May 6, 2026 • 38 mins
There are so many things in our modern world that we presume are fairly recent inventions. But the three things we’re going to talk about in this instance are quite old, but they have close associations with the recent past.
Research:
- Abbott, David, PhD., ed. “The Biographical Book of Scientists: Engineers and Inventors.” Peter Bedrick Books. New York. 1985.
- “Bad Breath.” Medline Plus. https://medlineplus.gov/badbreath.html#:~:text=Teenagers-,Summary,help%20give%20you%20fresher%20breath.
- Berlin, Erika. “‘The Myriad Reflector’: The Early, Forgotten Disco Ball.” Mental Floss. May 21, 2015. https://www.mentalfloss.com/entertainment/myriad-reflector-early-forgotten-disco-ball
- Britannica Editors. "aeolipile". Encyclopedia Britannica, 6 Jun. 2016, https://www.britannica.com/technology/aeolipile
- Britannica Editors. "Heron of Alexandria". Encyclopedia Britannica, 12 Mar. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Heron-of-Alexandria
- Garber, David. “Meet Me Under the Disco Ball: A History of Nightlife’s Most Enduring Symbol.” Vice. June 4, 2015. https://www.vice.com/en/article/meet-me-under-the-disco-ball-a-history-of-nightlifes-most-enduring-symbol/
- Handwerk, Brian. “The History and Science Behind Your Terrible Breath.” Smithsonian. Feb. 13, 2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/halitosis-horrors-how-bad-breath-became-americas-worst-nightmare-180962104/
- HØYRUP, JENS. “A NEW EDITION OF THE METRICA OF HERON OF ALEXANDRIA.” Physis. Vol. LIII. 2018. http://akira.ruc.dk/~jensh/Publications/2018%7BR%7D06_A%20New%20Edition%20of%20the%20Metrica%20of%20Heron%20of%20Alexandria_S.pdf
- Hughes, J. Donald. “Hero of Alexandria.” Ebsco. 2023. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/biography/hero-alexandria
- Mendell, H. “Hero and the tradition of the circle segment.” Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. 77, 451–499 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-023-00308-y
- “Mint! From the Ancient World to Modern Manchester.” Manchester Museum. Aug. 17, 2018. https://storiesfromthemuseumfloor.wordpress.com/2018/08/17/mint-from-the-ancient-world-to-modern-manchester/#:~:text=The%20ancient%20Egyptians%20invented%20breath%20mints%20to,*%20Severely%20worn%20teeth%20*%20Tooth%20loss
- “Myriad Reflector Will Feature Annual Fall Opening Odeon Ball.” Great Falls leader. Sept. 4, 1921. https://www.newspapers.com/image/1018804435/?match=1&terms=%22myriad%20reflector%22
- “Plant of the Month: Mint.” JSTOR Daily. https://daily.jstor.org/plant-of-the-month-mint/
- Pliny the Elder. “The Natural History.” Translated by John Bostock and Henry T. Riley. Taylor & Francis. London. 1855. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/50041
- Rossen, Jake. “All That Glitters: A History of the Disco Ball.” Mental Floss. Dec. 30, 2021. https://www.mentalfloss.com/entertainment/music/disco-ball-facts-history
- “Saltair.” Salt Lake Telegram. June 13, 1921. https://www.newspapers.com/image/288643722/?match=1&terms=%22myriad%20reflector%22
- Smith, Grafton Elliot, et al. “The Papyrus Ebers.” Ares Publishers. Chicago. 1974. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924073200077&seq=5
- “Strike the Banners.” The Kentucky Post. August 31, 1945. https://www.newspapers.com/image/760821309/?match=1&terms=%22L.%20B.Woeste%22
- “Wonderful Falls Short of Expressing the Grandeur of the Rotary Charity Ball.” The Piqua Daily Call. Jan. 26, 1917. https://www.newspapers.com/image/935844964/?match=1&terms=%22myriad%20reflector%22
- Woeste, L.B. “Myriad Reflector.” U.S. Patent Office. Feb. 6, 1917. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/9e/4c/73/00bfc626d3f664/US1214863.pdf
- Woeste, L.B. “Myriad Reflector.” U.S. Patent Office. March 13, 1928. https://ppubs.uspto.gov/api/pdf/downloadPdf/1662554?requestToken=eyJzdWIiOiIyM2QyOTAxNi1iNjVhLTRkNTAtYWEyOS0zZjAyOWMwYmZiMWUiLCJ2ZXIiOiJmZjg4ZmU5Yy1iOTA2LTQxZDUtYTQxMS02MGM5Mzk3NTk0YzYiLCJleHAiOjB9
- “Woeste Rites Are Set.” Cincinatti Enquirer. April 11, 1933. https://www.newspapers.com/image/103141821/?article=7dc922a9-f0a9-42b8-a61e-f9e92a7b3557&terms=%22Louis%20B.%20Woeste%22
- Woodcroft, Bennet, ed. “The Pneumatics of Hero of Alexandria.” Taylor Walton and Maberly. London. 1851. Accessed online: https://www.thehopkinthomasproject.com/TheHopkinThomasProject/TimeLine/Wales/Steam/URochesterCollection/Hero/index-2.html
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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 Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. I will talk about
the genesis of this episode on Friday's episode, because it's
(00:23):
very silly, but it was born, like so many of
our topics, out of just seeing something and asking off
handedly when was that invented? Which I do a lot.
This led me to look that up and it came
as a surprise regarding its timing, and I wanted to
talk about that thing, but I also knew that that
was not a media enough topic for a whole episode,
(00:45):
so I decided I would group it with some other
inventions that were made well before I would have thought,
probably most people would have thought. There are so many
things in our modern world that people presume our fairly
recent inventions that aren't. We talk about things like that
all the time, and often that is the result of
like what I call this sort of present tense hubris,
(01:05):
where we can't imagine another time or culture needing or
inventing the things that we use today. But I feel
like the three things that we're talking about in this
instance seem, at least to my mind, pretty valid in
presuming that they are more modern than they are, in
part because they all have close associations with the recent past.
(01:27):
One of them, the thing that inspired this episode, is
one of my favorite inventions of all time. So for
the first thing we're going to talk about, we have
to go all the way back to the early Common
era and a scientist known as Heron of Alexandria. Some
texts give his name as Hero. He's sometimes described as
being Egyptian because he lived in Alexandria. Other times he's
(01:50):
described as Greek. Some accounts list both. He was likely
born in Greece. He lived at a time of Greco
Roman dominance throughout the Mediterranean, and Egypt was a Roman province.
But all of the accounts agree he was very, very smart.
He was well educated. He understood and wrote about mathematics
and mechanics from all over the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. We
(02:15):
don't have a whole lot of biographical information about him,
though he's believed to have been born sometime early in
the first century. We know he was alive in the
year sixty two because he mentioned an eclipse in his
writing that's known to have taken place that year. Everything
else we know about Heron is what he recorded in
(02:35):
his writings. He wrote a lot about mathematics and mechanics,
but nothing autobiographical. Yeah, if you look up the dates
associated with his life, they are all over the map.
There are people that will put his date of birth
at around the year zero or one, and other people
that will put his death at around one hundred. And
(02:55):
I'm like, it's possible, but not super probable at this
point in time that he could have lived through the
entire first century. But in any case, his work is
influential in our lives in a number of small ways.
For example, if you've ever used the idiom that someone
has made one hundred and eighty degree turn in changing
their position or their opinion on something, you can thank Heron,
(03:18):
at least in part. The idea of a circle being
divided by three hundred and sixty units known as degrees,
actually originated in Babylonia, which used a base sixty system
for mathematics, but Heron is credited with adopting it and
teaching it widely in the technical school he founded in
Alexandria and writing about it in his books. But Beyond that,
(03:40):
his own work predates a lot of similar work, often
by hundreds of years. His math writings include Mechanica, which
included information about the workings of levers and how they
can be used to bear loads, as well as velocity
and the use of friction discs to create very ratios.
(04:01):
These discs or the basics of the kinds of drives
that would be described as transmissions today. They can transfer
torque to rotating parts at variable speeds depending on the
ratio selected in Heron's writings. All of this information was
intended to help architects manage building projects by providing them
ways to more efficiently transport and lift heavy loads in construction.
(04:26):
His book Dioptera is essentially a manual for measurement. It
includes descriptions of various measuring instruments, including a diopter. It
also included a method to measure distance traveled by a wheel.
A lot of this book is about how to measure
distance in the interest of land surveying purposes. Heron's three
(04:47):
volume work Metrica was all about geometry that covered topics
like the measurement of geometric figures. There are formulas for
using the lengths of a triangle's sides to calculate its area,
and a method for finding the square root of a
non square number. Metrica was actually lost for a very
very long time. This book was mentioned in the writings
(05:10):
of Utosius of Ascalon, who lived in the late fifth
and early sixth centuries, but its contents were a mystery.
Then in the eighteen sixties there was a mention of
an eleventh century manuscript in a library in Constantinople that
might contain some of Heron's writings. But this wasn't a
library just anybody could visit. There were hoops to jump
(05:32):
through just to get permission to enter. It wasn't until
eighteen ninety six that German archaeologist and head of the
Royal Museum of Berlin, Richard Shone, was able to identify
that a copy of Metrica was indeed contained in that manuscript.
Shona's Sun Hermann published the first critical edition of Metrica
in nineteen oh three. Haron wrote other books, and even
(05:56):
more have been attributed to him that are almost certainly
not his work, But the book that's most Germane today
is Pneumatics. In that work, he describes a variety of
mechanical devices featuring so many concepts we might think of
as fairly modern gas power, water power, steam power, atmospheric pressure,
and pumps, among others. But the section related to today's
(06:19):
topic is automata. He offers a little bit of multi
entry for this episode because he invented a lot of
things that were far far ahead of his time. Yeah,
he also, just to avoid confusion, did also write another
book called Automata. But the things we're talking about are
in this book pneumatics, and the first one that we're
(06:40):
going to talk about is the eolapile, which is today
sometimes also called a hero motor named after him. So
Heron had concluded that air is elastic and that it
consists of particles that move relative to one another. He
was essentially onto the idea of airflow and air mechanics,
although he didn't have it all figured out, and these
are concepts that Irish chemist robber Boyle was still working
(07:03):
to understand when he created what is often credited as
the first functioning air pump in the mid sixteen hundreds,
and Heron's understanding of airflow and how it could be
impacted by heat led him to develop a rudimentary steam engine,
the eola pile is something that modern teachers and hobbyists
recreate all the time, but there's a slight difference in
(07:26):
the way that these modern versions function compared to the
one that Heron described in pneumatics. Modern variations often consist
of a hollow sphere filled with water, which is suspended
over heat source by two arms. As that water heats up,
the steam is released through two short armlike valves on
the sphere's equator, and that causes it to rotate. So
(07:49):
this is a rudimentary steam turbine that creates a rotary motion.
But in Heron's original version, that water is actually contained
in a base vessel. He describes it as a call
caldron with a fitted lid that the ball is suspended over.
From that cauldron are two tubes. These are the ones
that the sphere is suspended with, but they're hollow tubes
(08:10):
that carry steam from the cauldron as it's heated and
into the sphere, which builds up until it releases that
steam through the equatorial valves, and that's what results in
the spinning motion. Similar mechanics would not be implemented for
practical use until the seventeenth century, but Heron's machine had
no practical use. It was not intended for any type
(08:32):
of job. It was built as an exploration and examination
of the effects of heat and air and steam combining,
and in the first century it was considered nothing more
than a fancy toy. There just was not a vision
of how this technology could be used. Yeah, I kind
of think of it as like the mechanical desk toys
that executives might have on their tests, Like this is neat,
(08:56):
look at spins when I heat it up. But it
could have spletely change the world if they had been
like I bet we could apply this to a vehicle.
The other hair and invention, which is similar in concept
to modern machines and really is the focus of like
the precursor to a modern machine in terms of the
context of this episode, is called in his book sacrificial vessel,
(09:20):
which flows only when money is introduced. This was a
very rudimentary vending machine, and here is how Heron described it. Quote,
if into certain sacrificial vessels, a coin of five drachms
be thrown, water shall flow out and surround them. Let
the example diagram be a sacrificial vessel or treasure chest
(09:41):
having an opening in its mouth, and in the chest
let there be a vessel containing water and a small
box from which a pipe conducts out of the chest.
Near the vessel place a vertical rod about which turns
a lever widening into the plate parallel to the bottom
of the vessel, while at the extremity is and a
lid which fits into the box so that no water
(10:03):
can flow through the tube. This lid, however, must be
heavier than the plate, but lighter than the plate and
coin combined. When the coin is thrown through the mouth,
it will fall upon the plate, and preponderating it will
turn the beam and raise the lid of the box
so that the water will flow. But if the coin
falls off, the lid will descend and close the box
(10:24):
so that the discharge ceases. More simply, this setup had
a plate attached to a lever that would tilt just
enough to open a valve that allowed water to flow out.
The coin would slide off the plate as it tilted,
and once it fell off, the lever would return to
its original position, closing the valve. This vessel looked sort
(10:44):
of like a semovar. That's a metal urn used to
make and serve tea, and its intent was to dispense
holy water at temples. He also created another vessel that
would dispense wine as water was poured into a separate compartment,
but as the water dispenser was strictly transactional with money,
it's more of a true vending machine. The next big
(11:07):
step in vending machines did not happen until London eighteen eighties. Yeah,
coming up, we're going to talk about a very ancient
invention intended to make the world a more pleasant smelling place.
But first we will pause for a sponsor break. For
(11:32):
a lot of people today, it is very normal to
have a small tin or other container of breath mints
in their bag or pocket. But breath mints are very
far from new. The herbs in the mint family, which
is lemiakie, are as anyone who's ever grown one, very
hardy perennials. It is in fact harder to control them
than to get them started outside. They will often appear
(11:55):
to die back completely in cold temperatures and then pop
up a new in warm weather, and they bread lake crazy.
Because of their very assertive nature as a plant that
spreads easily, and because it grows almost anywhere the origin
of mint, the plant seems to be completely unclear. If
you look it up, you will find texts that say
that it originated in any number of areas, including Asia,
(12:17):
the Mediterranean, Europe, and Africa. Mint has been used in
a lot of cultures as part of food traditions and
for its fresh, bright aroma. Blindey the Elder, who lived
in the first century, had a lot to say about
mint in his writings the Natural History. This isn't precisely
what we're talking about today in terms of invention, but
(12:38):
we are going to read a number of quotes from
that writing to illustrate just how commonly mint was used
and for a wide range of purposes. Pliny knew how
easy it was to grow mint, noting quote wild mint,
cat mint, ondieve, and penny royal will grow even without cultivation.
That isn't the only mint of its heartiness in the
(13:01):
Natural History. Pliny also writes quote, the mint that is
used in the dishes at rustic entertainments pervades the tables
far and wide with its agreeable odor. When once planted,
it lasts a considerable length of time. It bears too,
a strong resemblance to pennyroyal, a property of which is,
as mentioned by us, more than once to flour when
(13:22):
kept in our larders. So this also suggests that even
when you're not taking care of mint is a cultivated plant,
it can and will still grow on its o Pliny
writes of mint being used as an antidote for poison. Quote,
leaves of wild mint are kept dried and reduced to
a fine powder as a remedy for poisons of every description.
(13:45):
Spread on the ground or burnt, this plant has the
effect of driving away scorpions. He also comments on its
flavorful nature and claims that it has a benefit to milk,
writing quote, the very smell of mint ree that meets
the spirits and its flavor gives a remarkable zest to food.
Hence it is that it is so generally an ingredient
(14:07):
in our sauces. It has the effect of preventing milk
from turning sour or curdling and thickening. Hence it is
that it is so generally put into milk use for drinking,
to prevent any danger of persons being choked by it
in a curdled state. So much yuck about this, heads up,
You cannot keep milk from going bad by adding mint
(14:28):
to it. At best, it might for a little while
mask the sourness of milk that is in his very
early as stages of going bad. But also choking on
milk that's super curdled just seems like you weren't paying attention.
Yuck across the board. If you are about to give
(14:49):
a big speech, Pliny suggest drinking mint tea quote the
juice of mint is good for the voice when a
person is about to engage in a contest of eloquence,
but only when taken just before. Pliny included a lot
of treatments that could be made with mint in his writing.
There are twenty remedies that can be made with wild mint,
and forty one from cultivated mint. And then outside of those,
(15:12):
he noted how pleasant it could be simply to eat it. Quote.
If the air is inhaled by a person when eating peppermint,
he will be sensible of a cold feeling in the mouth.
It's the York peppermint patty spiel, just with the mint
at its base. But Pliny's writing about mint was drawing
on cultural knowledge of it that had been circulating for
hundreds of years already, and the use that we're focusing
(15:35):
on is as a cure for bad breath, although I
will say mint is not called out specifically in what
we're about to talk about, but there is this term
that's like general herbs available, and we know at the
time that mint was growing very readily in this area,
so presumably it was one of the herbs included. Even today,
(15:58):
there are so many causes for breath odor that it
can actually be hard to identify what the cause is
in a given person. Obviously, good oral hygiene can help
prevent the growth of bacteria that's often associated with foul breath,
but there are a lot of other causes of bad breath.
If you have dry mouth, you're more prone to it,
or if your diet includes certain foods, you might have
(16:21):
bad breath, even if you're great at brushing and flossing.
Various health conditions can also lead to breath that smells
less than fresh, and this has been a problem since
humans existed. But we are jumping all the way back
to ancient Egypt and one of their solutions for yuckie breath.
We talked a bit about dentistry and ancient Egypt, and
our two part episode on the history of dentistry. In
(16:42):
May of twenty twenty two, in part one of the episode,
we discussed how the Ebers Papyrus included information on packing teeth,
basically doing fillings, regrowing gum tissue, and even putting rudimentary
bridgework into the mouths of patience. It wasn't a time
where there was no denise care, but that care was
not as advanced as the care you would get today.
(17:04):
That means that even people who had the means to
access dental care were almost certainly going to develop some
kind of problem which could result in bad breath. And
as we mentioned just a moment ago, there are plenty
of other things that can cause breath issues, and the
Ebers Papyrus there was a treatment for that, and that
is breath mins, invented by the ancient Egyptians. The actual entry,
(17:29):
which to be clear we obviously only have from a translation,
initially begins as an air freshener for the home, and
that reads as follows quote substances to use in order
to make pleasant the smell of the house or of
the clothes dried mirr elderberries, incense, cyprus resin of aloes,
sebit resin kalmus from the land tah in Asia in
(17:52):
a coon grain mastics directs, crush a grind, make into
one and put on the fire another for the woman
to make they're out these ingredients. According to the other instructions,
put in honey, cook, mix, form into little balls. They
shall fumigate with them. It is also worthwhile to make
mouthpills out of them to make the smell of the
(18:14):
mouth agreeable. So basically, combine various good smelling things that
you might have on hand, cook them in honey, and
form that into tablets. These probably we're not super tasty,
and also they don't really contain any mint, at least
according to this list. But the mention of calamus is interesting.
(18:35):
It is referring to calamus, which comes up in other
papyri from ancient Egypt. Commonly it's known as sweet flag.
It is toxic and has psychoactive chemical components, So maybe
it just made people think their breath smell better. Definitely
a far cry from the many minty options for breath
(18:58):
that there are today. So by the time that that
Pliny was writing several hundred years later, they had figured
out the mint could be involved in this whole thing.
To keep your breath delightful. The next invention we're going
to talk about involves various sparkly things, and we're going
to get to that right after we hear from the
sponsors that keep the show going. On September twenty fourth,
(19:28):
eighteen eighty one, in Hamilton, Ohio, which is part of
the Cincinnati metro area, Bernard H. Weiste and Anna M.
Gold Camp Weiste had a son named Louis Bernard WEISTI,
who would grow up to patent one of my favorite things.
There is not a whole lot of information about mister Weiste,
but he did at some point mary a woman named
Florence Bliss Stemball and start a family. Lewis and Florence
(19:52):
had two daughters, Helen born in nineteen thirteen and Bonnie,
born in nineteen seventeen. But even when we was still
a kid, there was a mention of a mirror ball
in a trade paper put out by a Charleston, Massachusetts
Electricians union in eighteen ninety seven. So that's right, we're
going to talk about what would later become known as
(20:13):
the disco ball. Holly and I each kind of went
on a little expedition trying to find this periodical. Both
mental Floss and Vice say that this periodical carried the
write up about the union's annual party where this mirrored
ball apparently scattered sparkling light all around the room. We
(20:36):
did find a union paper that wrote up this event,
but had no mention of a mirror ball in it,
so it's possible there was just a different version that
came directly from the union rather than like Union country
wide paper, which is the one that we had found, Right,
(20:59):
we were looking at the bigger one that may have
aggregated other articles and may have edited right. In addition
to this lack of mention of the mirror ball and
the one version of this Holly and I found, there
are no photos of whatever this looked like. It is
often noted as the first time that a mirrored ball
(21:22):
was mentioned in the historical record. If it did look
something like today's disco ball. There's no attribution regarding who
came up with this decoration, which was at the Christmas party. Yeah,
we also don't know how the one that we know
(21:43):
got invented came to be. We have no information about
the inspiration behind it. Where we Stee's brain went. You
know what I'd like to do is glue a lot
of mirrors on something and throw light on it. But
if we jump forward in Lewis Wees's life, there is
plenty of newspaper coverage about his patented invention, which he
(22:06):
called the myriad reflector. He filed a patent for the device,
his Myriad Reflector, on February twelfth, nineteen sixteen, and he
was granted that patent almost a year later, on February
sixth of nineteen seventeen. The technical portion of this patent
at the end of the copy is straightforward, as it
would need to be. It's described as quote one, a
(22:29):
myriad reflector comprising mirrors mounted to form a polyhedron, bounded
by a convex system of plane faces, in combination with
means for suspending the device so that it may be
swung and rotated simultaneously to produce myriad reflections when light
rays from an extraneous source are thrown thereon. He also
(22:51):
described it a second time in an almost identical way,
but specifying that the mirrors could be separated slightly by
a non reflective sir. This was a reference to the
patent being about the mirrors not necessarily on a spherical shape,
but on any shape quote to suit the particular requirements,
which is a pretty astute way of cutting off copycats
(23:14):
for making and these sort of hanging mirrored reflectors in
shapes that were not spheares trying to patent those two.
But while that wording is legally smart, there is some
rather more florid language in the general description that I
found rather charming. We see wrote quote the object of
my invention is to produce a myriad reflector comprising a
(23:36):
plurality of reflecting surfaces, the same to be arranged in
such a manner that the several reflections shall be projected
at varying angles, the device itself being arranged so that
it may be rotated or otherwise moved, so that the
reflections may produce a scintillating and spectacular effect. It is
scintillating and spectacular. Oh, he knew the key to my heart.
(23:58):
I'm a magpie of my soul. The exact timing is
not clear, but around the time Westy got his patent,
or shortly thereafter, Westy's friend Benny Friedman, who owned a
tailor's shop, asked Lewis, who went by lou if he
wanted to use some space in the shop to set
up his own venture, and he did. He founded the
(24:18):
LB West Decorating Company out of that space, and soon
he was getting large contracts to set up parties and
municipal celebrations, and of course to sell his Myriad reflector
for those events. And to be really clear, the Myriad
reflector was a big deal. It was touted constantly in
(24:38):
newspapers by ballrooms and entertainment venues that had acquired one
as a draw. Reading through newspapers, it seems as though
a lot of venues saw it as this way they
were going to reinvigorate their business. Even before Weisty's patent
was granted, there are mentions of the Myriad reflector in
local papers indicating that weiste was already producing them. In
(25:01):
January nineteen seventeen, the Rotary Charity Ball of Piqua, Ohio,
which is a town about eighty miles north of Cincinnati,
had a write up in the Piqua Daily Call that read,
in part quote, during the Grand March, the hall was
darkened and from a Myriad reflector, sparks of every color
were flying over the ceiling, making a most dazzling and
(25:23):
wonderful scene. This was kept up at intervals during the
Grand March. This article notes that everything was donated for
the ball except the music, so presumably Weesti made that
Myriad reflector as a donation or loaned it to the event.
A June thirteenth, nineteen twenty one ad in the Salt
Lake Telegram read Dance to the Flash of the Myriad Reflector,
(25:46):
and it featured this drawing of five dancing couples beneath
a mirrored ball that is scattering light around the room.
That drawing is not especially detailed, but it is immediately
apparent what it depicts. The accompanying copy reads quote the
Myriad Reflector, one of the most beautiful electric lighting devices
ever seen here is now an exclusive feature at the
(26:07):
Salt Air You will find it flashing on the big
dance floor every Tuesday night. Come tomorrow night and see it.
There is also an addendum bit of copy in this
ad that has nothing to do with the mirror ball,
but which is also really charming to me because it says,
come early enough for a dip in the lake, and
in all caps, bathing is superb. Bathing is superb? Are
(26:31):
you just telling people to be clean or do you
really want them to splash about and enjoy your lakeside venue?
That autumn, the Great Falls Leader of Great Falls, Montana
drummed up excitement for its annual fall opening odeon Ball
by sharing with readers that a Myriad Reflector had been
procured for the event, and it also explains what it is. Quote.
(26:53):
The Myriad Reflector is something new in the amusement world
and had heretofore been used only in such places the
Marigold Gardens of Chicago, Hotel Astor in New York City,
Cave Hall of Saint Louis Schubert's Winter Garden of New York,
and like places. The Myriad Reflector is a novelty that
transforms a hall into a brilliant fairyland of flashing, changing
(27:18):
living colors, a marvel of kaleidoscope charm. The result is
thousands of small reflections, dancing, changing, chasing after one another,
into every nook and corner. What's interesting here, too, is
that after giving this sort of romantic descriptor, the Great
Falls Leader explains exactly how this effect is created. Quote.
(27:39):
The device is an immense globe twenty seven inches in diameter,
completely covered with more than one thousand special made mirrors.
When spotlights are thrown on the rotating ball, the reflections
of the mirrors are multiplied into a dazzling, dancing, indescribable
lighting effect that is simply immense. It's funny that the
(28:01):
write up says it's indescribable right after it went to
great lengths to describe it. It made me think of
Samuel Taylor, Coleridge and Kubla Khan and like writing this
whole poem and then being like and then I was
woken up, and I could never describe what I experienced.
It's like, maybe you just did you just did? I
read it. Other newspapers had similar features that talked about
(28:25):
Wisti's mirrored marvel. The timing of the patent really could
not have been better, as the Roaring twenties offered exactly
the right cultural atmosphere to embrace all of that sparkle,
and many of these write ups mentioned that it had
a small motor that turned it to keep the reflected
lights moving and dancing. That rotator motor wasn't part of
(28:45):
the original patent, and Weiste didn't apply for a patent
on the motor until several years after the examples that
we've been quoting in nineteen twenty four. That patent wasn't
actually granted until March thirteenth, nineteen twenty eight, at which
point he had been including the motor on his setup
for the better part of a decade. Lewis Weisty died
(29:06):
on April tenth, nineteen thirty three, at his home on
Wayside Avenue in the Mount Washington neighborhood of Cincinnati, and
the years after his death, his wife, Florence ran the
family business with the help of their daughter Helen. The
business struggled but made it through the Great Depression, and
was even hired to decorate Crossley Field for the All
(29:26):
Star Game in nineteen thirty eight. But after Helen got
married and started a family, Florence couldn't keep things going
by herself, and the business shuddered. In nineteen forty five. Yeah,
there's an interesting write up about it's closing that kind
of has that you know, social norm line about well,
Helen had a baby, so she's just domestic now she
(29:49):
can't work. It's like, oh, after the wee C Company closed.
The main producer of reflective mirrored balls was Omega National Products,
which o it out of Louisville, Kentucky. It was making
an estimated ninety percent of them when the disco craze
hit and made them super popular. Omega still exists today,
although a lot of other manufacturers have entered the market
(30:11):
since the nineteen forties. Yeah, today, if you go to
a craft store, you can buy mirrored pumpkins, mirrored kitty cats,
mirrored anything you can think of, in a variety of colors.
I wouldn't know. I don't own any of those. I
own all of those. I have a disco cat. You
can have people make giant discoed skeletons. I mean, one
(30:32):
woman did her own as a craft project and it's beautiful,
one of those giant yard skeletons. M you can't put
enough mirror stuff on things for me. I love it.
I'm obsessed with it. I'm also obsessed with listener mail.
Here's one, okay from our listener, Jane, who writes, Hi,
(30:54):
hollyod Tracy. I've been a longtime listener. I honestly don't
remember when I started listening. I know it was sometime
in undergrad, maybe even my senior year of high school.
I'm nearly thirty now, and I know in the grand
scheme of things, it's not old, but my brain is fuzzy.
I'm remembering things I did yesterday, and I've always wanted
a reason to send a note about something. Listen. I
(31:15):
feel like after we all lived in our homes, mostly
through the early part of COVID, memories got real weird
for everybody that's it doesn't matter your age. I just
think like time became a flat circle. Jane continues, there
have been so many somethings. As I am listening through
the backlog of episodes, I think I'm finally into twenty
(31:37):
twenty six. I started a re listen like three years ago,
from the very beginning of the podcast, and it's taken
me forever to get back to present day. There have
been so many subjects, especially the twenty twenty five episode
about the Library of Congress. She shares her connection to it,
and I'm not going to read that part because I
don't want it to be too identifying it for personal information.
(31:58):
And the most recent Cranberry episode. I had to pull
over on my way home because the Cranberry episode nearly
made me pee my pants. And I will tell you
why this is, Like if you put this line in
an email I want to keep reading. My beloved grandmother,
who still lives in the in law apartment of my parents' house,
has never been able to cook. I think she's one
(32:19):
of the reasons I had such a hard time trying
new foods as a kid, because as her favorite grandchild
at that time. A whole podcast on its own of
how my grandmother determines who is her favorite grandchild and
why at any given moment, if I said I wanted
to try something, she'd make it. The problem with this
is she would somehow change the texture of foods that
are really hard to mess up. I remember she made
(32:40):
steak one time and called it rare. It was as
hard as a hockey puck and gray all the way through,
but she tried. She also somehow managed to roast a
bell pepper into rubber. I don't know how she managed that,
but it was legitimately inedible. But now I have a
night shade sensitivity and I can't have them anyways. But
my favorite memories of my grandmother and her inability to
cook always come at Thanksgiving. She has for my entire
(33:03):
almost thirty years, insisted on cooking something for Thanksgiving. And
somehow my mother has managed to get it down to
two things, homemade cranberry relish and her homemade saltine stuffing
or dressing. I'm not really sure the difference. My family
calls it both. My family calls it both to most people,
stuffing as if it's cooked in the bird, dressing if
it's in a tray or a dish that you put
(33:25):
in the oven. She would process them both through a
food mill that I am fairly certain has survived since
the eighteen eighties. It's my goal to find it one
day and confirm this. The problem is now her memory
is starting to go and she can't remember where she
left it last. I've never had the cranberry relish, but
my sister loves it more than the canned jelly, which
I also dislike but wish I didn't listen. It's grating cocktails.
(33:48):
It's made with fresh squeezed orange juice, but bottled is
fine too, just not the concentrate from the freezer section.
We did that one year and it was vile to smell.
I don't think anyone ate it. And cranberry's frozen that
have been passed through the food mill, and then you
mix the juice and let it sit at least overnight,
and it becomes a deep red, almost purple slop. The
(34:08):
smell's wonderful. If I could make it a candle, I would.
I won't go into detail about her stuffing because she
has not been allowed to make it in years, and
outside of saltines and celery, I couldn't tell you what
was in it. She mentions the raisins might be in it,
which makes me make a face. But you know, everybody's
got their own taste. But I do know that her
stuffing is the reason I refused tried again until I
was twenty five. I love this idea. There's some more
(34:31):
in this email, but I'm not going to read the
whole thing. But I was fascinated because I'm like, you don't.
You don't how to do anything with the cranberries To
make cranberry sauce. You've literally just put them on the
stove the little water and they get smooshy, goushy on
their own, fall apart and become delicious. We all know
(34:57):
that I love cranberries. I find this fascinating. The idea
of like soaking them overnight is interesting and for people
that maybe don't have a heath horse, or like anything's
going wrong in their kitchen. That might be an option.
I might test this just to see how it works. Anyway,
I'm fascinated. Fascinated, I tell you, because I imagine the
acidity of the orange juice would break down the cranberries
(35:19):
enough that it would work just fine if they sat
long enough. Yeah. I have made a homemade cranberry sauce
type recipe before that has included a little orange juice.
But like I often do, that was like what was
in the recipe. I didn't really think through the chemistry. Yeah,
they often do. I I tend to leave the the
(35:43):
we're off on a slight tangent, but come with me.
I tend to leave the citrus part out because I
really just like the cranberry flavor. And I throw a
little vanilla in so it tastes almost even though it's
there's no dairy in it. It has like an almost
custardy taste because of the smoothness that it develops. Listen,
I'm into it. However, here's the most important part of
(36:03):
this email. Pet tax three beautiful beautiful kitties versus Princess
Jane says She has many names, most unsuitable for broadcasts,
but my partner and I call her that most and
it fits the bill. She's sixteen, probably partner Reegian forest Cat,
and I've had her since she was since I was twelve.
A great birthday surprise to come home and find her.
(36:25):
She's so beautiful and so pretty and listen, I love
a mature lady kitty very much. I love mature kitties
in general. Next is my baby boy Gizmo. He's five.
He loves to be next to people, but hates when
you touch him first. His favorite way to be pet
is body slamming himself into your shins. And lastly, my
gooby girl Gadget, who is four. She is tiny and
(36:46):
wee and would wear my skin just to snuggle closer.
My favorite part about her is she doesn't know how
to yewl, but she does know how to squeak. These
babies are so sweet. Yeah, oh, I love a little
cat face. One of them is a very funny picture
of her tiny kitty right up close to their nanny
(37:08):
cam that they put in there. And then Jane signs
off with thank you so much for all you do,
and I can't wait to catch them on the podcast. Also,
I didn't know y'all were on Netflix. Yep, we sure are.
So if you want to sit and watch it, you
can if you don't want to listen and only have audio.
But anyway, thank you Jane, Thank you for sharing your
(37:29):
kitty cats, sharing your family's Cranberry story. Listen. Not everybody
has good cooks in their family. I was lucky to
have many good cooks in my family. Not everybody does.
There were oftentimes when I would go to other kids'
houses and be like, what is happening at your home?
This is not delicious. If you would like to write
(37:53):
to us share a family recipe. Do you remember that
turkey meatloaf recipe we had years ago? I have it still.
I've made it several times. That was really good. I
don't remember who sent it to us off hand, but
I haven't shoved into a cookbook notebook somewhere upstairs. If
you want to share a family recipe, a picture of
your kiddie CAATs, a picture of anything else that you
(38:13):
delight in, a picture of a disco ball, however you
might use it in your home. That sounds great to me.
You can do that at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
If you want to look at the show notes to
see the research that we did for this or any
of our episodes, those are available at mistonhistory dot com.
If you would like to subscribe to the show and
you haven't done that yet, you can do that on
(38:35):
the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. I will talk about
the genesis of this episode on Friday's episode, because it's
(00:23):
very silly, but it was born, like so many of
our topics, out of just seeing something and asking off
handedly when was that invented? Which I do a lot.
This led me to look that up and it came
as a surprise regarding its timing, and I wanted to
talk about that thing, but I also knew that that
was not a media enough topic for a whole episode,
(00:45):
so I decided I would group it with some other
inventions that were made well before I would have thought,
probably most people would have thought. There are so many
things in our modern world that people presume our fairly
recent inventions that aren't. We talk about things like that
all the time, and often that is the result of
like what I call this sort of present tense hubris,
(01:05):
where we can't imagine another time or culture needing or
inventing the things that we use today. But I feel
like the three things that we're talking about in this
instance seem, at least to my mind, pretty valid in
presuming that they are more modern than they are, in
part because they all have close associations with the recent past.
(01:27):
One of them, the thing that inspired this episode, is
one of my favorite inventions of all time. So for
the first thing we're going to talk about, we have
to go all the way back to the early Common
era and a scientist known as Heron of Alexandria. Some
texts give his name as Hero. He's sometimes described as
being Egyptian because he lived in Alexandria. Other times he's
(01:50):
described as Greek. Some accounts list both. He was likely
born in Greece. He lived at a time of Greco
Roman dominance throughout the Mediterranean, and Egypt was a Roman province.
But all of the accounts agree he was very, very smart.
He was well educated. He understood and wrote about mathematics
and mechanics from all over the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. We
(02:15):
don't have a whole lot of biographical information about him,
though he's believed to have been born sometime early in
the first century. We know he was alive in the
year sixty two because he mentioned an eclipse in his
writing that's known to have taken place that year. Everything
else we know about Heron is what he recorded in
(02:35):
his writings. He wrote a lot about mathematics and mechanics,
but nothing autobiographical. Yeah, if you look up the dates
associated with his life, they are all over the map.
There are people that will put his date of birth
at around the year zero or one, and other people
that will put his death at around one hundred. And
(02:55):
I'm like, it's possible, but not super probable at this
point in time that he could have lived through the
entire first century. But in any case, his work is
influential in our lives in a number of small ways.
For example, if you've ever used the idiom that someone
has made one hundred and eighty degree turn in changing
their position or their opinion on something, you can thank Heron,
(03:18):
at least in part. The idea of a circle being
divided by three hundred and sixty units known as degrees,
actually originated in Babylonia, which used a base sixty system
for mathematics, but Heron is credited with adopting it and
teaching it widely in the technical school he founded in
Alexandria and writing about it in his books. But Beyond that,
(03:40):
his own work predates a lot of similar work, often
by hundreds of years. His math writings include Mechanica, which
included information about the workings of levers and how they
can be used to bear loads, as well as velocity
and the use of friction discs to create very ratios.
(04:01):
These discs or the basics of the kinds of drives
that would be described as transmissions today. They can transfer
torque to rotating parts at variable speeds depending on the
ratio selected in Heron's writings. All of this information was
intended to help architects manage building projects by providing them
ways to more efficiently transport and lift heavy loads in construction.
(04:26):
His book Dioptera is essentially a manual for measurement. It
includes descriptions of various measuring instruments, including a diopter. It
also included a method to measure distance traveled by a wheel.
A lot of this book is about how to measure
distance in the interest of land surveying purposes. Heron's three
(04:47):
volume work Metrica was all about geometry that covered topics
like the measurement of geometric figures. There are formulas for
using the lengths of a triangle's sides to calculate its area,
and a method for finding the square root of a
non square number. Metrica was actually lost for a very
very long time. This book was mentioned in the writings
(05:10):
of Utosius of Ascalon, who lived in the late fifth
and early sixth centuries, but its contents were a mystery.
Then in the eighteen sixties there was a mention of
an eleventh century manuscript in a library in Constantinople that
might contain some of Heron's writings. But this wasn't a
library just anybody could visit. There were hoops to jump
(05:32):
through just to get permission to enter. It wasn't until
eighteen ninety six that German archaeologist and head of the
Royal Museum of Berlin, Richard Shone, was able to identify
that a copy of Metrica was indeed contained in that manuscript.
Shona's Sun Hermann published the first critical edition of Metrica
in nineteen oh three. Haron wrote other books, and even
(05:56):
more have been attributed to him that are almost certainly
not his work, But the book that's most Germane today
is Pneumatics. In that work, he describes a variety of
mechanical devices featuring so many concepts we might think of
as fairly modern gas power, water power, steam power, atmospheric pressure,
and pumps, among others. But the section related to today's
(06:19):
topic is automata. He offers a little bit of multi
entry for this episode because he invented a lot of
things that were far far ahead of his time. Yeah,
he also, just to avoid confusion, did also write another
book called Automata. But the things we're talking about are
in this book pneumatics, and the first one that we're
(06:40):
going to talk about is the eolapile, which is today
sometimes also called a hero motor named after him. So
Heron had concluded that air is elastic and that it
consists of particles that move relative to one another. He
was essentially onto the idea of airflow and air mechanics,
although he didn't have it all figured out, and these
are concepts that Irish chemist robber Boyle was still working
(07:03):
to understand when he created what is often credited as
the first functioning air pump in the mid sixteen hundreds,
and Heron's understanding of airflow and how it could be
impacted by heat led him to develop a rudimentary steam engine,
the eola pile is something that modern teachers and hobbyists
recreate all the time, but there's a slight difference in
(07:26):
the way that these modern versions function compared to the
one that Heron described in pneumatics. Modern variations often consist
of a hollow sphere filled with water, which is suspended
over heat source by two arms. As that water heats up,
the steam is released through two short armlike valves on
the sphere's equator, and that causes it to rotate. So
(07:49):
this is a rudimentary steam turbine that creates a rotary motion.
But in Heron's original version, that water is actually contained
in a base vessel. He describes it as a call
caldron with a fitted lid that the ball is suspended over.
From that cauldron are two tubes. These are the ones
that the sphere is suspended with, but they're hollow tubes
(08:10):
that carry steam from the cauldron as it's heated and
into the sphere, which builds up until it releases that
steam through the equatorial valves, and that's what results in
the spinning motion. Similar mechanics would not be implemented for
practical use until the seventeenth century, but Heron's machine had
no practical use. It was not intended for any type
(08:32):
of job. It was built as an exploration and examination
of the effects of heat and air and steam combining,
and in the first century it was considered nothing more
than a fancy toy. There just was not a vision
of how this technology could be used. Yeah, I kind
of think of it as like the mechanical desk toys
that executives might have on their tests, Like this is neat,
(08:56):
look at spins when I heat it up. But it
could have spletely change the world if they had been
like I bet we could apply this to a vehicle.
The other hair and invention, which is similar in concept
to modern machines and really is the focus of like
the precursor to a modern machine in terms of the
context of this episode, is called in his book sacrificial vessel,
(09:20):
which flows only when money is introduced. This was a
very rudimentary vending machine, and here is how Heron described it. Quote,
if into certain sacrificial vessels, a coin of five drachms
be thrown, water shall flow out and surround them. Let
the example diagram be a sacrificial vessel or treasure chest
(09:41):
having an opening in its mouth, and in the chest
let there be a vessel containing water and a small
box from which a pipe conducts out of the chest.
Near the vessel place a vertical rod about which turns
a lever widening into the plate parallel to the bottom
of the vessel, while at the extremity is and a
lid which fits into the box so that no water
(10:03):
can flow through the tube. This lid, however, must be
heavier than the plate, but lighter than the plate and
coin combined. When the coin is thrown through the mouth,
it will fall upon the plate, and preponderating it will
turn the beam and raise the lid of the box
so that the water will flow. But if the coin
falls off, the lid will descend and close the box
(10:24):
so that the discharge ceases. More simply, this setup had
a plate attached to a lever that would tilt just
enough to open a valve that allowed water to flow out.
The coin would slide off the plate as it tilted,
and once it fell off, the lever would return to
its original position, closing the valve. This vessel looked sort
(10:44):
of like a semovar. That's a metal urn used to
make and serve tea, and its intent was to dispense
holy water at temples. He also created another vessel that
would dispense wine as water was poured into a separate compartment,
but as the water dispenser was strictly transactional with money,
it's more of a true vending machine. The next big
(11:07):
step in vending machines did not happen until London eighteen eighties. Yeah,
coming up, we're going to talk about a very ancient
invention intended to make the world a more pleasant smelling place.
But first we will pause for a sponsor break. For
(11:32):
a lot of people today, it is very normal to
have a small tin or other container of breath mints
in their bag or pocket. But breath mints are very
far from new. The herbs in the mint family, which
is lemiakie, are as anyone who's ever grown one, very
hardy perennials. It is in fact harder to control them
than to get them started outside. They will often appear
(11:55):
to die back completely in cold temperatures and then pop
up a new in warm weather, and they bread lake crazy.
Because of their very assertive nature as a plant that
spreads easily, and because it grows almost anywhere the origin
of mint, the plant seems to be completely unclear. If
you look it up, you will find texts that say
that it originated in any number of areas, including Asia,
(12:17):
the Mediterranean, Europe, and Africa. Mint has been used in
a lot of cultures as part of food traditions and
for its fresh, bright aroma. Blindey the Elder, who lived
in the first century, had a lot to say about
mint in his writings the Natural History. This isn't precisely
what we're talking about today in terms of invention, but
(12:38):
we are going to read a number of quotes from
that writing to illustrate just how commonly mint was used
and for a wide range of purposes. Pliny knew how
easy it was to grow mint, noting quote wild mint,
cat mint, ondieve, and penny royal will grow even without cultivation.
That isn't the only mint of its heartiness in the
(13:01):
Natural History. Pliny also writes quote, the mint that is
used in the dishes at rustic entertainments pervades the tables
far and wide with its agreeable odor. When once planted,
it lasts a considerable length of time. It bears too,
a strong resemblance to pennyroyal, a property of which is,
as mentioned by us, more than once to flour when
(13:22):
kept in our larders. So this also suggests that even
when you're not taking care of mint is a cultivated plant,
it can and will still grow on its o Pliny
writes of mint being used as an antidote for poison. Quote,
leaves of wild mint are kept dried and reduced to
a fine powder as a remedy for poisons of every description.
(13:45):
Spread on the ground or burnt, this plant has the
effect of driving away scorpions. He also comments on its
flavorful nature and claims that it has a benefit to milk,
writing quote, the very smell of mint ree that meets
the spirits and its flavor gives a remarkable zest to food.
Hence it is that it is so generally an ingredient
(14:07):
in our sauces. It has the effect of preventing milk
from turning sour or curdling and thickening. Hence it is
that it is so generally put into milk use for drinking,
to prevent any danger of persons being choked by it
in a curdled state. So much yuck about this, heads up,
You cannot keep milk from going bad by adding mint
(14:28):
to it. At best, it might for a little while
mask the sourness of milk that is in his very
early as stages of going bad. But also choking on
milk that's super curdled just seems like you weren't paying attention.
Yuck across the board. If you are about to give
(14:49):
a big speech, Pliny suggest drinking mint tea quote the
juice of mint is good for the voice when a
person is about to engage in a contest of eloquence,
but only when taken just before. Pliny included a lot
of treatments that could be made with mint in his writing.
There are twenty remedies that can be made with wild mint,
and forty one from cultivated mint. And then outside of those,
(15:12):
he noted how pleasant it could be simply to eat it. Quote.
If the air is inhaled by a person when eating peppermint,
he will be sensible of a cold feeling in the mouth.
It's the York peppermint patty spiel, just with the mint
at its base. But Pliny's writing about mint was drawing
on cultural knowledge of it that had been circulating for
hundreds of years already, and the use that we're focusing
(15:35):
on is as a cure for bad breath, although I
will say mint is not called out specifically in what
we're about to talk about, but there is this term
that's like general herbs available, and we know at the
time that mint was growing very readily in this area,
so presumably it was one of the herbs included. Even today,
(15:58):
there are so many causes for breath odor that it
can actually be hard to identify what the cause is
in a given person. Obviously, good oral hygiene can help
prevent the growth of bacteria that's often associated with foul breath,
but there are a lot of other causes of bad breath.
If you have dry mouth, you're more prone to it,
or if your diet includes certain foods, you might have
(16:21):
bad breath, even if you're great at brushing and flossing.
Various health conditions can also lead to breath that smells
less than fresh, and this has been a problem since
humans existed. But we are jumping all the way back
to ancient Egypt and one of their solutions for yuckie breath.
We talked a bit about dentistry and ancient Egypt, and
our two part episode on the history of dentistry. In
(16:42):
May of twenty twenty two, in part one of the episode,
we discussed how the Ebers Papyrus included information on packing teeth,
basically doing fillings, regrowing gum tissue, and even putting rudimentary
bridgework into the mouths of patience. It wasn't a time
where there was no denise care, but that care was
not as advanced as the care you would get today.
(17:04):
That means that even people who had the means to
access dental care were almost certainly going to develop some
kind of problem which could result in bad breath. And
as we mentioned just a moment ago, there are plenty
of other things that can cause breath issues, and the
Ebers Papyrus there was a treatment for that, and that
is breath mins, invented by the ancient Egyptians. The actual entry,
(17:29):
which to be clear we obviously only have from a translation,
initially begins as an air freshener for the home, and
that reads as follows quote substances to use in order
to make pleasant the smell of the house or of
the clothes dried mirr elderberries, incense, cyprus resin of aloes,
sebit resin kalmus from the land tah in Asia in
(17:52):
a coon grain mastics directs, crush a grind, make into
one and put on the fire another for the woman
to make they're out these ingredients. According to the other instructions,
put in honey, cook, mix, form into little balls. They
shall fumigate with them. It is also worthwhile to make
mouthpills out of them to make the smell of the
(18:14):
mouth agreeable. So basically, combine various good smelling things that
you might have on hand, cook them in honey, and
form that into tablets. These probably we're not super tasty,
and also they don't really contain any mint, at least
according to this list. But the mention of calamus is interesting.
(18:35):
It is referring to calamus, which comes up in other
papyri from ancient Egypt. Commonly it's known as sweet flag.
It is toxic and has psychoactive chemical components, So maybe
it just made people think their breath smell better. Definitely
a far cry from the many minty options for breath
(18:58):
that there are today. So by the time that that
Pliny was writing several hundred years later, they had figured
out the mint could be involved in this whole thing.
To keep your breath delightful. The next invention we're going
to talk about involves various sparkly things, and we're going
to get to that right after we hear from the
sponsors that keep the show going. On September twenty fourth,
(19:28):
eighteen eighty one, in Hamilton, Ohio, which is part of
the Cincinnati metro area, Bernard H. Weiste and Anna M.
Gold Camp Weiste had a son named Louis Bernard WEISTI,
who would grow up to patent one of my favorite things.
There is not a whole lot of information about mister Weiste,
but he did at some point mary a woman named
Florence Bliss Stemball and start a family. Lewis and Florence
(19:52):
had two daughters, Helen born in nineteen thirteen and Bonnie,
born in nineteen seventeen. But even when we was still
a kid, there was a mention of a mirror ball
in a trade paper put out by a Charleston, Massachusetts
Electricians union in eighteen ninety seven. So that's right, we're
going to talk about what would later become known as
(20:13):
the disco ball. Holly and I each kind of went
on a little expedition trying to find this periodical. Both
mental Floss and Vice say that this periodical carried the
write up about the union's annual party where this mirrored
ball apparently scattered sparkling light all around the room. We
(20:36):
did find a union paper that wrote up this event,
but had no mention of a mirror ball in it,
so it's possible there was just a different version that
came directly from the union rather than like Union country
wide paper, which is the one that we had found, Right,
(20:59):
we were looking at the bigger one that may have
aggregated other articles and may have edited right. In addition
to this lack of mention of the mirror ball and
the one version of this Holly and I found, there
are no photos of whatever this looked like. It is
often noted as the first time that a mirrored ball
(21:22):
was mentioned in the historical record. If it did look
something like today's disco ball. There's no attribution regarding who
came up with this decoration, which was at the Christmas party. Yeah,
we also don't know how the one that we know
(21:43):
got invented came to be. We have no information about
the inspiration behind it. Where we Stee's brain went. You
know what I'd like to do is glue a lot
of mirrors on something and throw light on it. But
if we jump forward in Lewis Wees's life, there is
plenty of newspaper coverage about his patented invention, which he
(22:06):
called the myriad reflector. He filed a patent for the device,
his Myriad Reflector, on February twelfth, nineteen sixteen, and he
was granted that patent almost a year later, on February
sixth of nineteen seventeen. The technical portion of this patent
at the end of the copy is straightforward, as it
would need to be. It's described as quote one, a
(22:29):
myriad reflector comprising mirrors mounted to form a polyhedron, bounded
by a convex system of plane faces, in combination with
means for suspending the device so that it may be
swung and rotated simultaneously to produce myriad reflections when light
rays from an extraneous source are thrown thereon. He also
(22:51):
described it a second time in an almost identical way,
but specifying that the mirrors could be separated slightly by
a non reflective sir. This was a reference to the
patent being about the mirrors not necessarily on a spherical shape,
but on any shape quote to suit the particular requirements,
which is a pretty astute way of cutting off copycats
(23:14):
for making and these sort of hanging mirrored reflectors in
shapes that were not spheares trying to patent those two.
But while that wording is legally smart, there is some
rather more florid language in the general description that I
found rather charming. We see wrote quote the object of
my invention is to produce a myriad reflector comprising a
(23:36):
plurality of reflecting surfaces, the same to be arranged in
such a manner that the several reflections shall be projected
at varying angles, the device itself being arranged so that
it may be rotated or otherwise moved, so that the
reflections may produce a scintillating and spectacular effect. It is
scintillating and spectacular. Oh, he knew the key to my heart.
(23:58):
I'm a magpie of my soul. The exact timing is
not clear, but around the time Westy got his patent,
or shortly thereafter, Westy's friend Benny Friedman, who owned a
tailor's shop, asked Lewis, who went by lou if he
wanted to use some space in the shop to set
up his own venture, and he did. He founded the
(24:18):
LB West Decorating Company out of that space, and soon
he was getting large contracts to set up parties and
municipal celebrations, and of course to sell his Myriad reflector
for those events. And to be really clear, the Myriad
reflector was a big deal. It was touted constantly in
(24:38):
newspapers by ballrooms and entertainment venues that had acquired one
as a draw. Reading through newspapers, it seems as though
a lot of venues saw it as this way they
were going to reinvigorate their business. Even before Weisty's patent
was granted, there are mentions of the Myriad reflector in
local papers indicating that weiste was already producing them. In
(25:01):
January nineteen seventeen, the Rotary Charity Ball of Piqua, Ohio,
which is a town about eighty miles north of Cincinnati,
had a write up in the Piqua Daily Call that read,
in part quote, during the Grand March, the hall was
darkened and from a Myriad reflector, sparks of every color
were flying over the ceiling, making a most dazzling and
(25:23):
wonderful scene. This was kept up at intervals during the
Grand March. This article notes that everything was donated for
the ball except the music, so presumably Weesti made that
Myriad reflector as a donation or loaned it to the event.
A June thirteenth, nineteen twenty one ad in the Salt
Lake Telegram read Dance to the Flash of the Myriad Reflector,
(25:46):
and it featured this drawing of five dancing couples beneath
a mirrored ball that is scattering light around the room.
That drawing is not especially detailed, but it is immediately
apparent what it depicts. The accompanying copy reads quote the
Myriad Reflector, one of the most beautiful electric lighting devices
ever seen here is now an exclusive feature at the
(26:07):
Salt Air You will find it flashing on the big
dance floor every Tuesday night. Come tomorrow night and see it.
There is also an addendum bit of copy in this
ad that has nothing to do with the mirror ball,
but which is also really charming to me because it says,
come early enough for a dip in the lake, and
in all caps, bathing is superb. Bathing is superb? Are
(26:31):
you just telling people to be clean or do you
really want them to splash about and enjoy your lakeside venue?
That autumn, the Great Falls Leader of Great Falls, Montana
drummed up excitement for its annual fall opening odeon Ball
by sharing with readers that a Myriad Reflector had been
procured for the event, and it also explains what it is. Quote.
(26:53):
The Myriad Reflector is something new in the amusement world
and had heretofore been used only in such places the
Marigold Gardens of Chicago, Hotel Astor in New York City,
Cave Hall of Saint Louis Schubert's Winter Garden of New York,
and like places. The Myriad Reflector is a novelty that
transforms a hall into a brilliant fairyland of flashing, changing
(27:18):
living colors, a marvel of kaleidoscope charm. The result is
thousands of small reflections, dancing, changing, chasing after one another,
into every nook and corner. What's interesting here, too, is
that after giving this sort of romantic descriptor, the Great
Falls Leader explains exactly how this effect is created. Quote.
(27:39):
The device is an immense globe twenty seven inches in diameter,
completely covered with more than one thousand special made mirrors.
When spotlights are thrown on the rotating ball, the reflections
of the mirrors are multiplied into a dazzling, dancing, indescribable
lighting effect that is simply immense. It's funny that the
(28:01):
write up says it's indescribable right after it went to
great lengths to describe it. It made me think of
Samuel Taylor, Coleridge and Kubla Khan and like writing this
whole poem and then being like and then I was
woken up, and I could never describe what I experienced.
It's like, maybe you just did you just did? I
read it. Other newspapers had similar features that talked about
(28:25):
Wisti's mirrored marvel. The timing of the patent really could
not have been better, as the Roaring twenties offered exactly
the right cultural atmosphere to embrace all of that sparkle,
and many of these write ups mentioned that it had
a small motor that turned it to keep the reflected
lights moving and dancing. That rotator motor wasn't part of
(28:45):
the original patent, and Weiste didn't apply for a patent
on the motor until several years after the examples that
we've been quoting in nineteen twenty four. That patent wasn't
actually granted until March thirteenth, nineteen twenty eight, at which
point he had been including the motor on his setup
for the better part of a decade. Lewis Weisty died
(29:06):
on April tenth, nineteen thirty three, at his home on
Wayside Avenue in the Mount Washington neighborhood of Cincinnati, and
the years after his death, his wife, Florence ran the
family business with the help of their daughter Helen. The
business struggled but made it through the Great Depression, and
was even hired to decorate Crossley Field for the All
(29:26):
Star Game in nineteen thirty eight. But after Helen got
married and started a family, Florence couldn't keep things going
by herself, and the business shuddered. In nineteen forty five. Yeah,
there's an interesting write up about it's closing that kind
of has that you know, social norm line about well,
Helen had a baby, so she's just domestic now she
(29:49):
can't work. It's like, oh, after the wee C Company closed.
The main producer of reflective mirrored balls was Omega National Products,
which o it out of Louisville, Kentucky. It was making
an estimated ninety percent of them when the disco craze
hit and made them super popular. Omega still exists today,
although a lot of other manufacturers have entered the market
(30:11):
since the nineteen forties. Yeah, today, if you go to
a craft store, you can buy mirrored pumpkins, mirrored kitty cats,
mirrored anything you can think of, in a variety of colors.
I wouldn't know. I don't own any of those. I
own all of those. I have a disco cat. You
can have people make giant discoed skeletons. I mean, one
(30:32):
woman did her own as a craft project and it's beautiful,
one of those giant yard skeletons. M you can't put
enough mirror stuff on things for me. I love it.
I'm obsessed with it. I'm also obsessed with listener mail.
Here's one, okay from our listener, Jane, who writes, Hi,
(30:54):
hollyod Tracy. I've been a longtime listener. I honestly don't
remember when I started listening. I know it was sometime
in undergrad, maybe even my senior year of high school.
I'm nearly thirty now, and I know in the grand
scheme of things, it's not old, but my brain is fuzzy.
I'm remembering things I did yesterday, and I've always wanted
a reason to send a note about something. Listen. I
(31:15):
feel like after we all lived in our homes, mostly
through the early part of COVID, memories got real weird
for everybody that's it doesn't matter your age. I just
think like time became a flat circle. Jane continues, there
have been so many somethings. As I am listening through
the backlog of episodes, I think I'm finally into twenty
(31:37):
twenty six. I started a re listen like three years ago,
from the very beginning of the podcast, and it's taken
me forever to get back to present day. There have
been so many subjects, especially the twenty twenty five episode
about the Library of Congress. She shares her connection to it,
and I'm not going to read that part because I
don't want it to be too identifying it for personal information.
(31:58):
And the most recent Cranberry episode. I had to pull
over on my way home because the Cranberry episode nearly
made me pee my pants. And I will tell you
why this is, Like if you put this line in
an email I want to keep reading. My beloved grandmother,
who still lives in the in law apartment of my parents' house,
has never been able to cook. I think she's one
(32:19):
of the reasons I had such a hard time trying
new foods as a kid, because as her favorite grandchild
at that time. A whole podcast on its own of
how my grandmother determines who is her favorite grandchild and
why at any given moment, if I said I wanted
to try something, she'd make it. The problem with this
is she would somehow change the texture of foods that
are really hard to mess up. I remember she made
(32:40):
steak one time and called it rare. It was as
hard as a hockey puck and gray all the way through,
but she tried. She also somehow managed to roast a
bell pepper into rubber. I don't know how she managed that,
but it was legitimately inedible. But now I have a
night shade sensitivity and I can't have them anyways. But
my favorite memories of my grandmother and her inability to
cook always come at Thanksgiving. She has for my entire
(33:03):
almost thirty years, insisted on cooking something for Thanksgiving. And
somehow my mother has managed to get it down to
two things, homemade cranberry relish and her homemade saltine stuffing
or dressing. I'm not really sure the difference. My family
calls it both. My family calls it both to most people,
stuffing as if it's cooked in the bird, dressing if
it's in a tray or a dish that you put
(33:25):
in the oven. She would process them both through a
food mill that I am fairly certain has survived since
the eighteen eighties. It's my goal to find it one
day and confirm this. The problem is now her memory
is starting to go and she can't remember where she
left it last. I've never had the cranberry relish, but
my sister loves it more than the canned jelly, which
I also dislike but wish I didn't listen. It's grating cocktails.
(33:48):
It's made with fresh squeezed orange juice, but bottled is
fine too, just not the concentrate from the freezer section.
We did that one year and it was vile to smell.
I don't think anyone ate it. And cranberry's frozen that
have been passed through the food mill, and then you
mix the juice and let it sit at least overnight,
and it becomes a deep red, almost purple slop. The
(34:08):
smell's wonderful. If I could make it a candle, I would.
I won't go into detail about her stuffing because she
has not been allowed to make it in years, and
outside of saltines and celery, I couldn't tell you what
was in it. She mentions the raisins might be in it,
which makes me make a face. But you know, everybody's
got their own taste. But I do know that her
stuffing is the reason I refused tried again until I
was twenty five. I love this idea. There's some more
(34:31):
in this email, but I'm not going to read the
whole thing. But I was fascinated because I'm like, you don't.
You don't how to do anything with the cranberries To
make cranberry sauce. You've literally just put them on the
stove the little water and they get smooshy, goushy on
their own, fall apart and become delicious. We all know
(34:57):
that I love cranberries. I find this fascinating. The idea
of like soaking them overnight is interesting and for people
that maybe don't have a heath horse, or like anything's
going wrong in their kitchen. That might be an option.
I might test this just to see how it works. Anyway,
I'm fascinated. Fascinated, I tell you, because I imagine the
acidity of the orange juice would break down the cranberries
(35:19):
enough that it would work just fine if they sat
long enough. Yeah. I have made a homemade cranberry sauce
type recipe before that has included a little orange juice.
But like I often do, that was like what was
in the recipe. I didn't really think through the chemistry. Yeah,
they often do. I I tend to leave the the
(35:43):
we're off on a slight tangent, but come with me.
I tend to leave the citrus part out because I
really just like the cranberry flavor. And I throw a
little vanilla in so it tastes almost even though it's
there's no dairy in it. It has like an almost
custardy taste because of the smoothness that it develops. Listen,
I'm into it. However, here's the most important part of
(36:03):
this email. Pet tax three beautiful beautiful kitties versus Princess
Jane says She has many names, most unsuitable for broadcasts,
but my partner and I call her that most and
it fits the bill. She's sixteen, probably partner Reegian forest Cat,
and I've had her since she was since I was twelve.
A great birthday surprise to come home and find her.
(36:25):
She's so beautiful and so pretty and listen, I love
a mature lady kitty very much. I love mature kitties
in general. Next is my baby boy Gizmo. He's five.
He loves to be next to people, but hates when
you touch him first. His favorite way to be pet
is body slamming himself into your shins. And lastly, my
gooby girl Gadget, who is four. She is tiny and
(36:46):
wee and would wear my skin just to snuggle closer.
My favorite part about her is she doesn't know how
to yewl, but she does know how to squeak. These
babies are so sweet. Yeah, oh, I love a little
cat face. One of them is a very funny picture
of her tiny kitty right up close to their nanny
(37:08):
cam that they put in there. And then Jane signs
off with thank you so much for all you do,
and I can't wait to catch them on the podcast. Also,
I didn't know y'all were on Netflix. Yep, we sure are.
So if you want to sit and watch it, you
can if you don't want to listen and only have audio.
But anyway, thank you Jane, Thank you for sharing your
(37:29):
kitty cats, sharing your family's Cranberry story. Listen. Not everybody
has good cooks in their family. I was lucky to
have many good cooks in my family. Not everybody does.
There were oftentimes when I would go to other kids'
houses and be like, what is happening at your home?
This is not delicious. If you would like to write
(37:53):
to us share a family recipe. Do you remember that
turkey meatloaf recipe we had years ago? I have it still.
I've made it several times. That was really good. I
don't remember who sent it to us off hand, but
I haven't shoved into a cookbook notebook somewhere upstairs. If
you want to share a family recipe, a picture of
your kiddie CAATs, a picture of anything else that you
(38:13):
delight in, a picture of a disco ball, however you
might use it in your home. That sounds great to me.
You can do that at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
If you want to look at the show notes to
see the research that we did for this or any
of our episodes, those are available at mistonhistory dot com.
If you would like to subscribe to the show and
you haven't done that yet, you can do that on
(38:35):
the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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