Curious Minds

There's no telling what people are capable of when they put their minds to it.

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Episode Transcript

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):
Inventors have come to occupy a comical place in our
cultural imagination. We picture wacky people trying to get rich
quick off of a niche device that barely works. The
movie Gremlins probably had a lot to do with this.
Who could forget the scene where the mom uses her
husband's inventions to dispatch the monsters in increasingly grotesque ways.

(00:56):
Pop culture touchstones like this might cause us to forget
that its originally occupied a very noble place in society,
and without one inventor in particular, the modern world might
have never come to be. Henry was the epitome of
the wacky inventor archetype. Born in eighteen thirteen in England,
he eventually grew into a man who was endlessly curious

(01:18):
and self assured. Anytime he encountered some modern invention or tool,
he immediately wanted to take it apart and figure out
how he could make it better. Case in points, when
he purchased an expensive gold picture frame for his sister,
he immediately wondered how he could make it cheaper. He
invented a bronze paint that made wooden frames look just
as good at a fraction of the price. The invention

(01:41):
was a huge success, but by eighteen fifty four, Henry
had set his mind on more life and death inventions.
The Crimean War had broken out, and Henry wondered if
he could find a way to make cannons that fired
more accurately. The iron ones of the time used round
cannonballs that had a tendency to drift off target. At first,
no one took him seriously. A guy who designed better

(02:03):
home decor didn't seem like the person to trust with
military equipment. But one chance evening, while traveling in Paris,
Henry met with an unlikely dinner guest. The guest was
none other than Emperor Napoleon, the third nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte.
He could see the wisdom in Henry's idea and encouraged
his passion for the topic. Anyone who cared this much

(02:25):
about the minutia of technology, would surely accomplish whatever he
set his mind to and nas. It turns out, Henry's
interest in cannons led him to some incredible discoveries. He
began with the shells, making them heavier and cutting grooves
into them so that they spun in the air, keeping
their trajectory. The only problem with this was that they

(02:45):
were too heavy for most iron cannons to fire, and
so he needed a better cannon. A cannon made of steel.
At the time, Steele had an almost mythical quality to it.
The inventors of the day were just as stumped as
to what made good steel as the blacksmiths of the
Middle Ages. All they knew was that good steel came
about when you mixed molten iron with carbon and tried

(03:07):
to remove the impurities of other elements. It took a
lot of heat and specifically designed apparatusus to do this.
Henry set up his own special device. Imagine a large
metal capsule suspended on an axle between two legs. It
had an opening to the top and it could be
tilted forward to add to or empty. At first, Henry

(03:28):
just tried to get the iron hotter and hotter to
see if he could burn away the impurities. But when
Henry happened to notice some molten iron in his workshop
turned into steel when it came in contact with the air,
he completely changed his approach. Henry fed a tube into
the bottom of this bucket like device. He still dumped
molten iron into the top, but then after that was done,

(03:49):
he would blow cold air up through this tube in
the bottom of the bucket. A few moments past and
the device suddenly erupted with a volcano like stream of
smoke and molten iron shooting from the top. It almost
caught the workshop on fire, but when Henry tested the
end result, he found that it was carbon free, malleable iron.
He had removed the impurities. Now he just needed to

(04:11):
add back in the right amount of carbon to make steel.
Henry made his device just a little bigger so the
chemical reaction of oxygen and carbon could be safely contained.
The resulting gases still burned off through the top, and
any remaining impurities could be skimmed off the top of
the molten metal. A small precise amount of carbon would
then be added back in, and when the metal cooled,

(04:34):
it was now pure malleable steel. Henry Bessemer's device became
known as the Bessemer converter, and his process for making
iron is now known as the Bessemer process. He patented
that process and became a millionaire as manufacturers all over
the globe used his steel to make buildings, weapons, cars,
and railroad tracks. One curious mind was all it took

(04:58):
to send the world erupting into the future. A common
misconception about the Middle Ages is that they were a
time of ignorance, often called the Dark Ages. While it's

(05:20):
certainly true that the state of literature and science had
yet to evolve, that did not mean that there were
not plenty of people around the world who were curious
and eager to study and expand human knowledge. As ever before,
humanity looked the stars for answers to our questions about
our place in the universe. The truth is this Dark

(05:40):
Age in Europe coincided with a period known as the
Islamic Golden Age. From the eighth to the thirteenth centuries.
The Muslim world made great strides in understandings of science, math, medicine,
and philosophy. Astronomy was a particular utility to Islamic nations
for their faith required them to pray five times a day,
a schedule that was strictly determined by the position of

(06:03):
the sun in the sky, and thus tracking the sun
required more precise instruments. Muslim astronomers refined an ancient Greek
device known as an astrolabe, which was used to measure
the positions of the stars in the sky. Appearing like
a flat circular disc, each astrolabe is engraved with static
star positions and concentric rings that adjust to measure the

(06:26):
visible dome of the sky. By the tenth century, astrolabes
were a popular tool for divining horoscopes and keeping time.
The ones that came out of the Islamic world would
often be inscribed with religious verses out of the Quran,
and the production of these devices would become a profession
all of its own. In the nine hundreds, in Baghdad,
a man began an apprenticeship under a famed astrolabist named Bitdalus.

(06:50):
Unlike many other craftsmen of the area, he would share
his knowledge with his daughter, who was showing an interest
in astronomy from an early age, and soon the of
them were studying together. The daughter's name was Algelia, and
she would become one of the first women astrologers in
recorded history. We know little of her life after that,
but she became prominent enough that her name shows up

(07:13):
in a piece of medieval Syrian literature discussing the manufacture
of astrolabes, and she became so well renowned for her
work that she eventually served at the court of Sayef
al Dullah, the first Emir of Aleppo. Although this mention
of her is brief, containing very few specifics, her presence
in popular culture looms large. She would become known by

(07:34):
the name Meriam Astrolabia or Meriam of the Astrolabes. The
astrolabe would remain a crucial instrument throughout the medieval period
and into the Age of Discovery, although eventually star charts
and mechanical clocks would supplant them in practicality. The last
of these devices would be produced in the late fourteenth
and early fifteenth centuries, and some might even say that

(07:56):
the astrolabe is the precursor to the modern GPS due
to its usefulness in navigation. But the legacy of astrolab
makers like Algaelia does not stop there. Many centuries after
she lived in the year nineteen ninety, an astronomer would
name an asteroid in her honor. Seven zero six zero
Algaelia still floats far far over our heads in our

(08:18):
galaxies asteroid Belt, reminding us all that if you dedicate
yourself to studying the stars, one day, you may find
your name among them. 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

(08:39):
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 dot com. And until
next time, stay curious.