Mechanical Mind

Today's tour features some amazing inventions that might have been a heavy lift, but we've been writing about them ever since.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcomed Aaron Menk's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio
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 the Cabinet of Curiosities. When

(00:36):
an athlete injures a muscle or attendant, they'll go through
a variety of treatments to mend the tissue. They might
soak their body in an ice bath to reduce inflammation,
or do certain stretches to loosen things up again. But
one man is actually responsible for many of the machines
and techniques used today, and he brought them all the
way from Sweden. His name was Gustaf Xander. Born in

(00:58):
the thirties in Stockholm. He was kind of obsessed with
fitness from a young age, focusing much of his study
on Swedish medical gymnastics otherwise known as the Swedish movement Cure.
Medical gymnastics were first introduced by Paer heinrich Ling, a
poet and theology student who was tired of seeing Sweden
taking a backseat to other stronger countries. So he came

(01:20):
up with training regiments centered around physical education, fencing, massage,
and dance that were eventually adopted by these Swedish government
and Xander mastered Ling's exercises, but he lamented the need
for other people to provide resistance so that the exerciser
could build muscle. I mean, what if the assistant couldn't
lift the weight or they just didn't feel up to

(01:41):
helping out that day. So he came up with an alternative,
one that removed assistance from the equation. Xander got to
work on a series of machines which he built and
honed through the fifties. The utilized levers and weights to
provide the needed resistance, much like today's exercise and therapy equipment.
They resuled something more akin to medieval torture devices than

(02:03):
workout gear, but each machine was designed to massage or
sculpt a particular muscle group within the body. They would provide,
according to Xander's own words, increased well being and capacity
for work. He earned his medical license in the sixties
and began testing his machines on the students of a
local school. The results were encouraging, with children demonstrating increased strength,

(02:26):
then improved overall health. After using the devices for some time,
Xander then opened his own school, the Medico Mechanical Institute
of Stockholm, to give the public a taste of what
mechanotherapy machines could do. They were built of wood and metal,
some with cables and pulleys, while others required the user
to be strapped in and pulled in a specific way.

(02:48):
One device bore a striking resemblance to the lateral pull
down machine used in today's modern gyms. The user would
sit on a chair at an angle and pulled down
on a rod connected to a cable. The resistance would
agitate the muscles in their arms, and yet another contraption
pummeled a person in the mid section with padded disks
to stimulate their abdominals. Of course, with great success comes

(03:10):
great profits. After winning awards for his designs in the
seventies and opening more institutes, Xander eventually pivoted to private
health spas for the wealthy. He also got his devices
into private elite institutions, and the upper class certainly approved.
Thanks to these miracle machines, it didn't matter if someone
was actually fit. All that mattered was how they looked

(03:31):
all the gains with very little effort. There were medico
mechanical institutes in one hundred and forty six countries by
O six and four years later. America had also gotten
wind of his workout machines. But the thing was, these
wooden appliances wouldn't fit in with modern gym equipment, which
was made of steel, iron and rubber. But Xander didn't

(03:52):
get a chance to improve his devices and the techniques
that he pioneered. He didn't live to see their widespread
adoption either, because he died in nineteen twenty. Almost all
of his machines were invented in the eighteen hundreds. He
didn't know it at the time, but his mechanotherapy ideas
would eventually be adopted by physical therapists and doctors all

(04:12):
over the world. They employed the use of machines to
help repair and rehabilitate injured tissue in their patients. Today,
mechanotherapy is used to treat everyone from injured athletes to
people recovering from car accidents and major falls. And Jim
Rats are quite familiar with his devices too, even if
they don't realize it. The fitness world just wasn't ready

(04:34):
for what Gustav Xander had built, and sadly he fell
into obscurity following his death about fifty years later, though
someone else would unknowingly pick up the torch. His name
was Arthur Jones, the founder of exercise brand Nautilus. Jones
also invented numerous devices and held the variety of patents
from machines that targeted specific muscles in the body. He

(04:57):
just didn't know that he was retreading ground that Zander
had already worked on. When asked about Xander's contributions, Jones
was quoted as saying, if I had known about and
understood Xander's work, it would have saved me a lot
of time and a rather large fortune in money. Because
the man was a genius. His only problem was that
he lived about a century ahead of his time. So

(05:19):
the next time you visit the gym, give thanks to
the Swede who brought fitness to the masses, and remember
to wipe down the machine for the next person who
uses it. Look around and you'll likely find an everyday

(05:43):
object that you don't really think about. It might be
your keys, or a pair of headphones, or even your
computer itself. These things are always there because they've always
been there. John Loud didn't have that luxury. What he
needed hadn't been invented yet, but he didn't worry about
it too much. He just made it himself. John Jacob
Loud was born in November of eighteen forty four in Weymouth, Massachusetts,

(06:07):
about sixteen miles south of Boston. He graduated from Harvard
College in eighteen sixty six with a degree in law,
gaining an appointment to the Suffolk County Bar six years later,
but ultimately the legal profession wasn't for him. He instead
gave it up to become an assistant cashier at the
bank where his father worked, and then took over his
dad's cashier position after his death in eighteen seventy four.

(06:30):
It was a job that he held for the next
twenty one years. But Loud wasn't just a cashier, at
least in his heart. He had a keen interest in
his heritage and became a genealogist with several different genealogical
and historical societies throughout New England. He was even able
to trace his lineage back to the Mayflower. On top
of that, he also conducted his local choir was active

(06:52):
within his church and he wrote poetry in his spare time,
what little he seemed to have. And he'd gotten married
in eighteen seventy two to Emily Key Vickery, with whom
he had eight children. Above all else, John J. Loud
was an inventor. You see. Aside from all the other
jobs and hobbies that he had, Loud also tanned leather.
It was a passion for him. But he had run

(07:12):
into a problem. The writing instruments of the time just
didn't work well on leather. Fountain pen ink didn't dry
quick enough and it ran everywhere. Meanwhile, his pencil couldn't
make a dark enough line for him to see. Loud
knew that there had to be a better way, and so,
in true inventor fashion, he built one. As Loud himself
put it, my invention consists of an improved reservoir or

(07:35):
fountain pen, especially useful, among other purposes, for marking on
rough surfaces such as wood, course, wrapping, paper, and other
articles where an ordinary pen could not be used. It
was a slender metal tube with a push button at
the top, a tightly coiled spring inside, and most importantly,
a small steel bearing at the bottom. As the tube

(07:57):
was dragged across the surface. The bearing would pick up
ink from within the reservoir and roll it on, leaving
behind a darkened line that dried instantaneously. He was issued
a patent for his invention on October thirtieth, eighteen eighty eight,
but quickly found out that his creation had limited purpose
outside of marking rough or coarse surfaces. With no way

(08:17):
to market his new product, he abandoned it and the
patent eventually expired, But it wasn't done for good. Others
tried to patent similar inventions with the intent of making
something that worked on all surfaces equally well, whether they
were made of paper or fabric, but one man actually succeeded.
His name was Laslow Bureau from Hungary in the early

(08:38):
twentieth century. Bureau was a newspaper editor who, just like Loud,
had grown tired of having to clean up the messes
left behind by his fountain pens. The pages he marked
up were often smudged because of the wet ink that
they used, but one day he noticed that his newspaper
had been printed with a fast drying ink that did
not smudge. He thought that ink would work well in
a pen, but not a fountain pen, so he asked

(09:00):
his brother at Georg for help. Georg was a dentist
and a chemist who knew how to mix the ink
into something more viscous that wouldn't smear and take forever
to dry. With a suitable vessel already created by others
before him, Birou was able to devise a new kind
of pen, one that used a tiny ball at the
end of a tube to collect the ink from a
cartridge inside, and as it rolled, it would deposit a

(09:22):
line onto the paper that was already dry. Birerou demonstrated
his first ball point pen in nineteen thirty one at
the Budapesh International Fair. Over the next seven years he
worked on it until he finally had it patented in
Paris in nineteen thirty eight, and that patent was bought
by Marcel Bick, the co founder of the Bick Company,
in nineteen forty five. Today Americans refer to most disposable

(09:45):
ballpoint pens as bis after the company that produces most
of them, but over in England they're called Biros, named
for the man who brought them to the mainstream. Sadly
for John J. Loud, his name isn't often said at all.
Even though he deserves just as much it as those
who came after him for the ballpoint pen. Although I'm
glad his name isn't attached to the pen today, I'm

(10:07):
not sure anyone would want to write with aloud. 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 dot com. The show
was created by me Aaron Mank in partnership with how

(10:30):
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 Lure dot com. And until next time, stay curious.