June 4, 2026 • 35 mins
History is often taught as a series of discrete, unrelated events -- and that could not be further from the truth. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore a fascinating Venn diagram of historical events... and learn that, technically, yes! A samurai could have sent something like a fax to President Abraham Lincoln.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
Max Kawhi Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
He's just so cute.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Look at him, a face.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Like a button. That guy, those big old eyes just
staring back at you. That is none other than mister
Noel Brown. They called me Ben Bullen, and we all
three are huge fans of as you could imagine history.
One thing that escapes a lot of people, I think,
especially when we just look at what you learn in
(01:01):
your grade school history books, is that all of the
history that you could imagine happened a lot more concurrently
that your history books will have you believe.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Parallel timelines, baby, not parallel universes. This stuff happened in
the same universe at the same time, just very very
far away. And we always from one another, and we
always talk about things like parallel thinking during times where
these different cultures were so isolated but kind of figured
out the same stuff at the same time. Super interesting phenomenon,
and we have a discussion of just such a relationship
(01:38):
coming to us from our brand new research associate, Jabbari,
you really knocked it out of the park with this
research brief.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Absolutely yet thank you Jabari. We're still working on a
nickname for you man.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
But itself in the text, I think right to celebrate Jabari,
to celebrate.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
You here we are not blowing smoke. This is what
ofb our or favorite kinds of thought exploration. We're going
to take three things that you're probably familiar with, the
ancient era of Japanese samurai, the advent of a facimile
technology which leads to the fax machine, and the presidency
(02:16):
of the notorious amateur wrestler Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
We'll reach on that guy both real reach with his
arms and with his hat.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
And this means, as Jabari reveals to us, this means
that technically a Japanese samurai could have hypothetically sent none
other than Abraham Lincoln a fax if he or she
had wanted.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Why am I picturing this as like a political cartoon opportunity,
You know, that's great, Like a samurai sending a fact
to Abraham Lincoln. The punchline would be in whatever the
fact said. Maybe that'll reveal itself in the text as well.
So sort of like finding out the tidbit of information
that Cleopatra, who lived from sixty nine to thirty BCE,
(03:10):
lived closer to the invention of the iPhone two thousand
and seven than she did to the construction of the
Egyptian Pyramids twenty five sixty BCE. We're always, you know,
as aging fellows and fans of pop culture, having these
moments where we're like, gosh, we're closer now to the
like sixties, as the sixties.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Were to like the twenties.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
You know, it's just the way time compresses as you
get older and you start viewing it in a different way.
It's fascinating stuff, but it's true. It's not a factoid.
It's a fact right.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
A factoid is something that sounds true but is not
in fact true, Like carrots give you great eyesight, so
which is a World War two myth. By the way,
so this.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Also re started by big carrot, no doubt.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
As you say, Jabari time reality, these windows and relationships
can throw us for a loop when we really start
thinking about them. And this is what inspires the conversation
we're having today. What might a samurai have sent to
our sixteenth president? And as Jabari. As you put it,
(04:19):
would our sixteenth president have left that samurai on red
at the time, he.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Was a busy man. He also seemed like a man
of the people, so he might have he might have responded.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
And since both of us are going to end up
in Japan at some point later this year, Oh.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
I've got a countdown going for it. Ben, I'm so excited.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Awesome, man, we we couldn't be more excited to talk
a little bit about Samurai. So you guys, what's the
first thing you think of when you hear the word Samarai?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
I think of Akira Kurosawa's seven Samurai.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Nice, But also, if we're going to stick with numbers,
I also think of the era of Samurai and the
various I believe the six kind of key periods involving
the evolution of the samurai culture in tradition.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
I just think a tom Cruise.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Oh gosh, yeah, the last Samurai, Thanks White Savior. So
I love the conversation about the eras of samurai because
for most of us in the West, you have a
titular image of what appears to be only one point
in Japan's history. But we have to remember the stories
(05:34):
about the samurai remind us of the deep age of
other civilizations. The US is still a relatively new kid
on the block geopolitically speaking, not pop music.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Speaking, right, And while we obviously don't quite have the
time to go into the entire history of Japan's existence
as a unified country, we are going to take a
bit of a snapshot at the six distinct eras of
the jap These samurai, Given there nearly seven hundred year reign,
perhaps it ought to come as no surprise to you
ridiculous historians that it would in fact share a timeline
(06:10):
at some point with some of these other historical touch points.
But it's nonetheless a very interesting, as you pointed out,
Ben thought experiment. So let's talk first about maybe where
the term samurai comes from.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Ooh, I love this as a guy who as a
guy who has cartoonishly bad Japanese, the term samurai has
fascinating etymology. It comes from the word saburu, which means
to serve, and it was first used in about CE
or ad if you prefer seven to two, and it
(06:43):
meant it was a way of describing mid to low
ranking court administrators, and only later did it describe armed
imperial guards, and mostly, as you can tell from the etymology,
the title was referring to their loyalty to the emperor
one who serves, and.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
This would have been feudal Japan, right, So these were
like sort of in service to their lord of this
particular region fiefdom. I guess you could call it, yeah,
like like knights, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Like knights. Consider that a knight in western or central
Europe may serve a particular duke, right, or a particular
noble or aristocrat lord. But that's some kind of lord,
but that that in turn, that aristocrat, that noble would
have fealty to the king or the royal family until
(07:37):
they tried would be the emperor throw them until they
tried to overthrow them gape in this case would be
the emperor. You're correct, right, And so these guys were
like they were kind they were like the security guards,
the police or military forces, you know, terrorizing the serfs.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
They were hired of a game squad, yes, a bit
of a goon squad. And one thing that Jabari I
love that you're pointing out here is right at the top,
we refer to samurai as either he or she him
or her. It may surprise some of us to realize
(08:16):
that a lot of the Samurai were co ed.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
That's the thing, man, we often run into facts like
this that are tricky upon first examination to kind of
reconcile with what we maybe typically think about the past.
The Samurai, as well as the pirates, for example, they
were pretty egalitarian. And they were also they treated women
with a lot more respect and equality than one might think. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Now, historical figures vary on the total, but experts generally
believe that anywhere from twenty percent to as many as
fifty percent of these frontline warriors were female by the
early sixteen hundreds. There's also a surprising amount of diversity
(09:06):
in this, particularly in the case of Yasuke the African Samurai,
which we covered back in twenty nineteen episode of Ridiculous History.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
We sure did, and you can check that one out
as Jabbari did.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
That was a fun one.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
And also, if I'm not mistaken, the inspiration for the
pretty excellent, very graphic novel asque cartoon Afro Samurai, I.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Believe that is correct.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Yes, And as we always say, in Hollywood adaptations inspired by.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Or loosely based on honorous so.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, Jabari, the line is too good to not include,
so we'll give you the quote verbatim. You say, that's right,
folks go woke and last damn near a millennium or whatever.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Kids say these days.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah, I think the kids would probably agree with that one. Frankly,
moving on to I believe Ben helped me out here
the High End period. Yes, hey, okay, High On period
seven ninety four to eleven eighty five, which is marked
by the formation of these I guess you could call
them bands or like these sort of individual subgroups of
(10:17):
warriors called bushi, and I believe that is a term
that you might be familiar with from the film Bushido Blade.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yes, yes, this is also another way to call them
would be mercenaries.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
And that might be a term ridiculous historians that you
may recognize from the video games series Bushido Blade.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yes, yeah, And another word for these folks at this
time would be mercenaries. They would get paid to maintain order,
and when an estate was expanding or encroaching into another territory,
it was their job to make that encroachment happen. At
(10:58):
this point, again, merks, they're not their stories similar to
that janisaries in some way, they're not rising to administrative
power just yet until they reach the Kama Kuora period,
and that's eleven eighty five to thirteen thirty three.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Well, and much like.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
The sort of codes of chivalry that we know, you
know from the feudal Knights from the West, the Bushie
adhered to a similar code of conduct and ethics called
the Bushido Code, which apparently in that series I've never
played personally, I think there's several of them. Bushido blade
is a strict code of honorable combat that dictates the
(11:41):
narrative progression of the story, kind of like in certain RPGs,
where your actions, whether they're positive or negative, or neutral
or whatever, can change the ending absolutely.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
We also know in the Kama Kora period that the
rise to power of what we call the Samurai class
came from a decade's long, violent stretch of chaos between
two powerful clans, Minamoto and Taia, and it ended with
(12:13):
the minimum spoiler everybody, the Minimoto. When this leads to
the formation of what we now call the Kama Kora
Shogunate area ruled by a specific clan shogun, similar to
like a Mongolian kanate, a warlord, right, Yes, pretty much.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Something along those lines.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
I mean, definitely not a much more of a totalitarian,
militaristic kind of order, like martial law practically.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah, like a warlord who's heavy on the admin, you
know what I mean. Like Japan. This is Japan's first
feudal military government in all of known history. It's decentralized,
so everybody is paying lip service to the Emperor of Japan,
but it's more of a figurehead status. It's the showguns
(13:04):
and later the samurai who wield the actual power.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
And I love what Jabari points out here. It's very
similar to the arrangement that Tony Soprano in the incredible
HBO series The Sopranos worked out with all of the
other captains of their crime family, or capos as they
referred to. In the early series of Sopranos, Uncle Junior
was meant to be the boss kind of I'm saying
(13:28):
the boss.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
I can't not say it that way in.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Terms of his age and seniority, but he really just
ruled as kind of a figurehead.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, exactly. And that's a great comparison. We know that
power shifts continued, and the power sort of balkanized. It
became more localized during what we call the Murumachi period
in thirteen thirty six all the way to fifteen seventy three.
This is where we see the feudal lords, warlords like
(14:02):
you said, named the daimo, and they are regionally placed,
strategically placed to sort of franchise out the rule of
the shogun. They maintain these large estates and these castles
which you should check out when you visit. This leads
to armies of samurai.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Right and then in the mid fifteenth century we start
seeing the beginnings of the son Dooku period, which was
fourteen sixty seven to sixteen hundred, and we also started
to see the complete fall of centralized authority due to
an incredibly bitter and brutal civil war between the daimo overseers,
which pitted the samurai armies against one another, causing tons
(14:45):
of internal strife and conflict, utterly brutal warfare for nearly
one hundred and fifty years. And this whole you know,
bloody affair, is credited as the period where combat technique
were beginning to be honed and revolutionized and some of
the sophisticated war strategies that we credit to the Japanese
(15:09):
and the samurai that we know today.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
A lot of people die in horrific ways. So we'll
just fast forward, fast forward along that while acknowledging it,
and this leads to the unification of Japan under the
Tokagawa Shokunate. This ushers in about two hundred years of
relative peace, and the warriors suddenly find themselves out of
(15:34):
a job. Then you don't need people running around chopping
heads off and committing sepuku. If they mess up, which
is ritualized suicide tied to these codes.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Of honor right and then failure to adhere to it
are being dishonored, and then you would be more likely
to take your own life ritualistically than live as a
shame to your family or your clan.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Now, this is where we get to the key part
of our thought experiment. Right, there's a three act structure.
Now we're to Edol period.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Which I think the way many people really think of
in terms of the real culmination of all of this
samurai business.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Now we're at sixteen oh three to about eighteen sixty eight,
So keep that last date in your mind, folks. This
is where we see the most consequential transition for the
samurai class. They become similar again to the comparison of
janissaries in the Ottoman Empire, they become bureaucrats, they become
(16:38):
local powerholders and politicians, and wearing your sword starts to
become ceremony and tradition. So you're not really it's like
all those portraits of later Medieval Age kings in the West.
They've got the armor on for the portrait, they've got
the sword because it looks nice in the oil painting,
(16:59):
but actually using it right.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
And I guess, you know, maybe I'm confused because certainly
when I think of samurai, I often think of the
Edo period, and maybe because that's what a lot of
a lot of the imagery comes from, like a lot
of the paintings and a lot of the classic samurai
garb that we think of with those helmets.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
But it is also completely accurate that this was not
the bloody warring period.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
This was samurai more as like diplomats and politicians wearing
the stuff out of ceremony.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
So it's interesting for me, certainly to.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Clarify some of that and realize that what we think
of as samurai period really is kind of a miss
mix and match of all of these different periods kind
of you know that has been depicted in maybe not
the most historically accurate way by pop culture.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Yeah, the samurai can still tangle if they have to,
but they're a lot more like your upper management. They're
a lot more like in response to your earlier facts
kind of samurai instead of you know, I will decapitate
you samurai, but they you know, what still happened. We
want to be clear about that. And you may be
(18:07):
asking yourself, guys, why did we need to take this
quick trip down memory lane of Japanese samurai history. We
think it's because it's cool, and it sets up our
It sets up one of our travel obsessions that tomorrow
you obviously also share, and it also gives us the
(18:28):
historical context that leads us to act to So there's
eight hundred years or over eight hundred years of samurai history.
Seven hundred of those years are effectively as part of
Japan's ruling class, and now we have to travel around
the world. So the Edo period is happening in Japan,
(18:50):
but what's going on in Scotland?
Speaker 3 (18:52):
What is going on in Scotland?
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Well, some crafty scots and some schemes. Well, yeah, there's
definitely some culinary innovations going on in terms of like
the traducing of cow stomachs.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Have you ever I bet you have been. You've eaten hagis?
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Surely yes, not me, not not to say that I'd
be against it, but I will tell you what I
did have last night, Ben, I went to this incredible
Polish restaurant called Carcima in green Point, Brooklyn and had
this thing they do called stuffed cabbage, where it's just
like a bunch of meat and seasoning and stuff like
stuffed inside a big, old, you know, thick piece of cabbage.
(19:29):
So that's about as close as I want to get
to the haggis of it all. Maybe try a little
blood sausage. But now the haggis is a little extreme
for me, so more for you, But okay with it.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
It's uh, it's one of those things where I'm glad
I tried it, but I don't. I don't find myself
come lunchtime with a hankering for a haggis.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
You don't hankering.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
I don't have a hagas hanker nor blood pudding, but
have tried that as well.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
It's just it's.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Something you should do when it's a so you could
say you did it, and.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Some people swear by it. They do, And I'll tell
you what I do like is maybe a bit of
a hot take. I like just a good old piece
of liver and that that has that kind of coppery
taste that a lot of people associate with awful and
bloody blood stuff.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
But I enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
I think it's because I grew up eating it. Not
something that I would order necessarily, but I did. I
hate brains and eggs as well because I had some
real uh real southern grandparents stuff from North Carolina, and
that was more liver for you. Man. Scrapple, remember Ben,
when we were on that road trip with with our
buddy Scott from car Stuff and we ate, uh they
call it scrapple or liver pudding.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, it looks like a shingle. It does look like it,
and it's not that bad. I don't know if that
documentary of our road rally for car Stuff is still
on Amazon, but check it out if it did a
lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
It was a good time.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
But back to Scotland after our organ meat detour there.
At this same time, when the Edo period is in
full swing in Japan, a Scottish inventor and engineer, as
Jabbari puts it, delightfully, was kilt deep in his creation
and development of facsimile technology.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
This guy's name is Alexander Bain.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Not that Alexander Bain, not the philosopher.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Different guy, Nope, different guy.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
That guy was born eighteen eighteen died nineteen oh three.
This fella we're talking about, Alexander Bain, was born in
either eighteen ten or eighteen eleven, depending on the source.
His father, a man named John Bain, was a crofter.
What's the crofter?
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Ben?
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Well, you know, let's do it like an ad. Hey,
are you tired of being a surf? Are you tired
of not having land rights or even human rights? Well
we can't make you a Scottish lord, but we can
upgrade you a little bit. Consider crofting the comfort ecotomy
plus of sharecropping. It's slightly better. You have a little
(21:52):
bit more equitable circumstances, and most importantly, your children have
a better chance of advancing up the socio economic ladder
of the time.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
And children he did have. My friend John Bain's wife,
Isabella Waiters, sometimes referred to as Isobel Waiters, reportedly had
twelve of them, six boys and six girls, an even dozen.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
That's wild man, Good luck, Isabelle, your service for sure.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
So this is where we this is why we're setting
up the idea of socioeconomic educational opportunity. Bain gets his
elementary education per normal. He later pursues a trade. He's
apprenticed to a local clockmaker named John Sellers se l
Lars and he's just eleven. Basically, the family I don't
(22:46):
want to say this disrespectfully. It's not human trafficking, but
they did kind of pimp him out because all the
money he made as the apprentice to this local clockmaker
went back to his family. Is pay as a kid,
he was apprenticeships of the time, they would pay you
quote unquote in room and board and anything. Any financial profit,
(23:11):
if it was acknowledged in your agreement, would go to
your adult family. This works out, Bain learns a lot.
He's not gonna waste his life being a crofter, not
that there's anything wrong with that. He has higher ambitions.
It's eighteen thirty seven when he relocates to London. He
works as a journeyman clockmaker for a little while. This
(23:35):
is the natural path of learning the trades at the time,
and even now in certain trades today, we think that
his second boss when he's a journeyman. We think this
guy was named John Barwise, because this happens all the
time in academia as well. Because Bain files his first
(23:56):
patent and this guy, John Barwise is listed as a
co applicant, which is kind of like when Quentin Tarantino
was listed as executive producer on Man with the Iron Fist,
Like he didn't really write the script, he didn't really
invent the thing.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
But yeah, sometimes the executive executi producer is kind of
a taste maker, sort of there to kind of lend
a little bit of expertise on set. But also sometimes
it involves like money and finance or credibility. It can
mean different things, but yes, especially when they put it
above the line, it adds some gravitas to a movie
like that.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
So we cannot prove it, but we have a sneak
eating Spidey sense that John and bar Wise just got
his name on the patent, not because he helped with
the idea, but because he was Alex Bain's boss.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
There you go, yeah, And that's sometimes he gets some
of that Nollywood too little Nepo baby type stuff. So
in January of eighteen forty one, the two of them
were granted their first successful patent, four o'clock with pendulum
that was moved by electromagnetic impulses. Been, I know you
and I are both fascinated by the art of clockmaking.
Oh the complications, Oh fascinating, dude, And like just the
(25:11):
tiny little pieces and the way they all have to
work in concert, and yes, the complications. So physicists and
fellow inventor Charles Wheatstone had demonstrated a clock to the
Royal Society, which is the UK's national Academy of Sciences
and the oldest continuously operating scientific academy in the entire
world around and operating going strong since sixteen sixty And
(25:32):
that happened in December of the previous year. And this clock, yeah,
was very similar, alarmingly similar to use clock parlance, to
the one that Bane and Barweise themselves had patented.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
And Bain had a story about this. He responded to
the maybe not accusations just yet, but the implications of
ip theft. Check out our episodes on that. And he
said the following, He said, look, I do know Charles
Wheatstone magazine editor told me to visit Wheatstone, and I
(26:06):
did visit him, and Charles and I talked about stuff,
and Wheatstone told me my idea was poppycock and hogwash
and I shouldn't pursue it any further, and then he
stole it from under my feet. Wheatstone did not like
(26:29):
this accusation. Obviously, these are strong words, so he said, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no no no. I've been working on my electric clock
way before I ever met this Bain kid. And we
don't know. We're never going to know for certain at
this point because it was so long ago, but it
seems entirely possible that these two guys did meet. But
(26:54):
they came up with the idea independently of each other.
There we go parallel thinking it happens, And that didn't
stop Bane. He took out war patents. He was getting
pretty prolific, and he was again, he was a very
smart dude. He he had this phenomenal idea. In December,
he took out a patent for a series of applications
(27:16):
of electric technology to railway locomotives and signaling, and he
did this with the help of another collaborator, a Royal
Navy lieutenant named Thomas Wright.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Correct Baine then introduced what would become a crucial modification
to the transmission of telegraph signals and of course received
reception as well by inverting the existing method of creating
these signals, which used a needle of pivoting under the
influence of an electromagnet, by suspending a movable coil between
(27:48):
the poles of a magnet, and this took off by
May of eighteen forty three. Bane it patented a machine
that could transmit and receive drawings and documents recognized Wiley
as the ancest are true the modern facts machine. And
when I say the modern facts machine, obviously it's easy
to kind of scoff because it does feel like an
outdated technology at this point in history, but it is
(28:09):
still used by certain organizations.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Oh and after warning, man fax machines are very common
in Japan.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Okay, interesting, Okay, well, let's get to it.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Even though Bain was applauded and lauded for his inventions
and just his you know, innovating spirit his imagination. He
was able to complete a series of successful lab tests
over the next couple of years, but it was just
ahead of its time and it didn't quite result in
the immediate adoption in use for practical applications that.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
He had hoped.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yeah, it reminds me of an excellent Mitchell and Web
sketch about all of da Vinci's other inventions that just
don't apply. That he's trying to explain how a computer
mouse works to his patron who they neither of them
know what a computer is, or he vince windshield wipers
before windshields and cars.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
That's hilarious. That is like the very definition of being
too ahead of the current.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yeah, and that's what. Yeah, you're making paraphernalia for a
core invention that does not yet exist. That's kind of
where Bain is.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
We know.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
There's something really beautiful about this too, which is in
the world of invention, it is extraordinarily rare for a
single person to be the luminary the Moses coming down
from on high, or the Prometheum with the fire. We
stand on the shoulders of giants. So if you look
around at anything in your area, including statistically the phone
(29:40):
you're listening to this on. Then you have to realize
that dozens, if not thousands of people made tiny inventions
and tiny improvements that led to the thing you're seeing now.
So a lot of our tech advancements come from what
we call compounding innovation standing on the shoulders of giants,
(30:01):
or combinatorial innovation, which is when you take an existing
technology and then you take another existing technology and you
put them together.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Yes, indeed, like peanut butter and jelly, just so just
like that what you call it synergistic effects.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
There we go.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
And a big fan of combinatorial innovation is an Italian guy,
physicist inventor Giovanni Casselli. He takes the technology of the
telegraph and something called the pentagraph and combines them with
speaking to synchronization pendulum synchronization to invent the first real
(30:42):
fax machine, which he calls the pentelegraph.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
The pent telegraph, I love it. In eighteen sixty, Napoleon
the Third No, not that Napoleon, his nephew, however, and
the Emperor of France at the time would take in
a demonstration of the pent telegraph, and you know they
were on board with it. They decided to place orders
for the service to work within the French National Telegraph network,
(31:07):
and with the help of Napoleon the Third but with
access to the telegraph network as well as financial support,
the Penn Telegraph was successfully tested over a span of
eight hundred kilometers stretching between Paris and Marseilles.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
And now we get to our third act. We're tying
the whole thing together. It is the spring of eighteen sixty.
The Tokugawa Shogunate has sent an official delegation of somewhere
between seventy six to eighty samurai to the United States
of America to ratify what's called the Treaty of Amity
(31:43):
and Commerce. They obviously arrive at the West coast. It's
San Francisco, right because trans Pacific flights are not a
thing yet. They are on the USS Powhatan in February.
That's when they arrive, and then they travel across the country.
It takes a while, by the way, because the interstate's
still not a thing. They get to Washington, d C. Philadelphia.
(32:08):
At New York City they have to go via Panama.
It's a whole thing, and the American public loves them,
you know, this is they get a Beatlemania ask welcoming.
They do, and it's problematic because it's exotic and they're
treating them like aliens. A crowd of five hundred thousand
something people shows up in New York for a parade.
(32:31):
This is bigger than New Year's at the time.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
It would seem so yeah, roughly half a million people.
That is wild.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Meanwhile, during all of this, the soon to be president
Abraham Lincoln was making the campaign rounds. He was on
the trail, and it wouldn't be long before he was
actively dealing with the lead up to a little thing
called the War of Northern Aggression or the Civil War,
something along those lines. But in terms of the timeline,
his travelers would have actually taken him well within the
(33:01):
range that that technology we're talking about could have transmitted communications.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
And on May sixteenth, eighteen sixty, it must be said,
the Republican National Convention convened in Chicago. Their platform condemned
proposals to allow slavery in US territories, and they called
rightly the reopening of the African slave trade a crime
against humanity. Because the Republicans of that era were very
(33:30):
different from the Republican Party in the US today. This
all brings it together beautifully. We think we know how
things wound up playing out in that election, but we're
baffled by the commonality and commingling of history because technically,
(33:52):
as you point out, Jabbari, all of this together means
that a samurai could have been on that diplomatic trip.
He or she could have actually sent Abraham Lincoln a fax. Uh,
let's send on this? What would what would the samurai facts?
Abraham Lincoln night sick, wrestling.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Moves man, Yeah, yeah, compliment on his read, sure, his
stovepipe hat?
Speaker 3 (34:17):
No, what you got, Max? I said, you up? Yeah?
You new phone? Who does w h No?
Speaker 2 (34:25):
I love Jabari's suggestions here. Perhaps that preemptive little on
your left or watch your back might have helped, and
that would work real well for the political cartoon that
we set up at the top. I think this is
a really fun way to kind of do a little
grab bag history episode in a really fun trajectory that
you set up for as Jabari. So thanks a lot
(34:46):
for the research on.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
This, big, big thanks to our super producer mister Max Williams.
Huge thanks to our brand new research associate Jabbari Davis,
as well as Alex Williams Uh the musical genius who
composed this track, Chris Fraciotis and he's Jeff codes here
in Spira, Jonathan Strickland, the quiztor, aj Bahamas, Jacobs a puzzler,
(35:06):
doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance the world's foremost authority on
underwater explosions. What a weird flex. Speaking of cool flex
is big big shout out to the rude dudes of
Ridiculous crime. If you dig us, you'll love them now
tell us maybe over on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians.
What you would have facted either a samurai or Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
Max Kawhi Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
He's just so cute.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Look at him, a face.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Like a button. That guy, those big old eyes just
staring back at you. That is none other than mister
Noel Brown. They called me Ben Bullen, and we all
three are huge fans of as you could imagine history.
One thing that escapes a lot of people, I think,
especially when we just look at what you learn in
(01:01):
your grade school history books, is that all of the
history that you could imagine happened a lot more concurrently
that your history books will have you believe.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Parallel timelines, baby, not parallel universes. This stuff happened in
the same universe at the same time, just very very
far away. And we always from one another, and we
always talk about things like parallel thinking during times where
these different cultures were so isolated but kind of figured
out the same stuff at the same time. Super interesting phenomenon,
and we have a discussion of just such a relationship
(01:38):
coming to us from our brand new research associate, Jabbari,
you really knocked it out of the park with this
research brief.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Absolutely yet thank you Jabari. We're still working on a
nickname for you man.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
But itself in the text, I think right to celebrate Jabari,
to celebrate.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
You here we are not blowing smoke. This is what
ofb our or favorite kinds of thought exploration. We're going
to take three things that you're probably familiar with, the
ancient era of Japanese samurai, the advent of a facimile
technology which leads to the fax machine, and the presidency
(02:16):
of the notorious amateur wrestler Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
We'll reach on that guy both real reach with his
arms and with his hat.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
And this means, as Jabari reveals to us, this means
that technically a Japanese samurai could have hypothetically sent none
other than Abraham Lincoln a fax if he or she
had wanted.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Why am I picturing this as like a political cartoon opportunity,
You know, that's great, Like a samurai sending a fact
to Abraham Lincoln. The punchline would be in whatever the
fact said. Maybe that'll reveal itself in the text as well.
So sort of like finding out the tidbit of information
that Cleopatra, who lived from sixty nine to thirty BCE,
(03:10):
lived closer to the invention of the iPhone two thousand
and seven than she did to the construction of the
Egyptian Pyramids twenty five sixty BCE. We're always, you know,
as aging fellows and fans of pop culture, having these
moments where we're like, gosh, we're closer now to the
like sixties, as the sixties.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Were to like the twenties.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
You know, it's just the way time compresses as you
get older and you start viewing it in a different way.
It's fascinating stuff, but it's true. It's not a factoid.
It's a fact right.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
A factoid is something that sounds true but is not
in fact true, Like carrots give you great eyesight, so
which is a World War two myth. By the way,
so this.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Also re started by big carrot, no doubt.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
As you say, Jabari time reality, these windows and relationships
can throw us for a loop when we really start
thinking about them. And this is what inspires the conversation
we're having today. What might a samurai have sent to
our sixteenth president? And as Jabari. As you put it,
(04:19):
would our sixteenth president have left that samurai on red
at the time, he.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Was a busy man. He also seemed like a man
of the people, so he might have he might have responded.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
And since both of us are going to end up
in Japan at some point later this year, Oh.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
I've got a countdown going for it. Ben, I'm so excited.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Awesome, man, we we couldn't be more excited to talk
a little bit about Samurai. So you guys, what's the
first thing you think of when you hear the word Samarai?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
I think of Akira Kurosawa's seven Samurai.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Nice, But also, if we're going to stick with numbers,
I also think of the era of Samurai and the
various I believe the six kind of key periods involving
the evolution of the samurai culture in tradition.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
I just think a tom Cruise.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Oh gosh, yeah, the last Samurai, Thanks White Savior. So
I love the conversation about the eras of samurai because
for most of us in the West, you have a
titular image of what appears to be only one point
in Japan's history. But we have to remember the stories
(05:34):
about the samurai remind us of the deep age of
other civilizations. The US is still a relatively new kid
on the block geopolitically speaking, not pop music.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Speaking, right, And while we obviously don't quite have the
time to go into the entire history of Japan's existence
as a unified country, we are going to take a
bit of a snapshot at the six distinct eras of
the jap These samurai, Given there nearly seven hundred year reign,
perhaps it ought to come as no surprise to you
ridiculous historians that it would in fact share a timeline
(06:10):
at some point with some of these other historical touch points.
But it's nonetheless a very interesting, as you pointed out,
Ben thought experiment. So let's talk first about maybe where
the term samurai comes from.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Ooh, I love this as a guy who as a
guy who has cartoonishly bad Japanese, the term samurai has
fascinating etymology. It comes from the word saburu, which means
to serve, and it was first used in about CE
or ad if you prefer seven to two, and it
(06:43):
meant it was a way of describing mid to low
ranking court administrators, and only later did it describe armed
imperial guards, and mostly, as you can tell from the etymology,
the title was referring to their loyalty to the emperor
one who serves, and.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
This would have been feudal Japan, right, So these were
like sort of in service to their lord of this
particular region fiefdom. I guess you could call it, yeah,
like like knights, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Like knights. Consider that a knight in western or central
Europe may serve a particular duke, right, or a particular
noble or aristocrat lord. But that's some kind of lord,
but that that in turn, that aristocrat, that noble would
have fealty to the king or the royal family until
(07:37):
they tried would be the emperor throw them until they
tried to overthrow them gape in this case would be
the emperor. You're correct, right, And so these guys were
like they were kind they were like the security guards,
the police or military forces, you know, terrorizing the serfs.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
They were hired of a game squad, yes, a bit
of a goon squad. And one thing that Jabari I
love that you're pointing out here is right at the top,
we refer to samurai as either he or she him
or her. It may surprise some of us to realize
(08:16):
that a lot of the Samurai were co ed.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
That's the thing, man, we often run into facts like
this that are tricky upon first examination to kind of
reconcile with what we maybe typically think about the past.
The Samurai, as well as the pirates, for example, they
were pretty egalitarian. And they were also they treated women
with a lot more respect and equality than one might think. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Now, historical figures vary on the total, but experts generally
believe that anywhere from twenty percent to as many as
fifty percent of these frontline warriors were female by the
early sixteen hundreds. There's also a surprising amount of diversity
(09:06):
in this, particularly in the case of Yasuke the African Samurai,
which we covered back in twenty nineteen episode of Ridiculous History.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
We sure did, and you can check that one out
as Jabbari did.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
That was a fun one.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
And also, if I'm not mistaken, the inspiration for the
pretty excellent, very graphic novel asque cartoon Afro Samurai, I.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Believe that is correct.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Yes, And as we always say, in Hollywood adaptations inspired by.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Or loosely based on honorous so.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, Jabari, the line is too good to not include,
so we'll give you the quote verbatim. You say, that's right,
folks go woke and last damn near a millennium or whatever.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Kids say these days.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah, I think the kids would probably agree with that one. Frankly,
moving on to I believe Ben helped me out here
the High End period. Yes, hey, okay, High On period
seven ninety four to eleven eighty five, which is marked
by the formation of these I guess you could call
them bands or like these sort of individual subgroups of
(10:17):
warriors called bushi, and I believe that is a term
that you might be familiar with from the film Bushido Blade.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yes, yes, this is also another way to call them
would be mercenaries.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
And that might be a term ridiculous historians that you
may recognize from the video games series Bushido Blade.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yes, yeah, And another word for these folks at this
time would be mercenaries. They would get paid to maintain order,
and when an estate was expanding or encroaching into another territory,
it was their job to make that encroachment happen. At
(10:58):
this point, again, merks, they're not their stories similar to
that janisaries in some way, they're not rising to administrative
power just yet until they reach the Kama Kuora period,
and that's eleven eighty five to thirteen thirty three.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Well, and much like.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
The sort of codes of chivalry that we know, you
know from the feudal Knights from the West, the Bushie
adhered to a similar code of conduct and ethics called
the Bushido Code, which apparently in that series I've never
played personally, I think there's several of them. Bushido blade
is a strict code of honorable combat that dictates the
(11:41):
narrative progression of the story, kind of like in certain RPGs,
where your actions, whether they're positive or negative, or neutral
or whatever, can change the ending absolutely.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
We also know in the Kama Kora period that the
rise to power of what we call the Samurai class
came from a decade's long, violent stretch of chaos between
two powerful clans, Minamoto and Taia, and it ended with
(12:13):
the minimum spoiler everybody, the Minimoto. When this leads to
the formation of what we now call the Kama Kora
Shogunate area ruled by a specific clan shogun, similar to
like a Mongolian kanate, a warlord, right, Yes, pretty much.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Something along those lines.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
I mean, definitely not a much more of a totalitarian,
militaristic kind of order, like martial law practically.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah, like a warlord who's heavy on the admin, you
know what I mean. Like Japan. This is Japan's first
feudal military government in all of known history. It's decentralized,
so everybody is paying lip service to the Emperor of Japan,
but it's more of a figurehead status. It's the showguns
(13:04):
and later the samurai who wield the actual power.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
And I love what Jabari points out here. It's very
similar to the arrangement that Tony Soprano in the incredible
HBO series The Sopranos worked out with all of the
other captains of their crime family, or capos as they
referred to. In the early series of Sopranos, Uncle Junior
was meant to be the boss kind of I'm saying
(13:28):
the boss.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
I can't not say it that way in.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Terms of his age and seniority, but he really just
ruled as kind of a figurehead.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, exactly. And that's a great comparison. We know that
power shifts continued, and the power sort of balkanized. It
became more localized during what we call the Murumachi period
in thirteen thirty six all the way to fifteen seventy three.
This is where we see the feudal lords, warlords like
(14:02):
you said, named the daimo, and they are regionally placed,
strategically placed to sort of franchise out the rule of
the shogun. They maintain these large estates and these castles
which you should check out when you visit. This leads
to armies of samurai.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Right and then in the mid fifteenth century we start
seeing the beginnings of the son Dooku period, which was
fourteen sixty seven to sixteen hundred, and we also started
to see the complete fall of centralized authority due to
an incredibly bitter and brutal civil war between the daimo overseers,
which pitted the samurai armies against one another, causing tons
(14:45):
of internal strife and conflict, utterly brutal warfare for nearly
one hundred and fifty years. And this whole you know,
bloody affair, is credited as the period where combat technique
were beginning to be honed and revolutionized and some of
the sophisticated war strategies that we credit to the Japanese
(15:09):
and the samurai that we know today.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
A lot of people die in horrific ways. So we'll
just fast forward, fast forward along that while acknowledging it,
and this leads to the unification of Japan under the
Tokagawa Shokunate. This ushers in about two hundred years of
relative peace, and the warriors suddenly find themselves out of
(15:34):
a job. Then you don't need people running around chopping
heads off and committing sepuku. If they mess up, which
is ritualized suicide tied to these codes.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Of honor right and then failure to adhere to it
are being dishonored, and then you would be more likely
to take your own life ritualistically than live as a
shame to your family or your clan.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Now, this is where we get to the key part
of our thought experiment. Right, there's a three act structure.
Now we're to Edol period.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Which I think the way many people really think of
in terms of the real culmination of all of this
samurai business.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Now we're at sixteen oh three to about eighteen sixty eight,
So keep that last date in your mind, folks. This
is where we see the most consequential transition for the
samurai class. They become similar again to the comparison of
janissaries in the Ottoman Empire, they become bureaucrats, they become
(16:38):
local powerholders and politicians, and wearing your sword starts to
become ceremony and tradition. So you're not really it's like
all those portraits of later Medieval Age kings in the West.
They've got the armor on for the portrait, they've got
the sword because it looks nice in the oil painting,
(16:59):
but actually using it right.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
And I guess, you know, maybe I'm confused because certainly
when I think of samurai, I often think of the
Edo period, and maybe because that's what a lot of
a lot of the imagery comes from, like a lot
of the paintings and a lot of the classic samurai
garb that we think of with those helmets.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
But it is also completely accurate that this was not
the bloody warring period.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
This was samurai more as like diplomats and politicians wearing
the stuff out of ceremony.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
So it's interesting for me, certainly to.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Clarify some of that and realize that what we think
of as samurai period really is kind of a miss
mix and match of all of these different periods kind
of you know that has been depicted in maybe not
the most historically accurate way by pop culture.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Yeah, the samurai can still tangle if they have to,
but they're a lot more like your upper management. They're
a lot more like in response to your earlier facts
kind of samurai instead of you know, I will decapitate
you samurai, but they you know, what still happened. We
want to be clear about that. And you may be
(18:07):
asking yourself, guys, why did we need to take this
quick trip down memory lane of Japanese samurai history. We
think it's because it's cool, and it sets up our
It sets up one of our travel obsessions that tomorrow
you obviously also share, and it also gives us the
(18:28):
historical context that leads us to act to So there's
eight hundred years or over eight hundred years of samurai history.
Seven hundred of those years are effectively as part of
Japan's ruling class, and now we have to travel around
the world. So the Edo period is happening in Japan,
(18:50):
but what's going on in Scotland?
Speaker 3 (18:52):
What is going on in Scotland?
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Well, some crafty scots and some schemes. Well, yeah, there's
definitely some culinary innovations going on in terms of like
the traducing of cow stomachs.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Have you ever I bet you have been. You've eaten hagis?
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Surely yes, not me, not not to say that I'd
be against it, but I will tell you what I
did have last night, Ben, I went to this incredible
Polish restaurant called Carcima in green Point, Brooklyn and had
this thing they do called stuffed cabbage, where it's just
like a bunch of meat and seasoning and stuff like
stuffed inside a big, old, you know, thick piece of cabbage.
(19:29):
So that's about as close as I want to get
to the haggis of it all. Maybe try a little
blood sausage. But now the haggis is a little extreme
for me, so more for you, But okay with it.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
It's uh, it's one of those things where I'm glad
I tried it, but I don't. I don't find myself
come lunchtime with a hankering for a haggis.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
You don't hankering.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
I don't have a hagas hanker nor blood pudding, but
have tried that as well.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
It's just it's.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Something you should do when it's a so you could
say you did it, and.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Some people swear by it. They do, And I'll tell
you what I do like is maybe a bit of
a hot take. I like just a good old piece
of liver and that that has that kind of coppery
taste that a lot of people associate with awful and
bloody blood stuff.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
But I enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
I think it's because I grew up eating it. Not
something that I would order necessarily, but I did. I
hate brains and eggs as well because I had some
real uh real southern grandparents stuff from North Carolina, and
that was more liver for you. Man. Scrapple, remember Ben,
when we were on that road trip with with our
buddy Scott from car Stuff and we ate, uh they
call it scrapple or liver pudding.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, it looks like a shingle. It does look like it,
and it's not that bad. I don't know if that
documentary of our road rally for car Stuff is still
on Amazon, but check it out if it did a
lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
It was a good time.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
But back to Scotland after our organ meat detour there.
At this same time, when the Edo period is in
full swing in Japan, a Scottish inventor and engineer, as
Jabbari puts it, delightfully, was kilt deep in his creation
and development of facsimile technology.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
This guy's name is Alexander Bain.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Not that Alexander Bain, not the philosopher.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Different guy, Nope, different guy.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
That guy was born eighteen eighteen died nineteen oh three.
This fella we're talking about, Alexander Bain, was born in
either eighteen ten or eighteen eleven, depending on the source.
His father, a man named John Bain, was a crofter.
What's the crofter?
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Ben?
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Well, you know, let's do it like an ad. Hey,
are you tired of being a surf? Are you tired
of not having land rights or even human rights? Well
we can't make you a Scottish lord, but we can
upgrade you a little bit. Consider crofting the comfort ecotomy
plus of sharecropping. It's slightly better. You have a little
(21:52):
bit more equitable circumstances, and most importantly, your children have
a better chance of advancing up the socio economic ladder
of the time.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
And children he did have. My friend John Bain's wife,
Isabella Waiters, sometimes referred to as Isobel Waiters, reportedly had
twelve of them, six boys and six girls, an even dozen.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
That's wild man, Good luck, Isabelle, your service for sure.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
So this is where we this is why we're setting
up the idea of socioeconomic educational opportunity. Bain gets his
elementary education per normal. He later pursues a trade. He's
apprenticed to a local clockmaker named John Sellers se l
Lars and he's just eleven. Basically, the family I don't
(22:46):
want to say this disrespectfully. It's not human trafficking, but
they did kind of pimp him out because all the
money he made as the apprentice to this local clockmaker
went back to his family. Is pay as a kid,
he was apprenticeships of the time, they would pay you
quote unquote in room and board and anything. Any financial profit,
(23:11):
if it was acknowledged in your agreement, would go to
your adult family. This works out, Bain learns a lot.
He's not gonna waste his life being a crofter, not
that there's anything wrong with that. He has higher ambitions.
It's eighteen thirty seven when he relocates to London. He
works as a journeyman clockmaker for a little while. This
(23:35):
is the natural path of learning the trades at the time,
and even now in certain trades today, we think that
his second boss when he's a journeyman. We think this
guy was named John Barwise, because this happens all the
time in academia as well. Because Bain files his first
(23:56):
patent and this guy, John Barwise is listed as a
co applicant, which is kind of like when Quentin Tarantino
was listed as executive producer on Man with the Iron Fist,
Like he didn't really write the script, he didn't really
invent the thing.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
But yeah, sometimes the executive executi producer is kind of
a taste maker, sort of there to kind of lend
a little bit of expertise on set. But also sometimes
it involves like money and finance or credibility. It can
mean different things, but yes, especially when they put it
above the line, it adds some gravitas to a movie
like that.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
So we cannot prove it, but we have a sneak
eating Spidey sense that John and bar Wise just got
his name on the patent, not because he helped with
the idea, but because he was Alex Bain's boss.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
There you go, yeah, And that's sometimes he gets some
of that Nollywood too little Nepo baby type stuff. So
in January of eighteen forty one, the two of them
were granted their first successful patent, four o'clock with pendulum
that was moved by electromagnetic impulses. Been, I know you
and I are both fascinated by the art of clockmaking.
Oh the complications, Oh fascinating, dude, And like just the
(25:11):
tiny little pieces and the way they all have to
work in concert, and yes, the complications. So physicists and
fellow inventor Charles Wheatstone had demonstrated a clock to the
Royal Society, which is the UK's national Academy of Sciences
and the oldest continuously operating scientific academy in the entire
world around and operating going strong since sixteen sixty And
(25:32):
that happened in December of the previous year. And this clock, yeah,
was very similar, alarmingly similar to use clock parlance, to
the one that Bane and Barweise themselves had patented.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
And Bain had a story about this. He responded to
the maybe not accusations just yet, but the implications of
ip theft. Check out our episodes on that. And he
said the following, He said, look, I do know Charles
Wheatstone magazine editor told me to visit Wheatstone, and I
(26:06):
did visit him, and Charles and I talked about stuff,
and Wheatstone told me my idea was poppycock and hogwash
and I shouldn't pursue it any further, and then he
stole it from under my feet. Wheatstone did not like
(26:29):
this accusation. Obviously, these are strong words, so he said, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no no no. I've been working on my electric clock
way before I ever met this Bain kid. And we
don't know. We're never going to know for certain at
this point because it was so long ago, but it
seems entirely possible that these two guys did meet. But
(26:54):
they came up with the idea independently of each other.
There we go parallel thinking it happens, And that didn't
stop Bane. He took out war patents. He was getting
pretty prolific, and he was again, he was a very
smart dude. He he had this phenomenal idea. In December,
he took out a patent for a series of applications
(27:16):
of electric technology to railway locomotives and signaling, and he
did this with the help of another collaborator, a Royal
Navy lieutenant named Thomas Wright.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Correct Baine then introduced what would become a crucial modification
to the transmission of telegraph signals and of course received
reception as well by inverting the existing method of creating
these signals, which used a needle of pivoting under the
influence of an electromagnet, by suspending a movable coil between
(27:48):
the poles of a magnet, and this took off by
May of eighteen forty three. Bane it patented a machine
that could transmit and receive drawings and documents recognized Wiley
as the ancest are true the modern facts machine. And
when I say the modern facts machine, obviously it's easy
to kind of scoff because it does feel like an
outdated technology at this point in history, but it is
(28:09):
still used by certain organizations.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Oh and after warning, man fax machines are very common
in Japan.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Okay, interesting, Okay, well, let's get to it.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Even though Bain was applauded and lauded for his inventions
and just his you know, innovating spirit his imagination. He
was able to complete a series of successful lab tests
over the next couple of years, but it was just
ahead of its time and it didn't quite result in
the immediate adoption in use for practical applications that.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
He had hoped.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yeah, it reminds me of an excellent Mitchell and Web
sketch about all of da Vinci's other inventions that just
don't apply. That he's trying to explain how a computer
mouse works to his patron who they neither of them
know what a computer is, or he vince windshield wipers
before windshields and cars.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
That's hilarious. That is like the very definition of being
too ahead of the current.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yeah, and that's what. Yeah, you're making paraphernalia for a
core invention that does not yet exist. That's kind of
where Bain is.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
We know.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
There's something really beautiful about this too, which is in
the world of invention, it is extraordinarily rare for a
single person to be the luminary the Moses coming down
from on high, or the Prometheum with the fire. We
stand on the shoulders of giants. So if you look
around at anything in your area, including statistically the phone
(29:40):
you're listening to this on. Then you have to realize
that dozens, if not thousands of people made tiny inventions
and tiny improvements that led to the thing you're seeing now.
So a lot of our tech advancements come from what
we call compounding innovation standing on the shoulders of giants,
(30:01):
or combinatorial innovation, which is when you take an existing
technology and then you take another existing technology and you
put them together.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Yes, indeed, like peanut butter and jelly, just so just
like that what you call it synergistic effects.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
There we go.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
And a big fan of combinatorial innovation is an Italian guy,
physicist inventor Giovanni Casselli. He takes the technology of the
telegraph and something called the pentagraph and combines them with
speaking to synchronization pendulum synchronization to invent the first real
(30:42):
fax machine, which he calls the pentelegraph.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
The pent telegraph, I love it. In eighteen sixty, Napoleon
the Third No, not that Napoleon, his nephew, however, and
the Emperor of France at the time would take in
a demonstration of the pent telegraph, and you know they
were on board with it. They decided to place orders
for the service to work within the French National Telegraph network,
(31:07):
and with the help of Napoleon the Third but with
access to the telegraph network as well as financial support,
the Penn Telegraph was successfully tested over a span of
eight hundred kilometers stretching between Paris and Marseilles.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
And now we get to our third act. We're tying
the whole thing together. It is the spring of eighteen sixty.
The Tokugawa Shogunate has sent an official delegation of somewhere
between seventy six to eighty samurai to the United States
of America to ratify what's called the Treaty of Amity
(31:43):
and Commerce. They obviously arrive at the West coast. It's
San Francisco, right because trans Pacific flights are not a
thing yet. They are on the USS Powhatan in February.
That's when they arrive, and then they travel across the country.
It takes a while, by the way, because the interstate's
still not a thing. They get to Washington, d C. Philadelphia.
(32:08):
At New York City they have to go via Panama.
It's a whole thing, and the American public loves them,
you know, this is they get a Beatlemania ask welcoming.
They do, and it's problematic because it's exotic and they're
treating them like aliens. A crowd of five hundred thousand
something people shows up in New York for a parade.
(32:31):
This is bigger than New Year's at the time.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
It would seem so yeah, roughly half a million people.
That is wild.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Meanwhile, during all of this, the soon to be president
Abraham Lincoln was making the campaign rounds. He was on
the trail, and it wouldn't be long before he was
actively dealing with the lead up to a little thing
called the War of Northern Aggression or the Civil War,
something along those lines. But in terms of the timeline,
his travelers would have actually taken him well within the
(33:01):
range that that technology we're talking about could have transmitted communications.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
And on May sixteenth, eighteen sixty, it must be said,
the Republican National Convention convened in Chicago. Their platform condemned
proposals to allow slavery in US territories, and they called
rightly the reopening of the African slave trade a crime
against humanity. Because the Republicans of that era were very
(33:30):
different from the Republican Party in the US today. This
all brings it together beautifully. We think we know how
things wound up playing out in that election, but we're
baffled by the commonality and commingling of history because technically,
(33:52):
as you point out, Jabbari, all of this together means
that a samurai could have been on that diplomatic trip.
He or she could have actually sent Abraham Lincoln a fax. Uh,
let's send on this? What would what would the samurai facts?
Abraham Lincoln night sick, wrestling.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Moves man, Yeah, yeah, compliment on his read, sure, his
stovepipe hat?
Speaker 3 (34:17):
No, what you got, Max? I said, you up? Yeah?
You new phone? Who does w h No?
Speaker 2 (34:25):
I love Jabari's suggestions here. Perhaps that preemptive little on
your left or watch your back might have helped, and
that would work real well for the political cartoon that
we set up at the top. I think this is
a really fun way to kind of do a little
grab bag history episode in a really fun trajectory that
you set up for as Jabari. So thanks a lot
(34:46):
for the research on.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
This, big, big thanks to our super producer mister Max Williams.
Huge thanks to our brand new research associate Jabbari Davis,
as well as Alex Williams Uh the musical genius who
composed this track, Chris Fraciotis and he's Jeff codes here
in Spira, Jonathan Strickland, the quiztor, aj Bahamas, Jacobs a puzzler,
(35:06):
doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance the world's foremost authority on
underwater explosions. What a weird flex. Speaking of cool flex
is big big shout out to the rude dudes of
Ridiculous crime. If you dig us, you'll love them now
tell us maybe over on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians.
What you would have facted either a samurai or Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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