Oh What A Time... - #114 Inventions: The Sequel (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 25, 2025

It’s time to return to one of our favourite subjects: inventions! This week we’ve got the history of portable music, the various attempts at portable television, plus the emergence of air conditioning starting with - and get this - Ancient Rome!Elsewhere, we’re still struggling to believe we live in the age of hair product innovation and no longer need to iron our hair. Is there anything else about modern hair styling that you can scarcely believe? Do let us know: [e-mail] If you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to episodes of Oh What A Time early and ad free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. These men, the men you're listening to now, are trapped in an oil pipe, 60 feet underwater. It's pitch black and the pipe is so tight they can hardly move. This is their story. It's a story about how an ordinary day at work turned into an unimaginable tragedy. It's about resilience and survival, incompetence and lies.

And ultimately, it's about one man and how his story threatened to take down a government. I just started to move. The holy strength I have in me. To just move, swim, swim, swim. I'm Isabel Stanley and this is Pipeline. Episodes 1 and 2 are out now. Follow Pipeline wherever you get your podcasts

to make sure you never miss an episode. Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time, the history podcast that asks was life really worth living in the pre-hair product age? It's not an age any of the three of us are familiar with, but there was a time when that was it. Your hair was your hair and there was nothing you could do about it. You could cut it if you wanted. The wind decided what your hair was. do for it. You could cut it if you wanted. The wind decided what your hair was. The wind was your barber. Wind and genetics. When people who lived through the 80s talk about what it was like, the number one thing that I feel comes up is women ironing their hair. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No straightness, we had to iron our hair. What? A friend of the podcast, the comedy promoter who

was put on some of the best gigs in Britain, Will Briggs, ironed his hair. What? He was in a band in the late 90s, pre-GHD, and Will used to iron it. Quite a successful band, it's worth saying. The Llama Farmers, who released albums that did genuinely well. They were in The Enemy and Sported Food Fighters, all that stuff. He used to iron his hair.

If you look at pictures, obviously the three of us are laughing at this because we all know Will. Will has naturally very curly hair and it was sort of jaw length. And if you look at pictures of him in the NME, I never recognised him because his hair is so straight. And I said, how did you do that? He said, oh, you'd sort of iron the bottom 50% and then it would just drag out the curly top 50% because obviously I couldn't put an iron on my head. So I would rest my head on an ironing board. You would get an ironing board out. And I would iron my head.

Are you, what, genuine questions there. What, are you using that setting where it shoots out loads of steam? You've got to haven't you? Surely not. Well this is a genuine question, like, or that squirty little nozzle thing. What temperature and what bits are you pressing? I generally am intrigued. I had an ex-girlfriend, she used to straighten her hair every day, she had curly hair and she used to straighten it every day with GHDs and every morning I would wake up to a, hey,

hey, four, hey, because she was catching bits of a yellowb and all sorts. Yeah. So I don't think you'd use the steam. That's insane. You'd, you'd, you're not going to lose it. Use a linen setting. I would honestly say it's more insane to do it completely dry. That's a terrible idea, isn't it? You'd want a bit of moisture. You two are insane. Straight out of the shower, but you're not, you're not steaming it. Why not? It's the same thing, isn't it? Because it's going to hit your skin. But it's interesting you mention GHD because, you know, GHD is further down the line, but

I suppose there is a similarity there, isn't there? And Ian is essentially part of the GHD family. Not in a way, you know, you wouldn't give one to someone as a gift and go, this will be good for your hair, but you can see the similarity. I would say it's the great grandfather of the DHT family. Can I say as well when it comes to hair product innovation I feel like we lived through that innovation because for a long time in my life the only hair gel available was the like litre buckets you would get in a barber shop of the green and that bubbly stuff. And for a long time that was it.

And then at uni you had stuff called Daxwax. Yes, yes. That would stay in your hair. You could put it on your hands and climb up the shard with that stuff. It's so thick. Well Daxwax is very, I bought some football boots a couple of months ago and I put dubbing on my boots like it was 1940 and I could have used Dax wax it's basically the same stuff yeah we were all putting

dubbing in our hair like we were sort of pre-morphopilers. So bad for your hair that stuff I'm sure. I had Dax wax it was so thick like I remember you'd wash your hair and it'd still be in your hair. Yeah I think I think my grandfather was doing something daft like putting sugar and flour and water in his hair and sort of calming it down. In the pre-hair product age. Over heat it would rise like a souffle. On holidays hair was rising. Old croissant head over there.

Because when I was a kid, a friend of mine used mousse. He had very curly hair and he used to mousse his hair. This is like mid to late 80s. And I had spikes at one point, late 80s, and I used hair gel, the green bubbly slime stuff that looked like something out of Ghostbusters. But hairspray, I remember you know, hairspray, I remember my mother having hairspray in the 80s.

I used to use my mum's mousse as like a last resort option. If it ran out of hair gel, it'd be borrowed from my mum's mousse. But it was so unsatisfying because it would just fix into place with like a small breeze and it would just tend to fluff. Well, we do live in the post-hair product age, that's true, but you still occasionally, this is part being the sort of busyness of being a parent, maybe you don't experience this because you're more organized than I am,

but I will maybe three or four times a year run out of hair stuff and then not have any time to get any new stuff. So there'll be four or five days where I just look terrible and I can't do anything about it. I'm forced to wear a cap constantly. I'm going to settings where a cap is not appropriate. It's not like proper work, meetings or whatever. Funerals and the BAFTAs. Corporate events. Corporate events. Red carpets. Grandma's funeral. I no longer use any hair products anymore. Really?

I am au naturel. Do you not shampoo your hair? Well, obviously. I'm not a freaking beast. I mean, I wash my hair. But how does it keep such a sort of choppy indie character? This is my natural hair. Is it? Because it looks like you use some kind of matte. You can turn up at any period in history and look like this.

Look as good as this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I use the kids' baby shampoo as well I use. What happened to you? So I don't know what... So as long as you've got that with you. I don't know what shampoo I'd be using 100 years ago. It would have been soap, probably, wouldn't it? Why the baby shampoo? What's happening? Because it's just fine and there's always so much of it in the house. It's fine. It is fine, but there's adult shampoos available in every shop in the country.

I mean, I can eat rusks every day and that would be fine. I think my hair looks alright. I think it's fine with the old baby shampoo. Your hair looks great. It does. It just seems like a strange choice to stick with a baby shampoo. I found my shampoo now. And you can buy it everywhere. It's not like when you've got to go to Harrods to buy or get online. It's in Spa. Budgins. Co-op. Skull, am I alone in finding it a little bit creepy that he uses baby shampoo? I was going to say, what would you do if you caught Sire Bell's wash bag and it was like, talcum powder's in there, what else have you got?

Wipes. Little baby nail scissors. Nappy bags. If I was working up a character in a drama where we want to suggest to the character there's something a bit off about him, you want to subtly drop it in early, you'd have him in the shower using baby shampoo. That's quite literally the cruelest thing you've ever said to me, Tom. The character in a drama that's a bit off.

What, the broadshed always goes on to be the murderer. Yeah, exactly. You don't want to just state it outright. This is my real life. It can't be too on the nose, but you've got to subtly plant it. So scene one, you're in the shower and you've got the baby shampoo. And immediately, there's a viewer thinking, this guy's, there's something. What's up with this guy?

How old is he? 44? Right. In this drama, Tom, I want you to imagine this scene. You see El get undressed. He takes off his socks. They're adult size socks. He throws them on the floor. By the time they hit the floor, they're baby size socks. He takes off his jeans.

Throws them on the floor. They suddenly turn baby sized. How is he doing it? I don't know. This is why we've got a good writer on it. How are you going to spin this out for an hour and a 50? I don't think it's troubling the Oscars. It's a short film.

But it's an intriguing opening scene. Oh my God, I'm the weirdo. There you go. Well, let's complete the three. So I panic when I run out of hair stuff. Elle doesn't need it. Skull, what about you? It's a vital ingredient. And I can't like, it's the first thing, if I'm going abroad,

passports, hair gel, you know, is that order. Ticket. The triple tap. The triple tap. You got your dachs wax in your pocket. Exactly. Right, today's episode is gonna be a fun one. This is actually, genuinely, some of my favourite episodes

we've ever done have been on this subject. It's another invention special. Well, it's because I think that Tom Crane thinks of himself as a bit of an inventor in waiting, actually. I think that... You're an ideas man. I am. And I do have ideas. I actually do have an invention idea, but I'm so confident in it. This is not a lie. I'm not willing to say it on the pod in case someone steals it. Do you know what it is? You're an ideas man who loves convenience and an easy life. So you are actually the ideal inventor. I very rarely have ideas and I love hardship.

So I'm actually the worst kind of person possible to be an inventor because I'm like, it's fine. It's fine as it is. And what about Skull? Well, I'm just thinking now, have I ever shared that I did come up with an invention once when I was a kid? No, what was that? This is pre-Robocop, pre-Terminator 2. I sketched out the idea for a robot. Now your first question is going to be, where does the intelligence come from? And I had an answer. Then, and I have an answer now, which was I would use my Commodore 64 as a brain.

And that brought in the brain. Commodore 64 would be stored in his chest and his face and his head would be the cathode ray monitor. And that's as far as it got. Ask it a question within 12 minutes. Yeah. It might start to create an ask. You ask it a question.

Oh God. You ask him a question. Oh God. And 24 hours later you can play Batman. So can you just explain to me, what do you think you've invented there? Because it seems to me you've just created a shell into which you're placing your computer. I mean that's pretty much it.

What part of the robot have you done? It's basically a big papier-mache holder for a Commodore 64. A cabinet. A cabinet with arms is what you've built. What was its best feature? I'd probably point at the Commodore 64 and go look at that. Yeah. Not every robot is going to be able to play, you're not going to play Ghostbusters on any old robot. Yeah. That's a very good point. So how far does this invention go? Had you done sketches? What was the situation?

Yeah. It didn't really get beyond the sketch stage, to be honest. Although I did have the Commodore 64, so there was that. In some respects, all that was not done was the easiest bit, which was the holder of the Commodore 64. I'm now starting to see why you haven't mentioned this invention before, because I say there's nothing to mention. I invented a cake when I was about seven or eight. What was that? So I was cooking with my grandmother, and she'd made a lot of little fairy cakes. So I got some melted cooking chocolate and I cut the fairy cake in half and then I scooped out

the inside and then I filled that with cooking chocolate and then I glued it back with chocolate, thus creating a sort of hard chocolate cricket ball with fairy cake coating. So it cracks your teeth, you're not aware it's going to be hard in the middle. The world's most dangerous cake. What were you doing? What did you do with the bits of cake you scraped out the middle? Oh I ate them, yeah. How old were you when you did this? Seven or eight. I remember thinking this is going to make me millions of pennies. Certainly not pounds, but I think this could

be big. That's remarkable. Yeah, it was like a sort of chocolate, hard chocolate cricket ball with fairy cake outside and then I dipped that in cooking chocolate. It was incredibly sweet. Yeah, I get that. You don't need to tell me that. There's no spoiler there. It was a fairy cake with a chocolate scent. You're not shocking me, it was sweet. A Terry's chocolate orange covered in fairy cake dusting is incredibly sweet. Yes, but without the orange, I didn't want there to be a health aspect. It is none of your five a day.

Just a pudding. Pure pudding. And of course, well, when I was six, I helped Tim Berners-Lee come up with the internet. You know, that was my big invention. That was my big invention. Right. And thank God I did. Look at this for a link. Because without the internet, how could we

receive wonderful emails from our listeners? It's good podcasting linking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good stuff. That's good stuff. Shall we read an email before we crack into some actual history? Oh, yes, please. Let's do that. Shall we read an email before we crack into some actual history? Oh yes, please. Let's do that.

Now, this email is from Liam Matthewman. Okay. And he says, New Camp Chapel, that's the title of the email. Oh yeah. Good morning my learned friends. Now I can confirm. Here, here, here, here. That is nice, isn't it?

Learned friends. Here, here, here, here. Order, order, order. Right on, Tom Craig. That is nice isn't it? Lermud friends. Here, here, here. Order, order, order. Right Honourable Tom Craig. I can confirm that during last week's episode on unlikely sports stars, now if you haven't listened to it late in general, that's right, the previous episode was on unlikely sports stars from history,

Chris is correct when claiming that there is an altar at the Nou Camp, which is Barcelona's stadium. I have been to the stadium and towards its vast expanse and there is a chapel halfway down the tunnel for players to use for prayer before or, I'm not sure about this one, during games. You're on the bench? Yeah. Where's Messi gone?

Yeah. Please let Messi get injured. Absolutely. He says, love the pod. It educates me on my post rounds every week. I love that. Postman listening. I love that. Keep up the good work. Liam Matthewman. Absolutely. He says, love the pod. It educates me on my post rounds every week.

I love that. Postman listening. I love that. Keep up the good work. Liam Matthewman. So there you are, Chris. So that is true. So there is a chapel at the Nou Camp where players can go and pray before the game or

during the game. I'm going to say this. I think if I saw a teammate praying in a chapel before a game, it's not going to inspire confidence in me that we've got much of a fighting chance, is it? I would say, sign of weakness. Yeah, they're on their knees, praying to God that we get a draw. Well there was Goodison Park, Everton's now old ground, although I think the women's team are going to play there. The women's team are going to keep playing there.

Has a church in one of the corners of the ground, St Luke the Evangelist. Really? Yeah, yeah. And that's what I love about the old grounds. They all have these strange little idiosyncrasies. So there's actual, you can see, if you look at a bird's eye view of Goodison Park, there's a church in one corner. If you see someone go to take a corner, will you see it in shot?

Is there like a priest? Will you see a wedding happening? Blessing the corner or what? Is it that close? Is it really so? Yeah, it's tucked in between two of the stands. I mean, you can see it. There you go. That's amazing. Do you, as someone who plays Seven Aside L, have any sort of superstitions or things you do before a game? Not to say that religion is superstition but you know what I mean. Is there anything that you do before a game? I grew up in a Welsh speaking Protestant non-conformist chapel

background and yet I always cross myself like a Catholic before running onto a five side pitch because I always think it makes me look like a really good Brazilian Argentine footballer. On the chest, do you mean? I just, I think it makes me look skillful, yeah, if I do that. I found out, I think it was earlier this season, I found out about the Spanish have one particular superstition of football grounds, which is that they don't, you know sometimes football grounds have like the badge, like West Ham have it outside the tunnel, they have the club badge like on the floor, Spanish players will never tread on that, they see it as a massive sign of disrespect,

so even away team players won't step on the crest. Yes I saw that when Madrid came to Man City, they were all walking on the crest. Yes, I saw that when Madrid came to Man City. Man City, wasn't it? Yes. They were all walking on the bench. Fascinating that, isn't it? You know how Man City can make that difficult for Spanish teams? It's just to have a massive emblem which fills up the whole gangway.

Carved into the pitch. Real Madrid are unable to get to the match. They have to climb through windows. What? Stood on the bench to take a volley that scored a winner? That's a bit disrespectful isn't it? Pity. No, it's fine. You do you. You do you. So thank you very much for that email, Liam. That is genuinely fascinating. I've also

been to the Nou Camp on the tour there. Any football fans who are listening, I'd say it's well worth going. You get to see Stoichkov's boots. You get to see all these cool trophies. Also, it's just an amazing place to go. It's full of history. And this, of course, is a history pod. So why wouldn't you love that? If anyone else has anything you want to send to us, there are many ways to get in contact. And here is how. All right, you horrible lot. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at owatertime.com and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter

at owatertimepod. Now clear off. So this week we're talking about inventions and later in the show I will be telling you all about the age of the portable television. In fact the handheld television and we've done a few inventions episodes. I actually had a handheld TV. So this is exciting.

Did you? This is one of those rare inventions that I actually had. Oh, well, I'll be talking about a very early portable music player. And I, as we sort of move towards the scorching heat of a modern British summer, am going to begin today's show by talking to you about the history of air conditioning, which is slightly more interesting than it sounds,

just in case anyone's panicking and people are going to switch this podcast off, I don't want to hear about air conditioning, you'd be wrong. You'd be wrong. It's genuinely interesting. Before we kick off with this- Can I stop you there? Yeah. Right. So I used to work in a building that I was told was the first building in the United Kingdom to have air conditioning installed.

Oh. Okay. And surely, I've never met anyone in my life who'd be able to tell me whether or not that was fact, but it was Greater London House in Mornington Crescent. Is that on, is that in your research? That is not in my research, but I imagine that would be far later because as you will find out, this is kind of, it came from America. Ah, okay. So I don't know about when it first appeared in Britain

and in terms of what house, but what you've done there is you've completely undercut my section already and made me some ill research and a fool. Well, you know what, if you're hot under the collar, you can't stand the pressure. Turn up the aircon. Back on the aircon. Before we start, how are you guys with heat? What's your sort of vibe? Bad. I am happy up to 30 degrees. I am curious between 30 and 33 and then I really have had enough. A couple of years ago in a particularly hot summer I went on witch reviews and bought the top portable air conditioning unit and I can't believe I'm saying this, it was too powerful.

Really? Like, I turned our house into an arctic climate in the middle of summer and I tripled our electricity bills in one house swoop. It was, yeah, but it was too much. You're solely responsible for global warming. Even on its lower setting, it was too much. You're solely responsible for global warming. Even on its lower setting, it was still freezing. There was a day in London a couple of years ago, one summer, and they said, we think it's going to be 38 degrees today.

And I looked at my thermometer, and about 2 in the afternoon it was 38. And out of curiosity, I just went for a walk. And I came back with a splitting headache. So I thought, not sure about it. I must admit though I love the Sun. Yes. And if it's sunny I will be out for as long as possible. Okay. I would say the 25 to 30 is probably my favorite. Yeah so I'm similar I really enjoy the Sun I like it with a breeze. I can say the first six months of my first child's life when we lived in a flat in Hoxton with floor to ceiling

Georgian windows which faced the sun as it rose in the morning basically was the worst six months of my life. It was literally like living in a greenhouse and we bought one of these really powerful aircons and it was so hot that wasn't even enough. We used to have to put a bowl of ice in front of it so it would blow ice into the room from it. It's the only way of making it bearable. Was it very cold house in the winter? It was quite cold in the winter. It was quite cold in the winter. So you were never happy. Yeah, no. No, March and September was great. Yeah. Exactly. Brief spring window.

But there was one man I have to thank for that little bit of salvation, that cool presence of the aircon unit. And that was a man called Willis Haviland Carrier, who was an American inventor of the electronic air conditioning unit. Now, would you care to guess when he first knocked one together? This blew my mind it was this early. When do you think the first electronic air conditioning unit was made? 1880s. 1880s. Elle's gone with? What are you going for? I'll go with 1920s. OK. Well, the correct answer is between the two. 1902, particularly hot summer in 1902,

which to my mind feels much earlier than I would have assumed. And he created the first one then, but it took a few years for these units to become commercial. But as news spread of his invention, Carrier was able to gain lucrative contracts from businesses such as the manufacturers of celluloid film, Gillette, Razorblade, this is a big one, Pittsburgh Hospital Maternity Ward, which must have been horrendous prior to aircon, the Masonic Lodge in Philadelphia. And then after the First World War, he entered into the European market. So this probably is when the British place that you worked in Chris, it might have seen this aircon. In 1922, he launched large scale commercial air conditioning,

which he gave one of the least catchy names ever to. What do you reckon it was called? What name did he go for for the first aircon unit? It doesn't sort of roll off the tongue. The centrifugal refrigeration machine, which didn't take on at all. People just didn't think this was a good name. So he renamed it the Chiller or the Weathermaker, which is, that's better. Oh, I like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sort of wrestlers you're into, Skull,

the Chiller and the Weathermaker. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Early 90s WWF. Whenever I'm in a hot country and there's air conditioning and I'm most grateful, and then I always think of places like Death Valley and the Badwater Basin in the pre-aircon age.

Horrendous. Yeah. There's like a Badwater Basin in the pre-Erkon age. Horrendous. Yeah. There's like a Badwater Basin Ultramanathon where people are running, you know, a hundred miles or something daft and it's 54 degrees. I remember Death Valley from, I don't know, a Guinness Book of Records when I was younger. And isn't that where the hottest temperature on earth has ever been recorded, was recorded in Death Valley? Yeah, it sounds horrendous. Yeah, it was 56.7 degrees up Furnace Creek. Furnace Creek again.

It sounds bad. You see that pop up on a map, don't go there. Yeah, yeah. Badwater Basin, Furnace Creek, Death Valley. Where are you going on holiday? Don't ask. It sounds like someone lives there and is trying to keep other people out by naming it that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've just got to give it a horrendous name and then nobody will come and will trouble us. Just call it Furnace Creek, we'll be fine. So he sets up this company, he starts to roll out these centrifugal refrigeration machines,

then called the chillers or the weather makers. And soon, this isn't particularly, no particular surprise because they're incredible inventions, they were everywhere. Especially in the big cities of the United States, such as Boston, LA, New York, where they called cinemas, department stores, Broadway theaters and factories. And thank God for that because I don't know, you can probably agree with this. There's no better feeling in the world than being on holiday in a hot country and then going into a cold supermarket and then looking at their weird crisps for like 15 minutes. And I'd throw into that the inverse of that, which is when you're on a really cold plane and the door's open, you step outside, you get that first hit of that smell and the humidity

of a warm country. Absolutely. But even then I'm quite glad when I get back into the airport and it's cool again. I enjoy that brief transition across the tarmac. You can leg it into the airport. Exactly. So this is when he set that up. But I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking, but was this really the first ever air conditioning? Is it really a modern phenomenon like that? Well, once again, we have, it's these good old people who seem to invent basically everything. It's either these guys or the ancient Greeks, the Romans we have to thank for setting us off in the right direction with air conditioning. They split heat management in Rome into two distinct areas. One, the external management of hot air, and two, the internal management of heat, both of which they realized required attention

to design and architecture. So I'm gonna take you through some of the stuff they had in Rome. And it's amazing actually, the stuff they were able to do so long ago. External approaches in Rome included careful use of shade, the encouragement of through breeze, wind catchers, which were built into tall buildings, and the use of awnings and parasols to provide a shield from the sun. For example, the Colosseum

had overhead rigging, which was known as the valerarium or the curtain veil, which not only provided shade, it also encouraged air circulation throughout the crowd. So they'd set up these awnings which would protect you from the sun, but also would funnel air through the coliseum. It's amazing, isn't it? That's clever. And there's an additional point to this, which I love. The velarium was made from the same material that they used to use the sails of ships and boats. So who do you think they used to control these things? It's quite an obvious guess.

Sailors? Do you think it would be? Exactly. Experienced sailors who'd retired from the navy, or the merchant marine, who were looking for work, would then work in the Colosseum controlling these, essentially, these sails which protected people and channeled the wind. I love that fact. How were the Romans better at cooling rooms and venues than the owners of lots of venues at the Edinburgh Festival? Absolutely. Even in 2025. It is impossible to watch some gigs in Comfort because the rooms are so hot.

It's panic-inducing. I did a room in The Pleasance called The Attic in 2011. You'd get people fainting and it was horrendous. I remember reading a review of John Richardson, a comedian, and I can't remember what his venue was, but the beginning of the room started with, John Richardson is unlucky enough to be performing in a room that is hotter than Hades. Amazing. So as for internal approaches in Rome, as how they called the home,

these principles of shade and cover were also incorporated into house design with use of courtyards, which were uncovered spaces filled with plants offering shade and cool air, in the same way that Victorian and Edwardian street designers used trees to provide shade along boulevards. And if you were really wealthy in Rome, there was another option to you. And this is the thing that blew my mind most of all. What do you think upper class Roman people

did to cool their homes? If you had lots of money, how could you cool your home? What do you think it was? Is it a bloke with a big fan? Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Surprisingly, it is not some sort of enforced labor. I found this amazing. It feels so modern. I found this amazing, it feels so modern. They would pay to have water drawn from aqueducts and then pulled through the external walls of your home. So the walls of your house would have water pouring through it at all times, which was drawn from an aqueduct, which would then reduce the heat stored in those walls and would bring down the internal temperature of your home. Isn't that incredible? Like the opposite of a radiator

kind of thing. Like it's pumping cold water through your walls. Exactly and this is in ancient Rome. It's just remarkable. But in winter you'd end up with an ice wall. Which I would have loved in that Hoxton flat. Other solutions adopted by upper class Romans included importing ice and snow from the mountains, some of which was added to the drinks that they were having during the summer. Sounds incredible. Sorry, what? Yeah, absolutely. So ice and snow was brought down from the mountains to be used in their

drinks and to cool themselves during the summer months. Is it not boiling hot? The little I know about ices, it's likely to melt if it's really hot. You get a huge cube, you slide it down the mountain at great pace, I guess, you ride it down. And they had ice in their drinks. They had ice in their drinks. And you think that's amazing, Chris? Check this out. Emperor Nero used to fill his summer baths with snow to keep cool. So he would have snow brought down from the mountains, he'd fill his summer baths and then he would relax in those. I mean, you're right, there is a short window there, isn't there? We suggest you're getting a lot of new snow every day. But that's what would happen. Snow and ice would be brought down from the mountains,

a great expense for the supremely wealthy people of Rome. I mean, if you're the guy who's in charge of bringing the ice down from the mountain, you can't be taking any lunch breaks, you'll be knackered, you'll be like, I've got to get this ice down now. What happened? I stopped for a nap. I didn't pay for water.

If there's traffic, you are stitched up. Absolutely. For most people, of course, this was far too expensive. So their option really was a visit to the public baths or sitting near a public fountain or in the shade or maybe heading off to the seaside. Romans did enjoy sort of seaside holidays. Did they? They're the best. I know. It's great, isn't it? I love the fact that was still a thing that people would pull to do them. Can you imagine a boiling hot day, everyone's sweating and everyone's just getting in the pool? There's no pre-pool shower in those days, is there?

Or chlorine. Or chlorine. Oh my gosh, that water. Well, Chris, it's apt you say that because those, I'm sure, were complaints people had, but ancient Romans did have complaints about shared swimming pools. Here's a quote from Seneca the Younger. This is from ancient Rome, I love this because it feels so contemporary. We've talked before about how we love it when you see graffiti on a wall that just speaks to the same annoyances that people have now. Seneca the Younger hated people dive bombing in the pool.

Like that advert you used to see in swimming pools in the 80s. Yeah, no heavy petting. No running. No bombing. No bombing. What were the other rules? Well Seneca the Younger, this is what he wrote in his book, he lamented the enthusiast who plunges into the swimming tank with unconscionable noise and splashing. Oh no! Is what he wrote. There you go. So even in ancient Rome he's pissed off at the idea of people who were bombing. I hate being splashed. It's the worst isn't it?

So irritating. I've just managed to find a 1970s Paul Rawls poster. I wonder how much of that... these would have been applied in the Roman age. No running, no pushing. No equatics or gymnastics. No shouting, no ducking, which is throwing your mate under the water. No heavy petting, no bombing, no swimming in the diving areas and no smoking. What you got left?

I'm trying to have a laugh. I think one of my earliest memories is being ducked under the pool in primary school. And I can still imagine myself, I'm there looking up through the water. It's weird, it's all my earliest memories. Yeah, I remember asking my mother what heavy petting meant. Oh well. Absolutely. It only applies in a pool, isn't it?

You never see heavy petting outside of a leisure centre. But that wasn't the only thing Seneca had to say about keeping cool and bath and all sort of stuff. He actually had a sort of harder reaction to this. His main thought was that if you couldn't afford to bring snow down from the mountains, you couldn't afford to cool the walls of your house. There was always a simpler way to approach it, which was just to put up with the heat. And this is what he wrote with a certain degree of stoicism, summer returns with its heat and

we must sweat. That's simply what he wrote. So some Romans just embraced it. Some Romans thought, you know, it's hot. I'm not going to try and cool myself down. I'm just going to enjoy summer for what it is and I'm going to sweat it out. Whereas other people with their sort of never-ending wealth were pouring water through their walls, were bringing snow down from the mountains, but you know, it's horses are courses, isn't it? So there you go, so that's the earliest aircons through to the modern invention, through to what we have now in our living rooms. Thank God when summer comes. They are incredible people. Oh, they were incredible people, the Romans.

Absolutely. Just problem solvers. Yeah. I could be dropped back into ancient Rome and I would be able to offer nothing. I would be so far behind them in terms of any sort of inventions or sort of, you know, you'd think being so modern I could go back and suggest something, but I wouldn't know how to do anything basically. They're way ahead of me. Good on them. The Discman. Oh yes, there we are. No? Well I could say these things, I could say the N64, but I wouldn't know how to make it.

say these things. I could say the N64 but I wouldn't know how to make it. The Budwater Ultramarathon by the way is 135 miles and it takes place in mid-July when the weather is at its most extreme and temperatures can reach 54 degrees. There's better things to be doing with your life. And if we get 100 new subscribers this month, Ellis is going to do it next year. Well that's it for part one of Inventions. If you want part two right now, you can become a subscriber where you get two bonus episodes every month and access to our entire archive of bonus episodes which includes book reviews, correspondence specials and loads of other fantastic episodes. If you want to sign up, support the show and become an OWATERTIME full-timer, you can do that by going to owatertime.com where your options include

another slice, an Apple, a Wondery Plus. Otherwise, we'll see you tomorrow for part two of Inventions. Bye. Goodbye. Bye. Follow Oh What A Time on the Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. And before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey.