Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick. And today we're continuing our trek through human
techno history, and we're going to begin with The flint Stones. Okay, uh.
If you've ever watched The flint Stones the old uh
(00:25):
in nineteen sixties American cartoon, you're probably familiar with their
over the top cartoon world in which you know, you
have you have these cavemen, but they're also it's also
like a commentary to eliminated extent on nineteen sixties American culture,
and they live alongside dinosaurs and they utilize them to
power pretty much every aspect of their society. Is the
(00:46):
satirical element there. If I've only seen The flint Stones
Viva Rock Vegas, probably yeah, I think so, because they,
if I remember correctly, those live action adaptations did put
a lot of emphasis on the dinosaur and pre star
creature based technology. Oh yeah, clearly. That's the big draw
of the series, is the curiosity what kind of dinosaur
(01:06):
is going to be playing the role of a toilet today? Yeah,
because well, they didn't use dinos to power everything. For instance,
they did insist on footing their own ridiculous stone cars
around town. I love that they had a typewriter that
was a mere stone machine, kind of like a cross
between a typewriter and a stone xylophone or something. But
(01:27):
they also used, of course, that would be what is
it a lithophone? Actually it's not a there is a
name for a stone xylophone. But but it was of
course more complicated, ridiculously complicated. Uh, in the flint Stones.
But then they also used, just to name a few inventions,
the following uh. And let let's go back and forth
on these jokes, a sauropod powered construction crane device, a
(01:50):
stegosaur based fire truck, theropod based mobile stairs like the airport. Yeah, okay,
A small dinosaur that they used as a can opener up.
This one's really famous. And I know they used this
one in the live action film. A garbage disposal dinosaur
that just lives underneath the counter. I remember this. Actually
they were like the garbage disposals acting up and he
(02:12):
opens up the cabinets and like yells at it. But
they've also got a record player that's a turtle and hummingbird. Yeah,
it's like the hummingbird is the needle, of course, and
the turtle was somehow spinning the record. Wait a minute,
where they're hummingbirds? And wait a minute. They were definitely
not humans coexisting with dinosaurs. Uh. They had a mammoth
(02:34):
based uh system of running water, didn't They also have
a tiny mammoth that was like the vacuum cleaner. They
used it to because the hose or maybe it's young.
I don't know how this worked. There was also a
I'm not sure it was a bird or terra saar
based camera. So like you hold up the camera to
take the picture and the small winged creature uses its
beak to then a chisel the image into a piece
(02:57):
of stone. That's funny that it's some kind a bird
as a dishwasher, it was like a pelican. Yeah, it
looked a lot like a pelican. And then, of course,
if you need a kitchen knife, what are you gonna
do use a sawfish? Why not a rock? Why not
a like a flint stone. It's it's there in the
name the flint. Hilarious If it is an actual sword fish,
I guess, but that defeats the purpose. I mean, why
(03:18):
you would use an animal in place of a machine
is that an animal is complex and has moving parts
and can generate motive power if you just need a
knife or something. It seems like real stone age technology
would work just as well. Oh absolutely, um. And then
of course there's the added fact that they have a
pet dinosaur named Dino who is just there for companionship. Now,
(03:40):
all of this is ridiculous, and even today we watch
it and we laugh at it because it's a ridiculous
exaggeration of animal labor. Each dinosaur prehistar creature is highly specialized.
So you know, either the humans of the flint Stones
just found the right animals to perform these very specific functions, uh,
or like us real life humans, they bred them to
(04:03):
encourage certain traits, traits who would make them ideal for
highly specific specialized tasks such as living under your sink
and eating all of your scraps. That's right. And to
explore this concept further today we're going to look at
a real historical example. Uh. Certainly not the only example
of an animal bred for a certain job within the
(04:24):
house providing some kind of motive power. Of course, we
know farm animals, draft animals. Pack animals have been doing
this kind of thing for millennia. But today we're gonna
be looking at a very strange specific case from history.
The turnspit dog, a breed of domestic dog that is
bred to run around a small wheel to power e rotisserie. Yes,
(04:45):
and this is this is this is amazing. I was
I had not heard of this before. So this was
like suddenly, It's like suddenly realizing the flint stones were
real to a certain extent. But but this is gonna
be a great episode as well, because it's not just
going to be about this dog. It's gonna be about
sort of two or three additional technologies that factor in
(05:05):
to this period in time in which dog labor was
used to help cook big chunks of meat. Right, So
I guess first we always asked the question here what
came before this invention? So obviously we should look at
the dog itself, and the dog in a way, if
you sort of, if you sort of squint, it is
sort of a human invention. I mean, obviously it's a
(05:28):
product of nature. So we like we didn't create you know,
canines generally, but the domestic dog and the domestic dog
breeds that exist have in many ways been guided by
human hands to greater and lesser extents. Yeah, I mean
it's not you know, it's not necessary a situation where
a prehistoric uh you know, number of human society said
(05:48):
that is a good wolf creature out there. I have
a few pointers for what we might change in it,
but that is essentially the process that ends up taking place. So, yes,
before you can have a dog powered meat spinning grill machine,
you have to have a domestic dog. And in brief,
the domestic dog dates back an estimated twelve thousand years
(06:09):
to the Near East, before the cat, before the sheep,
before the goat, and before the horse. The dog maybe
man's best friend, and it is certainly one of his
oldest non human friends. It is the oldest recognizably domestic animal.
And we know they were used some eleven thousand years
ago in post glacial Europe by hunter gatherers, and they
(06:32):
were almost certainly used in hunting. Interestingly enough, it's sometimes
questioned why humans didn't actually domesticate the dogs sooner than this,
and one idea is that there was even more incentive
to domesticate these, you know, the wild wolf like creatures
into the domesticated dog in the post glacial world, because
you increasingly then had to track wounded animals that you've
(06:55):
wounded during the you know, the hunt through wooded regions.
Increasing a wooded regions is the forest return and a
dog's superior sense of smell could make a huge difference
in that task. So the dog was a pre farming
domestic species, and that's something that's really essential to note.
Because the cat, I think we've touched on this before.
If not an invention, then unstuff to blow your mind.
(07:17):
You know, the cat comes about as an investigated species
in the post farming world because of the post farming
surplus of food. Right, So in the in the post
farming world, you might have say stores of grain or
other foods in a settled location that you're not moving
around from, and those might attract to say rats or
something like that that would get into your grain, and
then the cat can follow the rats. Right. And then
(07:39):
these areas other species, many of them of course, our
food species that we domesticated so so as to uh
control them and not have to hunt them anymore. They
live with us, and we kill them when we desire
to kill them. But of course as great as dogs
can be and continue to be and in the in
aiding the hunt, we know that they can be bred
(08:00):
who specialize in a number of key tasks. And I
have a short list here that I thought we might
go back and forth on again, much like we did
with the dinosaurs of the Flintstones. So you can of
course breed a dog over many generations to fetch felled foul.
That's kind of a tongue twister, but yeah, you can see.
Maybe you shoot down a bird, you don't know exactly
(08:20):
where it went, but the dog can find it. Essentially,
the dog is still aiding in the hunt, but it's
a more specialized version of aiding in the hunt. Now
the other thing would be playing more of a role
we think of with cats these days, are ridding the
home area or the food storage areas of rats and
other vermin. Right. Another one is to aid in fishing specifically,
(08:40):
and this is one of the breeds you see this
with is the Newfoundland dog, which is a you know,
a kin to the Labrador retriever. The Labrador retriever fetches
felled foul, but the traditionally but the Newfoundland dog is
there to retrieve floats and ropes from dangerous icy waters. Now,
of course we see lots of shepherd ng dogs in
world traditions that they can help control the movements and
(09:03):
direction of flocks. Right. Um, a big scary dog with
a loud bark has long been used and uh and
and is still used to as as protection, either to
protect an individual or to protect property. Yeah, and I
guess this would be part of a bigger thing. Is
just sort of like using dogs for violence or the
threat of violence. So dogs used in war or fighting
(09:25):
or in in in combat dogs. Unfortunately, sometimes dogs you
used to fight each other purely for sport, which is terrible,
or in other equally egregious kinds of bear baiting. Yeah.
Another area, though that is not dark or not not
intrinsically dark, is tracking, because dogs mad dogs could be
(09:47):
used to track somebody or something for nefarious reasons, certainly,
but dogs can be used to track people to say,
to find uh say, fine individuals who have been buried
in an avalanche, that sort of thing. Right, And then
of course you've got the final version, the version that
many of us today probably know the best, which is
just pure companionship. Dogs are a good friend, They're a
good buddy, and this is where we get the final
(10:08):
form of the dog, the pug. Right. But while we
often think of other animals like horses, donkeys, cattle, and
stuff like this clearly as draft animals animals that are
used to pull loads, or as pack animals, animals that
are used to carry loads. Uh, animals that are there
to provide motive power. We don't often think of the
(10:29):
dog this way. And yet, nevertheless, the dog has been
used for these purposes in many ways around the world
all throughout history. And one of those ways is what
we're going to talk about today, pairing dogs for motive
power with a specific type of cooking technology, which is
the turnspit to the practice of using a dog to
(10:50):
turn a wheel like a hamster wheel to turn a
rotisserie in a kitchen. Right, I mean, but before we
really started researching this, the only example that would have
come to mind would be sled dogs, where the dog
is used for locomotion to pull a sled across snow. Yeah,
I mean there there are plenty of examples of people
using dogs to uh to pull carts and things like that. Uh,
(11:10):
and there carry a pack, yes, yes, exactly. But later
in the episode, we'll also talk about other types of
more treadmill based motive power that come from dogs. Another
important thing to note when we're talking about all these
different things that dogs have been bred floor and and
this is kind of this is one of those sort
of overstatements of the obvious, But the role changes the
(11:33):
form of the dog. So like when we're talking about
these dogs that are that were bred to you know,
to catch rats and to chase vermin, we're often dealing
with dogs that are that are small in stature that
can chase the rat into its hiding places. Likewise, the
dogs that are used for tracking and in many cases
involving the hunt as well, are often some of the
(11:55):
absolute best smellers and are just you know, ideal for
tracking and and in all of this too, we get
into the problem of the modern world sometimes where someone
will have a pure bred dog, a dog that has
been whose evolution has been hijacked too, you know, for
the specific function, and then it finds itself as a
pet without a without necessarily having an avenue for that
(12:18):
special power that it has been given through selective breeding.
So I mean a lot of times it's funny that
people will have a dog for a pet, and they
don't even realize what the that dog breed that their
pet is was was originally bred for. And so they
may notice behavioral characteristics of the dogs that come through
without knowing why that dog is like so attuned to
(12:41):
chasing after my certain little moving objects, or why that
dog has to sniff everything. Yeah, I've I've heard though
of specific cases where, especially urban dogs, um have you know,
their owners will make an effort to find outlets, like
find a place where they can herd a single sheep
around and use that energy, or these groups that will
(13:02):
go through. I think it's New York. I heard a
radio I think it's an NPR story about this, where
people with traditionally vermin hunting dogs will get together and
basically go on a big rat chase the streets, you know,
because that's that's what the dog wants. Right. So we've
read plenty of breeds for different tasks, but I guess
we should turn to the other half of the equation here,
(13:24):
leading to the turnspit dog, which is the Rotisseriy. Yes,
the rotissory. So if you've been to the supermarket, I
think you know the basic idea here because you've probably
seen rotisserie chickens, right, but this this, uh, it's a
chicken on a spit, and usually they're like multiple spits,
creating this whole carousel of rotisserie chickens. And they're moving
under some sort of heat source, you know, being a
(13:47):
lamp or some sort of actual you know, heating element.
But you've probably also seen it if you've ever seen
like the spit for donor kebab or for euros. These
are traditionally done where there's a heat element on one
side and there's a bunch of you know, seasoned meat
that's on a spit that constantly rotates. And the idea
(14:07):
what the constant rotation is to provide even heat. Right,
meat is skewered and then placed over or adjacent to
a heat source. But then what happens if you don't
turn it. You're gonna get one side of the meat
that's hideously burned and one side of the meat that
is perhaps undercooked. Even you but it's not what you want.
You want uniform heating around the meat and within the meat.
(14:31):
And this method actually still works. One of their Robert,
do you ever encounter steak world, you know this whole
world world wisdom and false wisdom about what you're supposed
to do or not do with steaks. It can be
it can be a treacherous pass So used to when
I when I still ate beef and I would grill.
Sometimes I had I had, I would look in a
(14:52):
grilled book and there would be a lot of wisdom
there about how to do it. And then you go
on the line and there might be, you know, wisdom
that set the opposite. Yeah, exactly. There's also a lot
of like you know, dad wisdom kind of stuff that
about this. One of the one of the steak myths
that people often say is you should only turn your
steak once. You know, you put it on the grill
one side, let it go halfway on that side. Flip
(15:12):
it once and let it go halfway on that side. Uh,
that is not good wisdom. You can turn a steak
as many times as you want if you're grilling it,
and that actually helps the steak cook more evenly. Um.
You know, by constantly turning it, you are not letting
the heat build up too much on one side and
overcook that side. Okay, Well, like a similar thing I
do when I do grill, I tend to do veggie grilling,
(15:33):
and so I'll do like a grill basket and I'll
just make sure I I stir it up. Yeah, and
the same principles actually, I think would apply pretty well
to vegetables. Probably the more you stir them, the more
evenly cooked they're going to be. But in this case,
we're continuing to talk about big hunks of meat. The
bigger the better on a spit turning, uh, so as
to have that uniform cooking. But here's the thing. You've
(15:54):
got to turn that spit, and the most basic way
to do that is to turn it by hand. Now,
of course, later it's no spoiler to say that eventually
machines are going to come into play and do it,
because again, you've been to the grocery store, you've seen
machines turning rotisserie chickens. You know that that is coming. Um. However,
the rotisserie, you know, was very much in vogue in
(16:15):
the medieval world, and we see plenty of illustrations of
their use, both both in you know, their terrestrial setting
depictions of everyday medieval humans engaging in rotisserie cooking. But
then you also see lots of these imagined realms of
hell to where if you see a big elaborate depiction
of eternal damnation, there's almost certainly going to be some
(16:38):
individual spitted on a on a long skewer and then
turned over a fire. Right, the culinary traditions of the
time come through in our imaginations of torment right now.
The word ROTISSERII. The rotisserie concept itself, of course, is
not too complicated, but the word comes goes back to
France in around fourteen fifty years so, which is ironic
(16:59):
because while all there were versions of of turnspit roasting
or rotisserie all over Europe from the medieval period and
probably some earlier than that, but especially beginning in the
medieval period, I've read that it is most common in
Great Britain, that is, where spit roasting was an extremely
popular form of cooking. That like in the European continent
(17:20):
and elsewhere in the world, people would be more likely
to use like ovens enclosures to cook inside if they
were going to do a roast of meat at all
or anything like that. Apparently, for some reason, English culture
was just not into the ovens for roasting. They liked
the open flame and the constantly turning spit. Yeah, yeah,
absolutely both. I think the main sources we turned to
(17:41):
in this yeah, they center almost exclusively on England. Uh,
that's where we look at the documentation of the of
the spit and all of these additional details about how
the practice changes. Well, I think that's for two reasons.
Number one, spit roasting in general seems a more popular
form of cooking in Great Britain. And then beyond that,
where spit roasting is done, it seems like the dog
(18:04):
was a more popular way of doing it in Great
Britain than it was elsewhere. Now, one of the sources
that I I used in in my research here is
an excellent book by one B. Wilson called Consider the Fork,
a History of how We Eat and Uh. And you know,
one thing that's important is even though we have this
cartoony and perhaps even flint Stonian idea of meat spitted
(18:27):
above a fire and roast in turned, I think this
is how the Ewoks were attempting to to to consume
the heroes in Star Wars, right, maybe, I mean they've
got them hanging from a stick. It would be kind
of awkward actually spitted. I guess they weren't spitted there
would be a lot of like tumbling and falling around
the ropes they were hanging from. So I'm not sure
how well that would work for somebody I thought they
(18:49):
were going to eat somebody. I thought that they were
going to eat them. Yeah, I just don't know if
they would have turned to them. I think they probably
would have just burned them on one side and then
they do all right. Well. Well, one thing that that B.
Wilson points out is that the spit was typically located
next to a fire and not over it for most
of the cooking. You would only position it more over
the fire towards the end to toast it, sort of
(19:11):
like in an oven. Now you might you know, you
might bake something and then broil it to the last
you know, few minutes to get it a little crispy
on top. Right, then that makes sense putting it next
to the fire. I think you could get gentler, more
even heat throughout right. And a lot of times in
England we're talking about open hearth cooking too, so that
just makes more sense. Right the fire is in the
(19:32):
fireplace and then your eu rotisserie is positioned in front
of the fireplace. But for open hearth cooking. You have
to understand that this means the kitchen, especially near the fireplace,
is going to be a sweltering environment, and somebody's got
to turn that spit. And according to be Wilson, before
we put the spit dogs to work turning the spit,
(19:52):
we used turnspit boys. Yes, it's it's, it's, it's, it's,
it's it's hilarious and at the same time it is
so disturbing. So only only during the sixteenth and seventeen
centuries did the dogs take over the work really, uh,
and they took over the work from human children. She
includes a quote from biography John Aubrey, who said, quote
(20:15):
in olden times, the poor boys did turn the spits
and lipped the dripping pans, Oh boy, the dripping yeah.
And Be describes this as perhaps the worst of the
many quotes soul destroying jobs in the rich medieval kitchen.
Here's a passage from their book quote by the reign
of Henry the Eighth, the king's household had whole battalions
(20:38):
of turnspits, charring their faces and tiring their arms to
satisfy the royal appetite for roast capin's and ducks. Venison
and beef crammed in cubby holes to the side of
the fireplace. The boys must have been near roasted themselves
as they labored to roast the meats. Until the year
fifteen thirty, the kitchen staff at Hampton Core worked either
(21:01):
naked or in scanty, grimy garments. Henry the Eighth addressed
the situation not by relieving the turnspits of their duties,
but by providing the master cooks with a clothing allowance
with which to keep the junior staff decently clothed and
therefore even hotter. That's horrible, I mean this, this lines
up with everything I've read that the turnspit role was
(21:23):
essentially the lowest rank in the kitchen. It was the
last job you'd want to have because it's like, it's
not only sweltering hot, hard work, it's also incredibly dull
and repetitive. You know, you're not getting much of variety.
You're just standing there by a really hot fire, turning
a crank at a steady pace for hours and hours
at a time. It's kind of it's like Conan the Barbarian,
(21:46):
you know, running the mill exactly. Yeah, because it's very
important that the crank had to be turned at a
steady rate. You couldn't have the person turning the crank
take a break for a few minutes and go do
something else, because then the meat would burn on that side,
So you had to keep it turning. Yeah, so it's yeah,
it's it's grueling, just monotonous manual labor here and uh
(22:11):
and even though it's not even just the big kingly houses,
even lesser houses used them and they were they were
actually seen as acceptable well into the eighteenth century in England.
And uh and uh. Also in Scotland, b rights that
Scottish highlander John McDonald born seventeen forty one, he was
an orphan and at the age of five he worked
(22:34):
the spit in a household. Yeah, and I think this
comes through in common expressions within the English language of
the period, Like there was the expression turn spit to
like refer insulting lee to someone. It was essentially you
would call somebody a turnspit to suggest they were like
lowly and not worth your time, that they were wretched
in some way. But around the Tutor area, which was
(22:58):
roughly like the sixteenth century, you know, late fourteen hundreds
through the end of the fifteen hundreds, Uh, technology change
the picture somewhat. For this is when kitchens in in
England started using the rotisserie spit powered by belt and
dog wheel. So maybe we should take a quick break
and then when we come back we can discuss more
about the turnspit dog. Alright, so here's where we're gonna
(23:26):
look at the turnspit dog and the wheel itself. So
I guess I should mention a couple of sources that
I used for this. One is a book by Jan
Bondison called Amazing Dogs, A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities from
Amberley Publishing, two thousand eleven. And another is a book
by Brian D. Cummins, who is a cultural anthropologist who's
focused on the relationships between humans and dogs. And this
(23:49):
book is called Our Debt to the Dog, How the
Domestic Dog Helped Shape Human Societies from Caroline Academic Press. So,
according to Cummins, the first published men and of turnspit
dogs in history comes from a treatise published in fifteen
seventy six written by an author named Johanneses or John Caius,
(24:10):
who was quote Doctor of physic a in the University
of Cambridge, and this is sometimes claimed to be the
first English book written about dogs. I think he actually
wrote it in Latin, but it was quickly translated by
an assistant into English. Um And Cummins points out that
right from the beginning, Kaius identifies the turnspit dog or
what he spells the turns pete dog as a breed,
(24:32):
which Cummins thinks is probably incorrect. And we'll come back
to that more later, whether the turnspit dog was a
distinct breed of dog or not. But John Chias appears
to have gotten a lot of things wrong about dogs
in his book about dogs. He apparently didn't know much
about dogs, but he's like, I'll write a book any
little um. But this this being the first mentioned in
(24:53):
literary history, I guess we should take a look at
what he says. And so the text reads of the
dog called turn speed in Latin vuver sater, there is
comprehended under the curs of the coarsest kind, a certain
dog in kitchen service, excellent for when any meat is
to be roasted, they go into a wheel which they
(25:15):
turning round about with the weight of their bodies, so
diligently looked to their business, that no drudge nor scullion
can do the feet more cunningly whom the popular sort
here upon call turns beats. Now that is that is interesting.
Even if there is we'll discuss there maybe problems with it,
because it does imply that this is not just you
(25:35):
didn't just grab a random animal and throw it in
and just see what it did in the wheel. Now
that the dog seems to have been trained to to
to proceed on the wheel at a regular pace so
as to properly cook the meat, right, KaiA says that
it's not just that the dog can turn the wheels.
The dog turns the wheel and the spit at a
(25:57):
better rate than the human cooks in the hitchen do,
which I think a lot of people can probably relate
to the idea of a dog being more reliable than
a human um. But but the premise here, I think,
is that a dog runs inside a wheel like a
hamster wheel, in order to turn a belt that turns
a spit to ensure the even cooking on all sides
(26:17):
of the roast. So, beginning a few centuries later in
the seventeen hundreds, more records of turnspit dogs show up
in the literature, including a formal breed categorization by Carl Linnaeus,
the Swedish scholar who established a lot of important conventions
of taxonomy and nomenclature in zoology and botany. And so again,
I think Linnaeus here is identifying the turnspit dog is
(26:40):
a distinct breed of dog. Bondison points out that Linnaeus's
name for the breed is Canus vertigious or dizzy dog.
A name used in several English sources is the verna
pat cur So here's Bondison on on Linnaeus's description here
quote small, long bodied, and bandy legged. Most had drooping ears,
(27:02):
but some had to ear standing up. Some turnspit dogs
had gray and white fur, often with a white blaze
down the face. Others were black or reddish brown. There
may as well have been several other colors. Brian Cummin
says that the most common characteristics of the dog identified
as a breed are small size, short legs, muscular, especially
(27:25):
for their size and weight estimates are kind of all
over the place. They range from like fourteen to thirty
five pounds, good cardiovascular conditioning for obvious reasons, and generally
being terrier like and that makes sense because a terrier
would already be a breed that is, uh, would be
we're talking with breeds that are are small in stature.
White you utilize mainly as vermin um. Uh. Chasers don't
(27:48):
actually know, but that sounds right. I know, there's like
the rat terrier. Yeah. Uh so. Charles Darwin even made
reference to the turnspit dog in On the Origin of Species.
I had forgotten about this, but so. Of course, one
of darwin main arguments for his theory of evolution by
natural selection was the artificial breeding of animals such as
cattle and dogs. Showing the descent with modification was possible
(28:11):
by the guidance of human breeders, and thus it could
also be possible by the guidance of the natural environment.
That was the point of comparison he was trying to make,
And so Darwin writes that in domesticated strains of animals
we constantly see examples of adaptation quote not indeed to
the animals or plants own good, but to man's use
or fancy. Some variations useful to him have probably arisen
(28:34):
suddenly or by one step. So it has probably been
with the turnspit dog. So we know that in the
middle of the eighteen hundreds, when Darwin's writing about this,
it would have been a common enough, like a well
known enough phenomenon to have a turnspit dog working in
a kitchen that he could just make casual reference to
it and people would know what he was talking about. Oh, yes,
(28:55):
that dog that is so well adapted to turning a
wheel in kitchens. So, but the question kind of becomes
is the turnspit dog like a dog? Are these dogs
bred for this work or are you merely selecting dogs
to fulfill the role of the turnspit dog? Right? And
I think it's possible that's some combination of the two, Right,
that dogs with initial bits of characteristics were selected for
(29:16):
the job early on, and then maybe they were bred
to bring out certain characteristics that made them especially good
wheel turners. Right. And and this would be the same
process that you would get, say, a good rat chasing dog.
You can imagine like early on people saying I need
some dogs to go catch those rats. Give me some
short legged dogs, and then you know, the breeding commences
(29:38):
and you get increasingly breeds of short legged dogs that
have a real tenacity for chasing rats. Right, If you've
got a batch of them, maybe the two that catch
the most rats. You breed them together and that makes
the next generation. At the time, an author named J. G.
Wood mentions the turnspit dog in his Illustrated Natural History
in eighteen fifty three, but he writes that by his
(29:59):
time the dog had become rare, and while it had
previously been very common, it then existed only in isolated regions.
But in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, uh turnspit dogs
were extremely common in Great Britain. Uh Bondison writes that
they were especially common in the west of England and
particularly in the city of Bristol, and in Wales, especially
(30:21):
South Wales. Bondison writes, quote in sixteen thirty nine, when
the cornishman Peter Mundy visited Bristol, he was amazed that
there was quote scarce a house that hath not a
dog to turn the spit in a little wooden wheel.
So he's not just talking about palaces or like ns
with big kitchens there. He's saying scarcely a house. So
that's where it was apparently most common, but that was
(30:43):
less common. There are still records that there were turnspit
dogs outside of Great Britain, in places like France, where
they were shin tourn A Broches, or in Switzerland and
Germany and Holland, and in North America. There even references
to turn spit dogs in Ben Franklin's own pencil Vania Gazette.
But I mean we should recognize that something so Cummins
(31:04):
characterizes the turnspit dog's work as often quite wretched for
the dog. So they'd be having to power a wheel
by walking essentially inside the wheel for hours at a time.
These roasts take a long time to cook, uh, And
they were near the heat of the fire, which meant
that their work was sweltering, and they were often dehydrated.
(31:25):
And they can't take breaks because the wheel has to
keep going. Well, they can in some cases. I'll get
to that in a second. Generally the dog wheel was
hung suspended from the ceiling next to the fireplace. Yeah.
I believe their wood cuts the kind of show this
as well, Like it almost looks like something you would
see on a cracker barrel wall, right, you know, exactly, Yeah,
(31:46):
except it has a living dog and it turning a
crank um. Yeah, this is one of the things that's
so interesting about this is all these other categories we've
looked at, or at least, you know, disgusting in passing
in which we have bred a dog to to fulfill
a specific task. Those tasks are exclusively I think in
the wild, though, you know, like it's some version of
(32:06):
the thing they would do, be it hunting a rat,
or fetching a bird that's been shot out of the
sky with with bow or or buckshot, you know, or
or even swimming after fishing lures, or or even pulling
a sled. At least it is it is out in
an environment. It is running across the countryside in this
(32:27):
kind of artificially uh constructed pack structure. Well, yeah, you know,
I would say even for more indoor dogs, like companion
dogs that sit on your lap and cuddle with you.
I mean, that does seem more analogous to some kind
of natural behaviors, you know, like din snuggling behaviors. Uh,
this sort of like being trapped in a kitchen in
a wheel turning the wheel does seem more estranged from
(32:50):
the natural habitat and behaviors of a dog in the
wild than any of these other uses I can think of.
It is at best almost animal cruelty and probably just
animal cruelty. Oh yeah, I mean in many cases surely.
I mean it's hard to know because on one hand,
like a lot of dogs do seem to kind of
like enjoy having a task to do, right, But this
(33:11):
seems like it's really hard work that is sustained for
a long time. That like, there are lots of stories
of the dogs not wanting to do it, like they
would try to flee, like they would because dogs are intelligent,
and so one of the details I was reading is
that you would have the turnspit dog that I get,
it's not in the wheel all the time. One presumes
that it's just sort of either hanging out in the
kitchen or around the house. And then if the dog
(33:33):
begins to observe the telltale signs of a roast being prepared, uh,
if we'll run off and hide because there's no it
knows what's coming. Yeah, And there are explicit tales of
cruelty in some cases, at least like where authors at
the time right that some cruel cooks if a dog
didn't keep the wheel turning at a satisfactory rate, that
(33:54):
mean cook would put a hot coal into the wheel
with the dog, so the dog would be made to
run to escape the coal, which continually tumbled in the
wheel after it was Obviously it's horrible. On the other hand,
it doesn't seem like it was always equally bad everywhere.
Like some luckier dogs worked in pairs, trading off in
shift so that one could rest while the other worked.
(34:15):
Maybe maybe they would have a rest today while the
other worked for a day, or they could trade off,
you know, and I don't know by the hour or
something like that. Right, So there is there is the
possibility for a less cruel model at it. And at
the same time, as we discussed later, there there were
individuals who who who specifically pointed out the practice as cruelty, yes,
(34:35):
and as as one rare piece of good news in
this story. In the seventeen fifty six Sinographia, Carl Linnaeus,
again the Swedish scholar, wrote the when he was writing
about turnspit dogs, that as a reward for their hard work,
turnspit dogs would often get to eat a piece of
the steak. That's good, you know, I guess well, I
doubt that the cook who's putting the hot coal in
(34:55):
there with them is also giving them a taste of
the roast. But I imagine gender kitchen, it would vary
to give a bit of flavor about what this was
like to see in person from from people who were
there witnessing firsthand. I want to read one often sided
passage that comes from a work called Anecdotes of Dogs
by Edward Jesse from the nineteenth century. Uh So, here's
(35:16):
what Jesse writes, how well do I recollect, in the
days of my youth watching the operations of a turnspit
at the house of a worthy old Welsh clergyman in Worcestershire.
As he had several borders as well as day scholars,
his two turnspits had plenty to do. They were long bodied,
crooked legged, and ugly dogs, with a suspicious unhappy look
(35:38):
about them, as if they were weary of the task
they had to do and expected every moment to be
seized upon to perform it. Cooks in those days were
very cross, and if the poor animal, wearied with having
a larger joint than usual to turn, stopped for a moment,
the voice of the cook might be heard rating him
in no very gentle terms. When we consider that a large,
(35:58):
solid piece of beef would take at least three hours
before it was properly roasted. We may form some idea
of the task a dog has to perform in turning
a wheel. During that time, a pointer has pleasure in
finding game. The terrier worries rats with considerable glee, the
greyhound pursues hairs with eagerness and delight, and the bulldog
even attacks bulls with the greatest of energy. While the
(36:21):
poor turnspit performs his task by compulsion like a culprit
on a treadwheel, subject to scolding or beating. If he
stops a moment to rest his weary limbs and then
kicked about the kitchen when his task is over, that
had some stark condemnation. And and of course, and it
totally it does. It does bring to mind all of
the popular chef TV reality shows in which the chef
(36:44):
is is just nasty to humans. Uh, you know, one
can imagine how nasty a chef could be of this
stereotypical TV chef could be to the poor the four
spit dog. I wonder why is that such a common
stereotype of angry, yelling chef who's meaned all the cooks
working for them? Is that Is that just an accident
(37:06):
a cultural contingency, or does is does that grow naturally
out of the kind of work that happens in kitchens
with the heat and the rapid pace of work and everything.
I don't know, it'd be interesting to hear from people,
because I know it, and I've heard shows where people
are talking about like regional differences. Um goodness me. I'm
terrible at remembering what podcast I've listened to before, what
(37:28):
what radio shows, But I specifically remember listening to a show. No,
it was a documentary, it was it was visual about
I believe it was a British couple that had moved
to Thailand to open a Thai restaurant and they're using
Thai chefs, and I believe it was the wife was
was Tai and the husband was was British and so
(37:52):
he was used to the more British kitchen culture and
when they when they were setting up a shop in Thailand,
like she advised him, look, you can't yell at staff
like you you did back in Britain. It's a different
culture here. If you yell at them, they just won't
come back to work the next day. So that anecdote
in that show would lead me to believe that it
does gonna is It is gonna vary greatly from culture
(38:13):
to culture, and maybe what we see on TV is
largely a product of sort of the you know, the
big city high cuisine and um, you know, major metropolitan
parts of Europe and the United States, or maybe even
something specifically about like angry British food cuisine culture, because
almost all the angry chefs I can think of are
(38:34):
like British guys. Yeah, I want to see one of
the gentle chef but maybe it just takes forever for
the for the food to come out. Well, I mean,
you never really know what they were like actually in
their work. But I mean, as far as TV persona
has come along, there are some gentle chefs. I think
of Paul Prudom, you know, he always seemed like such
a lovely, gentle soul. But I wanted to turn back
to turnspit dogs for a second here. Uh So, there's
(38:56):
a fact about them that cited in multiple sources that
I thought was interesting is that apparently it was a
well known custom on Sundays to take turnspit dogs out
of the kitchen and bring them to church with you. Uh,
not just to have his companions at church, but specifically
to be used quote as foot warmers. Footwarmers, I guess,
(39:17):
so you put your feet on the dog and the
dog is warm. Maybe I assume it's cold in church,
and that I don't know, lessons the pain of going
to church somewhat, I guess. And it sounds like a
step up for the dog. But not that that's saying
much though. This actually led to a number of popular
church jokes at the expense of the poor turnspit dogs.
(39:38):
Bondison notes a couple of these. I'll read a quote
from from jam Bondison quote. According to an eighteenth century joke,
the Bishop of Gloucester once preached to a church in Bath,
uttering the line, it was then that Ezekiel saw the wheels.
This is the passage from the prophet Ezekiels is the
wheels coming in the sky and uh. And Bondiston continues
(39:59):
at the mention of this dreaded word, all the turnspit
dogs ran for the door, their tails between their legs,
and then Bondison mentions that another version of the story
has the bishop talking about the horrors of hell, where
there's like roasting and turning on a spit. And again
the mention of these words sends all the foot warmer
dogs running to escape, and it's it's a clever joke,
(40:21):
but it does get back to the idea that the dogs,
dogs are intelligent, and dogs would pick up on the cues.
They might well pick up on the particular words like this,
but but even on I think even the smaller signs
like they're just just little clues that everyone is preparing
for a feast right now, Robert, I think you turned
up some examples of other animals that were used in
(40:43):
a similar fashion. Yeah, yeah, so this is something that
b brings up in their book, because, like we've been
touching on, the dog was awfully smart, perhaps too smart
for the work, and could run and hide. Uh. So
there were some who said at the turnspit goose was
the preferred method, uh, that you would get you would
(41:05):
get a goose in there, and it would perform better
and longer, uh and would be less prone to outthink
the chefs. So we have thus far we have turnspit children,
turnspit dogs, and the turnspit goose. But of course there
was like there was an arc of the turnspit dog,
the turnspit dog is a convention came and went. Jan
(41:25):
Bondison writes that in seventeen fifty, uh, turnspit dogs would
be found all over the place in Great Britain, extremely common.
By eighteen fifty people still knew about them. It was
like a thing you could make reference to, and and
people knew what it was. But they'd become more scarce
at that point, and by nineteen hundred they had almost
completely vanished. There. There were just a few here and
(41:47):
there left. Uh. And of course the main reason is
the increasing availability of mechanical alternatives like clock jacks, which
we will talk about more in a bit, But there
was also an accompanying shift in social norms. I think,
not just against animal cruelty, which was a thing that
changed somewhat in social conventions over time, but by the
(42:08):
middle of the nineteenth century, when turnspit dogs were increasingly rare,
to be seen with a turnspit dog in your kitchen
came to be interpreted as a sign of poverty, of
sort of backwardness or old fashioned nous, or just of eccentricity.
It was the kind of thing you might have, like
you're saying at the at the cracker barrel wall. You know,
(42:29):
people putting up weird stuff and having a strange attraction
at their inn or restaurant. Uh, you could have a
turnspit dog. Would be like, isn't that quaint? The old
school turnspit dog, Like this would be even like today,
of course even more so, like this would be a
moment in a horror film. Yeah, yeah, you know the
cup of Young Cuckball. There a car breaks down and
(42:49):
they're invited into the you know, the warm uh, you know,
the living room of this eccentric individual, and there on
the wall is a turnspit dog running in its wheel, uh,
to operate the rotissory. Right, it's a sign you should
turn around and go back. Now we'll come back to
the question of whether the turnspit dog was actually a
breed of dog or not. But Bondison argues that the
(43:12):
disuse of the wheel turned spits over time, and you
know again by the beginning of the twentieth century that
almost completely vanished. That the disuse of this technology led
to the extinction of the breed of dog known as
the turnspit dog, since the looks and the temperament of
the dog made them mostly unattractive as pets. In fact,
one of the extremely few records of turnspit dogs being
(43:35):
kept as pets after the decline of their role in
the kitchens is that Queen Victoria herself kept three quote
turnspit tykes as personal pets at winds Or Castle. So
whatever you think of Queen Victoria otherwise she she took
in some turnspit tykes. Well, yeah, that was pretty decent.
And you know what it also speaks we touched on
the cleverness that would still be innate in the turn
(43:57):
spit dog. But also like it also shows the dogs
other longstanding ability uh could not be bred out of it.
Its ability to bond with humans, to you know, to
look up at humans with those uh, those eyes that
seem you know, almost you know, watery, with devotion and
emotion and and and enabling this bond to form and
(44:19):
and indeed, a bond to form with the most powerful
individual insaid country, the bond between them and the lowest
domesticated animal. Well, you know, you you could identify many
of the great powers of the dog as a species.
You know, they have an amazing sense of smell. You
can you can see their determination and dedication and hard
work in many cases to the tasks they set to.
(44:43):
But I think it could easily be argued that the
ultimate superpower of the dog is their ability to form
emotional connections with humans more so than any other. After all,
they've they've lived alongside us so long, longer again than
any of the domesticated animals. All right, on that note,
we're going to take another break, and when we come back,
we're going to get into the legacy of the turnspit dog.
(45:11):
All right, we're back, all right. I think we should
talk a bit about the legacy of the turnspit dog
in English literature, because references to them show up in
English literature roughly from like the fifteen hundreds, when the
turnspit dog first became popular, uh, roughly to the eighteen hundreds.
It kind of cuts off after in the twentieth century.
And it makes sense, right because if especially in in
(45:33):
in Britain, if this was something that was to be
found in pretty much every household or in a lot
of households anyway, it would be a common frame. There
would be a common frame of reference. It would be
a common even in perhaps a metaphor for expressing something
about the human condition, and so it might not surprise
you that, since it goes back to the hundreds, it
shows up in Shakespeare. In Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, Dromeo
(45:55):
of Syracuse says, I amazed ran from her as a witch,
and I think, if my breast had not been made
of faith, in my heart of steel, she had transformed
me into a curtail dog and made me turn in
the wheel. So curtail dog there refers I think to
the docking of the tail and curtailed like cut off,
(46:15):
and and that seems to have something to do with
the social class or status or value of the dogs,
like the uh, the more valuable breeds that would would
have belonged to rich people. I think we're more likely
to have the full tail, whereas the tail was curtailed
and breeds that were maybe for working, like in the kitchen.
(46:35):
That's where we get the word curtail. Yes, oh my goodness,
all right, and all sorts of discoveries are taking place
with the stopping. Well, actually, I want to go back.
I'm not sure that's where we get the word curtail.
I mean, I think that means cut short, but like, yeah,
but let's just say that is where we get but
by Brian Cummins account, usually a curtail dog in Shakespearean
references is a reference to a turnspit dog. There's another
(46:58):
quote in the Mary Wife of windsor quote Hope is
a kurtil dog in some affairs, and Cummins links this
to the futility of hope in some cases, like to
the futility of the work in the turnspit wheel, that
it just goes on and on. Another one is that
some authors have even alleged that the saying every dog
has its day comes from the turnspit dog tradition. I
(47:20):
think this has not proven. I can't find strong evidence
linking the saying to the roasting spit. But the the
idea is that since many kitchens would have two dogs
in some cases, they would trade off every other day,
so you'd have a day where you work in the
wheel and then you'd have a day of rest. And
from what I can tell, this English expression does probably
show up during the Tudor period in the fifteen hundreds,
(47:43):
which is also the time when turnspit dog wheels became
common in England, but again I can't prove that's where
the phrase comes from. Interesting yeah, and it's like there's
this handy example of of of of cruelty in every household,
and of course it makes into language or in this
case potentially Yeah. Unfortunately, it's like every reference to it
(48:05):
in English literature is to the fact that it is
wretched work, that it's something you don't want to have
to do, that it's hard, that it can be cruel.
In fact, even not just not just hard work and cruel,
but Sisyphean literally because Bondison also quotes a quote a
rare collection of poems entitled Norfolk Drollery, And here's the
(48:26):
quote this, I confess he goes around around a hundred
times and never touches ground, and in the middle circle
of the air he draws a circle like a conjurer
with eagerness. He still does forward tend like Sisyphus, whose
journey has no end. Of course, is the what the
Titan that is punished by having to push the rock
(48:47):
up the hill and then it rolls back down. Yeah,
I don't know if it's Titans that You're probably right
about that, Yeah, but in Greek mythology, having to push
the boulder up the hill only to have it roll
back down again every time he's somebody who ticked off
a guy that. But it's interesting because then why a
mythology is usually the handy metaphor to turn to. It's like,
for this period of time, you had to replace Sisiphus.
(49:08):
You'd replace myth because you had the real life Sisiphus
installed in your home. That's the epic struggle that everybody
can relate to because they've seen one of these in
the kitchen. Uh. And it turns out we mentioned this earlier,
but there were other similar dog powered machines in human history.
For some reason, always especially in whales. I don't know why,
but whales in western England seemed like the epicenter for
(49:31):
dog powered machines. So you had dog powered butter turns,
dog powered fruit presses, dog powered grain wheels, even water
wheels to draw water up from a well. And then
later I was reading about how in England and in
the United States there were a few examples of dog
powered printing presses. Wow, like, I mean, it really sounds
(49:51):
like we're almost getting into the realm of dog punk.
I think, yeah, well, that could be a great like
whole family plus dog Halloween costumes, some kind of dog
punk outfit actually, and that's someone should do this. You
could have a scenario where it's like a dog punk world,
but of course the dogs are heroes and they of
course escape and rebel, so sort of like dog punk
(50:13):
meets Rats of nim basically rights itself. Yeah. So we
we talked before about the question of whether the turnspit
dog was actually a breed of dog. There's been a
lot of speculation about which dog breeds most resemble or
are most closely related to the turnspit dog. According to Bondison,
the docks In and the Bassett Hound have been proposed,
(50:34):
but Boniston thinks these are bad candidates. Maybe better candidates
for relations are the glen of imaal terrier, which greatly
resembles historical reports of the turnspit dogs, though has a
more terrier like head. And this was but this was
also a dog that was definitely used to hunt vermin. Yes,
so we're getting into that area to where perhaps this
(50:56):
is a dog that had a dual role, Like we
have these rat catcher dogs. I need them to turn
this wheel. Go grab one of those rat catcher dogs
and throw in the wheel. Yeah, I think that's highly plausible,
especially early on you know, and maybe they were bred
more for wheel duties as time went on. Another bit
better candidate also is apparently the Welsh Corgy, which is
ironic because of the famous Welsh corgy Corgis, who are
(51:19):
royal companions at the castles of the British monarchy, which
might sort of fit with the story of the nineteenth
century Queen Victoria taking in turnspit dogs as pets. I mean,
because perhaps you end up with another selective breeding situation.
The cutest of the turnspit dogs are taken in by
the queen, and you get you get Corgis. I can
see it, though I don't know how far back Corgis go.
(51:41):
Might that may not actually match up with the corgy lineage,
and perhaps we'll hear from Corky breeders in that right.
So Cummins ultimately argues that, given all of the disparate
reports about size, appearance, coat, and so forth, that the
turnspit dog, in his mind, probably was not a distinct
breathe of dog, but rather was any small dog that
(52:02):
could be trained to turn the wheel, though he believes
they were mostly derived from terrier breeds. So we've got
these different I think it's not fully settled whether the
turnspit dog was a breed of dog or wasn't in
the large part, maybe sort of a breed of dog
or just was was a class of types of dogs. Yeah,
like we might be in that area where it was
(52:23):
on its way in some regions towards becoming a breed.
But ultimately and thankfully the practice does go away. There
is one known taxidermy turnspit dog at the Abergavenny Museum
in Wales. It's a named Whiskey. I've included a picture
for you to look at here, Robert. I mean it's
a small dog with short kind of bent or crooked legs,
(52:44):
and it is a cute dog. I could see a
dog like this, uh, you know, earning its way out
of the wheel and into the hearts of a queen. Now,
b rights that turnspit dogs were used in America into
the nineteenth century, and uh, and that you had an
the animal rights advocate by the name of Henry Burg
who lobbied against their use, and he ultimately succeeded in
(53:06):
bringing some shame to the practice, but with limited consequences. Yeah,
there were there were at least some cases where he
like identified turnspit dogs that were being used in some
cities as like as where there was obvious cruelty, and
he like took the people who were who owned the
dogs to court. Yeah, and he would make surprise visits
and kitchens to catch the dogs and their use and
(53:28):
reportedly be rights. In some cases he found that the
dogs had been replaced by young black children. It's horrible.
It commins rights about that too, that in some cases
when the dogs were removed, uh that human children were
used in the role, especially black children, and that Berg
tried to to advocate on behalf of the children who
were put through this cruelty too in some cases, arguing that, like,
(53:50):
will children not be given the same rights as an animal? Yeah, thankfully. However,
you know, even though we started with children and then
dogs enter the picture, than geese of the picture, thankfully,
going back to children is not the change that ultimately
brought the end of the turnspit dog. Right, just as
dogs replaced some human turnspits early on, automotive power ultimately
(54:13):
replaced the majority of dogs, and and it started not
the majority, but it started somewhat as early as the
sixteenth century and would just go on to replace dogs
more and more for spit turning as time went on.
So Bondison writes that Leonardo da Vinci, of course invented
an automatic spit turning device that was called a smoke jack,
(54:34):
And it worked sort of on the principle of a windmill,
except inside a chimney. So smoke and hot air rising
from the fireplace up into the chimney would rotate a
turbine with several blades, and then the turbine, driven by
the smoke and the rising gases, would generate rotational energy
that could be transferred by belt or chain to the
(54:54):
roasting spit. Yeah, it's a clever, clever invention. It would
later see some use. One of the drawba to it,
of course, is that you do have to, uh, you
have to feed a lot of fuel to the fire.
You have to keep the fire up. You have to
keep that updraft powerful enough to turn the machinery. Yeah.
There were several problems with the smoke jack model. Uh.
It was improved upon incrementally in later decades after Da
(55:16):
Vinci's invention of it. Bondison notes that records indicate smoke
jack's were in use in England during the time of
Samuel Peeps, who was an English naval administrator and prolific
diarist who whose journals give us a window into much
about what English life was like at the time, which
was like sixteen thirty three to seventeen oh three. But
even these later improved models of smoke jack's were still dirty,
(55:38):
They were unreliable, and yeah, they required a very hot
fire and a lot of you know, putting off, so
a lot of fuel essentially to get them spinning at
the right rate. But even with those limitations, they could
do the work of a lot of dogs. Bondison writes,
quote in the early nineteenth century, Lowther Castle near Penrith
had a particularly advanced smoke jack drive, driving eight horizontal
(56:00):
and four vertical spits, saving the labor of not less
than twelve turnspit dogs. But another automated solution, and I
think the one that ultimately really replaced turnspit dogs, was
also in existence by the sixteenth century, and this was
the clock jack, sometimes called the meat jack, had other
names as well. Yeah, the clock jacks used a suspended
(56:24):
weight or a spring that you would wind up at
the beginning of the cooking process to store potential energy
that would slowly be released with a steady rotation mechanism,
and it worked much better than any of the other
known methods. Yeah. Basically consisted of a weight suspended from
a cord and wound around a cylinder. The weight slowly descended,
the power transferred through a series of cogs and pulleys
(56:46):
and powered one or even multiple spits. Uh Sometimes there
was even a bell included which would ring when it
stopped when the food was done. Even uh So some
commentators have likened it to a modern microwave and that respect.
Oh that's interesting, But did it have a popcorn function?
I bet not, so you might be asking the question
(57:07):
and wait a second. If clock jacks existed since the
sixteenth century, as long as smoke jacks and almost as
long as the turnspit dogs, like why were inferior turnspit
engines such as dogs or smoke jacks or whatever used
at all? And the main answer here has cost. You know,
clock jacks, especially early on, were expensive. They these were
(57:29):
mechanisms that had intricate you know, clockwork issue designs which
were too expensive for standard homes and ends. But I
think as time went on, as they became cheaper to
produce or mass produce, you could get them cheaper, and
more people would replace their turnspit dogs with an automatic
system like a clock jack. And indeed Be points out
that by around seventy eight the meat jack was just
(57:52):
highly praised as as a method to keep the meat turning. Uh.
And you actually would find them in nearly half of
English households. Uh. And that's of all households, not just
the rich ones, but that just all English households. Uh.
You know these culinary robots as being caused them. Uh,
they did the job. They didn't invoke even a tinge
(58:14):
of shame. Uh. And it wouldn't run off and hide
like a turnspit dog. And we know this. We know
that it was in in in pretty much half of
all households based on probate inventories of the deceased, so
this would be where you know they go. They had
records of what were in the households of people who
had died, and so they knew like this house had
(58:34):
had a head of clockjack, this house had a clockjack,
and ultimately we can say like half of England had
a clock jack in their house, thus driving away the
necessity of the turnspit dog. So you would hope that
that what would have happened historically is that there was
a great awakening of people, you know, turning away from
animal cruelty and human cruelty for these these biologically powered
(58:57):
spits and saying hey, there's a better way. But no,
it sounds like probably it was more like technology and
economics that played the main role in replacing dogs and
humans to turn spits. Yeah, and so you you had
you know a number of these gadgets came into play,
not only the clockwork jack but also the smoke jack,
which who entered earlier had become the designs had become better. Uh.
(59:18):
Still there were certain design problems with it, but you
saw them implemented. Other English inventors experimented with steam water
clock were various, like even more elaborate clockwork wonders. Uh
spit Roasting meat was just such a central part of
the English way of life that it attracted the sort
of endless innovation that we see now and things like
(59:38):
coffee preparation. Yeah, like everybody's got to have their coffee,
and so you see so many endless varieties of ways
to make a cup of coffee and still continue to
see new innovations in coffee percolation design, right. Uh. And
then of course, once electricity came along, I think that
was a huge game changer, right, because now rotisseries pretty
(59:59):
much all of them are going to be electrically powered. Right.
And the other big factor that B points out is that,
you know, with with with all these jacks, we had
an increasingly high tech invention based around rather old cooking methodology,
the like open hearth cooking, cooking something in front of
that big open fireplace. But then this went out of
(01:00:20):
style during the mid nineteenth century, and so did the
meat jack and its related meat turning robots. Though of
course this just spit roasting itself of course did not
go away. Spit roasting itself lives on, as to do
various mechanical rotisseries. You can you can buy them for
your backyard grill. You can buy you can you know,
certainly you can see them at the grocery store, the
(01:00:41):
butcher shopper anywhere. Uh. Chickens or other meats are are,
you know, turning about and cooking in their own juices.
But thankfully you will not find dogs turning tiny wheels
to power them. I gotta say this one was interesting,
but it tugged on my heart strings. Yeah, I mean certainly.
I mean in a way, it's this is human techno history, right,
(01:01:04):
you have you have to consider the light in the dark. Yeah.
But I mean also just seeing the way changes in
technology and culture are constantly interacting with each other as
time goes on, the way the technology influences what's culturally
appropriate and acceptable and that, and then then cultural values
affecting what kind of technology is in demand. Yeah. And
(01:01:25):
then also I'm just so interested in the fact that
you had, uh, some very old technologies that were remaining
the same, but this one aspect of the process kept
getting altered, you know, like the cauldron and the spit itself. Uh,
there's nothing modern about that. The heart itself did not
change for so long, but there was like a one
(01:01:47):
pivot in the process that was where you saw all
this innovation and then ultimately everything else changes as well. Fortunately,
now in the twenty one century, we can cook all
of our food in the microwave. Yes, and hopefully I
think the plan is so this November, of course, we
are doing a lot of food based episodes that you know,
(01:02:07):
we'll do food based episodes the rest of the year
as well as well, we have already, but we wanted
to really focus in on food, given that this is
a period of feast uh traditionally and especially in America.
So hopefully we're gonna get to the microwave this month
as well. It'll melt your brain in the best way,
all right. Uh, well, I'm sure everybody has some thoughts
(01:02:29):
on this. Uh. You know, whether you're a fan of
spitted turning meat or a fan of dogs, or like
you know all of us. H you know someone who is,
you know, starkly offended by the prospect of putting children
to work, five year olds to work in a in
a in a kitchen, uh, performing manual labor. Uh. We
would love to hear from you. You can reach out
(01:02:49):
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