous activity. In nineteen
sixty eight, he published a book on fitness, detailing the
benefits from yoga to aerobics, along with his favorite exer,
size running. Before long running became exceptionally popular, people everywhere
(04:06):
took up the activity. Winters, though, presented a problem, so
a mechanical engineer named Bill Straub came up with a solution.
The same cardiovascular devices the doctors had used. Too big
and bulky for homes, the apparatus slowly found its way
into gym's that previously focused exclusively on weights. Straub called
(04:26):
the device the PaceMaster and sold it for four hundred
dollars roughly d dollars today, and it's fair to say
that the device worked. When Strab passed away in two
thousand twelve, he was nineties six years old. Along the way,
dozens of companies had emerged as competition. Sales reached nearly
one billion in two thousand seventeen. Today, approximately fifty three
(04:48):
million of Straub's devices are inside people's homes. Others flocked
to Jim's paying to use what once was a torture device,
and admittedly we still have a love hate relationship with them.
We no longer call them the Eternal staircase or Pacemasters. No,
the modern day version is simply known as the treadmill.
(05:21):
Ask anyone to rattle off a list of inventors and
their inventions, and you'll get plenty of replies. Edison and
the lightbulb, bell and the telephone, and the right brothers
and airplanes, just to name a few. And while some
inventors like Tesla were considered ahead of their time, there
were others lost to time. Such was the case for
Cornelius Drebble in he married and the couple went on
(05:45):
to have six children. To support his growing family, he
held down several jobs as a painter and engraver, although
he also dabbled in alchemy. The family moved to England
in sixteen o four by the invitation of King James
the First. The new King sought out explorers, alchemists and
economists for his court, and it was there under the
(06:05):
King's employ that Drebble demonstrated his newest invention, A perpetual
motion device that told the time, the season, and the weather.
The device not only impressed the king, but also caught
the attention of the Holy Roman Emperor, escalating Drebbel's reputation
as one of the most influential inventors in Europe. He
was prolific, creating things like moving statues for the Renaissance court,
(06:30):
along with harpsichords that played on their own using solar energy.
And art wasn't the inventor's only love. With an educational
background in chemistry and alchemy, he soon set to work
on other technologies for farming. He built an incubator for
hatching chicken eggs, and he created a regulator for use
with the portable stove. And it was that work with
(06:51):
incubators and stoves that led him to create early versions
of thermometers and a functional air conditioning system. Oh and
during his work with regulator, he accidentally discovered a new
scarlet dye by dropping chemicals onto a tin window cell.
A bright red color became an instant hit. The exact
chemicals and mixture of it, though, were kept secrets. Although
(07:13):
Drebble himself did not make a lot of money from
the die, his two daughters and their husbands did, operating
a prosperous business making the formula. There were more inventions too.
He created fountains that delivered fresh water, the first camera obscura,
and a method for grinding lenses for telescopes and microscopes.
And he also created the first lantern magica or magic lantern,
(07:36):
a device much like a projector using concave glass and
a mirror to project light onto a wall. He created
the first compound microscope with two convex lenses, although a
Dutch spectacle maker claimed that Drebble stole the idea from him.
Later in six four, an Italian scientist loved the lenses
so much that he improved upon Drebble's work his name Galileo.
(08:00):
But Drebble's best work was the stuff he saved for
the King. He worked on secret weapons, mostly bombs and
other methods of detonation. His floating bomb was a failure,
but in sixteen twenty he was hired to work with
the King's navy and began work on another invention that
became one of his biggest obsessions ever. He designed a
boat made with a wooden frame and then covered it
(08:21):
with greased leather to make it more water proof. The
first rendition had a basic rudder and four oars. Excited
by the possibilities, Drebble built two more, each larger than
the one before it. The final version of the boat
carried sixteen people at a time. The King's Navy viewed
the ship as an oddity, though as it carried no
cargo other than men. There were no cannons either. The
(08:44):
main purpose, according to Drebble, was to allow the King's
men to sneak up on their enemies. The idea of
such a covert vessel was not an original idea. William
Bourne had drawn up similar designs in fifteen seventy eight,
but Drebble had improved a on them enough to make
an actual working prototype. He named the craft after himself,
(09:05):
the Drebble, and organized a demonstration for the King and
the Navy right there in London on the Thames. Having
quite a reputation for his inventions, thousands of excited Londoners
flanked the river banks to see what Drebble had in store.
Absence of large sails and masts, the Drebble maintained a
low profile. There was very little deck to speak of either,
(09:25):
and the boat swam more than it sailed as it
made its way from Westminster to Greenwich and back. The
entire trip took the ship three hours. On one leg
of the trip, it said that King James himself rode
as a passenger. But although the boat had set out
to do what its inventor intended, the King and the
Royal Navy remained less than impressed. It would take another
(09:46):
few centuries before any military saw the value in using
a drebble, but they finally did catch on today, though
we call them by a different name, submarines. I hope
you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
(10:08):
the show by visiting Curiosities podcast 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 com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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