Oh What A Time... - #16 Inventions

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

This week we're taking a look at great (and not so great) inventions through the ages. We've got the Player Piano (that piano that looks like it's being played by a ghost), Tamagotchi (the virtual pet that was huge in the 90s) and the Paternoster Lift (that constantly revolving lift that looks absolutely terrifying). Plus there's naturally a mention for Sir Clive Sinclair. And there's so many features for you to email us about: Interesting relatives? Prove an interesting fact to someone in 500AD? Historic jobs that are easy? ONE DAY TIME MACHINE? Send us your thoughts by emailing: [e-mail] Aaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice? Oh and please follow us on Twitter at @ohwhatatimepod And Instagram at @ohwhatatimepod And thank you to Dr Daryl Leeworthy for his help with this week’s research. Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk). And thank you for listening! We’ll see you next week! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's 2FA security on Kraken? Let's say I'm captaining my soccer team, and we're up by a goal against, I don't know, the Burlington Bulldogs. Do we relax? No way. Time to create an extra line of defense and protect that lead. That's like 2FA on Kraken. A surefire way to keep what you already have safe and sound. Go to Kraken.com and see what crypto can be.

Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See Kraken.com slash legal slash CA dash PRU dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. I'm going back to university for $0 delivery fee, up to 5% off orders and 5% Uber cash back on rides. Not whatever you think university is for. Get Uber One for students. With deals this good, everyone wants to be a student. Join for just $4.99 a month. Savings may vary. Eligibility and member terms apply. Looking for a collaborator for your career? A strong ally to support your next level success? You will find it at York University School of Continuing Studies,

where we offer career programs purpose-built for you. Visit continue.yorku.ca. Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time, the history podcast that tries to decide if the past was absolutely rubbish. I'm Tom Crane. I'm Chris Scull. And I'm Ellis James. Each week on this show we'll be looking at a new historical subject and today we're going to be discussing inventions. From the Paternoster lift to the virtual pet Tamagotchi to the player piano. I know two of those three things. I think I do anyway. Can't wait to learn more. And the one you don't know is the one you've researched and are talking about today but still can't get your head around. It's going to be a very bad bit of podcasting.

It's the kind of job, isn't it, that kids want to do. I want to be an inventor when I grow up. Have you ever met an inventor? Well, this is quite cool uh my friend's dad was part of the team that invented the well you know that thing that landed on mars yeah mars landing yeah that little robot that landed and then got its foot stuck and didn't really move properly yeah that one but he was part of the team one of the lead inventors on that that's amazing yeah that's quite cool it made it there it then got into

problems but it made it there which is i couldn't get something to basically involved in nasa sanctioned robot wars exactly the two main inventors of our lifetime i would say trevor bayliss and uh yeah james dyson clive sinclair as well as the other one. No, I'm not. You're not having Sinclair. I'm not having a shit car. A shit car that would be terrifying to drive. Can you even call it a car? Sinclair C5. When you see footage of it, you think you'd have to be a maniac to get in one of those on a main road. This has to be a prank.

Can you be classed as an inventor if your invention is just rubbish and impractical? He did invent other things, though, in fairness. I don't know why I'm being so supportive of Sir Clive Sinclair, but he did have other things in his locker, I think. Oh, he was the ZX81 and the ZX Spectrum. OK. So he invented those early computers that I'm just about old enough to remember. Even when you had a Spectrum, you barely had a computer.

Yeah, that is true. It was on the outskirts of computers. In the same way that if you had a Sinclair C5, you barely had an electric vehicle. You might as well walk. Did you need a number? Did Sinclair C5? Would you have to register that with the DVLA? That is a good question. I'm not sure. I just remember the footage of him, I think, on Tomorrow's World or something like that.

Sort of driving it round a busy roundabout and there are lorries. Beep, beep! Hang on, there's no number plates on a Sinclair C5. Oh, OK. There's no number plates on a Sinclair C5. Oh, okay. So that'll probably be because it can only achieve a top speed of insert number, which is okay under the DVLA.

It probably will be that. Yeah. It'll be the same way you don't have to register an electronic scooter or any of these sort of things, so they can't do the speed that's required to be a vehicle, a road-worthy vehicle like this. I'm afraid now I'm going to have to look top the top speed of a sinclair c5 an electrically assisted pedal cycle yeah because i was about to say that wasn't there an element of it where you peddled yeah they were made in wales made in merthyr it's also it's not that's not a

sexy sentence is it i'm now going to get in my electrically electrically assistant was it was it electrically assistedassisted pedal cycle. That is not a cool term for what you're driving. Although widely described as an electric car, Sinclair characterised it as a vehicle, not a car. I love that he made that. In the same way the Flintstones car was a vehicle and not technically a car.

That's amazing. I actually, I do have, I've had an an invention i've had knocking around for a while in my head oh yeah great you'd like to know what it is which is i have a problem with my flies when i go out about my flies are often down and i don't realize it so i'll go to the that's a choice i'll walk around town and i'll realize oh no my flies are down again i can't believe i forgot to zip them up yeah now my idea is it's a little thing that clips onto the base of your fly and it can tell when the flies are down and it does a little beep. A nice, subtle, dignified beep.

And I go, oh, there we are. Little zip. There we go. Into the meeting. The job's yours. So thanks for coming in. You now run Apple. I think the scenario you've just posited really reveals that

you've you've put chosen this is the reason why these jobs are not coming off yeah exactly it must be we've looked into it and it's the flies well i've always noticed chris whenever i miss out on a job it's always to someone who's got his flies done so there must be some kind of correlation i'm not a mathematician if you drew drew a graph, it gives you the result. That's why. Anyway. Should we do a bit of correspondence? Yeah, let's do it.

What have you got? Right. Okay. We've had an email from none other than Leigh Saunders. Thank you, Leigh, for getting in contact. On the subject of medieval jobs, it would be definitely a bit of a skive. Ellis, do you want to explain what this was? Because it's something you mentioned.

Well, I'm so glad that I'm able to make a living from podcasts and the radio and occasional live performances. I just don't think I'm suited to anything else. And even when I talk to relatives of mine who've done sort of manual work or physical work i think my god i'd last five seconds doing that so then you extrapolate from that and you think okay well how would i have coped 100 years ago 200 years ago a thousand years ago

i just assume that i would be dead at 13 that's that's just that's just how i imagine it working out so i've always been we've been interested in jobs from the past that are a bit of a skype. Exactly. I would also die. I'd die at 14 and I'd be found with my flies down as well. As a final indignity. They'd assume you were some sort of court jester, a dirty court jester. No, this guy's brilliant. He's got one gag but this gag

why do you say you won't see it coming it's the same joke but it's always hilarious so leia's got in contact to say hello team great podcast you guys are producing oh thank you your question in today's new correspondence episode about a job from the medieval period which actually be not too much hard work compared to the hard labor of others set my mind straight to one thing and one thing only a food taster oh this being the person who was employed to taste the food of the kings and queens or other important people to check if it was safe for them it would it would secure employment with the most loved elites of society of the period and waiting for meal times and tasting food off a plate and giving your employer a thumbs up

unless you were suddenly dead of course wouldn't be that bad the one caveat to this caveat sorry to this would be you'd have to be all over the medieval opinion polls and subscribing to whatever the medieval equivalent of push notifications were to keep up with gentry popularity it's perhaps a messenger knocking on your door delivering an update on rich people and how they're doing in the opinion league tables because you wouldn't want to risk the food tasting of an unpopular person so that's the thing you need to be across who is liked and who isn't like his main point is that actually day to day if you're with someone who's much light being a food taster is not that bad a job here's a question that i've always wanted to ask

about food tasters medieval food tasters yeah surely if the food is poisoned it's not going to be instant it's not like cyanide is it back then it's going to be something that just rots your guts over like 48 hours isn't it so surely there's not enough time for a food taster to really evaluate the how lethal a main course is i was with an australian comedian once and we were all eating oysters and she went oh that's a bad oyster the oysters are bad everyone avoid the oysters so maybe you can just tell and you'd have a little you'd have a little bite of poison food and you'd say,

Right, I'm probably going to be very ill but not die. No one else, no one else touch it. I'm going to have a really tough ten days. Everyone else, go and get a KFC. Can I suggest something quite awful? Just get a dog. And have it under the table with you. And then wait ten minutes.

Tom, you'd be of such value in the court of a king. Because you're a great jester. The fly stuff's incredible. Also, you're chipping in with ideas. You're a problem solver with your flies down. This guy, he's an absolute joker. But when the chips are down, boys, he comes up with great ideas.

And he's always got his knob up. It's absolutely fantastic. Great for morale. When the chips are down, also, incidentally, don't eat the chips. The dog is dead. You're wasted here. Thank you, Leigh, for getting in contact with that.

We love all the stuff you send us. So should we quickly remind people of the format points they can hit us with? One Day Time Machine, the greatest format point in current podcasting. You go back for a day, any point in time, what are you doing with your day? What are the other things we want people to email us? Medieval skives. I'm absolutely fascinated by them.

Or even skives at any point in history. Jobs that definitely would have been quite easy. Yeah. Also, what would you do if you went back to 500 AD to convince someone of a fact that is demonstrably true? And have you got any good historical relatives? Here's how you can get in touch with the show.

All right, you horrible lot. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show you can email us at hello at oh what a time dot com and you can follow us on instagram and twitter at oh what a time pod now clear off breaking news coming in from bet, where every nail-biting overtime win, breakaway, pick six, three-point shot, underdog win, buzzer beater, shootout, walk-off, and absolutely every play in between is amazing. From football to basketball and hockey to baseball, whatever the moment, it's never ordinary at Bet365. Must be 19 or older. Ontario only. Please play responsibly.

If you or someone you know has concerns about gambling, visit connectsontario.ca. It's a new day. How can you make the most of it with your membership rewards points? Earn points on everyday purchases. Use them for that long-awaited vacation. You can earn points almost anywhere, and they never expire. Treat your friends or spoil your family.

Earn them on your adventure and use them how you want, when you want. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Learn more at amex.ca slash yamxtermsapply. So this week, as we said in the introduction, we are discussing inventions that changed the world. And I'm going to be chatting about the player piano. Now, live music or any live performance has historically been very expensive, therefore to some extent exclusive. But in the years before the advent of mass-recorded sound, something that I think we'd probably find quite hard to imagine, almost the only way to hear good music played to any sort of professional standard was to go to a concert, which meant relatively limited choice. And also it meant you needed to live in certain places.

Can you imagine that, though, not being able to listen to songs you liked unless you actually went to a gig? I actually think that's one of the best things about modern life. It's like, if you think of a song, I want to hear this song, I can just go hear it. Back in 1600s, you've got to go get a little fella with a stringed instrument. He's got to know it. You're like, oh, I love this composer.

Oh, when are they on? Oh, there's a concert at a venue 400 miles away in nine months. Which I can't afford to go to. You could go for the weekend. Treat yourself. Also, if you go to a concert and you're like, wow, that's an absolute banger, well, you're probably never going to hear it again in your life.

Enjoy the memory. Well, your one option in the home is to sing the song yourself isn't it so if you go i want to listen to green sleeves you can stand in your front room and sing green sleeves and listen to it as it's listen to it live it's not as satisfying but that is literally what people's sort of relationship with music would have been because most people wouldn't be able to afford it but also in any way you know people playing pianos in pubs was a really big thing for a very long time. Yeah.

And people really respected the person in your community who was a good musician. Because if you'd gone to the trouble of learning songs, I think more people probably were self-taught musicians as well, because it was the only way of creating music. Music is such an enormous part of all societies. of creative music. Music is such an enormous part of all societies. Now various inventors had tried to resolve this problem by creating machines that either reproduced sound or played music for themselves and in so doing changed the world by making music available to anyone at any time. Various contraptions emerged, self-playing violins, can you imagine that? And mechanical organs for instance. But the most successful were the player pianos. Enter the American Edwin Scott Voughty.

He was born in New York in 1856. Voughty entered business first as a clerk, then as a salesman for an organ company in 1873, when he was about 17 years old. Now, Thomas Edison... That's quite a hard job, isn't it? I mean, selling organs. I mean, I imagine it must have been to churches, not door to door.

Not knocking on sort of like a... Do you think he's just going down the street knocking on doors and he gets to a church and he's like, yes! And he goes in and there's a huge dusty space where there was previously an organ. Yeah, and a very sad congregation who love music. They've just donated loads of money. An organ salesman.

Now, Thomas Edison invented his phonograph in the late 1880s, providing one form of recorded and replayable sound. So, Voughty began to think about the applications and prospects for the instruments he was selling to his customers. The result, in 1895, was the player piano. Now, that's the other thing with having recorded music at our fingertips is if you love a song you can just play it again and again and again yeah that's really interesting i suppose you could make requests if someone was playing something

in the pub but if a song is i'm i think i'm quite weird about this i'm if there's a song i like and really love it i will listen to it 30 times on the trot. Absolutely, definitely. Especially if I'm travelling somewhere, if I'm commuting somewhere with my headphones on and it's my little secret that I've just listened to Taylor Swift. Yeah, no, your secret is that your flies are down and everyone can see your penis down. Now, with the player piano, using specially punched rolls not dissimilar to the punched cards used in early computing, the piano read a series of instructions and played pieces of music on its own.

The mechanism was pneumatic and driven by bellows operated by a human player who was also responsible for the tempo or speed of the piece being reproduced. Eventually, electric models were introduced. Now, to truly transform the market and to compete with the phonograph and the gramophone, player piano manufacturers needed one more innovation. This is crucial as well. An instrument that could reproduce the tempo and other phrasing input by the original performer. Now this innovation was to be credited to the German Edwin Welt. He launched his reproducing piano in 1904, though its heyday was to be in the 20s. Now, it was possible for composers and famous pianists,

so the Australian Percy Granger, for instance, the American George Gershwin, or the Russian Sergei Rachmaninoff and Sergei Prokofiev, for instance. It was possible to have their singular style of performance reproduced anywhere that such a piano was installed. Exactly the point made in the marketing. Now, i am terrible for what i'm about to say okay when i get a new piece of technology and that could be the dvd

player or the first smartphone i owned or the first computer i owned i will always i've had to really talk myself out of this in quite recent years I will always think right, that is as good as this is going to get this technology has ended here we're done that's that TikTok it's 2002 and computers

are not going to get better than this I remember the first time I saw someone's iPhone I was like, well they've done it haven't they the perfect phone. The scientists can focus on something else now, because that's all they do. I reckon if I'd seen a player piano in the

20s that was able to really accurately reproduce say, the playing style of George Gershwin in 1920 or whenever, or 1904, which is when it was first introduced, I would have sat back and I would have gone, this is where music ends.

I couldn't agree more. I remember when I first got a Game Boy for Christmas, thinking this is literally what it would look like if an Italian plumber went on an adventure. This is... It couldn't more accurately reflect that journey. It's done.

This is what... In terms of modern inventions, this is the thought that I always come back to as to why we haven't invented everything. The thing that still blows my mind about living in 2023, if my arm gets chopped off,

that's it. I don't have an arm anymore. It's mad to me that I could if my arm gets chopped off that's it i don't have an arm anymore yeah it's mad to me that i could lose my arm and then can't we why can't we grow a new one that will happen yeah it will definitely happen but that's that's that's the thing i hold up as well we can't have invented everything yet but we are in a situation where you can have a you know incredibly advanced robotic whatever this or um an arm replacement, basically. So we are at that point of kind of invention, obviously. Well, like heart transplants.

Can you imagine telling someone from before the first heart transplant, oh, yeah, yeah, if your heart gives up, we'll just give you someone else's, a dead person's heart. Like, are you mad? In a way, I reckon if you went back to 1800 and you told people about heart transplants, but that we can't make you a new arm if you lose your arm, I think they'd be like, why have we got it that way round?

How have we solved the heart thing before the arm thing? What I would want is if I lost an arm in some sort of awful accident, I would want then, as a replacement arm, Arnold Schwarzenegger's arm. Huge, muscly arm. Well, also, you wouldn't be able to play piano anymore, so you'd want to play a piano as well. That's what you'd want.

That would be the perfect time to get you to play a piano. Now, the thing with the performances being able to replicate, say, you know, Gershwin or Percy Granger, that also meant that performances could be reproduced long after the player's death. Wow.

So the Venezuelan pianist Teresa Carreno, for instance, who died in 1917, or the German pianist Bernhard Stavenhagen, who died in 1916, they were being broadcast on BBC Radio

via a reproducing piano installed in a studio in Manchester in 1923. That is incredible. Yeah. That is genuinely incredible. With all the rhythm and all the feeling and touch, they would have... Now, the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg was still providing concerts in 1937,

some 30 years after his death, and influencing interpretations of his music thereby. Even today, disc and electronic recordings have been made based on the performances captured by the reproducing piano, either a grand or an upright. Now, the how of capturing the performance was quite simple. A player was invited to the factory and asked to play a piece on a specially adapted piano. So each key was rigged up to a pencil, which marked wherever it was played and for how long onto a blank paper scroll, a blank version of the punched ones sold to consumers. There were also pencils recording pedal use and tempo.

Purchase scrolls would be marked with a tempo marking reflecting a metronomic beat, and this is the setting the home consumer would use for reproduction. So similar, I suppose, to the distinction beat and this is the setting the home consumer would use for reproduction so similar i suppose to the distinction between a 33 and a third or a 45 rpm setting for a record as you're playing it back in your in your home or whatever yeah based on the original player yeah so if this sounds eerily familiar then it's not all that different from the use of computer generated avatars to

stand in for artists you know modern in in times, either after their death or long after they've ceased to look like their younger selves thanks to the processes of ageing. So music went first to where other forms of entertainment have since followed. Now, if you've ever wondered, as aficionados in the 1920s, and to borrow wording from an advert which actually appeared in national geographic in 1922 opposite one for a smith and wesson how long does paderewski hold his d the answer came in the form of a piano reproducing his playing style and the best bit you can have him play his d for you over and over again now the player piano or the reproducing piano has survived to the present day though the golden age of the instrument was in the 1920s. You see it in westerns and things.

Yes. Now, these days, famous recording artists hardly rush to provide performance capture, preferring instead to prioritise the more prestigious album. But that doesn't really matter, because the computer is able to provide a suitable alternative. In fact, there's a direct link between how composers now write music often for film so if you think of people like hans zimmer and the reproducing piano the only different these the only difference these days is that a computer captures the input rather than a paper scroll turning that input into sheet music rather than a series of pencil marks to be deciphered by the mechanics of it so modern cinema

would be really really different without the player it. So modern cinema would be really, really different without the player piano. Now I watch videos of player pianos when I was preparing for this for this week's episode and whilst they're incredible you have to admit, it's really creepy. Because the keys are going down, aren't they as well?

Yeah, it just looks like it's being played by a ghost. That is exactly what it looks like. And I reckon if you were a little kid and you hadn't seen the films, you didn't know what they were, you could really terrify a child with the play of Yama. You could scar that child for life quite easily.

It looks horrific. I think if I was playing it in my home, I'd lower that little hood over the keys so I'm not seeing the keys going up and down. Because that's the bit that freaks me out. I don't need that. I'll just listen to the music. I don't not seeing the keys going up and down. Because that's the bit that freaks me out. I don't need that. I'll just listen to the music. I don't need the ghost keys going up and down.

Yeah. Do you like music, Tom? Love it. Yeah. Do you like ghosts, Tom? Oh, not so sure about them. Well, what about if a ghost plays you songs you like? Um, okay.

Joey, this is amazing. The ability to recreate, here an artist playing the piano again and it reminded me of um this episode of tomorrow's world i saw about a japanese hotel and i remember vividly seeing this and going thinking wow this is the future and in this hotel you could go up to your room and you could choose a film from like a library of different films and there would be a big robotic kind of video catalog library deep in the depths of this hotel you'd punch in what number you wanted it would charge you to your room and this mechanical arm would go down select the video and put it into your video player and you would sit there and watch it

and on tomorrow's i was like this is the future a clunky version of netflix i suppose. Yeah, super clunky physical version of Netflix. That's absolutely incredible. It's funny this, isn't it? Because when you try to future gaze, you just take what you know right now and try to imagine that that's how you will be served in entertainment in the future. So with the piano, when the player piano came out,

it's like, well, this is how you'll hear piano. It'll just be plugged into the piano. But the reality is you end up with Spotify or the ability to just listen to media anywhere. I was a huge early backer of the mini disc. I was completely convinced, despite the fact that I had one and it kept saying talk reading

and it never played the music I was trying to make it play. I still thought this is it. This is the thing, as you say, to tick off that thing. This is it. This is the final invention. This is it. But you say thing. As you say, to tick off that thing, this is it. This is the final invention. This is it. But you say it's hard to future-proof. You say it's hard to predict what will be coming trends-wise.

The very people who had millions and billions of pounds behind them to predict those things, the example I'm giving here is Blockbuster, and even they couldn't do it. So Blockbuster Video, which was at one point the biggest thing basically you know in every city there were 25 of these things yeah now it doesn't exist yeah they failed to recognize it's terrifying so you being 14 and living in mid wales unable to predict what the next sort of technological leap will be in music is slightly understandable but this huge multinational

which had impossible amounts of money and the ability to research and predict etc could not see that seismic change well I was doing like Tom I was a circuit stander for years and I once walked to a gig in King's Lynn this is

probably in about 2016 or something. And for the first time in ages, years, I saw a blockbuster video in town that was full of people. So I was like, wow. You've goodnight sweetheart back to 2002.

But every other blockbuster in Britain had closed down by this point, apart from the one in Kingsland that was doing a roaring trade. So I thought, well, I have got my opening five minutes guaranteed. Here we go. So I walked on stage, pleased as punch, thinking this is going to be incredible.

When I hammer Blockbuster Video. No one laughed. And the bloke said, stop it. Every comic we get every week talks about that fucking Blockbuster Video. We know we've got one and no one else does. It's fine. Move on.

If only, Tom, if only you'd been the court jester at blockbuster video hq gonna be cracking gags flies down by the way guys all right i'm going to talk to you about a late 90s craze all right so we get in our time machine we go back to the 90s lsu emerged from the time machine people immediately saying that guy does not belong here in the 90s he's sticking out like a sore thumb he couldn't possibly get away with it doesn't make any sense he knows too much um children in the 90s enjoyed a series of imported crazes all of which were massive and then just died off just as quickly as they emerged do you remember the yo-yo the yo-yo came back it was huge for a bit that's a weird question to europe do you remember the yo-yo

but it went massive it was massive it had a kind of it had a resurgence, a renaissance. And the thing with the yo-yo, during the 90s yo-yo renaissance, people of my parents' generation were so smug. They were like, oh, yeah, it'll all come back. These people will be playing with a stick and a hoop in there in a couple of months. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, you did this first. Very good. By the way, can I just tell you one thing? Tell me if this is the correct decision. I was walking down

the road with my five-year-old yesterday and on the wall in one of my neighbour's houses was a Diablo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is the thing you'd spin with two sticks and flick it in the air. Yeah, idiots have them at music festivals. Right. Yeah, okay.

Well, I was one of those idiots. Diablos. Yeah, I had one as a teenager, and I was really good, and I could do the one where you flip it over. You put your stick through the eye of the needle, as it were. That's what we called it in the Diablo community. In the community, yeah. It was my fellow Diablos.

They got banned from my school because one of them hit Mr. Man on his head. Mr. Man was a sports teacher. And then there was a Diablo ban. And I was gutted. Because that's what got me through break times. Did we play Pogs? Remember Pogs? The little cardboard discs?

I was a little bit too old for Pogs. But I remember them. I love Pogs. They came in. They came right to the end. And then there's also, I had a Nokia 3210. Do you remember Snake? Snake was a big thing.

Yes, I'm part of Generation Snake. If you ever managed to do the thing where the snake filled the entire screen. I never did it. I got close. I got close a couple of times. There's no greater rush. I had a friend of mine who was at university. I said, are you enjoying your degree?

He said, I'm playing a lot of Snake. That's a bad sign. That guy now owns Google. He's a trillionaire. There was also Windows 95 emerged, and everyone was playing Solitaire and Minesweeper, but the big one was the Tamagotchi. Yeah.

November 1996 it came out. I had a Tamagotchi. Do you guys have a Tamagotchi? No, I was 15, almost 16 by the time they came out so it felt like, I think my little sister had one. I think it felt like something slightly younger kids had. I didn't have a Tamagotchi. I was a similar age but I also had a diablo so to answer your question

if you don't know what a tamagotchi is it's a little digital virtual pet it had a little plastic casing little tiny digital kind of a little screen, few buttons, a keychain, usually brightly coloured plastic. It was the brainchild of Japanese inventors, the businessman Akiro Yokai and Bandai employee Aki Maita. They wanted to come up with a pet that was easy to look after and hence Tamagotchi was born.

It was sold by Bandai, which is interesting. They're the same company that came up with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Oh, wow. They were raking in the cash which is interesting. They're the same company that came up with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Oh, wow. They were raking in the cash in the mid-90s. And so it hit British Isles, May 1997, and it just went mad. It sold out everywhere almost instantly.

And I bought one. So I was 97, I was 14, and I got a Tamagotchi. In 97, I was 14, and I got a Tamagotchi. And I got what was then a new generation of Tamagotchis that you could fight. Do you remember this? What? I don't remember this. Against other Tamagotchis? I remember you had to feed them, and you had to do all the stuff you would with a normal pet,

but obviously on screen, but you had to remember to do it. Yeah, yeah. That's a good point. Remember I should explain the things you need to do. You would get your Tamagotchi. It would hatch from a virtual egg. You would need to feed it. You would need to toilet train it, groom it, entertain it, put it to bed,

give it medicine when it's ill. Yes. You'd have to give it different levels of care and attention depending on how old it was. Interestingly... And all of this, Chris, it was on a tiny LCD screen as well. Yeah, tiny LCD little screen. Your average lifespan of a Tamagotchi

this is interesting this because I swear Tamagotchis were older but the average age was about average lifespan is 12 days 7 generally

the kind of shortest 25 the longest it's a bit bleak isn't it yeah so I'm sure I mean make it longer than that yeah and they say

that Britain is a nation of pet lovers how long should we let it live for 12 days will be fine Yeah, and they say that Britain is a nation of pet lovers. How long should we let it live for? 12 days will be fine. 12 days? What about 14? What about make it a fortnight? No, not quite a fortnight.

Oh, my God. 12 will be fine. So the average life span is 12 days. The world record age for a 1996 Tamagotchi, can you have a guess? Nine months? 89 days. Wow.

89, but it must have been some pain at the end. There were definitely parents who said, oh, you want a dog, do you? We'll get you a Tamagotchi and see how you get on with that. And if you can look after Tamagotchi, we might consider getting a dog. That was definitely... They came in and go, it's dead after 12 days.

I told you, this is why we didn't get you a dog. Yeah. You can't look after Tamagotchi for two weeks. Yeah, but the difference is, if you kill a dog, we're going to end up in prison. Genuine question, though. What do you think the thought process was behind 12 days? What's happened there?

I guess it speaks to the short attention span of kids, maybe? Also, I didn't have one, but I vividly remember the Tamagotchi. I mean, it was a news story. It was a cultural phenomenon. Yeah, everyone had them. Were they very labour-intensive to look after?

No. So you weren't, like, up in the middle of the night like with a sort of like with an ill child with croup you have to take it for a six mile walk every day

around the park at six am but I would they weren't banned in our school because I had mine in school and I think

this is like 97 this is before you've got mobile phones and smartphones so you've got you've got a lot of attention and not a lot of places to put it if you don't want to pay attention to whatever lesson you're in.

So I would sit there, like, checking on my Tamagotchi. You know the same way they say that when you get a text message or you check your phone, it releases a few endorphins, it's like a chemical reaction. I think Tamagotchi was a really early version of that. Coupled with personal responsibility. Yes. In the same way, what's so frustrating about a smartphone

is that a lot of the time, I would say the majority of the time I spend on my smartphone is wasted time, but also I do need it for my calendar, for Izzy's calendar my emails and stuff stuff that actually is relevant so that then you get sucked into the sort of the less relevant stuff but with the tamagotchi obviously if you don't look after this thing it will die and what happened then when it died could you reset it and start again yeah that's basically what you do yeah

it's a little i'm sure there's a little reset that's from memory i'm sure there's a little a little message came on the screen when it died said this is your fault that's basically what you do, yeah. I'm sure there was a little reset, but that's from memory. I'm sure there was a little reset. You know, a little message came on the screen when it died and said, this is your fault. That's what it said. Really? In capital, though. You did this. Cheers.

It would print out a little death certificate. Yeah. It actually said, satisfied. Satisfied. Did you give a name to your Tamagotchi? Yes, I did. Did you have a name? Right. So I remembered the name to your tamagotchi yes right so i remembered my name the name of my tamagotchi last night now you have to understand this is like 1997 and i just really got into hip-hop so i called my tamagotchi tupac two yeah tupac the second yeah because it was a fighting

tamagotchi and i'd learned that tupac had Thug Life written across his stomach in a tattoo. Nice. So I called my Tamagotchi Tupac, too. And it was a fighting one, and it was like a champion. I had this champion Tamagotchi. I think they must have introduced the fighting models for boys, because it was huge in my school. All the boys.

Who was it fighting? You'd link them together. They would have little connections on the tops of the Tamagotchis. You'd link them together They would have like Little connections on the tops of the Tamagotchi You'd press them together and go like battle And then you would watch your two screens As you would fire little kind of like Hadoukens on Street Fighter 2 You'd kind of like just throw fire at each other

And then one would win So could you get beaten up? That's slightly unfortunate considering what happened to Tupac But this is Tupac 2 you see He was writing a new history for himself. Oh, OK, fine. So were you in control of the battle? No.

You could feed them, and I think you might be able to train them. There was some element where you could... Basically, if your Tamagotchi was genetically good and you kept it in good condition, it had a better chance of winning its fights. Wow. OK. And Tupac 2 was on a roll in my school.

Just unbeatable that's incredible but of course what would happen on these on the battles if you thought that this is the ultimate fate of tupac too we would fight i'd had so many fights that ultimately he lost one and that was it curtains yeah and that was true also over the other range of tamagotchi is if you didn't fail to act you didn't feed them or groom them or entertain them put them to bed in time over a sufficient period of time that animal would die your tamagotchi would pop it if you didn't look after well i remember chris actually on that there was a point where i lost my tamagotchi so i knew it was somewhere in the house dying suffering which is quite bleak somewhere in the house my pet was just just dying

and and i wasn't i was covered in feces got supposed to sort that out i suppose you know all these sort of things you're supposed to do oh how depressing i just remembered as well if you take your tamagotchi would do a little poo and you see little flies buzzing around it and if you didn't clean the poo that's how it would get sick i'm sure i'm sure that was one thing i've just remembered now in it's it's odd isn't it because there are so many parallels with modern smartphone addictions yeah with the you know with with the tamagotchi and and the way kids entertain themselves now but there is an element of personal responsibility to the tamagotchi that i actually quite like absolutely yeah it's a good way you know how they give kids babies that cry

to kind of get them used to responsibility? And also, you know, you get... I remember my sister had a doll that weaved and she had to change its nappy and stuff. And there's actually something quite interesting, something quite positive about that, having to look after something. Especially a family that doesn't have pets.

It's just the fact that Tom's just died under the sofa. I didn't even bury it, never found it again. So in Japan, various innovations popped up around Tamagotchis, such as Tamagotchi creches, where units could be left in the care of others if your parents were busy.

Special bereavement hotlines, where people could get counselling and grieve over the loss of their virtual pet. No! There will always be grifters looking to make money. As night turns to day and day turns to night I'm going to talk to you about the Paternoster lift and how this invention

changed the world so should we start by talking about how we are with lift how are you guys do you you freaked out by them are you okay with this still a childlike thrill okay i love a lift the higher the better absolutely love it i went up to the 11th floor last night and i was like this is living where were you i was in a hotel in Cardiff and I got to the length floor and I thought, I've made it. Were you staying on the length floor? I'm staying on the length floor, baby. No, you weren't.

Okay, you weren't on the second floor and you thought, I'm just going to enjoy the lift. No, no, no. I wasn't exploring. Okay. My dad was so scared of lifts that he would never go on them so the family the family would get in a lift if we're in a hotel and we would go up to whatever floor and then we just have to wait for him to walk up the staircase wow yeah he was so scared of them he refused to go in them have you ever been stuck in a lift no have you no no okay but i have got a weird thing where I've been in lifts, me plus one other really famous person a few times in my life.

Adam Sandler. Wow. David Schwimmer. Wow. Gordon Brown. Wow. I think that might be it. Did you say anything in any of those situations?

No. I just went, oh. Okay. That's what I did when I got in a lift with Nigel Farage once. Oh. I did exactly the same thing with carl frosch yeah they're my two lift people i've been in lifts with oh so um i'm gonna start by taking you back okay uh before i talked about this paternoster lift and how it changed everything so the modern elevator can trace its roots back to louis the 15th versailles palace in 1743 so that's too early that's too early for a lift that's too early don't like it it's amazing

his lift was called the flying chair and it required i think i've i think i see what's happened oh yeah he'd also invented a flying chair. That's the other thing, which I'm surprised to take off. So it required the user to pull on a rope to raise himself up or down. Would you like to guess why he had this installed in the Versailles Palace? Was he a big lad? Well, he was a big lad, but that's not the reason. Well, it's kind of on the outskirts of the reason.

He had it installed so he could visit his mistress's apartment which on the floor above his without having to use the stairs so he was quite a lazy guy and also didn't really want to be seen going around the palace how's that less lazy than the stairs well if you're doing it with some hand power well it had counterweights so maybe it was quite a smooth action okay yeah yeah it does make me think though how sexy is that will that be you appearing slowly like sort of the love lift on take me out into someone's bedroom possibly naked which is the next question are you arriving naked when you go up to see your lover sat there on the chair going i'm ready um i think tiny pair of pants yeah okay in case she's not alone yeah not quite naked but certainly not fully clothed but how is it so you said that's working someone's pulling a rope basically you'd sit in it it's like a little cabinet basically you pull a rope and then you

would slide up to your lover's room. Oh, you'd pull it yourself. You'd pull it yourself. That's the thing. It's quite hard work, isn't it? I still think that sounds like more work than

looking up the stairs. Your arms are doing the work, aren't they? Yeah. I also imagine that it was, I imagine it was quite squeaky so other people would have heard. So I'd be thinking about, I'd probably,

let's say you finished quite quickly you don't want to be going down squeaking your way back to your bedroom and everyone going well that's been three minutes i'd probably go after i'd finished i'll say should we chat for a bit and then i think i'll probably stay down in about 10 minutes yeah should we chat maybe a three-course meal meal do you fancy a curry so that was the first lift but it wasn't until the mid-19th century that lifts really started to gain momentum because this was the time when buildings started to get taller and taller and most notably the ev hog vault building in man in Manhattan uh Howalt sorry which opened in 1857 it was five stories tall and it was there that they set up the first ever passenger elevator it was installed by a guy called Alicia Otis now the reason this was put in wasn't because uh it was hard to get up those five

stairs it was because there was a shop in there and the guy wanted to draw people to his shop it was called how else fashionable emporium which sold cut glass and fine chandeliers stuff like that and he just wanted people to visit so it's kind of a tourist trap so the reason the first passenger elevator was set up simply as a way to trick people into his shop which i kind of think shows sort of lack of faith in your merchandise are you thinking we need to think of a way to get people in here well let's just come up with a new way of travel um this lift was if you're interested was powered by steam there's a steam engine in the basement which would kind of worry me i think i'm not sure i'd want to get on a steam powered lift especially with only five flights of stairs you know i think i'd probably walk in but the crucial

thing was this then led to further inventions in this field and there was a liverpudlian architect called peter ellis who had a different idea he wanted a lift basically that could deal with lots of people and in quick succession and when in 1864 he was asked to design the oriel chambers which was a five-story building in liverpool he came up with this invention called the paternoster lift which was first installed in 1869 and this lift has had a huge impact on the way cities are today in the life we lead so the thing about the paternoster lift was it never stopped so it never slowed down it didn't have any doors. It just had loads of compartments that were constantly going round. Like a ski lift.

Like a, yes, but forward facing. So you basically step into, like stepping into a cupboard, but that cupboard is on the move. And it will slice your legs off if you get it wrong. I've just realised what a Paternoster lift is. Yeah. I've never seen one in real life but i know about them they are terrifying things exactly so passengers had to step into these little um cupboards basically

and they had to time it right and had to leap out at their own peril making their own judgments about timing because it wouldn't stop it would just go it would go past your floor onto the next floor and you just had to jump out and in at the right time it was really easy to get wrong i mean do you think you'd risk that would you know what i've only been skiing once and i was hungover in my defense so i'd i'd i'd never been so i they started me off in a sort of child slope and i got I got good enough at that, they said, you can do a blue run on your own now, but you need to go on a ski lift. I was like, oh, great, that sounds like good. It was on some day, I can't remember how long,

but I'd had a couple of lessons. They said, have you been on a ski lift before? And I rather arrogantly said, I'll work it out. Anyway, it was explained to me how to get on and off a ski lift at which point let's face it my attention started to drift um i i got on the ski lift all right and it was like a proper ski lift in a sort of in a big resort in the in the alps somewhere but when it came to getting off the ski lift i realized i'd not been listening and didn't know and kind of blacked it, which was absolutely impossible to do. So I sort of got off the ski lift badly.

My skis got caught. I don't think I'd got off the seat properly. I can't remember if you meant to unclip yourself. Either way, I got everything that you could get wrong, wrong. And I had to be rescued by a bl be rescued by obviously it's still going and if it if it keeps i don't get off the drop obviously becomes exponentially bigger at which point it looks like i'm sort of face of death so i got on the seat at this point what you have got your bum on the seat it. It's like being dragged and all this kind of stuff. Yeah. And I reckon I was probably three seconds away from serious injury.

And I know it was bad, and I know I should have listened, and I know that the bloke was angry with me because he was so furious, he took his gloves off and threw them at me in disgust. In cold weather as well. Yeah, yeah. And swore in a language I didn't understand. And then I thought, right, just pretend that didn't happen. And then...

It was awful. It was absolutely awful. But yeah, and do you know what? I never told Izzy that. And she'd been skiing lots of times So fingers crossed she doesn't listen to this episode Because it was very, very embarrassing But yeah, so when it comes to the Paternoster lift

No thanks Well, this might not reassure you In the Czech Republic, they've earned the nickname Of the Elevators of Death That's what they're doing there But Imperial Germany became obsessed with them, basically, because they were obsessed with matching Britain and America for everything,

and they installed them everywhere. And even today, where they've disappeared basically everywhere, there are still hundreds in operation in Germany, even though they continue to injure people. Some stats here. Their overall rate of accidents Is estimated as 30 times higher Than conventional elevators And Germany saw an average

Of one death per year Due to paternosters Prior to 2002 So since they've invented One person a year in Germany Has died on one of these things Do you know what, Tom? And Chris

Obviously we're all parents You know the first time You take little kids Really little kids Either on an escalator or on the tube or on the metro in Paris or any kind of metro, getting them on and off the train is terrifying. And getting them on and off the escalator, you just think, I cannot mess this up.

A pattern of the lift. Can you imagine taking your kids on a pattern of the lift? Ready? Ready? Ready? Sit! Oh, my God! a paternoster lift can you imagine taking your kids on a paternoster lift ready ready ready sit oh my god not only would I

never do that I would say to my kids you are never getting in a paternoster lift I don't care if you're 50 60 it's not happening

I can't believe Tom you're giving away giving these stats because I've always suspected there must be a fail safe there must be a fail safe there must be yeah i thought that those lifts surely have somewhere it must be so sensitive

and they'll be made of jelly or something well the fail safe in germany and in the czech republic actually is because there's lots of tourists have started visiting these uh elevators of death and trying to get on them they've now put barriers in front of them because they're often in official courthouse buildings and those sort of things. So you have to basically tap in to get to them. So if you work there, you can go on them, but they've basically stopped tourists going on them.

Right, okay. That's their plan. You're on a stag. You're on a stag. It's day two. You're a stag in Germany. Everyone's hungover. You're you're the organizer the best map you see the elevator of death as a potential as a potential tourist attraction like an inside number nine episode isn't it

would watch Would absolutely watch Do you go That sounds like a laugh Or do you say No we're going to go to the pub Because it's absolutely mad I would never ever do that Because you also know One of the lads on the stag

Is going to do things And he lies down And he puts his head out And he tries to put his head back in Just before it goes Oh god This is freaking me out. Ultimately, it's not good enough because you're just on a lift.

And you've got to get off again. Even if you get it right, it's hardly the thrill of a lifetime. It's just a bad thing, but with added jeopardy. But the crucial question is, how did the Paternoster lift change the world so why was this invention so important and there's two reasons first of all before the lift i thought it was really interesting the top floor in a house or building was considered the worst place to live lugging yourself up the stairs just to sleep below the roof was considered unhealthy dangerous like as bad as the cellar basically but the lift changed that the lift is the reason the penthouse is now the place that people want to live it meant um it became

this accessible area and then suddenly you're looking at views you're looking at the wonder of all that and it completely changed the value of you know property basically and secondly this is far more important lifts proved that humans could build upwards and made navigating these buildings possible yeah which in turn then made cities more and more dense as kind of property owners try to develop taller and taller buildings and maximize square footage so within without the invention of the paternoster lift and other lifts like that cities would not have developed in the ways that they have now they're the reason we have high rise and you know new york and shanghai and london all these places look like they do how interesting the invention of the lift it allowed us to build up to cram people into small spaces because really you know

build a building which is 60 floors high if there's not a lift in it it's not usable is it and that's that's the important impact it had. Amazing. How interesting. Can I ask a question? So we know now people are dying on paternoster lifts. Can I ask how? Is it what, are they getting their heads caught? What's going on there? He doesn't give the specifics.

Do you know what? Don't tell me. Can I surprise you? Most of these sort of government-based statistical readings or things like that don't get into the nitty-gritty of how people died yeah i mean it's obvious isn't it it's obvious is it oh god sorry i'm reading about it now oh no it's mad that any of them exist i would have i would have assumed they were all gone. Because they're crazy. They are crazy. How can you trust anyone?

Yeah. Also, you'd think, I mean, this... I sound like an old person who's got a very specific set of political leanings, but you would think that health and safety culture would have nipped the pattern off the lift in the bud. That is true about health and safety culture would have nipped the Paternoster lift in the bud. That is true about the health and safety though. I know what it is, but it was actually

that the health and safety team, they worked on the top floor and people were too nervous to go up. There's a 150-year-old man with a massive white beard waiting there thinking to himself, we haven't had a single complaint. That was Inventions. I loved that, guys. That was a lot of fun.

It was good fun, yeah. I mean, not as much fun as a death-defying escapade on a Paternoster lift, but still a fun episode nevertheless so if you have enjoyed today's episode and you are enjoying the show in general please do leave us a review write it in Latin, write it in ancient Greek

write it in English, Welsh, whatever you want to do but show your support for the show because it makes a real difference and we also really appreciate all the emails you send us it's great, there's a community of you out there getting in contact and we love hearing from you if you want to get in contact and contribute to this wonderful show you can email us on hello at oh what a time.com on the internet we look forward to hearing from you thanks guys as always see you next goodbye bye see ya bye