99% Invisible - 454- War, Famine, Pestilence, and Design

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

When Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt were promoting The 99% Invisible City in late 2020, one question came up over and over again in conversations and interviews about our built environment: in what ways will the COVID pandemic change cities long term? Realistically, it's hard to answer a question about the future while in the midst of a crisis, but we can look to and extrapolate from precedents, like: designs born out of past disasters.War, Famine, Pestilence, and Design

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. When Kirk Coles said it and I were promoting a book, the 99% invisible city last year during the middle of the pandemic, over and over, we were asked how we thought the design of cities might change because of COVID. And by that point, lots of shorter term changes were already visible, like street closures to accommodate outdoor dining and other open air activities. That's Kurt. Hey Kurt. Hey Rogan. Also all the plexiglass partitions like they popped up overnight and they're still everywhere in the bay. I was impressed how the shopkeepers could put them up so fast and fix them in, you know, kind of interesting ways. But they do kind of diminish the retail

experience. Like I have a hard time hearing through or around them Totally especially when talkers on both sides are also wearing masks. Yeah, I need to lip read to understand people most of the time anyway So I don't love the plexiglass that could go away as soon as it's safe But one thing I do want to keep actually is all the way finding cues the stickers on the floor, like guiding people where to stand, to keep socially distant and keep in line. I mean, I don't want the social distancing to stay, but I love adding an information layer onto the floor, you know, keeping people in line because people are terrible and knowing where to stand and be in line

and just like soothe my anxiety. Yeah, absolutely. And I could see keeping some things like sidewalk seating and car-free streets too. Always assuming that we, you that we vet these for impacts on accessibility and the potential privatization of public space. Of course, that's right.

But we're not going to try to predict what designs are going to stick around from our current pandemic. Instead, this week, we're going to look to the past. Kurt and I are going to talk through some of the other designs throughout history that were born out of moments of disaster. And I think some of these examples will really surprise people. Yes, so when you're in the moment, it can be really hard to tell which solutions are just tied to current challenges and which ones are going to stick around.

But we can look to history for some remarkable examples of designs that have persisted, or even evolved further in the wake of a crisis. Okay, let's just start it. Something that surprised me when I was researching this is how truly every day some of these things have become. And one that really grabbed me is this gadget from the early 1800s, which I'm sure looks kind of familiar to you. Yes, indeed. This looks like the precursor to a bicycle. Like, it's not quite a bicycle, but it looks enough like one that I can imagine riding

it like a bicycle. Like, it's not quite there. It's wood, it's metal, it looks a little chunky. It doesn't have pedals. It reminds me of like the scoots that, I don't know if anyone has toddlers, like the little bicycles that basically, that you push along with your feet, like Fred Flintstone. But so what is this thing? It's called the Laufmachina. Laufmachina. Yeah.

What does that mean? Well, literally translated from German, it means running machine. Oh, okay. And yeah, and as you notice, it's basically one step or, well, technically two pedals shy of being a bicycle. And the main difference between the two is that in this case, users actually had to run along the ground while struggling this thing. And then they had to pick up their feet and glide along on the wheels, you know, sitting on this kind of awkward seat and middle. So it's exactly like a scoot.

Yeah, basically, yeah. I mean, it looks, it looks totally fun, like a recreational vehicle for, you know, fancy lands and suits. Exactly. And later it came to have that association, but it was actually created during a shockingly dark period of history. Well, you can have to narrow it down for me because it seems like 90% of history is shockingly dark. Fair enough, fair enough. I mean, the big overarching catalyst behind this was a volcano.

And it wasn't just any volcano. When Mount Tambora erupted in 1815, it was the largest eruption in recorded human history. And so this event itself causes a bunch of deaths. Tens of thousands of people die. And even though it happened between mainland Asia and Australia, the sound of it could be heard over a thousand miles away. Whoa, but that sounds terrifying. Yeah, absolutely. And it didn't stop there. People close by were the ones who suffered initially, but the volcano had these longer term global impacts that lasted way past the eruption.

And as far away as Europe, 1816 would become known as the year without summer. They were facing this brown and red snow which was colored by the volcanic ash in the atmosphere and it must have looked to people like the end times had finally come. Yeah. I remember last year when the wildfires kicked ash up into the upper atmosphere and it turned the entire Bay Area orange for a day, like it was a dark orange. It was just one of the weirdest days of my life. It felt so ominous and so just crazy making to me that I kind of didn't know what to do with myself all that.

I had the same reaction and thinking about it, I at least knew what was causing. I had weather forecast and could comprehend what was going on around me. But I'm trying to picture people at this time who didn't know exactly what was causing this sort of apocalyptic event and and on top of not having a firm grasp of the cause they were in the midst of a lot of other stuff. So a picture this right? Europe at the time is still

recovering from the devastation of the Napoleonic wars. So things weren't exactly great to begin with. And then along comes this volcanic winter, which devastates the crops. And so food supplies go down, prices go up, there's riding, thefts, violence, and a top of all of that, you've got the resulting malnutrition, which is driving the spread of diseases. So it's this ugly combination of catastrophe,

kind of perfect storm of bad fortune. So how did those dire conditions lead to this bike? Right, so the Louth machine, you know, more specifically was inspired by a particularly morbid side effect going on amidst all this. So right, we've got food scarcity, which is leading people to, you know, turn in a lot of new directions, including two horses. Oh, like they ate the horses. Yeah, so people were slaughtering horses for meat and for their

hide, and you know, it's not like there was an alternative. I mean, even if you'd wanted to keep your horses alive, there wasn't enough food to feed them. And so it's very grim and very much kind of a product of necessity at the time. Yeah. Yeah. So without horses, people still need to get around. And so that's what creates this the loaf machine. Yep. You got it. That's where this this German inventor comes in. His name is Carl Vendriss. And he has this idea for a two-wheeled alternative to riding on the backs of animals. And you know, so he's tinkering around with this thing and he does his first test ride

right around that time in 1817. And this first wooded iron mouth machine is a hooking thing. It weighs 50 pounds and it takes human power and it could only travel to miles per hour. But on the other hand, at the time, 10 miles per hour was a pretty good pace. Yeah, but it still sounds a bit awkward, like running along rather than battling. And it sounds like it was only really useful for people who live uphill from something they wanted yet to. Yeah, as a kind of day-to-day device, it was pretty unwieldy. And it took a lot of practice

to learn how to stay balanced and not pull off the thing. And then of course, you've got European roads at the time, which are not all flattened smooth. That's a prolly, you know, for running downhill. No, right. Now, we're sliding smooth. And on top of that, you know, as you said, it's like, you can't go downhill both ways. So people are kind of learning the hard way that these proto bicycles are not the safest or the most efficient device.

But you know, for it to, you know, take root and take off, it must have been popular enough to overcome these shortcomings and have people use them. Yeah, that's the thing. It was still popular enough that it quickly spread to England and France. And avid writers of these things would actually wear through their shoes because they spent so much time propelling the machines. They were so popular in some places that municipalities had to ban them for traffic and safety reasons. And amidst all this, they got a new nickname too, the Dandy horse. So this presumably is after the period of time in which the crisis necessitated them. Like, this is when they do become true recreational vehicles.

Is that, is that right? Yeah, I mean, they start to have these kind of aristocratic associations, like fancy dandy's going around town on their fancy dandy horses. Although the horse party is kind of macaw, right, because it still harkens back to the sort of dark origins of the device. And then ultimately, you know, they grow a bit less popular as such, because they're not super functional. And they start to evolve too. People would trade out the wood for steel. And then, of course, there's this really critical development Which you could probably guess wrong with this

Pedals of that thing yeah, I got a pizzer pedals of the thing And that's what this French mechanic caught in 1863 when he added a crank and pedals to the front wheel hub and With that one move he essentially created the first true bicycle as we know it. By the end of that century, the bicycle had come full circle, right? It started as this kind of functional solution and become this kind of dangerous hobby horse thing. And then it was back to being this kind of functional mode of transportation. And it came to have other associations too. Like in hindsight, bikes played a really critical role in helping 19th century women gain both physical but also social mobility. I mean, it's just amazing to think of it that it all started with this confluence

of just absolute disasters. I mean, it's not too surprising because like, you know, they always say that, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. But this was a really grim sort of circumstances that led to this thing that I think it's a, you know, pretty unalloyed, delightful good in the world. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, really dark necessity in this case, leading to something that's really widespread today. And, and as I was digging into this story, right, of the bicycle, It got me thinking like, what other things are there like this? Or was this just a one-off loop, right? Are there other everyday designs that we take for granted now that have their roots and tragedy? And that's when I came across the rise of miniature golf during the great depression of all times.

That is not an association I would have made. So when I picture miniaturical courses, I kind of think of like the World War II era, I mean, like sort of kitschy leisure and baby boomers and that kind of thing, not the great depression. Yeah, right. I mean, the last thing on your mind, will you look at a mini golf course is the worst economic crash in modern history. So did mini golf come up because like it was too expensive to maintain big fancy golf courses or something like that? I mean, that's part of it, right? There's no way you're going to maintain these huge grounds for just a couple people walking along with their golf clubs and like all

that we associate with sort of luxurious sprawling golf courses. That was kind of not on the agenda financially, but also there's just the matter of space, right? You've got all these people who are in cities and need something to do. And, you know, they don't have transportation to get out of cities. So many golf becomes this kind of logical solution, kind of in-fill solution in the urban environment. Right. So like along with everything else real estate prices plunged and there's some space and you might, you know, if you have a little bit of space, you can build, you know, a miniature golf course. Yeah, that's exactly it. The conditions were in some ways

totally ideal in the wake of 1929 for exactly this kind of activity. And so while technically mini golf actually predates the stock market collapse, The crisis really ramped up interest in it. You have, as you noted, tons of close businesses and vacant lots and all of this is just right for entrepreneurs to take over. Even in places where there's not extra space, people just made space doing convert rooftops into PB golf courses or parking lots, really anything. And so it was

this surprisingly huge fad. And at one point, somebody even called it the madness of the 1930s. Specifically talking about miniature PB golf is the madness in this race. Wow. Absolutely insanity. That is quite the sequel to the Roarain 20s. Yeah. And so you've got these two very different periods in a way, but there's also this parallel where if you think about it, everybody needs recreation and distraction. It doesn't matter if things are going well or they're going horribly. Given the economic situation in the 30s, cheap activities were naturally much more appealing. On the business side, it's also an opportunity, right? Because people

could turn their own yards into courses or the interiors of their unused office buildings, basically anybody could try their hand at building a course. And so tons of people did. Wow. I love picturing that. The people just, I wonder, but normally, like, setting up a miniature golf course, like a lemonade stand, you know, like every, every, every where they can. So winded all the things that I think of when it comes to major golf crop up like the, you know, the mechanical windmills or the ramps and, you know, all that sort of stuff when it that happened. So some of the more technologically advanced stuff came later, but a lot of those basic

things that we still see in miniature golf courses today, do date back to this exact era. Things like ramps and bridges and ridges, people just build out of like available dirt or whatever they could find. And at the same time, you have this recent invention of artificial turf, which helps courses hold up, better to foot traffic. So people who could afford it would add that

to make a more robust course. But really the kind of key in all this is all the odds and ants. Course makers could just grab whatever scraps they could find, pipes and stones and just work them into this bigger design. And there was some scrappy entrepreneurialism in picking the sites for these places too. Like some would situate their courses underneath big lit up billboards so that they could operate it without having to pay for the light bulb or the electricity. Oh, I love it. This is so fun to picture.

Like cities filled with miniature golf courses everywhere. I mean, am I getting this right? Is it really like everywhere? Yeah, I mean, I've literally seen pictures of it being everywhere. And like, I love these images of like little rooftops that are who are people are crowded around, like playing mini golf. And you know, it's totally the opposite of what we can imagine today, right? Like you look at New York City and you think, well, every bit of real estate is used and expensive. But back then, it was like, no, there were little spaces you could cram into. And so

people would just head out and droves and go play mini golf. Well, I mean, mini golf is delightful. So it doesn't surprise me all that much, but the ubiquity of it that you're describing really is striking. Yeah. And of course, with all these creators vying to make their course the best course and trying to attract, you know, more players, there was innovation around that too, like ways that people would try to set there's a part.

Things like pools and mases and traps popped up and eventually more kind of fancy things, like fountains and forests and castles, and even replicas of famous architecture, like the Taj Mahal or the Great Wall of China. And so over time, these things become almost like tiny theme parks, right? Like just populated with all kinds of wild and creative and colorful stuff. And this one in particular that I read about, I think, is my personal favorite feature, which is a trained monkey that goes after your ball. So if you're not careful, it'll just come and snatch your ball and it's like game over. I would definitely go to that park. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I wish that one was

still around today. But a lot of the elements are still around, right? Like, like those complex courses with the miniature architecture, it's like become a kind of staple and it's still like this thing that we associated with like a fun family night out. Totally. It's just sort of fun to imagine New York City just being carpeted with major golf courses and all things. I kind of love it. Oh, I do too. Yeah, I do too. So these are kind of two delightful things born out of a natural disaster and an economic disaster.

Yeah, yeah. And so to make things a little darker, I want to pivot to another kind of catastrophe, one that we're all familiar with, no matter when we live, and that's war. And some of the most devastating periods of human history have been, of course, marked by human conflicts. And yet, at the same time, tons of well-known inventions are also created during wartime. Yeah, totally. After that of my head, I would say like, glues and rubber and computing, like all the encryption and stuff that came about because of war.

Was there something in particular that jumped out to you? Yeah, amidst all of those inventions that have become part of our everyday life, is something that's really, really every day that we absolutely take for granted, which is cans. And of course, can openers, they go with them. And these kind of jumped out to me not just because canning was developed during a period of disaster, but also because it kept evolving from one conflict and one war to the next over multiple centuries. But this whole evolutionary process starts with Napoleon. I mean, that makes sense. You have troops on the move. You need to attack Russia.

And of course, the Russians aren't super keen on feeding his armies as their atomic course. And so to solve this issue of his, of his troops on the march, needing food, he ends up offering up a prize in 1795. And it's a cash reward to anybody who can help him develop a better technique for keeping food from spoiling. Wow. It's kind of like an ex-price, but more than on earth. Yeah, the Napoleonic ex-price. And so this Frenchman who eventually gets the money ends up spending over a decade doing research and development. So he can earn the prize. And his process of heating and sealing foods and jars is pretty much the same thing that

a lot of people still use today. But that's not really canning at this point. Like it's just more like jarring like that. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah. Right, right. So he's using glass jars, but cans were the next big step. And suddenly industrial canaries start to spin up.

And the cans of the 19th century, for the most part, look, a lot like the ones we see today that got those side ridges that helped strengthen them and allow them to expand and contract. Yeah. Like if you picked up a can off the shelf of a supermarket and took off the paper label, you would see those ridges. Yeah. The basics of the design were there, essentially, from the start. The biggest difference was a complete lack of can open. So you've got these cans. and at the time, they're especially thick and robust, and people had to use hammers and chisels to get them open up until basically the mid-1800s.

It's really stunning to think about that you could have cans without can openers that they weren't invented alongside of each other. Yeah, it seems crazy, right, that you could have decades between the invention of the can and the invention of the device that opened it. And when it was finally invented, it still wasn't really popular in a kind of general public consumer sense. But during the Civil War, armies were really quick to pick up on this thing and say, wow, yeah, canned goods in the field with devices to open them.

I mean, that's great. Like, that's just what we need. That sounds like quite a breakthrough. Like, is there a reason why ordinary people didn't use them? Is it just like not user-friendly, just expensive? Yes. So, despite the fact that it took so long to invent a can opener, that sort of worked, it was still not the user-friendly can opener.

You're probably picturing and that you probably have in your kitchen drawer. People really had to just kind of stab the can and then saw along the edge manually. So as you can imagine outside the military, there wasn't a ton of interest. And where they were used a lot was in grocery stores. But instead of sending you home with a can, the grocery store clerks would actually open the cans for you and send you home with the open cans. So cans weren't for storing stuff at home. It was for storing stuff on shelves of the general store. So yeah, that sort of defeats the purpose of the look handy can that you get at a grocery

store, but I can kind of see how it works. Yeah, I mean, it kind of works, but it's totally backward from the way that we think about cancer. Today is like something you can take home for convenience purposes. So zooming out, big picture, there's this back and forth, right, between military and civilian uses in the 1800s. So canning would ramp up for a war, and then that production capacity, like they'd try to figure out a way to put it on shelves and sell it to consumers, even if it meant opening the can and sending you a home

with a can. But then in World War One, canned food took its next really big leap forward. And it happened in part because soldiers really, for the most part, hated it. Heated what? Like, eating canned food? Yeah, they did. They were not big fans of the canned food. And I mean, you can imagine, right? Like it gets old pretty fast, eating canned food in the trenches. And to make things worse, at the time,

there wasn't a lot of selection. And so you can imagine being a British soldier and just eating a lot of pork and peas. And, but during the war, things started to change. And we started to get some variety in canned foods, things like soups and pasta, stuff that we pretty much would recognize today. And so because of this greater diversity in options,

suddenly it was a little bit more appealing to civilians to after the war. So like now that they have good food inside of the cans, you can sell people can opener so they will open them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, and that's the thing, right? That's the thing we see opened over again.

It's like each war, the canning gets a little better or the food gets a little better. And so you have these new innovations and it starts with jars and it goes to cans and then there's better openers and taste your ingredients. And along the way, there are also of course, you know, some tins with built-in openers to make things easier. There's that two-wheeled opener that we still use today, but it wasn't until World War 2 that my personal favorite can opener hit the scene. You have a favorite can opener. Oh, come on. Doesn't everybody have a favorite can opener, uh, hit the, you have a favorite can opener. Oh, come on, doesn't everybody have a favorite can opener? Um, no, but seriously, this thing is all kinds of amazing. Uh, it's

called the P 38 and it's not just a can opener. It's this crazy compact little multi tool. It's got this thin middle handle and the blade folds into it. So it packs flat and it can open cans, but it could do all kinds of other stuff. Like what? Well, I'm glad you asked because it can be used as a screwdriver, a bottle opener, a fish gutter, a wire stripper, a flint striker, a letter opener, a coffee stir, a toothpick, a boot scraper, and I mean, that's just the beginning of the list. It's so good. And this is a really good can opener to, I guess.

Yeah, it's absolutely great. And it's tiny. And it's the best. And so that was in some ways, I mean, to be at least the kind of peak of canning, right? Is World War Two, you've got better canned foods, a better ways to open them. And then we're kind of on the backside of that peak

following World War II, because suddenly you have refrigerators that are becoming more and more widespread. And so cans suddenly are not really as essential for storing all kinds of food. And for people who are still buying cans, there are these new fangled contraptions, these electric can opener,

which you start to see popping up in kind of mid-century homes, right? Right. But that push and pull dynamic of like canned foods during a crisis is still present because in the beginning, the pandemic, I bought more canned food than I ever bought in probably the last decade. Oh, yeah. Yeah. For sure. I mean, that's the thing, like the ingrained nature of the can is that it has become functionally associated with disaster. Right? So it may not be a military disaster, but, you know, everybody from like survivalists who are trying to live off the grid to people who are just facing hurricanes or pandemics,

like we all have this urge to stockpile cans in case of unexpected or expected disasters. It still serves its purpose pretty well, as long as you can get into them. Yeah, well, I mean, these days they have those little pull tab ones. I mean, those are good. No, it's super easy. Cool. Yeah. So we have one more piece of disaster design innovation after this. So, Kurt's back to talk with me about one more design, something that's far, far older

than bicycles and miniature golf or even canned goods, but unlike those other developments that we've discussed, this particular design strategy went away, but then came back again very recently during COVID. Yeah, it was one of those things where, you know, we're in the midst of this pandemic, and we're seeing a lot of these really new design strategies and technologies and improvements on older strategies, like face masks, which have been around for a long time. But there's this one design that really struck me

because it had largely gone away for a long time and then it resurfaced last year. And it's called a wine window. I know you got forwarded this like a hundred times. I got forwarded this a hundred times, but it's for people who can't picture it. What is a wine window and what is it for? What does it do? Right. So basically it's a small portal in a wall at sort of like waste to chest height. And it maybe is arched and framed in stone. It's like a tiny fancy little door, but it's much smaller, like a little window. And these were actually designed so customers could buy wine without having to enter a wine shop, which of course is ideal for a period when people are concerned about social

distance. Yeah, it's like a fast food window for the plague. Yeah, fast food window, but for wine and for pedestrians instead of cars, but really the same principle. And so rather than, you know, pulling over and shouting in order into a speaker for a hamburger, you could just throw up and find one of these long, the cobblestone square of an adorable old section of warrants. I love it. I love it. And not just for wine. I just like the idea of walking up and ordering something to a little window in a picturesque old city, although the city wasn't quite as old then. But tell me, were these little walk-up windows created because of pandemics and just

sort of like reinforced because of the waves of diseases that would come through cities? and just sort of like reinforce because of the waves of diseases that would come through cities? Well, it's a little bit of that and it's a little bit of just like tax history, but basically like in the 1500s, forms changed its wine-vending rules, which allowed people to sell out of their homes. And that led to the very first wine windows. And so yeah, it's tied up in land use and all this kind of bureaucratic stuff. But as time went on, these openings had obviously huge health advantages when the black death, for example, swept across Europe. And so the windows really work. I mean, do they, you know, keep buyers and sellers from passing diseases and dying?

I mean, it certainly seems that way. Like vendors had tried other strategies to cut down on the spread of the Bonic plague, things like soaking coins in vinegar, but line windows helped too. And then slowly over the centuries, a lot of these portals got shut, or were filled in or boreded up, as diseases were held a bit more in check. And then, of course, COVID hit. And because they're still there in some form, right? Like built into the walls, reopening them was a pretty obvious choice.

It is so interesting, although I mean, it doesn't quite have the same sort of like thing as the miniature golf and bicycle where they, you know, they kind of like persist and evolve. These really just stayed frozen in time. And we're just there to be unborted and opened up when we needed them again. Yeah, I kind of like that difference. I appreciate the fact that they sort of went dormant and then they were exhumed for this purpose that they served so long ago. But yeah, they're definitely not everyday designs, but I kind of want them to be everyday designs, right, I want this to be something that survives this era. And hopefully remains part of the built environment. And even if they do close them, at the very least,

I'd love to see like little plaques show up next to them, saying, you know, these were used historically and once again, during this pandemic. And then maybe who knows, like a couple hundred years from now, when there really is a call to use them again, just reopen them again, right? Yeah, well, I hope there's never a need for future use in the same way that they were used before.

I mean, one of the great things about the story is that they didn't have to evolve or be used because there was a lot of other technological development in terms of hygiene and health and vaccines that made it so that you didn't need little windows to pass wine. Yeah, and the way their golden arrow was that period in which they weren't used, right, when they were just remnants of a darker time in it.

Yeah, you know, the greatest way that we could use them, you know, in the future, it's just that's quite little inachronisms more than something out in the Sesame. Yes, with little plaques. With little plaques, of course, little plaques. This wasques, of course. Little plaques. This was so much fun. Thank you, Kurt. Yeah, Roman, anytime. 99% of his book was produced this week by our digital director,

Kurt Colstad. Music, mix, and tech production by our director of Sound, Sean Riel. The Lightning Hall is the executive producer, the rest of the team includes Emmett Fitzgerald, Vivian Leigh, Chris Baroubaix, Christopher Johnson, Joe Rosenberg, Lashemadon, Sophia Klatsker, and me Roman Mars. We are a part of the Stitcher and Sirius XM Podcast family. Now, headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building, in beautiful, uptown, Oakland, California.

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