FACTORALY - E50 PIPES

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

Pipes are everywhere. You're probably never more than a few metres from one. In this episode, we explore the ins and outs of pipes of all kinds. From ones that make music, through ones that deliver substances and materials, to ones that make you cough. Pipes have been around for a very long time and continue to deliver. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, Simon. Hello, Bruce. How are you today? I'm absolutely fabulous. Thank you very much. How are you? Jolly good to hear. I am equally well. Good. That's very good to hear isn't it just well i suppose we should say hello to everybody else really i mean there's a lot of people here actually considering what a small space we're recording in we have got an awful lot of virtual guests we are in an awful lot of ears yes we are sorry about that yeah sorry just

dig us out yes quite using one of those roman spoons no a viking spoon viking earwax spoon yes as in our episode on vikings yes absolutely which of course you all listen to because you you lot are thorough you've gone back and listened to every single episode definitely um episode of what what what are we talking about, Bruce, for the uninitiated? Okay, on three. One, two, factorily. See, I thought you were going to go one, two, three, factorily, not one, two, factorily, on three. This is very confusing to people, isn't it? On three, rather than after three. It's a whole thing that happens in Lethal Weapon, one of my favourite movies. I recite this frequently. So, yes, this is Factorily.

I'm Simon Wells. I'm Bruce Fielding. I almost accidentally said that the wrong way around. I'm Simon Wells. And I'm Bruce Fielding. No, that would just confuse people. It would, really would. We're both professional voiceover artists.

We are. Which is why we sound like this. Exactly. So what we're doing here is, this this is fact orally this podcast is all about interesting and random facts we pick a subject we chat about it for an indeterminate amount of time and then i would say waffle yeah that's far better that's far more accurate and you lovely people at home or wherever you are in your car on your dog walk you lovely folk get to listen to us a lot of people fall asleep to this it's very annoying yes not because it's dull but just because we sound so relaxing and calming and we actually

need to do one on breath don't we so we can and breathe in and out. Feel calmer and more grounded. While people go to sleep and dream of the kind of subjects that we are interested in. For example, this week. Yes. Pipes. Pipes. Yeah, you see, when we came up with pipes, I thought, well, what the hell are pipes?

Because there's all sorts of different sorts of pipes. I mean, we're using the sort of slang term for our pipes when we're actually talking to you. Oh, yes, of course. Yeah. Although I think actually, for the purposes of being kind to people, we should mention right up front that this episode may contain references to tobacco. Yes. I think that's a fair thing to point out. Yes. Absolutely. We are not promoting it.

We are not advocating it. We are not saying it's good. Have you ever smoked? I used to smoke. I don't anymore. It's not good. No. I used to smoke.

I don't anymore. It's horrible. There you go. So, yes, we're not advocating it. We're simply stating that it exists. Exactly. Where does it all begin, Simon? It begins at the very beginning. Very good place to start. Indeed. So pipes, well, let's start with the word itself. The word pipe, I mean, pipes have been around forever. Pipes have been around for thousands of years. But the word pipe being used to reference a pipe, that word comes from the musical sense of a pipe.

You know, playing the pipe, like the Pied Piper of Hamlet. Piping someone into dinner or whatever it is. Yes. So it's originally a Latin word, pipa, P-I-P-A, meaning a musical pipe, a piped instrument, which confuses the heck out of me because there's a Chinese instrument also called the pipa, spelt exactly the same way, which is more of a lute-like guitar-type instrument. So that doesn't make any sense to me at all um but the latin peeper comes probably roughly speaking from the word to peep or to chirp like a bird all right because of

the sound that that instrument makes so it's onomatopoeic it's onomatopoeic yeah so yes that's where we get pipe from and then obviously you have so many different types of pipes it's unfathomable what's the earliest sort of pipe? Well, presumably if the Latin thing is to be believed, it would be the instrument. But I'm not sure that's the case. I don't know what they were calling pipes before they called them pipes. I know they've been around for a long time, about 3,000 years. Yeah, they're quite old, aren't they?

They were used in Egypt as the kind of pipe that we see, we believe to be like a pan pipe, which is like a closed end pipe that you blow across the top of. Oh, I see. Yes. So those pan pipes in Greek mythology, Pan, the god of shepherds and nature, was always pictured with his goat's bottom half playing these pan pipes. Which I believe is why Peter Pan is called Peter Pan, because he played a set of pan pipes. Correct. Yes. So those pipes are the prototype for certainly the musical type of pipe.

I suppose any sort of pipe, really. It's like a hollow tube. Exactly. Did you say that the Egyptians had that instrument? They did, yes. So as far as I can tell, the earliest example of the pipe used in the conduit sense. So, okay, let's get that out of the way. So roughly speaking, a pipe is a hollowed out tube that's used for carrying stuff from one place to another.

Whether that's gas, water, fuel. Cables. Cables, etc cables etc etc etc that's roughly speaking the basis of what a pipe is yes in the non-musical sense yeah um and the oldest example we find of that is again from egypt so maybe they'd sort of you know finished with their pan pipes and then thought what else can i use this for i don't know um but around 3000 bc in ancient egypt the pyramid of shura has roughly 380 meters worth of copper piping copper piping copper piping wow isn't that 3000 bc in in egypt copper piping used as drainage on a pyramid that's impressive that just i had to double check that because it just didn't seem reasonable um so they've been around for a while they certainly have can you imagine calling an

egyptian plumber to to come and source out your piping sort of picture it in the the hieroglyphics yes yes the the egyptians would like turn sideways going um so that was 3000 bc just after that two two and a half thousand bc um pipes were used by the indus valley civilization uh in in what is the modern day india and pakistan kind of area um and they had earthen pipes you know made made of clay yeah um and they used asphalt to seal them to join them together oh and to insulate them yeah okay again around two and a half thousand bc there's some evidence i don't know why this is vague every source says it's vague and it's inconclusive but i'm gonna use it um apparently there were pipes used to transport natural gas uh into beijing two and a

half thousand years bc for lighting purposes no yeah that's i mean that can't be right no i know but i've seen it written down too many times to completely ignore it so therefore i'm stating it do with it as you will yes yes well actually what you could do is tell us that we're completely wrong. Oh, please do. We love that. By writing to us or leaving a comment or, you know, along with your five-star review. Of course. Just say, oh, by the way, you got that wrong. Yes.

Yeah, so you talked about gas. Yes. I mean, there's a lot of gas goes around in pipes, isn't there? There is, yeah. Especially in China and Russia and places like that. Yes, of course. I think the longest pipeline in the world is in China. How long is that? Well, we can come on to the Guinness book at the end of the podcast if you like,

but why not right now say that the longest gas pipeline is 8,707 kilometers long. Goodness me, that's a long pipeline, isn't it? A very long pipeline going from west to east China. Flippin' heck. Yeah, it's a lot of gas. You know, I fit the definition of a gentleman. Right. Which is someone who can play bagpipes, but doesn't. That's brilliant. So I learned to play bagpipes. I used to go to Scotland a lot on holiday and I love the sound of pipes.

And I will put some, some of my favorite, sorry about this, I will put links to one, okay, just one, bagpipe track in the blog at factorily.com. Factorily.com.

That's the one. So I learned, I learned how to play bagpipes it's not difficult isn't it it's not huge the difficult bit is what they call the grace notes okay because the thing is you've got like one continuous noise yes so because it's one continuous noise you can't stop playing what's called the chanter, which is like the recorder bit. Okay. So you have to put like a little twiddly bit in to kind of indicate that that's where you're changing style or notes or chord or whatever. Right. And they're called grace notes and they're very difficult to do. Are they?

And I was only using my bagpipes like twice a year on the 25th of January for Burns Night and on New Year's Eve or New Year's. Right. And I was getting a bit out of practice. So I would occasionally go up on Hampstead Heath and practice. But there was a guy called David Brooks. Right. Who was playing his pipes on Hampstead Heath regularly. And there was a complaint.

Just the one? Just the one just the one the city of London decided to take him to court to stop him from doing it oh my goodness and I mean I used I used to play my pipes on the Heath as well but this guy was up and you were not taken to court I was never taken to court but in 1996 David Brooks was taken to court and ordered to stop playing I mean they came up with all sorts. He was basically, he was fined like 15 quid. Oh, okay, fine. And told not to do it.

But as a sop, the judge said, well, you can play on the bandstand. Hey. Three times a week. Oh, wow, brilliant. So he got away with it. But there was a reason why he got away with it. Okay.

And the reason why is that up until 1996, the bagpipe was classified as a weapon of war. I beg your pardon. So it was used at Culloden and the Boer Wars and both the World Wars. And it was even used in the gulf war and desert storm the the bagpipe is there to um energize and and encourage soldiers to fight harder oh okay and so when it was um found on a battlefield it was classified as a weapon like sabers and guns rather than as a musical instrument like drums or or bugles yeah and pipers would go to war just carrying a set of bagpipes. Wow.

They were unarmed. In the First World War, about 2,500 pipers crossed no man's land just playing the pipes. Wow. And it's amazing. It's just so stirring. I mean, it's either stirring if you like it. It's very stirring if you hate it. If you're enemies, it's just so stirring. I mean, it's either stirring if you like it, it's very stirring if you hate it.

Or to your enemies, it's scary, yeah. I mean, that raises an awful lot of... When you first said it, I was sort of picturing people plopping little bits of lead shot into the end of the pipes and then firing them at the enemy. But yeah, it makes you wonder, yeah, what about drums? What about horns? Why aren't all of those things classified as a weapon? Because they do the same thing. Great Highland bagpipes. Right. And the bagpipe itself is made from an animal skin. The bag that you keep the air in is made from animal skin, which you have to season. Oh, right. And the traditional seasoning for the inside of a bagpipe bag, which I used to use, is whiskey and honey. Of course it is. So you basically put whiskey and honey, you mix them all together, then you pour it into the bagpipe,

and you kind of like squish it around inside the bagpipe to keep the leather soft and supple. Right. Excellent. I mean, there is technically, there are bagpipe conditioner type of liquids that you can put in. But, you know, classical bagpipers would always use honey and whiskey. And so they jolly well should. Quite right. That's lovely. What a lovely tradition. So I had a look at water pipes.

I sort of tried to think of what is the most common type of pipe. I discovered, I think I knew this in the back of my mind, but I wasn't entirely sure. Plumbing comes from the Latin word plumbum, which is Latin for lead, because lead piping was so ubiquitously used for water pipes that those things sort of went together. So that's why we have plumbing and plumbers and plumb lines and so on. And apparently, lead pipes being used for water goes all the way back to Roman times. We've already talked about the copper pipes used by the Egyptians. The Romans used lead. And I find it really interesting what things used to be so common under the rule of the Roman Empire.

And then as soon as they vanished, we just entered these dark ages where we forgot everything. We forgot how to build roads. We forgot how to to build houses we forgot how to use lead pipes we forgot we forgot how to do underfloor heating oh all of this stuff absolutely i mean we just had to reinvent all of this stuff over again um but lead pipes yeah used by the romans uh it's a very easily shapeable malleable substance and um it's you know it's quite leak proof you know because it's it's so easy it can be sort of you know melted down and joined together and all the rest of it um but having forgotten all of that and then started all over again at least in this country um we went through a period apparently in the early 1800s there was a chap called um william murdoch who created a system for transporting

gas fire pipe and um he he used discarded musket barrels and stuck them together to form a long continuous pipe yeah and they were they were either riveted together or clamped together and therefore very very leaky yes for gas especially that's just that's just silly um and then they started using steel pipes for for both gas and and water um after discovering that um lead was toxic well yes but but lead was used for a very long time because it's malleable and it's infinitely recyclable yes absolutely it's. It's very good stuff, except for the fact that it has a tendency to kill you. It's toxic. Well, it'll only kill you if you're in the library with Professor Plum.

With Professor Plum. I knew you were going to say plum. All that brings us right back to plumbing, doesn't it? How interesting. Well, do you know that there wasn't a B in plumbing originally? So, plumbus. It's a couple of Renaissance monks who decided to show off and put extra letters into various different words like plum. That's brilliant, isn't it?

Yes. They'll do that. So there is another sort of stainless steel piping that is used in a very modern way in CERN, actually. Oh. The Large Hadron Collider Beam Pipe at CERN is a pipe. I'll put a link in the show notes to a video of this professor talking about how she's worked out how to put the particles going around at like um 1.9 kelvin it's it's like it's cooled by liquid helium through magnets but at the end ultimately in the middle of all these magnets is a pipe in fact three pipes right um it's like in what three

pipes in one but it's it's it's got to be the coldest pipe it's made of stainless steel it's it's it's lined with um i think lined with copper uh but electrical electrical particles are actually flying flying around the um the collider yeah within a pipe pipes get everywhere don't they i know you did a bit on on bagpipes earlier. I had a quick look at pipe organs. Yes. Which are just, I think it's a phenomenal sound that pipe organs make. I sang next to one at the Royal Albert Hall. Have you?

Yeah. It's called The Beast, I think it is. Oh, really? Yeah. It's huge and it's very, very powerful. It's wonderful. You can feel it in your guts as you're singing next to it yeah yeah yeah i hadn't quite realized the the mechanics of this

that um there are just so many pipes in these organs you know what you actually see on the front of a pipe organ is just the facade there are loads and loads and loads of pipes behind them apparently the biggest pipe organ in the world has 33 000 individual pipes i can't even quite picture what that looks like i can try and find a picture of it and stick it in the show notes that would be great thank you i know that there are these these cinema organs there are people people have had to enlarge their houses yes because they bought a cinema organ and all the all the pieces arrived yes and they're oh damn suddenly realize what they've got themselves into yeah um but pipe organs are pretty old as well the the the first instrument that could be sort of

identified as a pipe organ was from the third century bc in greece and um it used hydraulics it used water pressure to generate air that went through the pipes that made a sound and then you you press the the keys on the keyboard and it diverts the air from one pipe to another pipes are of different lengths makes different notes but in order to get the volume the the big resonant volume that you mentioned in the role albert hall you you have sets of pipes so you have you know 10 20 100 pipes all making the same note, so that when all of those pipes are played at once, it increases the volume compared to just one single pipe being played. Pipe organs were used in Constantinople.

The emperor had an annual Christmas dinner at which a pipe organ was played to great entertainment of his guests. The oldest playable pipe organ that still exists was built in 1435, and it sits in Switzerland. And then you go back to our episode about circuses. You have the Kaliapai, the steam-powered pipe organ used about circuses. You have the calliope. Oh, yeah, of course. You know, the steam-powered pipe organ

used in circuses. The one I've never heard is the second largest organ in the world. Right. Which one's that? Which is in the Playboy Mansion screening room. No way, really? Yeah. How interesting.

How interesting. And the other one I've never heard is the arsepipe, which is a musical instrument from the British Virgin Islands made out of car exhausts. Oh, that's fantastic. I know.

It's played like a didgeridoo type of thing. It's called an arse pipe. How wonderful. I know, I know. Isn't that great? How jolly. I suppose at some point we do have to get round to the use of pipes to burn stuff and inhale it. Yes, I think so.

Again, not advocating it, just stating that it's a thing that exists. One of the most famous pipes is obviously the Native American Pipe of Peace. Yes, of course. Peace Pipe. Yes. Which was mistakenly believed by the incoming Europeans and the armies of those people to be a peace pipe. But actually what it was, it was a communal pipe or a sacred pipe. They saw these things being smoked when various different tribes were signing treaties. And they kind of assumed that this was part of the ritual to retain the peace while they got the treaty signed.

I see. But actually it's a ceremonial sort of sacred pipe. And if you think about it, it's kind of logical. It's like you're sending your prayers up to heaven. So the way that you get your prayers to heaven is you inhale the smoke. The smoke inhabits your soul and takes the prayers. And then you blow the smoke out and it goes into the air and wafts up to heaven. Gotcha.

So it's actually a really, it's quite a religious thing. Yeah. I'd never really thought of the symbolism of that. I found a pretty decent list of the different shapes of of pipes if you sort of think of a pipe i i instantly well two two types of pipe i instantly think of one is a pipe that my granddad used to smoke which is just your classic sort of cherry wood bowl with a black mouthpiece. Yes. Hold it between your teeth kind of pipe. And the other is the great big fancy curvy pipe that Sherlock Holmes used to smoke. So you're talking about a briar and a meerschaum.

So the briar is the material. Right. But the shape of them, again, we'll put photos up on the website. Oh, yes. There must be charts to tell you but the the shape that i particularly picture sherlock holmes you know it sort of comes out of your mouth goes down to your chin and loops back up to where the bowl is that's called a shape is it yeah because yes because meerschaum is basically like a fossil thing. It's like fossilized animals that live on the base of the sea.

It's like a clay. And what happens with Meerschaum is it's very easy to carve when it's still fresh. But then as it dries out, it goes very hard and very fire resistant. Oh, I see. So that's why you can use Meerschaum to make the most intricate and amazing looking pipes. Ah, interesting. But briar is because of Brière, I think, in France. They worked out that there was this wood that was very resistant, again, resistant to flame and heat.

A lot of pipes seem to be made out of either fruit or flowering plants, the wood of those plants. So a lot of pipes are made with, like you say, briar. Either fruit or flowering plants, the wood of those plants. So a lot of pipes are made with, like you say, briar. Some are made with rosewood, pearwood, anything that's sort of quite dense and fire resistant. I mean, originally the sort of oldest pipes. In fact, one of the oldest pipes that's ever been owned by Englishman, is a pipe owned by Walter Raleigh. Oh, really? And you can still see it. And it's in the Dunhill Museum.

Because Dunhill are obviously famous for making smokers' requisites. Sure. Including pipes. I used to do the advertising and do a lot of work for Dunhill. Yes. So I know an awful lot. I know more about Dunhill than any human being really should. But do you know the Dunhill lighter,

the one where you flip the top open and then you sort of whirl a wheel on the side of it? Yes. So that was the prototype of that. It's actually a Coleman's mustard tin. And it was invented by Alfred Dunhill for a friend of his who had lost a hand in the war. And couldn't light a match because to light a match, you need two hands.

You do, yeah. So because he couldn't light a match, he invented this thing which had a lighter fluid in it and a wick. And you sort of flip the top up and you would sort of swish the side. And that would cause a flint to cause a spark that would then cause a flame yeah so it was it was actually the very first lighter that you could use with one hand right and then of course there's the world's most famous pipe, which isn't a pipe. Oh, when is a pipe not a pipe?

When it's a René Magritte pipe. Okay. So a René Magritte pipe was a surrealist. And he did a painting of a pipe. Okay. And underneath this painting of a pipe, he wrote the words, And what that means is this isn't a pipe. Okay.

Because it was a drawing of a pipe, not a pipe. Oh, I see. So technically it's not a pipe. It's a picture of a pipe. It's a picture't a pipe. Okay. Because it was a drawing of a pipe, not a pipe. Oh, I see. So technically it's not a pipe. It's a picture of a pipe. It's a picture of a pipe. Right. Oh, there's the brain going. But talking of brains, actually, Albert Einstein, very keen plumber.

And pipe smoker. And pipe smoker. Yeah. So two types of pipes in one in fact he was he was so keen on plumbing that the the the union of new york plumbers once gave him some gold plated plumbing tools to play with really yeah albert einstein albert einstein had a whole set of plumbing tools what a guy how very odd i know we were talking earlier about pipes and how you put things inside them,

whether it's gas or whether it's actually something physical, like a cable or a telephone wire or something like that inside a very long pipe. Yes. And how do you think you get a cable from one end of a pipe to the other? Because you have to put the pipe in first. You have to put the whole pipe in and then put the cable in. Yeah, that's a fair point. I don't know.

Are you ferreting around for an idea of how you might do it? Don't you dare suggest that. There is a company called the Ferret School school and they train ferrets to run up pipes and and and lay cable inside pipes and what they do is they put a harness on their ferrets they've got trained ferrets and they put harnesses on these trained ferrets with a very lightweight line and they they encourage the ferrets to go all the way down the pipe to the other end and then they draw through the lightweight line tie a little bit of heavier weight like line to that then tie the cable to that heavy weight and they kind of pull it through that's incredible and they're still using ferrets today they use it for all sorts of things it's like um

when there was a gig at i think the o2 and there was a gig at, I think, the O2, and there was some problem with the cables. Yeah. Quite recently, they had to basically put ferrets down to relay a new cable inside the pipe. I've never heard of such a thing. How very odd. It's just wonderful what you can do with a ferret. I discovered a type of pipe that I never realised existed.

Okay. A sipping pipe. Oh, right. What's that? So it's a piece of glassware used to consume alcohol. And it's roughly pipe-shaped. And the one I found,

the example of this thing I found was for a drinking port specifically. Right. And so it's roughly the shape of a smoking pipe. Yeah. There's a glass bowl into which goes the liquid. And then there's sort of a stem that goes from the bottom of the bowl upwards into a mouthpiece and the idea is that you when you take a sip through this mouthpiece you're sipping the port from the bottom rather than slurping it from the top like with an open glass that can't be right because all the sediment goes to the bottom well yes it does i didn't

understand that bit either but that's apparently how it works we'll find a picture and put it on the website okay um but you know you you sip liquid. It comes from the bottom of the reserve that's sitting in the bottom of the bowl of the pipe rather than slurping from the top. So what you're describing is effectively a straw. Yes, pretty much. Pretty much, yeah, but built into a glass. And apparently it's to reduce the amount of oxidation that goes on the surface. The less of the drink is exposed to the surface,

the less oxidation occurs, and therefore it allegedly gives you a better drink. I don't know whether it's true or not. The source I found from the origin of these things was a company in Australia who claimed to have invented it in the 1970s, so relatively recent invention. But then soon after they'd invented it and started producing it,

they found that a very similar item existed since the 17th century, which was called a German schnapps pipe or schnappspfeife, which is exactly the same thing. It looks like a ceramic painted smoking pipe, but you fill it with schnapps and you suck through the mouthpiece from the bottom. And I never realised this was a thing. And now I want one.

Sipping pipes, gas pipes, smoking pipes. Water pipes, bag pipes. So many pipes in the world. Well, I've reached the end of the pipeline when it comes to facts about pipes. How about you? Yes. Well, I've reached the end of the pipeline when it comes to facts about pipes. How about you? Yes, I think I've also run out of facts. I mean, that is to say about the specific pipes that we've researched. I think any one of these subtopics could probably demand their own episode. Absolutely. I mean, bagpipes, definitely. Smoking pipes, almost

certainly. We still need to do three things before we let people – well, I say let you go. I'm assuming that you're being held in trust by this. But the three things that we need you to do are five-star review, please, lots of great comments and wonderful things to say about us. And that would be very, very helpful to us. We'd like you to like us on various social media platforms. We'd like you to subscribe to us so that you can get a little ping in your inbox saying, hey, there's a new episode available. Yes. The other thing, of course, you probably know nerds because you're listening to this, so you almost

certainly are one. And if you're not one, then you should know some. And if you do, tell them about us because spreading the word is the best way to get this podcast into as many ears as possible. Indeed. And we'll all be better off for it. Yes.

Well, until then, it's goodbye from me. And it's goodbye from him. So thank you for coming. Please join us again on the next episode of Factorily. Bye for now. Cheerio.