Elizabeth Fulhame’s Colorful Chemistry

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. Three of my four most
recent episodes have been about someone named Elizabeth, including today.
I did not do that on purpose. It was just
a coincidence. But if you've been looking at your app
and kind of you've done a double take, like, didn't
they just do this? They just had Elizabeth. It's a

(00:37):
different Elizabeth. There are just a lot of Elizabeths. I guess.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Welcome to the Stuff you missed in History Class, Festival
of Elizabeths. Festival of Elizabeths.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
I just finished reading the last couple of books in
the Edinburgh Knights series by TL Huchu. These books are
set in Scotland in a post catastrophe world that is
full of ghosts and magic and the occult. And then
there are also a lot of references to real historical
figures underpinning this fictional world. And in the fourth book

(01:10):
of this series, Elizabeth Fulham gets mentioned as the author
of Catalysts and Accelerants, A Guide to Refining Practical Magic,
And I thought, was that a real person and googled
and it was that is not a real book, though
Elizabeth Fulham's seventeen ninety four book was on chemistry and

(01:33):
it was ahead of its time. And I'm also just
really fascinated by her, even though we really don't know
much about her. So most sources describe Elizabeth Fulham as Scottish,
and that is because she was married to Thomas Fulham,
who graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a medical
degree in seventeen eighty four. So there's an assumption in

(01:56):
play that they met in Edinburgh or maybe somewhere nearby.
We don't actually know exactly where Thomas was from either.
People often came to Edinburgh to study medicine from other
parts of the British and Irish Isles and even other
parts of the world. According to the Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography, he was from Ireland. In terms of Elizabeth's biography,

(02:20):
that's basically it. We don't know when she was born
or who her parents were. We don't know what her
name was before she got married, or what her childhood
was like, or how long she lived. There are even
some doubts about whether her name was Elizabeth. She published
her work under the name Missus Fulham, and that is
how eighteenth and nineteenth century writers referred to her. So

(02:43):
if you're thinking, aren't there birth certificates or marriage certificates
something that we could use to confirm some of these
very basic details. In Britain and Ireland, clergy kept records
of baptisms, burials and marriages going back to the sixteenth century,
but there wasn't a legal framework for civil registrations of

(03:06):
these kinds of events until eighteen thirty six for England
and Wales, eighteen fifty four for Scotland and eighteen sixty
four for Ireland. So it is possible that their church
records related to the lives of Elizabeth and Thomas Fulhane somewhere,
but if they do exist, no one has found them yet.

(03:26):
In seventeen seventy nine, while he was in medical school,
Thomas Fulham took a chemistry class that was taught by
Scottish chemist and physician Joseph Black. In addition to being
a highly respected chemist, Black had a reputation for being
both inspired and inspiring as a teacher and attracting students
from outside of Scotland to study chemistry with him. Chemistry

(03:49):
was part of the medical curriculum, but a lot of
medical students also took more chemistry than they needed because
they wanted to keep learning from him. That included Thomas Fulham,
who continued to be connected to Black's chemistry classes until
seventeen ninety That was not just after he finished his
chemistry requirement for his medical degree, it was years after

(04:10):
he finished that medical degree. These two men were also correspondents,
and Black credited Thomas Fulham with developing a method to
manufacture white lead. Black's lectures were also popular with the
general public, and a significant number of people paid three
guineas to take his general chemistry course. Women could not

(04:31):
formally enroll at the University of Edinburgh until eighteen ninety two,
but there were some women who attended lectures that were
open to the public before that point, and we don't
really know if Elizabeth Fulham did that, there would have
been few, if any women in the audience. Quite as
early as her lifetime. She may have pursued an interest

(04:52):
in chemistry on her own, maybe with her husband's help
to get access to books and materials from the university.
It it is likely that she became interested in developing
techniques for dying cloth. In seventeen eighty, when her husband
started taking this chemistry class. One of Black's regular demonstrations

(05:13):
involved dissolving metals in an acid solution and then precipitating
metal chlorides out of that solution. Elizabeth wondered if it
was possible to do something similar to precipitate metals onto textiles,
creating fabrics that were basically dyed with silver and gold.
And she mentioned this idea to her husband and some

(05:35):
of their friends, and they all dismissed her. She thought
she could really figure this out, though, which is so admirable.
In her words, quote, I imagined in the beginning that
a few experiments would determine the problem, but experience soon
convinced me that a very great number, indeed, were necessary
before such an art could be brought to any tolerable

(05:56):
degree of perfection. She went on to do experiments for
fourteen years, carefully recording her methods and results with various textiles, metals,
and chemicals. We'll talk more about the methods in just
a bit, but she was eventually able to make small
bits of gold and silver cloth. She didn't really think

(06:16):
these were worth public attention, but she kept trying until
her only limit was her budget. She could basically make
a piece of gold cloth that was large enough to
use up the components she could afford to buy for
that experiment. She described one particularly good piece as measuring
about a yard long and almost flawless. She mostly worked

(06:38):
with silk, but she experimented with other fabrics as well.
Some of her experiments apparently turned out just sort of
stained and sad looking, but she also produced pieces of
cloth in a whole array of other colors, some of
which were flecked with silver or gold. She said that
she had once seen a piece of fabric made for

(06:58):
the late King of Spain which was purple with gold
wire running through it. It is possible that she saw
this on a trip with her husband. We know that
he traveled to Spain in seventeen eighty nine, and she
tried to get a similar effect on a piece of
white silk and succeeded quote, having produced a beautiful purple

(07:18):
color with gold beaming through it. Fulham also found another
use for her techniques, which was more like a paint.
In her words, quote, I have applied it to some maps,
the rivers of which I represented in silver, and the
cities in gold. The rivers appearing as it were in
silver streams, have a most pleasing effect on the site

(07:40):
and relieve the eye of that painful search for the
course and origin of rivers, the minutest branches of which
can be splendidly represented in this way. In October of
seventeen ninety three, Fulham met quote an illustrious friend of science,
and that was most likely English chemist Joseph Priestley. He

(08:02):
approved of her work and he offered to have it
presented to the Royal Society. Priestley was a fellow of
the Society at that point. Fulham didn't say exactly why,
but she decided to go a different route and publish
her book herself. Now it is possible that the reason
for that traces back to Priestley, who was persecuted for

(08:22):
his dissenting religious views and branded as seditious for his
support of the American and French revolutions. Priestley fled to
the United States in seventeen ninety four, and that was
the same year that Fulham's an essay on Combustion with
a view to a New Art of Dying and Painting,
wherein The Flegistic and Antiflegistic Hypotheses are Proved erroneous one

(08:47):
whole title, and it was printed by J. Cooper in
Bow Street, London. In the eighteenth century, booksellers filled the
role of publishers, and Fulham's bookseller was Joseph Johnson. Johnson
was Priestley's publisher as well, and he was also known
for publishing works that were considered to be radical at
the time. That included the work of religious dissenters and

(09:10):
feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft. Regarding that plegistic and anti flogistic
hypotheses situation referenced in that title. In the eighteenth century,
one theory was that all combustible materials contained a substance
known as flogiston, which was released in the act of burning.
The ash or other residue that was.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
Left behind was the deflogisticated substance. I love that word.
This basic idea was first proposed by Johann Becker in
sixteen sixty seven, and then it was further developed by
George ernst Stall, who coined the term flogiston in the
early eighteenth century. By the time Fulham wrote her book,
this theory had supporters and opponents. Supporters included Joseph Priestley,

(09:58):
who called oxygen deflegisticated air when he isolated it in
seventeen seventy four. Challengers to this hypothesis included Antoine Laurent
de Lavoisier, who we've covered on the show before and
who was building on Priestley's work. In seventeen seventy seven,
Lavoisier proposed a theory of combustion that described air as

(10:20):
a mix of gases, with one of those gases, which
he called oxygen, being required for combustion. And we're going
to get into how all of this connects to Fullhame's
book after we pause for a sponsor break. To get

(10:44):
to the details of Elizabeth Fulhams's book, she had doubts
about whether the techniques that she had developed for dyeing
cloth with metals could be established as an art or
an industry. She was working without a patron or other
financial bats, so her experiments were limited to what she
and her husband could afford. That meant she didn't have

(11:06):
access to anything like a fully equipped lab. She was
doing experiments at home with a few glass vessels and
a nuth apparatus, A Newth Apparatus is a set of
interconnecting glass chambers developed by John rvyn Nuth for carbonating water.
We've actually talked about it before in our episode on

(11:27):
Johann Schweppa and carbonated beverages. This apparatus could also be
used for other purposes. Surgeon Robert Liston, who we have
also covered on the show Near and Dear to My Heart,
adapted one to administer anesthesia to his patients. Fulham used
a Newth apparatus for various experiments involving gases, placing pieces

(11:48):
of cloth in one of the chambers, depending on exactly
what she was trying to expose it to you. Fulham
also wrote that she did not have the means to
patent her techniques, and even if she did have the means,
she thought such an application would be in vain quote
if we may judge the future by the past. She

(12:09):
also thought the experiments themselves were not unworthy of the
attention of other chemists, since, in her words quote, they
seemed to throw some light on the theory of combustion. So,
even though she didn't feel like she could patent what
she was doing, she wrote this book. She also seems
to have thought that if she didn't write the book,

(12:30):
someone else might try to pass off the ideas that
she had developed in her experiments as their own. As
she wrote in the preface, quote, I published this essay
in its present, imperfect state in order to prevent the
foracious attempts of the prowling plagiary and the insidious pretender
to chemistry from arrogating to themselves and assuming my invention

(12:53):
in plundering silence. For there are those who, if they
can not by chemical never fail by strategy and mechanical means,
to deprive industry of the fruit and fame of her labors.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
She also had some thoughts about the way she was
likely to be received and treated as a woman publishing
scientific work. These thoughts are honestly one of my favorite
parts of this whole book. We are going to read
a chunk of them. In her words, quote, it may
appear presuming to some that I should engage in pursuits

(13:31):
of this nature, But averse from indolence and having much leisure,
my mind led me to this mode of amusement, which
I found entertaining, and will I hope be thought inoffensive
by the liberal and the learned. But censure is perhaps inevitable,
for some are so ignorant that they grow sullen and silent,

(13:55):
and are chilled with horror at the sight of anything
that bears the semblance of learning, in whatever shape it
may appear. And should the specter appear in the shape
of a woman, the pangs which they suffer are truly dismal. Oh,
it's so good, she went on to say, quote there

(14:15):
are others who suffer the same nature in a still
higher degree, but by virtue of an old inspiring tripod
on which ignorance, servility, or chance has placed them, assume
a dictatorship in science, and fancying their rights and prerogatives invaded,
swell with rage, and are suddenly seized with a violent

(14:36):
and irresistible desire of revenge, manifesting itself by innuendos, nods, whispers, sneers, grins, grimace,
satanic smiles, and witticisms uttered, sometimes in the acute and
sometimes in the nasal, obtuse twang with an affected auteur,

(14:57):
and contempt of the specter, shrugs, a variety of other contortions,
attending she did not dance around what she thought of
people who got so wadded up at the idea of
women doing science.

Speaker 1 (15:12):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
Sometimes the goblin, which thus agitates them, lurks latent, and
nothing is perceived but hollow murmurs, portending storms. Sometimes the
lurking fiend darts with sidelong fury at the devoted object, which,
if unarmed, falls victim to the grisly monster. But happily

(15:33):
for humankind, the magic tripod drags none into its dizzy vortex,
but those who are radically stupid and malicious, who are
beasts of prey destined to hunt down unprotected genius, to
stain the page of biography, or to rot unnoted in
the grave of oblivion. Fulhame's preface is followed by an

(15:58):
introduction in which she gives an overview of the evolving
understanding of combustion, including the arguments for and against the
phlogiston theory. She references multiple seventeenth and eighteenth century scientists,
making it clear that she was well read and familiar
with the scientific literature and theories of the day. She

(16:19):
concludes that neither side in the flogiston debate was fully correct.
She found Lavoisier's concept of combustion superior to the idea
of flogiston, but she also thought his hypothesis didn't fully
account for everything, including what was going on when bodies
became heavier during combustion. After this introduction, the book doesn't

(16:42):
just list out all of her years of experiments using metals, chemicals,
and cloth. She thought that would be tedious to read,
and beyond that, she wanted to arrange the experiments in
a way that allowed them to mutually illustrate each other.
So she covered a one hundred and twenty seven experiments,

(17:02):
which was a fraction of the number that she actually
carried out. She grouped them so that their successes and
failures could illustrate a general principle or provide data about
how their methods could be improved. There are chapters on
the reductions of metals by hydrogen, gas, phosphorus, sulfur, charcoal, light, acids,

(17:24):
et cetera, and chapters on the oxygenation of different combustible bodies.
She wrote about her experiments in plain, accessible language, using
what was called the French nomenclature.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
That was what was outlined in the seventeen eighty seven
publication Metau de Nomenclature Chimique, which was written by chemists
Bertol Furcois, Guiton de Morveaux, and Lavoisier. She also included
a two page glossary to help anyone who was still
using the older terminology, and spelled out her reasons for

(17:58):
using different terms than the French standard. In a couple
of places where she did so, she detailed her materials, methods,
and results, including all those different colors of cloth that
we mentioned earlier. As an example, here is one of
her experiments with gold quote. In order to determine whether
a solution of gold in ether or one in water

(18:20):
were best adapted to the object of these experiments, I
evaporated to dryness a solution of gold in nitromuriatic acid
and dissolved the salt in distilled water. In this solution
I immersed a piece of silk, which, after it was
dried in the air, was suspended in a glass cylinder
like the former piece and exposed to the action of

(18:43):
hydrogen gas about two months. The silk, after some time
assumed a purple color, and five or six specs of
reduced gold the size of pin heads and one much
larger were observed. Examining the silk in the sunbeams. I
pursue the whole of it spangled with minute particles of

(19:03):
reduced gold. As Fulhane discussed the results of the experiments
in her book, she made some observations that were really
quite ahead of her time. One was that some of
the chemical reactions she was working with, specifically the reduction
of metals, happened only in the presence of water, and
some substances seemed to burn better when they were damp.

(19:25):
In some cases, chemical reactions happened at room temperature if
there was water present, and without the water she would
have needed a smelter. It was obvious to her that
water was facilitating these reactions and that it wasn't consumed
by those reactions. She speculated that the water was being

(19:46):
broken down into its components, with those components facilitating combustion,
and then being reunited into water when the reaction was over.
In this way, she said, quote, as fast as these
are consumed in the various processes of combustion, equal quantities
are formed and rise regenerated, like the phoenix from her ashes.

(20:10):
She didn't have the details exactly right, and observing this
phenomenon also led her to the incorrect conclusion that all
such reactions required the presence of water, But what she
was describing was catalysis. That's a chemical process in which
one substance facilitates a chemical reaction without being consumed in

(20:32):
that reaction. The discovery of catalysis is usually attributed to
Janzjaka Berselius, who coined the term decades later in eighteen
thirty six. Fullham was not the first person ever to
observe and describe this kind of reaction, but she was
the first person known to have framed it as part

(20:52):
of a whole class of reactions that were all similar
to one another. Catalysts are a truly enormous part of
the chemical inns today, used in the production of everything
from foods to medicines to plastics, and in both the
refining of petroleum and the limiting of emissions from gasoline
powered vehicles. Those are just examples, not an exhaustive list

(21:15):
of everything catalysts are used for. Dear me no.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
She also experimented with photosensitivity. She described impregnating silk fibers
with myrate of silver, which took on a bluish black
color when exposed to the sun, or immersing a piece
of silk in silver nitrate and exposing it to the sun,
where it almost immediately took on a reddish color that

(21:40):
darkened until it was almost black. Silk treated the same
way but kept in the dark did not go through
such a color change. She also described similar results with
gold chloride and speculated that the reaction could be used
to write letters or words. Various historians of photography have
described what she was doing as a photographic process and

(22:03):
as an early example of the kinds of experiments that
would eventually lead to degeratypes and photographs.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
We will talk about how Fulham's work was received after
we paused for a sponsor break.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
So we started off this episode by talking about how
today we know almost nothing about Elizabeth Fulham, so it
might seem like logically her work must have gone unnoticed
when she published it in seventeen ninety four, but it
did not. They got some attention both within and outside
the scientific community.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
The Gentleman's Magazine was first published in London in seventeen
thirty one, and it remained in print for nearly two centuries.
It was a popular periodical, and it was also the
first to use the word magazine meaning stoorhouse to describe
a published collection of essays and articles and similar texts.
In June of seventeen ninety five, The Gentleman's magazine published

(23:10):
an anonymous review of Fulham's book. It began quote an
essay on combustion by a lady. Thought we could proceed
from no other pen than that of miss Williams or
missus Wolstoncraft, and must be a political disquisition disguised. We
were agreeably disappointed to find that it relates entirely to

(23:31):
a method of making cloths of gold, silver and other
metals by a chemical process. So in that passage, Wolstoncraft
is obviously Mary Wollstoncraft. Miss Williams was probably Helen Maria Williams,
who was an English writer and social critic who was
connected to Joseph Priestley and to Wolstoncraft, among other eighteenth

(23:52):
century figures. Apart from what this anonymous writer is implying
about women and feminists in this piece, it suggests that
Fulham's book was widely read enough to catch an editor's
attention and be worth writing about in a popular magazine.
In seventeen ninety six, English physician and chemist Thomas Beddows

(24:15):
wrote about Fulham's book in the Monthly Review he said
it would be better titled Experiments on the reduction of
Metals in the ordinary temperature of the atmosphere. But he
described her discovery of the need for water to be
present in certain reactions as singular, and the overall work
is ingenious and quote entitled to respectful consideration, He wrote,

(24:39):
quote We applaud this lady's persevering ingenuity, We admire her
dexterity in carrying on her researches almost without apparatus, and
we sincerely sympathize with her on account of that disabling
and discouraging narrowness of circumstances of which she so feelingly complains.
May she soon meet with a being such as she

(25:01):
has heard of on the record of fame, but never
seen one viz. A liberal patron or else experienced such
a change in circumstances as shall allow full scope to
her abilities. In seventeen ninety eight, Benjamin Thompson, who later
became Count Rumford, published an essay called an Inquiry concerning

(25:23):
the Chemical Properties that have been Attributed to Light, that
was in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.
In this he describes the results of an experiment with
gold as agreeing perfectly with similar experiments by the quote
ingenious and lively Missus Fulham. In a footnote in this paper,

(25:44):
he went on to say, quote it was on reading
her book that I was induced to engage in these investigations,
and it was by her experiments that most of the
foregoing experiments were suggested. Thompson was a British physicist born
in the colony of Massachusetts, and the year after publishing
this essay, he and Joseph Banks established the Royal Institution

(26:07):
of Great Britain. Other eighteenth century scientists cited her work
as well. It was reviewed favorably in the French Annalve's
De Chimi, and a German version of her book was
published in Gottingen in seventeen ninety eight, but not everybody's
response was positive. While Joseph Priestley had apparently encouraged Fulham

(26:27):
to publish her work, he later published a point by
point rebuttal of her conclusions, saying her description of what
we now known as catalysis was quote as fanciful and
fabulous as the story of the phoenix itself. Irish chemist
William Higgins sounded sort of petulant When he discussed Fulham's

(26:49):
work in seventeen ninety nine, he did call it in genius,
and he said he read it with great pleasure. But
in between those two more positive passages, he said, quote,
had this fair author read my book, and indeed I
suppose she did not, having quoted every other treatise upon
the subject, no doubt she would have been candid enough

(27:13):
to do me the justice of accepting me from the
rest of my cooperators in science when she told them
they aired for having overlooked this modification of their doctrine,
and also when she adduced it as an original idea
of her own. He implied that he had had this

(27:34):
same discovery regarding the presence of water in chemical reactions
first before she did, although his observations were focused only
on the rusting of iron, while she was looking at
chemical reactions more broadly. The scientific societies of Europe were
not open to women at this point, but Fulham was

(27:55):
named a corresponding member of the Philadelphia Chemical Society. Philadelphia
chemist Thomas Peter Smith wrote a sketch of the Revolutions
in Chemistry in seventeen ninety eight, and in it he said, quote,
I shall now present you with the last and most
pleasing revolution that has occurred in chemistry. Hitherto we have

(28:15):
beheld this science entirely in the hands of men. We
are now about to behold women assert their just Though
two long neglected claims of being participators in the pleasures
arising from a knowledge of chemistry already have Madame Dossier
and Missus mcaulay established their rights to criticism and history,

(28:37):
Missus Fulham has now laid such bold claims to chemistry
that we can no longer deny the sex the privilege
of participating in this science. Also, what may we not
expect from such an accession of talents? How swiftly will
the horizon of knowledge recede before our united labors? And
what unbounded pleasure may we not anticipate in treading the

(29:00):
paths of science with such companions. If you don't recognize
the names that he dropped in there, Madame Dossier is
An Dossier, a translator, commentator and scholar from France who
had died in seventeen twenty. Catherine Macaulay was the first
english woman to become a published historian. She died in

(29:22):
seventeen ninety one. An American edition of Fulham's book was
published in Philadelphia in eighteen ten, and that characterized it
as little known in North America. This edition began with
an anonymously written advertisement which characterized the book's pages as
quote assuredly deserving of more attention than they have hitherto received.

(29:45):
From there it read quote Whether it be that the
pride of science revolted at the idea of being taught
by a female, I know not, but assuredly the accomplished
author of this essay has sufficiently evinced the adequacy of
her requirements in the propagation of opinions subversive of a
part of the highly esteemed edifice raised by the efforts

(30:06):
of Lavoisier and others. That the work has hitherto remained
unknown in this favored land, where freedom of inquiry is
so sedulously cherished, is matter of surprise, especially when it
is known that, many years passed, the author was elected
an honorary member of the then existing Chemical Society of Philadelphia,
a distinction founded on the merit of this work. Later,

(30:30):
this anonymous editor continued, quote, I cannot doubt the justice
of the opinions deduced by missus Fulham from her numerous
and well conducted experiments. And although it may be grating
too many to suppose a female capable of successfully opposing
the opinions of some of our fathers in science, yet

(30:51):
reflection will serve to satisfy the mind devoted to truth
that she has certainly thrown a stumbling block of no
small mass magnitude in the way of sentiments we have
been taught to consider as sacred. Scientists and researchers on
both sides of the Atlantic continued to refer to Fulham's
work for decades. English polymath John Herschel is one of

(31:15):
the people credited with coining the term photography, and he
cited Fulham in his first paper on the subject, which
was published in March of eighteen thirty nine. Chemist George
Thomas Fisher Junior noted her gold chloride experiments in the
introduction to his manipulations in the Scientific Arts, Part three
Photogenic Manipulation, whose introduction walks through the History of Photography,

(31:40):
that was published in eighteen forty three. It is not
clear whether Fulham had a direct influence on the development
of photography, but it is clear that people knew about
and were talking about her work in the early years
of photography's evolution.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
Over the nineteenth century, Fulhame's work went from being actively
discussed in the fields of chemistry and photography to being
more of a footnote in textbooks and in works about
the history of those fields, and then those references also
largely stopped until her work was rediscovered in the mid
twentieth century. It is much easier to access her work

(32:18):
today than it was in the nineteen sixties, though at
that time there were a few copies in archives and
special collections in various libraries, which was where people rediscovered it. Today, though,
all three versions of her book are available as scans online,
either as text or as scans of the actual pages.

(32:38):
That includes the original London printing, the German translation, and
the eighteen ten American edition. And that is Elizabeth Fulham
and I kind of love her, even though we know
almost nothing.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
I'm excited to talk about her on Friday, me too.
Do you have listener mail? In the meantime, I do
have listener mail. This listener mail is from David, and
David wrote, just listened to your behind the scenes coffee
episode where you shifted into typology and the long s
or and then David actually put the long s in

(33:14):
the email.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
It's the one that looks kind of like an f
I recently ran across this exercise in reading a story
where the text regresses back through the centuries of English script.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
And thought you'd enjoy it.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
I admit I hit a wall when the text reached
the twelve hundreds, but learned a lot of new script
along the way. There's a nice description of the different
eras at the end. I have to admit that my
ner fourteen year old went straight to mind you moose
bites can be pretty nasty, that being from the very
comical credits to the movie Monty Python in the Holy Grail.

(33:53):
Enjoy and so this links to a piece called how
Far Back in Time can You Understand English? At dead
languagessociety dot com that languages is plural.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
I also laughed at your description. Suspicion of shrimp and
grits in New England reminded me of the time my
brother caused a minor event at the airport when he
tried to fly home from his visit here with white lily,
flower and grits in his luggage. Truly enjoy the show.
David was writing from South Carolina. That being why someone

(34:27):
was returning his home with white lily flower and grits
ps pet taxes.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Is katiecat kk taking over my chair helping with the
taxes than her normal repose of snoozing after belly scritches.
A very cute kitty cat. Thank you so much, David
for this email I saw. I think the author's thread
on Blue Sky, which was similar, like each piece of
it was a different mess, and so you can sort

(34:55):
of step your way back to read what it would
be like earlier and earlier in English. And I think
I also got to not being able to understand it
anymore at about the twelve hundreds. So if folks want
to look for that again, it is called how Far
Back in Time can You Understand English? At Dead Languages
Society dot com. It is a fun little exercise both

(35:18):
to just see how far back do I understand this,
and also to see how much English has evolved over
the last approximately thousand dish and something years. We've had
a whole episode of the show about that fact a
long time ago, about the history of the English language.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
So thank you again, David.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
If you would like to send us a note, we're
at history podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. You can see
our show notes on our website, which is at missinhistory
dot com, and you can subscribe to our show on
the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you'd like to get
your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a

(36:06):
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.

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