May 27, 2021 • 10 mins
Thinking outside the box is how many difficult problems are solved. But it's also how many amazing and unique creations just from the drawing board to reality.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Benky'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 are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
(00:27):
of Curiosities. Everybody has to start somewhere. To become a
great leader or an expert in a particular field takes
years of experience. A person doesn't go from an entry
level position to the corner office overnight. One must work
(00:49):
their way up the ranks until they reach the top. Unfortunately,
some doors are closed so tight you can't even get
a toe in, let alone a whole foot. Sometimes you
have to take matters into your own hand. Ends to
get noticed, like James Dyson, who was so angry that
his vacuum kept breaking, he took it apart to see
how it worked. It turned out that a critical design
flaw was the cause of his problems, so he got
(01:11):
to work on a new kind of vacuum design, and
unlike the other models on the market, his didn't need
a bag. Dyson built over five thousand prototypes before finding
one that worked, doors were shut in his face, Manufacturers
refused to make it, and retailers wouldn't carry it in
their stores. It took a long long time before those
(01:32):
stores and their customers saw the benefits of a Dyson vacuum,
but once they did, the rest was history. Stewart Freeborn
was another person with a dream, one that he was
going to make come true, no matter what it took.
Born in London in nineteen fourteen, Freeborn was fascinated with makeup,
but not the fashion kind. The idea of dressing up
(01:53):
to look like someone or something else fascinated him, and
as he got older, he grew into did in the
chemistry of different plastics, learning how they were made and
how they affected the human skin when applied, and he
knew exactly how he wanted to put his experience to
use in the movies. Freeborn's father, an insurance broker, begged
(02:15):
him to join the family business, but Stewart couldn't shake
his love of movie magic. He even started sneaking onto
the lots of shows whenever he was able to, and
just like Dyson in his early days, no one was interested.
Refusing to give up, Freeborn made a bold move in Nive,
he called up the local newspapers and studios to let
(02:35):
them know that Highly Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia, had
arrived in London. Not long after, the Emperor was seen
driving around Freeborn's neighborhood, that is, until the police detained him.
Unfortunately for them, all they had caught was an ambitious
young makeup artist in a fake beard and nose prosthetic
looking for his big break, and his stunt didn't even
(02:56):
land him a job. It wasn't until a British director
named Alexander Korda took a chance on him, giving Freeborn
some work on period dramas being filmed at the time.
One of his first major productions was that of a
nineteen forty eight adaptation of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.
The role of Fagin would be played by Alec Guinness,
someone whom Freeborn would work with again on such films
(03:19):
as The Bridge Over the River Quai in nineteen fifty seven,
as well as a little science fiction film being shot
in the Tunessee and Deserts in nineteen seventy seven. In fact,
Freeborn was responsible for many of Star Wars colorful characters,
including one fan favorite. In particular, Concept artist Ralph mcquarie
had imagined Han Solo's loyal Wookie partner, Chewbacca, as a
(03:41):
seven foot tall monster with a misshapen head, yellow eyes,
sharp teeth, of vests and boots. Freeborn put his own
spin on the character, making him more doglike in appearance
and replacing his vest with the bandalier. The result was
a gentle giant with an iconic growl who would go
on to save the galaxy numerous times. The film's sequel, however,
(04:02):
had a unique problem. A new creature was needed, and
it too was required to look unique, something to set
it apart from the other characters that Freeborn had designed,
and so he turned to two unlikely places from which
to draw inspiration. A mirror at a photograph of Albert Einstein.
Upon seeing his own reflection, Freeborn noticed the topography of
(04:24):
his face, how the lines and bumps told the story.
He was older and more experienced than he had been
in his youth, and he lost so much of his hair.
As for Einstein, it was his eyes that had captivated
the artist the most. They were the eyes of a
quiet and wise man, and they were surrounded by Wrinkles.
Freeborn combined all the features the creases of his own
(04:46):
weathered face with Einstein's sunken eyes to create one of
the most recognizable characters in the entire Star Wars universe,
the two foot tall Jedi master Yoda. The funny thing
(05:11):
about technology is that not only is it constantly changing,
it's changing us as well. How we work and the
way we think are ever evolving thanks to Breakthrough is
happening every day. Telephones used to be bound to wires
in our homes and offices. As satellites and wireless technology
spread across the world, landlines gave way to cell phones. Today,
(05:32):
the devices we carry in our pockets are no longer
used only for voice communication. We record our lives using
their built in cameras. We can look up any fact
on the Internet, or post our every thought in two
hundred and forty characters or less. In other words, we've
come a long way today. We're the ones doing the changing.
(05:52):
The more we share about our lives, the more selfies
we post and ads we pick up on, the more
our technology learns about us, our behavior, years are buying habits,
even what we look like. This information can be used
to influence the things we purchase or make it easy
for governments to track us down. But for Hasashi Canby,
it made it easier to identify pastries. Cambay founded Brain
(06:15):
Company Ltd. In n after spending several years designing computerized
graphics systems. His work could be seen on nightly news
programs displaying baseball scores and monetary exchange rates. From there,
Camba moved on to digitizing the textile industry. He replaced
the handwritten card system that had been used to program
looms with an automated computer program. This resulted in fewer
(06:39):
mistakes and less wasted fabric. As the years progressed, Brain
continued to innovate with applications for bridge engineers, students, and
other kinds of textile manufacturers. But it was in two
thousand seven when everything changed. A restaurant chain was about
to venture into the baking business, and if it wanted
to compete, it had to offer a wide variety of pastries. Now,
(07:01):
in America, a bakery might sell a handful of different
kinds of cookies, cakes, and other goods. In Japan, though,
the most successful pastry shops sold hundreds of varieties. Unfortunately,
that success came with complication. Most items were sold without
wrappers or bar codes, meaning cashiers had to memorize the
look and price of each pastry. They also had to
(07:23):
handle each individual item, and this process led along lines
and contamination by the cashiers. There had to be a
better way, and the Brain Company was going to find it.
They got to work on an artificial intelligence program to
assist in identifying pastries on a conveyor belt. It used
multiple algorithms to detect the features of different kinds of
(07:43):
baked goods, something they referred to as computer vision, but
it was a tough task. For example, a croissant might
not always be crescent shaped, and some pastries looked just
like others in shape and size, the only difference being
their fillings or if they had sugar on top. Can
bas team kept working, though, even as the two thousand
eight financial crisis threatened to shut them down for good,
(08:06):
and as other projects lost funding due to budget cuts.
He poured one percent of his remaining resources into the
pastry project. Brain rewrote its algorithms, weaving them together with
complicated camera systems and lights. They also accounted for variations
like if a doughnut got split in half on the
conveyor belt, with the program know that two pieces were
(08:27):
meant to go together, or if multiple items were touching,
would it understand that they weren't. One giant pastry can
based team had it covered. By the time they were finished,
the Bakery Scan platform was able to recognize dozens of
varieties of pastries with ninety eight percent accuracy, and it
was always learning too. The more the cashiers helped in
identifying questionable scans at the checkout line, the better the
(08:50):
program got it recognizing them the next time around. Bakery
Scan was a breakthrough, but it was only the beginning.
Another challenge was on the horizon, and it was about
to take Cambay's brain from the conveyor belt to the
oncology ward you see. Ten years after bakery Scans inception,
a doctor at Kyoto's Louis Pasture Center for Medical Research
(09:11):
saw a story about it on the news. The concept
intrigued him as someone who spent years looking at cancer
cells up close, because under the microscope they kind of
looked like bread, and he wondered if Canby's technology could
be used outside of the bakery and inside his research facility.
So Brain modified the algorithms, and with the little engineering,
(09:33):
the new platform dubbed AI scan could now detect a
single cancer cell among a microscope slide full of other
healthier cells with accuracy. Today, this AI tech is being
used across all sorts of different industries like automotive and
even jet engineering, and it's still saving lives in the
medical field too, all thanks to a complicated request from
(09:57):
a bakery. And I think the big your lesson here
speaks for itself. Don't ever let people tell you that
pastries aren't good for you. 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
(10:22):
me Aaron Manky 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. Ye
Welcome to Aaron Benky'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 are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
(00:27):
of Curiosities. Everybody has to start somewhere. To become a
great leader or an expert in a particular field takes
years of experience. A person doesn't go from an entry
level position to the corner office overnight. One must work
(00:49):
their way up the ranks until they reach the top. Unfortunately,
some doors are closed so tight you can't even get
a toe in, let alone a whole foot. Sometimes you
have to take matters into your own hand. Ends to
get noticed, like James Dyson, who was so angry that
his vacuum kept breaking, he took it apart to see
how it worked. It turned out that a critical design
flaw was the cause of his problems, so he got
(01:11):
to work on a new kind of vacuum design, and
unlike the other models on the market, his didn't need
a bag. Dyson built over five thousand prototypes before finding
one that worked, doors were shut in his face, Manufacturers
refused to make it, and retailers wouldn't carry it in
their stores. It took a long long time before those
(01:32):
stores and their customers saw the benefits of a Dyson vacuum,
but once they did, the rest was history. Stewart Freeborn
was another person with a dream, one that he was
going to make come true, no matter what it took.
Born in London in nineteen fourteen, Freeborn was fascinated with makeup,
but not the fashion kind. The idea of dressing up
(01:53):
to look like someone or something else fascinated him, and
as he got older, he grew into did in the
chemistry of different plastics, learning how they were made and
how they affected the human skin when applied, and he
knew exactly how he wanted to put his experience to
use in the movies. Freeborn's father, an insurance broker, begged
(02:15):
him to join the family business, but Stewart couldn't shake
his love of movie magic. He even started sneaking onto
the lots of shows whenever he was able to, and
just like Dyson in his early days, no one was interested.
Refusing to give up, Freeborn made a bold move in Nive,
he called up the local newspapers and studios to let
(02:35):
them know that Highly Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia, had
arrived in London. Not long after, the Emperor was seen
driving around Freeborn's neighborhood, that is, until the police detained him.
Unfortunately for them, all they had caught was an ambitious
young makeup artist in a fake beard and nose prosthetic
looking for his big break, and his stunt didn't even
(02:56):
land him a job. It wasn't until a British director
named Alexander Korda took a chance on him, giving Freeborn
some work on period dramas being filmed at the time.
One of his first major productions was that of a
nineteen forty eight adaptation of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.
The role of Fagin would be played by Alec Guinness,
someone whom Freeborn would work with again on such films
(03:19):
as The Bridge Over the River Quai in nineteen fifty seven,
as well as a little science fiction film being shot
in the Tunessee and Deserts in nineteen seventy seven. In fact,
Freeborn was responsible for many of Star Wars colorful characters,
including one fan favorite. In particular, Concept artist Ralph mcquarie
had imagined Han Solo's loyal Wookie partner, Chewbacca, as a
(03:41):
seven foot tall monster with a misshapen head, yellow eyes,
sharp teeth, of vests and boots. Freeborn put his own
spin on the character, making him more doglike in appearance
and replacing his vest with the bandalier. The result was
a gentle giant with an iconic growl who would go
on to save the galaxy numerous times. The film's sequel, however,
(04:02):
had a unique problem. A new creature was needed, and
it too was required to look unique, something to set
it apart from the other characters that Freeborn had designed,
and so he turned to two unlikely places from which
to draw inspiration. A mirror at a photograph of Albert Einstein.
Upon seeing his own reflection, Freeborn noticed the topography of
(04:24):
his face, how the lines and bumps told the story.
He was older and more experienced than he had been
in his youth, and he lost so much of his hair.
As for Einstein, it was his eyes that had captivated
the artist the most. They were the eyes of a
quiet and wise man, and they were surrounded by Wrinkles.
Freeborn combined all the features the creases of his own
(04:46):
weathered face with Einstein's sunken eyes to create one of
the most recognizable characters in the entire Star Wars universe,
the two foot tall Jedi master Yoda. The funny thing
(05:11):
about technology is that not only is it constantly changing,
it's changing us as well. How we work and the
way we think are ever evolving thanks to Breakthrough is
happening every day. Telephones used to be bound to wires
in our homes and offices. As satellites and wireless technology
spread across the world, landlines gave way to cell phones. Today,
(05:32):
the devices we carry in our pockets are no longer
used only for voice communication. We record our lives using
their built in cameras. We can look up any fact
on the Internet, or post our every thought in two
hundred and forty characters or less. In other words, we've
come a long way today. We're the ones doing the changing.
(05:52):
The more we share about our lives, the more selfies
we post and ads we pick up on, the more
our technology learns about us, our behavior, years are buying habits,
even what we look like. This information can be used
to influence the things we purchase or make it easy
for governments to track us down. But for Hasashi Canby,
it made it easier to identify pastries. Cambay founded Brain
(06:15):
Company Ltd. In n after spending several years designing computerized
graphics systems. His work could be seen on nightly news
programs displaying baseball scores and monetary exchange rates. From there,
Camba moved on to digitizing the textile industry. He replaced
the handwritten card system that had been used to program
looms with an automated computer program. This resulted in fewer
(06:39):
mistakes and less wasted fabric. As the years progressed, Brain
continued to innovate with applications for bridge engineers, students, and
other kinds of textile manufacturers. But it was in two
thousand seven when everything changed. A restaurant chain was about
to venture into the baking business, and if it wanted
to compete, it had to offer a wide variety of pastries. Now,
(07:01):
in America, a bakery might sell a handful of different
kinds of cookies, cakes, and other goods. In Japan, though,
the most successful pastry shops sold hundreds of varieties. Unfortunately,
that success came with complication. Most items were sold without
wrappers or bar codes, meaning cashiers had to memorize the
look and price of each pastry. They also had to
(07:23):
handle each individual item, and this process led along lines
and contamination by the cashiers. There had to be a
better way, and the Brain Company was going to find it.
They got to work on an artificial intelligence program to
assist in identifying pastries on a conveyor belt. It used
multiple algorithms to detect the features of different kinds of
(07:43):
baked goods, something they referred to as computer vision, but
it was a tough task. For example, a croissant might
not always be crescent shaped, and some pastries looked just
like others in shape and size, the only difference being
their fillings or if they had sugar on top. Can
bas team kept working, though, even as the two thousand
eight financial crisis threatened to shut them down for good,
(08:06):
and as other projects lost funding due to budget cuts.
He poured one percent of his remaining resources into the
pastry project. Brain rewrote its algorithms, weaving them together with
complicated camera systems and lights. They also accounted for variations
like if a doughnut got split in half on the
conveyor belt, with the program know that two pieces were
(08:27):
meant to go together, or if multiple items were touching,
would it understand that they weren't. One giant pastry can
based team had it covered. By the time they were finished,
the Bakery Scan platform was able to recognize dozens of
varieties of pastries with ninety eight percent accuracy, and it
was always learning too. The more the cashiers helped in
identifying questionable scans at the checkout line, the better the
(08:50):
program got it recognizing them the next time around. Bakery
Scan was a breakthrough, but it was only the beginning.
Another challenge was on the horizon, and it was about
to take Cambay's brain from the conveyor belt to the
oncology ward you see. Ten years after bakery Scans inception,
a doctor at Kyoto's Louis Pasture Center for Medical Research
(09:11):
saw a story about it on the news. The concept
intrigued him as someone who spent years looking at cancer
cells up close, because under the microscope they kind of
looked like bread, and he wondered if Canby's technology could
be used outside of the bakery and inside his research facility.
So Brain modified the algorithms, and with the little engineering,
(09:33):
the new platform dubbed AI scan could now detect a
single cancer cell among a microscope slide full of other
healthier cells with accuracy. Today, this AI tech is being
used across all sorts of different industries like automotive and
even jet engineering, and it's still saving lives in the
medical field too, all thanks to a complicated request from
(09:57):
a bakery. And I think the big your lesson here
speaks for itself. Don't ever let people tell you that
pastries aren't good for you. 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
(10:22):
me Aaron Manky 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. Ye
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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