March 12, 2019 • 11 mins
Humans have created some amazing things over the years, but few have left people feeling as confused and nervous as the two objects you'll see on today's trip through the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Books do not simply appear.
(00:29):
Someone must undertake the task to sit down and compose
the words on the page for another person to read.
And that's the main purpose of a book, to be read,
to convey information to another individual so that they might
learn or be entertained, or in some cases both. A
book is a vessel and the person who opens that
vessel is meant to consume the contents within, which is
(00:52):
what makes the Voytage Manuscripts such a complex and strange volume.
It was discovered by an antiquarian bookseller named Wilfred Voynage
in it had been passed down through the ages from
Holy Roman emperors two doctors to check collectors, going missing
for two centuries until finally ending up in the hands
of Voynage. He purchased it in a small Italian village
(01:16):
and brought it back to London, where he kept it
hidden for several years. Then in nineteen fifteen, Voynage decided
to reveal the manuscript of the World, and scholars were
befuddled by it. Measuring roughly the size of a standard
modern hardcover, the book is comprised of two hundred forty
vellum pages bound within a goat skin binding In two
(01:38):
thousand nine, radio carbon dating test Pegnet's creation to sometime
in the early fourteen hundreds. Almost every page is adorned
with paintings and drawings of flowers, mythological creatures, buildings and people,
oh and text texts that no one can read. Some
words are written in Latin, but the majority of the
(02:00):
next is written in an unknown language. It has been
studied continuously since Voyinage first uncovered the manuscript over a
century ago, and no one has successfully deciphered its contents.
It's even been studied by n Essay cryptographers, who believe
the manuscript was written in a European language that had
been converted using a kind of cipher to obscure the text. Others, though,
(02:23):
say that the words are really codes that required a
separate book to translate properly. One man who examined the
book in claimed that it was actually a diary written
in a special shorthand only understood by the original author. However,
historians quickly debunked that theory, citing that the abbreviations used
in the book weren't based on any known style or form. Scientists, students,
(02:49):
and scholars looked at everything, the arrangement of the text,
the number of letters and words in each line, how
each letter was formed, and still came away knowing no more.
And they did before they laid eyes on it. One
of the more prominent theories came from a television writer
and historian named Nicholas Gibbs. He'd been contacted to examine
(03:10):
the manuscript as part of a project he was working
on for a UK television show. He published his findings
on a prominent literary website, where it was picked up
by countless outlets across the Internet. By all accounts, he'd
done what no one else could do. He had solved
the mystery. Now, according to Gibbs, many of the Latin
abbreviations had been used in fifteenth century medical texts about herbs.
(03:34):
The idea that the book had been written in a
kind of code or cipher had been incorrect. All it
was was medical shorthand. And not only that, but many
of the diagrams within the book match diagrams and other
medical texts that Gibbs had consulted, leading him to believe
the manuscript had been a specially created document for one
(03:54):
specific reader who wanted all of their necessary information stored
within one book. The Voyage manuscript predates the printing press
by a few decades, so books of that time had
to be reproduced manually, gives claim this particular manuscript had
been a greatest hits album of other textbooks pertaining to
herbal medicine and gynecology. Sadly, his treatise would quickly become
(04:18):
a target of criticism, and soon after it was published,
medievalists dug in. They ripped apart his theory, mainly about
how he interpreted the Latin abbreviations. No one within the
historical community took him seriously, and just like that, everyone
was back to square one. Things got so desperate at
one point that rumors circulated that the book was a fake,
(04:41):
fabricated by Voynage himself using his vast knowledge of antique
books of bookmaking. Historians, though, have ruled that idea out
due to the age and provenance of the vellum. Finding
so many pages from a single source would have been
nearly impossible even for a dealer such as Voyage, and
so for now the Voyage Manuscript remains an unsolved literary mystery.
(05:04):
Theories seem to be debunked as soon as they are offered,
but for anyone wanting to try their luck, they'll have
to pay a visit to Yale University. That's where the
book is housed today, within it's rare Book and Manuscript
Library under the call number MS for zero eight. And
if you managed to sit in front of it, happy reading.
(05:37):
Music has a way of affecting people like nothing else.
Hearing an old song can transport a person back to
their childhood, drumming up feelings of wistfulness or pain. Love
songs can ignite romance on a star lit night, or
regret for something lost. Music has always been equated with magic,
(05:57):
and in some ways it really is. In others, it's
a poison that can bring a person lower than they've
ever thought possible. Bounding Father Benjamin Franklin learned about this
more sinister side of music the hard way. Franklin was
a bit of a renaissance man, with his interest extending
from politics, to art, to literature, and to music. A
(06:20):
friend of his Edward de Laval played a unique kind
of instrument, one that captivated Franklin from the first note.
He called it a glass harp, and it wasn't really
an instrument at all, at least not in the traditional sense.
It didn't use strings or a reed to generate sound.
There was nothing more than a table of glass cups
filled to different levels with water. Delaval would wet his
(06:43):
finger and rub it along the rim of each glass,
one at a time, which would generate a tone. Franklin
was enchanted by the gentle hums from Delaval's harp, so
he set out to make one for himself. His idea
was to construct the table of goblets into something that
would it in a box and could be easily transported
for travel. He worked with the local glass blower to
(07:05):
create glass bowls of various sizes arranged on an iron
rod horizontally. Each bowl would play a single note when
touched by a wet finger. A foot pedal would spin
the whole contraption, allowing Franklin to simply shift his hands
when he wanted to play different notes. The novel new
design actually allowed him to play up to ten notes
(07:27):
at the same time, much like a piano. He dubbed
his creation the glass armonica, yes, just like harmonica, another
name it often went by. He debuted his glass armonica
in seventeen sixty two, and it took off with audiences immediately.
The sound was unlike anything anyone had ever heard, and
its popularity grew so quickly that legends like Mozart and
(07:51):
Beethoven even composed music for it. However, not everyone found
the glass harmonica a soothing experience. It's other worldly tones
didn't sit well with some listeners, who spoke of dizziness,
stomach gichs, fainting, and in some extreme cases, permanent nerve damage.
Even worse were the psychological problems associated with its music.
(08:14):
Both listeners and players were known to suffer from depression,
suicidal thoughts, and some even had to be committed to
sanitariums for delusions, and all of it was attributed to
listening to this instrument. During one performance in Germany, a
child died after a prolonged exposure to its music. The
more spiritually minded believed its high pitched notes could summon
(08:36):
the ghosts of the dead. In reality, it was science
that held the answers. It turns out that the tones
produced by the device occurred at such a range the
human ear was unable to detect their origin. This disorientation,
combined with the surreal nature of the notes themselves, may
have been what had created such a discomfort in audiences.
(08:59):
It had also been suspected that lead in the glass
may have caused sickness in anyone who touched the bulls,
but those claims were never confirmed. Most degree that the
trace amounts that would have been present could not have
been enough to triggered lead poisoning. Regardless of the science,
these symptoms and stories led to the belief that the
glass armonica was cursed, which led to its eventual decline,
(09:22):
except in the case of Benjamin Franklin. He never experienced
any of the instrument side effects and continued to play
it until his death in seventeen. He was quoted as saying,
of all my inventions, the glass armonica has given me
the greatest personal satisfaction. Unfortunately, no one else felt the same.
(09:44):
Over half a century after its debut, not a single
musician was still playing the glass armonica. Musical tastes had
moved on. New instruments were cropping up, ones whose notes
could fill a concert Hall without creating psychological damage in
the listener. By five thousand glass armonicas were made during
the seventeen hundreds, and today only a handful still remain.
(10:06):
A replica of the one Franklin played is on display
at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. You can visit it
if you want to see it. Surprisingly, though, the instrument
has seen a kind of resurgence, most notably among film composers.
In fact, thanks to composer James Horner, millions of people
around the world have heard the otherworldly tones of the
(10:27):
glass armonica without knowing it, and the song it's simply
called Spock a theme for the same character in Star
Trek two, The Wrath of con A good choice and one,
I might add that is most logical. I hope you've
(10:49):
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
(11:11):
learn all about it over at the World of Lore
dot com, and until next time, stay curious.
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Books do not simply appear.
(00:29):
Someone must undertake the task to sit down and compose
the words on the page for another person to read.
And that's the main purpose of a book, to be read,
to convey information to another individual so that they might
learn or be entertained, or in some cases both. A
book is a vessel and the person who opens that
vessel is meant to consume the contents within, which is
(00:52):
what makes the Voytage Manuscripts such a complex and strange volume.
It was discovered by an antiquarian bookseller named Wilfred Voynage
in it had been passed down through the ages from
Holy Roman emperors two doctors to check collectors, going missing
for two centuries until finally ending up in the hands
of Voynage. He purchased it in a small Italian village
(01:16):
and brought it back to London, where he kept it
hidden for several years. Then in nineteen fifteen, Voynage decided
to reveal the manuscript of the World, and scholars were
befuddled by it. Measuring roughly the size of a standard
modern hardcover, the book is comprised of two hundred forty
vellum pages bound within a goat skin binding In two
(01:38):
thousand nine, radio carbon dating test Pegnet's creation to sometime
in the early fourteen hundreds. Almost every page is adorned
with paintings and drawings of flowers, mythological creatures, buildings and people,
oh and text texts that no one can read. Some
words are written in Latin, but the majority of the
(02:00):
next is written in an unknown language. It has been
studied continuously since Voyinage first uncovered the manuscript over a
century ago, and no one has successfully deciphered its contents.
It's even been studied by n Essay cryptographers, who believe
the manuscript was written in a European language that had
been converted using a kind of cipher to obscure the text. Others, though,
(02:23):
say that the words are really codes that required a
separate book to translate properly. One man who examined the
book in claimed that it was actually a diary written
in a special shorthand only understood by the original author. However,
historians quickly debunked that theory, citing that the abbreviations used
in the book weren't based on any known style or form. Scientists, students,
(02:49):
and scholars looked at everything, the arrangement of the text,
the number of letters and words in each line, how
each letter was formed, and still came away knowing no more.
And they did before they laid eyes on it. One
of the more prominent theories came from a television writer
and historian named Nicholas Gibbs. He'd been contacted to examine
(03:10):
the manuscript as part of a project he was working
on for a UK television show. He published his findings
on a prominent literary website, where it was picked up
by countless outlets across the Internet. By all accounts, he'd
done what no one else could do. He had solved
the mystery. Now, according to Gibbs, many of the Latin
abbreviations had been used in fifteenth century medical texts about herbs.
(03:34):
The idea that the book had been written in a
kind of code or cipher had been incorrect. All it
was was medical shorthand. And not only that, but many
of the diagrams within the book match diagrams and other
medical texts that Gibbs had consulted, leading him to believe
the manuscript had been a specially created document for one
(03:54):
specific reader who wanted all of their necessary information stored
within one book. The Voyage manuscript predates the printing press
by a few decades, so books of that time had
to be reproduced manually, gives claim this particular manuscript had
been a greatest hits album of other textbooks pertaining to
herbal medicine and gynecology. Sadly, his treatise would quickly become
(04:18):
a target of criticism, and soon after it was published,
medievalists dug in. They ripped apart his theory, mainly about
how he interpreted the Latin abbreviations. No one within the
historical community took him seriously, and just like that, everyone
was back to square one. Things got so desperate at
one point that rumors circulated that the book was a fake,
(04:41):
fabricated by Voynage himself using his vast knowledge of antique
books of bookmaking. Historians, though, have ruled that idea out
due to the age and provenance of the vellum. Finding
so many pages from a single source would have been
nearly impossible even for a dealer such as Voyage, and
so for now the Voyage Manuscript remains an unsolved literary mystery.
(05:04):
Theories seem to be debunked as soon as they are offered,
but for anyone wanting to try their luck, they'll have
to pay a visit to Yale University. That's where the
book is housed today, within it's rare Book and Manuscript
Library under the call number MS for zero eight. And
if you managed to sit in front of it, happy reading.
(05:37):
Music has a way of affecting people like nothing else.
Hearing an old song can transport a person back to
their childhood, drumming up feelings of wistfulness or pain. Love
songs can ignite romance on a star lit night, or
regret for something lost. Music has always been equated with magic,
(05:57):
and in some ways it really is. In others, it's
a poison that can bring a person lower than they've
ever thought possible. Bounding Father Benjamin Franklin learned about this
more sinister side of music the hard way. Franklin was
a bit of a renaissance man, with his interest extending
from politics, to art, to literature, and to music. A
(06:20):
friend of his Edward de Laval played a unique kind
of instrument, one that captivated Franklin from the first note.
He called it a glass harp, and it wasn't really
an instrument at all, at least not in the traditional sense.
It didn't use strings or a reed to generate sound.
There was nothing more than a table of glass cups
filled to different levels with water. Delaval would wet his
(06:43):
finger and rub it along the rim of each glass,
one at a time, which would generate a tone. Franklin
was enchanted by the gentle hums from Delaval's harp, so
he set out to make one for himself. His idea
was to construct the table of goblets into something that
would it in a box and could be easily transported
for travel. He worked with the local glass blower to
(07:05):
create glass bowls of various sizes arranged on an iron
rod horizontally. Each bowl would play a single note when
touched by a wet finger. A foot pedal would spin
the whole contraption, allowing Franklin to simply shift his hands
when he wanted to play different notes. The novel new
design actually allowed him to play up to ten notes
(07:27):
at the same time, much like a piano. He dubbed
his creation the glass armonica, yes, just like harmonica, another
name it often went by. He debuted his glass armonica
in seventeen sixty two, and it took off with audiences immediately.
The sound was unlike anything anyone had ever heard, and
its popularity grew so quickly that legends like Mozart and
(07:51):
Beethoven even composed music for it. However, not everyone found
the glass harmonica a soothing experience. It's other worldly tones
didn't sit well with some listeners, who spoke of dizziness,
stomach gichs, fainting, and in some extreme cases, permanent nerve damage.
Even worse were the psychological problems associated with its music.
(08:14):
Both listeners and players were known to suffer from depression,
suicidal thoughts, and some even had to be committed to
sanitariums for delusions, and all of it was attributed to
listening to this instrument. During one performance in Germany, a
child died after a prolonged exposure to its music. The
more spiritually minded believed its high pitched notes could summon
(08:36):
the ghosts of the dead. In reality, it was science
that held the answers. It turns out that the tones
produced by the device occurred at such a range the
human ear was unable to detect their origin. This disorientation,
combined with the surreal nature of the notes themselves, may
have been what had created such a discomfort in audiences.
(08:59):
It had also been suspected that lead in the glass
may have caused sickness in anyone who touched the bulls,
but those claims were never confirmed. Most degree that the
trace amounts that would have been present could not have
been enough to triggered lead poisoning. Regardless of the science,
these symptoms and stories led to the belief that the
glass armonica was cursed, which led to its eventual decline,
(09:22):
except in the case of Benjamin Franklin. He never experienced
any of the instrument side effects and continued to play
it until his death in seventeen. He was quoted as saying,
of all my inventions, the glass armonica has given me
the greatest personal satisfaction. Unfortunately, no one else felt the same.
(09:44):
Over half a century after its debut, not a single
musician was still playing the glass armonica. Musical tastes had
moved on. New instruments were cropping up, ones whose notes
could fill a concert Hall without creating psychological damage in
the listener. By five thousand glass armonicas were made during
the seventeen hundreds, and today only a handful still remain.
(10:06):
A replica of the one Franklin played is on display
at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. You can visit it
if you want to see it. Surprisingly, though, the instrument
has seen a kind of resurgence, most notably among film composers.
In fact, thanks to composer James Horner, millions of people
around the world have heard the otherworldly tones of the
(10:27):
glass armonica without knowing it, and the song it's simply
called Spock a theme for the same character in Star
Trek two, The Wrath of con A good choice and one,
I might add that is most logical. I hope you've
(10:49):
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
(11:11):
learn all about it over at the World of Lore
dot com, and until next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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