Curious Minds

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Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild.

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.

Inventors have come to occupy a comical place in our cultural imagination.

We picture wacky people trying to get rich quick off of a niche device that barely works.

The movie Gremlins probably had a lot to do with this.

Who could forget the scene where the mom uses her husband's inventions to dispatch the monsters in increasingly grotesque ways.

Pop culture touchstones like this might cause us to forget that inventors originally occupied a very noble place in society.

And without one inventor in particular, the modern world might have never come to be.

Henry was the epitome of the wacky inventor archetype.

Born in 1813 in England, he eventually grew into a man who was endlessly curious and self-assured.

Anytime he encountered some modern invention or tool, he immediately wanted to take it apart and figure out how he could make it better.

Case in point, when he purchased an expensive gold picture frame for his sister, he immediately wondered how he could make it cheaper.

He invented a bronze paint that made wooden frames look just as good at a fraction of the price.

The invention was a huge success.

But by 1854, Henry had set his mind on more life and death inventions.

The Crimean War had broken out, and Henry wondered if he could find a way to make cannons that fired more accurately.

The iron ones of the time used round cannonballs that had a tendency to drift off target.

At first, no one took him seriously.

A guy who designed better home decor didn't seem like the person to trust with military equipment.

But one chance evening while traveling in Paris, Henry met with an unlikely dinner guest.

The guest was none other than Emperor Napoleon III, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte.

He could see the wisdom in Henry's idea and encouraged his passion for the topic.

Anyone who cared this much about the minutia of technology would surely accomplish whatever he set his mind to.

And as it turns out, Henry's interest in cannons led him to some incredible discoveries.

He began with the shells, making them heavier and cutting grooves into them so that they spun in the air, keeping their trajectory.

The only problem with this was that they were too heavy for most iron cannons to fire.

And so he needed a better cannon, a cannon made of steel.

At the time, steel had an almost mythical quality to it.

The inventors of the day were just as stumped as to what made good steel as the blacksmiths of the Middle Ages.

All they knew was that good steel came about when you mixed molten iron with carbon and tried to remove the impurities of other elements.

It took a lot of heat and specifically designed apparatuses to do this.

Henry set up his own special device.

Imagine a large metal capsule suspended on an axle between two legs.

It had an opening to the top and it could be tilted forward to add to or empty.

At first, Henry just tried to get the iron hotter and hotter to see if he could burn away the impurities.

But when Henry happened to notice some molten iron in his workshop turned into steel when it came in contact with the air, he completely changed his approach.

Henry fed a tube into the bottom of this bucket-like device.

He still dumped molten iron into the top, but then after that was done, he would blow cold air up through this tube in the bottom of the bucket.

A few moments passed, and the device suddenly erupted with a volcano-like stream of smoke and molten iron shooting from the top.

It almost caught the workshop on fire, but when Henry tested the end result, he found that it was carbon-free, malleable iron.

He had removed the impurities.

Now he just needed to add back in the right amount of carbon to make steel.

Henry made his device just a little bigger so the chemical reaction of oxygen and carbon could be safely contained.

The resulting gases still burned off through the top and any remaining impurities could be skimmed off the top of the molten metal.

A small, precise amount of carbon would then be added back in and when the metal cooled it was now pure malleable steel.

Henry Bessemer's device became known as the Bessemer converter and his process for making iron is now known as the Bessemer process.

He patented that process and became a millionaire as manufacturers all over the globe used his steel to make buildings, weapons, cars, and railroad tracks.

One curious mind was all it took to send the world erupting into the future.

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This show is sponsored by American Public University.

American Public University is the number one provider of education to our military and veterans in the country.

They offer something truly unique, special rates and grants for the entire family, making education affordable not just for those who serve, but also for their loved ones.

If you have a military or veteran family member and are looking for affordable high-quality education, APU is the place for you.

Visit apu.apus.edu/slash military to learn more.

That's apu.apus.edu slash military.

A common misconception about the Middle Ages is that they were a time of ignorance, often called the Dark Ages.

While it's it's certainly true that the state of literature and science had yet to evolve, that did not mean that there were not plenty of people around the world who were curious and eager to study and expand human knowledge.

As ever before, humanity looked to the stars for answers to our questions about our place in the universe.

The truth is, this dark age in Europe coincided with a period known as the Islamic Golden Age.

From the 8th to the 13th centuries, the Muslim world made great strides in understandings of science, math, medicine, and philosophy.

Astronomy was a particular utility to Islamic nations, for their faith required them to pray five times a day, a schedule that was strictly determined by the position of the sun in the sky, and thus, tracking the sun required more precise instruments.

Muslim astronomers refined an ancient Greek device known as an astrolabe, which was used to measure the positions of the stars in the sky.

Appearing like a flat circular disk, each astrolabe is engraved with static star positions and concentric rings that adjust to measure the visible dome of the sky.

By the 10th century, astrolabes were a popular tool for divining horoscopes and keeping time.

The ones that came out of the Islamic world would often be inscribed with religious verses out of the Quran, and the production of these devices would become a profession all of its own.

In the 900s in Baghdad, a man began an apprenticeship under a famed astrolabist named Bidalis.

Unlike many other craftsmen of the area, he would share his knowledge with his daughter, who was showing an interest in astronomy from an early age, and soon the pair of them were studying together.

The daughter's name was Al-Gilia, and she would become one of the first women astrologers in recorded history.

We know little of her life after that, but she became prominent enough that her name shows up in a piece of medieval Syrian literature discussing the manufacture of astrolabes.

And she became so well renowned for her work that she eventually served at the court of Saif al-Dullah, the first emir of Aleppo.

Although this mention of her is brief, containing very few specifics, her presence in popular culture looms large.

She would become known by the name Mariam Astrolabia, or Mariam of the Astrolabes.

The astrolabe would remain a crucial instrument throughout the medieval period and into the age of discovery.

although eventually star charts and mechanical clocks would supplant them in practicality.

The last of these devices would be produced in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, and some might even say that the astrolabe is the precursor to the modern GPS due to its usefulness in navigation.

But the legacy of astrolabe makers like Algelia does not stop there.

Many centuries after she lived in the year 1990, an astronomer would name an asteroid in her honor.

7060 Algelia still floats far, far over our heads in our galaxy's asteroid belt, reminding us all that if you dedicate yourself to studying the stars, one day you may find your name among them.

I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about the show by visiting CuriositiesPodcast.com.

The show was created by me, Aaron Mankey, 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 learn all about it over at theworldoflore.com.

And until next time, stay curious.

This show is sponsored by American Public University.

American Public University is the number one provider of education to our military and veterans in the country.

They offer something truly unique, special rates and grants for the entire family, making education affordable not just for those who serve, but also for their loved ones.

If you have a military or veteran family member and are looking for affordable, high-quality education, APU is the place for you.

Visit apu.apus.edu/slash military to learn more.

That's apu.apus.edu slash military.

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