April 27, 2023 • 9 mins
Not everything ends up the way it started out, and that includes the lives we live as humans, as well as the inventions we make along the way.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm 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.
(00:36):
Some of us don't know what we want to be
when we grow up until well we're grown up. Many
of us start out wanting to be a lawyer, or
a doctor, or a firefighter, until we realized we're better
suited as mechanics or sales reps or acrobats. Melvin Kaminsky
knew what he wanted to be. He just took a
little longer getting there than most. But he had a
good reason. He had a war to fight. Kaminski was
(00:58):
born in nineteen twenty six in a Brooklyn tenement. He
literally popped out on the kitchen table. He didn't get
to know his father, though, who died at the young
age of thirty four when Melvin was only two. Instead,
he was raised by his mother, three older brothers, and
his uncle Joe. Joe was a cab driver who would
often shuttle the doormen at Broadway theaters back to their
homes in Brooklyn in exchange for free tickets to the shows.
(01:21):
Melvin saw a performance of Anything Goes starring ethel Merman,
and he was hooked. He knew he didn't want to
work in the garment industry like other young Jewish men
at the time. He wanted something more glamorous, so he
started performing for guests at the Belt Hotel, while he
was also learning to play drums from fellow Brooklyn night
Buddy Rich. But before he had a chance to really
(01:41):
break into show business, all hell broke loose. World War
Two to be exact, Kaminski was invited by an army
recruiter to take an aptitude test and scored high enough
to be sent to the Virginia Military Institute, where he
was educated in specific fields, namely electrical engineering, saber fighting,
and horse back riding. These would come in handy weeks
(02:02):
later after he turned eighteen and was enlisted to serve
in the army. He moved around from Fort Dixon, New Jersey,
to Fort Sill in Oklahoma for radio operator training. Then
in nineteen forty four, Kaminsky made it to France and
Belgium as a forward artillery observer in the seventy eighth
Infantry Division, but nineteen forty five saw him take on
(02:22):
perhaps the most dangerous job of his military career after
being transferred to the eleven oh fourth Engineer Combat Battalion.
He was tasked with scouting ahead of the tanks, searching
for and clearing land mines along the terrain. He even
participated in the Battle of the Bulge, and more than
once he was forced to fight for his life against
Nazi troops as infantry, but the anti Semitism he faced
(02:44):
wasn't just from the Germans. Being a Jewish kid from
Brooklyn made him a punching bag for even his own
fellow soldiers. One time, in particular, he found himself on
the receiving end of some nasty insults from one of
his comrades, which prompted an angry Kaminsky to remove the
soldier's helmet and bash him over the head with the
mess kit. That little stunt earned him a little time
in the stockade, but he never forgot his roots and entertainment.
(03:06):
At the end of the war, Kaminski joined these Special Services,
where he became a corporal and performed for the troops
at Fort Dix. After his service had ended, I came
time to find a real job. His mother had lined
up a position for him at the Brooklyn Navy Yard,
but Kaminsky couldn't imagine working there for the rest of
his life. Rather than work on ships, he hopped into
a taxi and took it to the Catskills. He cut
(03:28):
his teeth as a drummer and a pianist in various
hotels and nightclubs until one night, a comedian scheduled to
perform at one of the clubs called in Sick. That
was Kaminsky's chance to really shine. He took to the
stage and made the audience laugh with impressions of famous celebrities.
He found his calling as a comedian. Come to nineteen fifties,
he left the Borsch Belt for television, where he got
(03:50):
a job writing for a popular variety show run by
an old friend from his youth, Sid Caesar. It was
called Your Show of Shows, and Kaminsky worked right alongside
writers who would go on to great acclaim, including playwright
Neil Simon and lifelong friend Carl Reiner. But eventually the
world would come to know him as much more than
a television writer. He'd create iconic characters like the two
(04:12):
thousand year Old Man, as well as some of the
funniest and most enduring films and TV shows of the
last sixty years, including Get Smart, The Producers, Blazing Saddles,
Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs, and so many more. He was born
Melvin James Kaminski, but when he was a teenager he
adopted a much catchier stage name, which he'd borrowed from
(04:33):
his mother's maiden name of Brookman. Who is he? He's
comedy legend mel Brooks. A good invention shouldn't just solve
(04:55):
a problem, It should improve upon the previous solution. When
Henry Ford was asked if customers had to say in
the development of the Model T, he famously said, if
I had asked people what they wanted, they would have
said faster horses. The goal of a new invention is
to make life easier and reduce friction in completing a task.
Edison accomplished this numerous times with items like his incandescent
(05:16):
light bulb, phonograph, and mimeograph. He built his career on
quality of life improvements, unless that life happened to belong
to an elephant, of course, but one invention that never
really got off the ground involved in upgrade to the
common pen. It was part of a complete system meant
to make duplicating documents and drawings much easier. Edison developed
the idea over the summer of eighteen seventy five. The
(05:39):
pen really wasn't a pen filled with ink. It was
a pen shaped shaft with a needle at the tip.
As the user moved it across a piece of paper,
a small motor at the top would drive the needle
back and forth like a piston, poking holes to create
a stencil. Once the stencil was completed, it would be
placed in a press and a roller would push ink
through the holes a copy underneath. Now, if you think
(06:02):
about it, the electric pen was the precursor to the
photocopiers that we used today. Edison even marketed it mainly
to law firms, insurance companies, and other offices that required
documentation drafted in duplicates and triplicates. He called it the
electro Autographic Press. After two years of making and selling
them himself, Edison contracted Western Electric Manufacturing Company to begin
(06:24):
producing them going forward. By eighteen seventy seven, he expected
Western Electric to make at least two hundred electric pens
each month. Edison would then earn a royalty on each
pen sold to broaden his audience, though he even pitched
his electric pens toward average buyers with promises of all
kinds of flyers, blueprints, contracts, and personal correspondence that would
(06:45):
be so much easier to produce with his invention rather
than using the current analog tools. Of course, Unfortunately, the
device didn't find much footing. Office clerks found it cumbersome
and unwieldy, while the wet cell battery that power it
required too much maintenance. Five years after its debut, competing
mechanical pens started to hit the market, ones that didn't
(07:07):
need batteries to operate. They quickly overtook Edison's invention and
relegated it to nothing more than a historical footnotes until
Samuel O'Reilly got his hands on it. O'Reilly was from Waterbury, Connecticut's,
and had moved to New York sometime in the eighteen eighties,
where he had started working as an illustrator of sorts.
He took one of Edison's automatic pens and realized that
(07:28):
it could be modified for his own purposes, and so
over the course of fifteen years, O'Reilly tweaked and updated
Edison's original design, developing a new kind of tool that
incorporated an ink reservoir directly into the pen. Now the
needle wouldn't just punch a hole, it would push the
ink into it as well. He earned a new patent
for his contraption as well in eighteen ninety one. This
(07:51):
made O'Reilly's job much easier on his hands and on
his clients. What used to take him hours now only
took minutes, with the ability to perforate his canvas of
choice fifty times a second. Though he didn't work with
paper or wood or linen, he exclusively illustrated on skin, forearms, legs, chests, necks,
(08:13):
anything the client wanted inc You see, Samuel O'Reilly was
a tattoo artist, and his brand new invention, the tattoo
machine or tattoo gun, was based on Edison's electric pen,
and it not only turned O'Reilly into an overnight success,
but it changed the future of the tattoo industry. In fact,
the tattoo guns used today aren't too far removed from
(08:34):
what Samuel invented back in eighteen ninety one. Thomas Edison
didn't create his motorized pen with the intention of revolutionizing
how tattoos are made, but, to paraphrase a old saying,
one person's trash is another person's tattoo gun. I hope
you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(08:57):
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 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 Worldoflore
(09:18):
dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm 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.
(00:36):
Some of us don't know what we want to be
when we grow up until well we're grown up. Many
of us start out wanting to be a lawyer, or
a doctor, or a firefighter, until we realized we're better
suited as mechanics or sales reps or acrobats. Melvin Kaminsky
knew what he wanted to be. He just took a
little longer getting there than most. But he had a
good reason. He had a war to fight. Kaminski was
(00:58):
born in nineteen twenty six in a Brooklyn tenement. He
literally popped out on the kitchen table. He didn't get
to know his father, though, who died at the young
age of thirty four when Melvin was only two. Instead,
he was raised by his mother, three older brothers, and
his uncle Joe. Joe was a cab driver who would
often shuttle the doormen at Broadway theaters back to their
homes in Brooklyn in exchange for free tickets to the shows.
(01:21):
Melvin saw a performance of Anything Goes starring ethel Merman,
and he was hooked. He knew he didn't want to
work in the garment industry like other young Jewish men
at the time. He wanted something more glamorous, so he
started performing for guests at the Belt Hotel, while he
was also learning to play drums from fellow Brooklyn night
Buddy Rich. But before he had a chance to really
(01:41):
break into show business, all hell broke loose. World War
Two to be exact, Kaminski was invited by an army
recruiter to take an aptitude test and scored high enough
to be sent to the Virginia Military Institute, where he
was educated in specific fields, namely electrical engineering, saber fighting,
and horse back riding. These would come in handy weeks
(02:02):
later after he turned eighteen and was enlisted to serve
in the army. He moved around from Fort Dixon, New Jersey,
to Fort Sill in Oklahoma for radio operator training. Then
in nineteen forty four, Kaminsky made it to France and
Belgium as a forward artillery observer in the seventy eighth
Infantry Division, but nineteen forty five saw him take on
(02:22):
perhaps the most dangerous job of his military career after
being transferred to the eleven oh fourth Engineer Combat Battalion.
He was tasked with scouting ahead of the tanks, searching
for and clearing land mines along the terrain. He even
participated in the Battle of the Bulge, and more than
once he was forced to fight for his life against
Nazi troops as infantry, but the anti Semitism he faced
(02:44):
wasn't just from the Germans. Being a Jewish kid from
Brooklyn made him a punching bag for even his own
fellow soldiers. One time, in particular, he found himself on
the receiving end of some nasty insults from one of
his comrades, which prompted an angry Kaminsky to remove the
soldier's helmet and bash him over the head with the
mess kit. That little stunt earned him a little time
in the stockade, but he never forgot his roots and entertainment.
(03:06):
At the end of the war, Kaminski joined these Special Services,
where he became a corporal and performed for the troops
at Fort Dix. After his service had ended, I came
time to find a real job. His mother had lined
up a position for him at the Brooklyn Navy Yard,
but Kaminsky couldn't imagine working there for the rest of
his life. Rather than work on ships, he hopped into
a taxi and took it to the Catskills. He cut
(03:28):
his teeth as a drummer and a pianist in various
hotels and nightclubs until one night, a comedian scheduled to
perform at one of the clubs called in Sick. That
was Kaminsky's chance to really shine. He took to the
stage and made the audience laugh with impressions of famous celebrities.
He found his calling as a comedian. Come to nineteen fifties,
he left the Borsch Belt for television, where he got
(03:50):
a job writing for a popular variety show run by
an old friend from his youth, Sid Caesar. It was
called Your Show of Shows, and Kaminsky worked right alongside
writers who would go on to great acclaim, including playwright
Neil Simon and lifelong friend Carl Reiner. But eventually the
world would come to know him as much more than
a television writer. He'd create iconic characters like the two
(04:12):
thousand year Old Man, as well as some of the
funniest and most enduring films and TV shows of the
last sixty years, including Get Smart, The Producers, Blazing Saddles,
Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs, and so many more. He was born
Melvin James Kaminski, but when he was a teenager he
adopted a much catchier stage name, which he'd borrowed from
(04:33):
his mother's maiden name of Brookman. Who is he? He's
comedy legend mel Brooks. A good invention shouldn't just solve
(04:55):
a problem, It should improve upon the previous solution. When
Henry Ford was asked if customers had to say in
the development of the Model T, he famously said, if
I had asked people what they wanted, they would have
said faster horses. The goal of a new invention is
to make life easier and reduce friction in completing a task.
Edison accomplished this numerous times with items like his incandescent
(05:16):
light bulb, phonograph, and mimeograph. He built his career on
quality of life improvements, unless that life happened to belong
to an elephant, of course, but one invention that never
really got off the ground involved in upgrade to the
common pen. It was part of a complete system meant
to make duplicating documents and drawings much easier. Edison developed
the idea over the summer of eighteen seventy five. The
(05:39):
pen really wasn't a pen filled with ink. It was
a pen shaped shaft with a needle at the tip.
As the user moved it across a piece of paper,
a small motor at the top would drive the needle
back and forth like a piston, poking holes to create
a stencil. Once the stencil was completed, it would be
placed in a press and a roller would push ink
through the holes a copy underneath. Now, if you think
(06:02):
about it, the electric pen was the precursor to the
photocopiers that we used today. Edison even marketed it mainly
to law firms, insurance companies, and other offices that required
documentation drafted in duplicates and triplicates. He called it the
electro Autographic Press. After two years of making and selling
them himself, Edison contracted Western Electric Manufacturing Company to begin
(06:24):
producing them going forward. By eighteen seventy seven, he expected
Western Electric to make at least two hundred electric pens
each month. Edison would then earn a royalty on each
pen sold to broaden his audience, though he even pitched
his electric pens toward average buyers with promises of all
kinds of flyers, blueprints, contracts, and personal correspondence that would
(06:45):
be so much easier to produce with his invention rather
than using the current analog tools. Of course, Unfortunately, the
device didn't find much footing. Office clerks found it cumbersome
and unwieldy, while the wet cell battery that power it
required too much maintenance. Five years after its debut, competing
mechanical pens started to hit the market, ones that didn't
(07:07):
need batteries to operate. They quickly overtook Edison's invention and
relegated it to nothing more than a historical footnotes until
Samuel O'Reilly got his hands on it. O'Reilly was from Waterbury, Connecticut's,
and had moved to New York sometime in the eighteen eighties,
where he had started working as an illustrator of sorts.
He took one of Edison's automatic pens and realized that
(07:28):
it could be modified for his own purposes, and so
over the course of fifteen years, O'Reilly tweaked and updated
Edison's original design, developing a new kind of tool that
incorporated an ink reservoir directly into the pen. Now the
needle wouldn't just punch a hole, it would push the
ink into it as well. He earned a new patent
for his contraption as well in eighteen ninety one. This
(07:51):
made O'Reilly's job much easier on his hands and on
his clients. What used to take him hours now only
took minutes, with the ability to perforate his canvas of
choice fifty times a second. Though he didn't work with
paper or wood or linen, he exclusively illustrated on skin, forearms, legs, chests, necks,
(08:13):
anything the client wanted inc You see, Samuel O'Reilly was
a tattoo artist, and his brand new invention, the tattoo
machine or tattoo gun, was based on Edison's electric pen,
and it not only turned O'Reilly into an overnight success,
but it changed the future of the tattoo industry. In fact,
the tattoo guns used today aren't too far removed from
(08:34):
what Samuel invented back in eighteen ninety one. Thomas Edison
didn't create his motorized pen with the intention of revolutionizing
how tattoos are made, but, to paraphrase a old saying,
one person's trash is another person's tattoo gun. I hope
you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(08:57):
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 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 Worldoflore
(09:18):
dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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