SciShow Tangents - Inventions

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

Is it usefulness, accidental genius, or sheer dumb luck that produces inventions? Well, after this episode, we at least know for sure what Batman's answer would be. As for the rest of it, you'll just have to listen along while we dive into one of Ceri's dream topics: Inventions!SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! Head to www.patreon.com/SciShowTangents to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter! A big thank you to Patreon subscriber Garth Riley for helping to make the show possible!And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @im_sam_schultz Hank: @hankgreen[This or That]Pacemakerhttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3232561/https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jul/11/from-viagra-to-valium-the-drugs-that-were-discovered-by-accidentSnow globehttps://www.bbc.com/news/business-25298507https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-an-experiment-to-amplify-light-in-hospital-operating-rooms-led-to-the-accidental-invention-of-the-snow-globe-180985742/Stethoscope https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1570491/https://www.thoughtco.com/rene-laenecc-stethoscope-1991647[The Scientific Definition]Pigeon Vesthttps://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/pigeons-bras-go-warBat Bombhttps://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/1090bats/https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-almost-perfect-world-war-ii-plot-to-bomb-japan-with-batshttps://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/old-weird-tech-the-bat-bombs-of-world-war-ii/237267/Chicken Eyeglasseshttps://gizmodo.com/thousands-of-chickens-once-wore-glasses-to-stop-them-ki-1700343874https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1989/11/27/entrepreneur-wants-a-lens-in-every/https://extension.psu.edu/poultry-cannibalism-prevention-and-treatmenthttps://patents.google.com/patent/US730918Experiment (patent in category “Boats to ascend rivers”)https://books.google.com/books?id=K1YdAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA120#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttps://liberalarts.tamu.edu/nautarch/nwl/lake-champlain-projects/hoofbeats-over-the-water-ina-research-on-horse-powered-ferryboats/https://books.google.com/books?id=z0Avt3ruFx0C&pg=PA294#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttps://www.uspto.gov/blog/the-search-for-lost-x[Ask the Science Couch]“Ahead of their time” inventions (Undersea cables, Antikythera mechanism, electric cars) https://www.nps.gov/caco/learn/historyculture/french-transatlantic-cable.htmhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84310-whttps://www.youtube.com/@clickspringhttps://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-early-electric-carsPatreon bonus: Patent law and whether you can apply without a prototypehttps://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/35/100https://www.legal.uillinois.edu/services/legal_guidance/inventions_and_patentshttps://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2109.htmlhttps://improbable.com/2014/02/21/the-blonsky-centrifugal-birthing-device-in-dublin/[Butt One More Thing]John Henry Kellog’s vibratory dining chair for bowel movementshttps://www.museumofquackery.com/devices/k-chair.htmhttps://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health-nutrition-history-quackery/enigmatic-dr-kellogg

You're listening to a Complexly Podcast. Hello, and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive science knowledge showcase. I'm your host, Hank Green. And joining me this week, as always, is science expert in Forbes 30 under 30 education luminary. It's Sari Riley. Hello. And also our resident everyman, Sam Schultz. Hello. Sam came in late today because we're recording this on a strange, on a strange day. Look who's talking.

Eight years, eight years. First time I've ever been here before Sam. So I figured I'd bring it up. But that's not what I actually want to talk about. I want to talk about how Sam kind of walked in and he looked a little bit like, I don't know, I feel like you got a Jason Bourne vibe going on today. Like you may be being hunted by a secret government agency and also you probably may be hunting that secret government agency back. Yeah I've gone full ghost protocol this year. That's why my resolution is to go ghost protocol and to take down all the forces of evil that are

oppressing me and all my friends. You probably shouldn't tell the forces of evil about it on a podcast. They know, this is me. This is like when Batman sets out building on fire, big bat symbol. This is my big bat symbol. He's like, you are aware. I'm coming for you, you can't stop me. Did Batman set a big building on fire?

That seems like more property destruction than he usually gets up to. I think that's in the third one when the city is destroyed anyway. I'm pretty sure. It seems like a lot of work to put lighter fluid in every one of the bat windows. That my friend is why you aren't Batman. It's not too much work for him. I'm not willing to put in the work.

Yeah. You don't have all those bat gadgets. You can just send your enemies, you can send them a text that said I'm coming for you. It's so embarrassing though, if somebody took a picture of the 45 minutes Batman spent rappelling along the side of a building, pouring lighter fluid into each individual window. Maybe he got Alfred to do it for him. Are there any superheroes that use the power of the costume to just have a bunch of them in many places at once?

Like a bunch of Batmans many places at once, like a bunch of Batmans. Yeah, it's a mask anyway. You're gonna be so, so sorry that you got me started on this. Because we have, himself, has started Batman Incorporated in which you can franchise out being a Batman. You can franchise out being a Batman? You can have a subway, you can have a Batman. If you're naughty, he'll come and bust your teeth out.

But you can't. Does that happen? Are there bad franchisees in the Batman Incorporated incorporation? You better believe it, my friend. A Batman has to go bust their teeth out. There's a bunch of Spider-Men. There's a bunch of Spider-Men.

There are, but it doesn't- Are there Spider-Men at the same time? Do they overlap with each other? Yeah. Are they just the multiverse? Yeah. There's Spider-man, there's his various clones, there's Spider-woman, there's Spider-boy, there's a lot of them. And they're multiversal, so yeah, depending on if that all happens.

Sometimes they all get together. This happens in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where all the multiverse vampire slayers have to get together to save, to close the hell mouth together. It's very intense. But that's, I don't, multiverse doesn't really count. That's not really a franchise model. That's not Batman, Spider-Man, plural.

Yeah. Well, this is how the Dread Pirate Roberts works. He just trades the mask over to the next person, but there's never two at the same time. Yeah, that feels like pretty standard succession of, you have become beyond a person, you become an icon, you become a known quantity in the universe, and you don't want the name to die,

so you pass it on to someone who is honorable. But the franchisee model is what I'm really wanting to dig into. Yeah, okay. How can you have multiple of yourself running around at once? It seems totally doable. Oh, people know because... No, I like, but this is so you're telling us

that we are treading new comic book ground. Okay, yeah. That Batman hiring Batman to do Batman stuff while Batman just gets a chance to relax and heal a little bit emotionally and physically. And everybody's like, Batman's just everywhere these days. Yeah, he's doing it.

But it turns out Batman actually got therapy and was like, it's probably not all on me. I can probably share some of this. Hank, if anybody here could write a Marvel comic, I think you could probably phone call away. You wrote a Star Wars book. I don't, that's a good point. I am in a Star Wars book. God,'t, I don't. That's a good point.

I'm in a Star Wars book. I'm so stupid. That's a DC comic. I feel like it is. Yes, all right. Which is even easier. That's easier. Oh, you think so?

Well, because they're desperate. They need it more. Yeah. They need big name Hank Green to come in with his Batman idea. Yeah, and it's all just like a thinly veiled exploration of my own stresses and anxiety. Anxiety is sad.

And the movie is called Bruce Wayne or glasses. And his hair is a little curlier. They kind of had like some gingerish hair that was kind of. And he lived in a small town. He lived in a small town small town for his way Yeah, not the city not cities played out city out for it has been played out You know and he made YouTube videos made YouTube videos and drove an electric car around that's the Batman for me Yeah, everything's electric. It's completely energy transition Batman. Yeah

He tells everybody about it at every possibility, all his bad, he meets them up and they're tied up and he's like, you know what? Have you guys heard the good news about ground source heat pumps? Joker, your Joker mobile could be so much more efficient. Here on SciShow Tangents, we get together to try to one up, amaze and delight each other with science facts

while also trying to stay on topic. Our panelists are playing for glory and for Hank bucks, which I will be awarding as we play. I probably won't. And at the end of the episode, one of them will be crowned the winner. You're just not gonna do it this time? Stop doing things.

We'll deconstruct the podcast every episode. It's not that I don't want to. One segment at a time. It's just that I'll probably forget. For any of our listeners who haven't heard the news yet, which we have already slightly referred to, SciShow Tangents is, we are very sad to say, ending this year.

Our final show is going to come out March 18th. And between now and then, we're gonna celebrate all the things Tangents. We're gonna talk about some of our dream topics. We're gonna have dream guests. We were gonna have a dream guest this episode. Probably shouldn't say this, but as we're recording this,

a very large fire in Los Angeles, so they could not come. And as always, we're gonna be celebrating traditional science poems and butt facts and all of our other regular shenanigans. Today's topic was handpicked by our own education luminary, Sari Riley. So without further ado,

let's introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from Sari. When you need a thing and it doesn't exist, just make it up, whether you hit or miss. Inventions sound fancy, but here's a twist. You can just sort of do it and add it to a list. Like imagine a guy who had a goal to keep their hands clean, but also dig a hole. They picked up a rock or maybe a bowl and scooped out some dirt. Hey, that's a shovel.

Or a chef cooking be beats or some red meat. Did you just rhyme hole with shovel? Sorry. Yeah. A shovel. Well, yeah, we're really bringing back classic tangents. Yeah. In honor of Stefan, our dearly departed. Or a chef cooking beats or some red meat, but it falls into the fire. That's defeat.

What's this? A pot or pan or a sheet? They can sizzle it up. Hot food is neat. A hatch for a cat or a pendulum for a clock, a fluffy bath mat or a new color of chalk, a trap for gnats or a painter's smock, a new thermostat, or a CD that's punk rock. Most everything around us was made up by someone using science or luck or help from their son. And sure, lots of things are basically reruns. So why not just make things? Get out there. It's fun. Hell yeah, Sari. That's some tangent shit right there.

I couldn't even follow it really. some tangent shit right there. I couldn't even follow it, really. Well, it's it's really great. It's because it answered one of my my most pressing questions about inventions, which we'll answer after we get back from the break. But that question is, is putting a hat on a cat an invention? Apparently, the answer is yes. But before we get into it, before we explain to you what inventions are, we're going to

take a quick break and then we'll be back to define the topic. All right, everybody, we're back. Sari, what's an invention? You know, there's like a philosophical definition, a vibes-based definition, if you will. And then there's a legal definition, which is much more boring. So the vibes-based definition is a new method of doing something, a new like object, anything that is previously unknown that you create as opposed to something that you discover. So you find something in the world that already exists but is not known or recognized yet. So like the a

theory of gravity or something like that it's not an invention because technically it's all out there and we're just modeling the thing that already exists. We're noticing the thing. If you discover a new cat, you didn't invent a new cat or species of cat, you can name it. What if you breed a new cat though? Then I think it kind of falls into the, because you can like create a new medicine,

you can create a new plant species you can create a new plant species that we then turn into commercial. You create a new cat, you can make new cat. You can definitely patent some cats. Like cat breed. Well, I think you have to do, I don't know. I don't actually know, but you can definitely patent particular seeds of crops

that you've done genetic engineering. It's like the beagles that glow. you can patent the beagle that glows. I bet you could patent the glowing beagle if you wanted to. But hopefully they don't... it gets messy. This is why it gets messy with legal definitions because if an invention is considered, I think the three main categories that I found are novel, so new to the world, useful, helps in some way, and non-obvious, which is a loaded word. Yeah, which is why putting a cat in a hat

is totally an invention because somebody did that for the first time. It's definitely useful. I enjoy it. And three, who would have thunk? Who would have thunk? Yeah, you have to look at something and go, who would have thunk?

And then it may be protected by the legal classification of a patent. How the determination of useful, that comes down to a person just deciding if it is, are there parameters around useful? Yeah, no. That's how law works. There's courts, the courts have to decide.

This, well, okay, going in a different direction, Sari, is math invented or discovered? So this is a hot, hot debate. I know, I brought this up specifically because I figured you'd looked into it. And... A little bit, yeah. I think that math is something,

it's in the discovery zone of things. In the way that people, like a new music piece, you don't, you can copyright it, but you can't patent it. So you're like composing a new music piece or you're't, you can copyright it, but you can't patent it. So you're like composing a new music piece or you're like creating a work of art. You are- You're not inventing it. You're not inventing it really.

You're like using all the things we know about math, the logic and rules, and then creating new formulas to describe the universe or to solve a problem is the way that I kind of see it. I'm just so hung up on this, on this useful. Useful. Yeah. Yeah.

Cause useful apply to like, Oh, I can look at it and I'm having fun looking at it. Is that useful? Yeah. Well, and that's, I think why patent law is usually, you can cut this out if it's too mean. So I think this question of usefulness. So I think this question of usefulness is flagged. Sarah's about to go and just slam down the patent law. Establishment.

Yeah. You can cut this out if it's too mean about patent lawyers. This is great. I have no idea what she's about to say. I can't imagine we're going to cut it out. I don't want to get in trouble from anyone because usually tech bros and business people are the meanest kind of people. But I think patent laws are a bunch of, it's just people trying to compete with each other

to be like, oh, I own an idea. Oh, I came up with something slightly better than you. And it's the most useful. Actually, you are being mean. Okay. You're being mean to people who submit for patents and you're doing a little voice too. Yeah, I'm doing a little voice. Well, that is good.

I think when I just decide to lean in and make it so bad that you gotta cut it, maybe. Yeah, no, no, no, work. I got, that was too good though. Yeah, we're keeping it. There's a, well, I think good-natured people in the patent industry will be like, yes, that is a problem that exists and I don't like those people.

Yeah. Yeah. I think there are people who are genuinely trying to be like, oh, if I improve upon this or if I come up with a new thing and it would be good to have credit for this thing to protect myself in the future so that I can iterate on this and make sure that it is used in the hands of good, not evil. I think a lot of patents of this like useful definition is just people trying to one up each other in the tech space with a slightly different semiconductor

and then preventing anyone else from using the thing because they don't wanna collaborate, they don't wanna play nicely, they don't wanna share their toys. And so they're like, oh, my idea is useful, my idea is useful. But like people who are baking different kinds of breads aren't worried about that. They're just there making their my idea is useful, my idea is useful. But like people who are baking different kinds of breads aren't worried about that.

They're just there making their bread, sharing it with people. That's right. The bread people, they deserve more anyway because they got bread. So I think that's where it's like, who's deciding what's useful? Yeah, what kind of world would it be

if we all had to like pay out some money to make sourdough? That, unacceptable. What if we like shaped our world and our society instead of around the idea of something being useful, it is just like joy or good or kindness instead, like as an adjective. And so in that way, useful is a very fraught word in patents because I'm uninterested in the industry that patents support kind of or Increasingly so as I get older. I'm like, I don't care if something's useful. I I have my things I like my things to work, but I see why Sarah wanted to do this topic

This was nowhere I wanted to do this topic because I had funny old patents that I wanted to bring up and then it unlocked something in me. This is my circle. Okay, well we have to get into it then, so let's get into it. We're going to do our first game and we're gonna be playing a game of this or that from our friend, Deboki Chakravarti.

Inventions are the products of hours and hours of hard work sometimes, but sometimes they're just people trying to make a slightly different something just so that they can make a bunch of money. But it's built on the incredible wealth of knowledge that humanity has already amassed over millennia, but sometimes inventions are the result of an accident. Maybe someone had a mistake and they were able to get clever to cover up their foibles, or they were working on something else and they stumbled into a new idea.

So for today's game, we're gonna be talking about this or that of accidental inventions. I'm gonna name an invention and it's gonna be up to you to guess, did an accident play a notable role in the development of this invention? Okay.

Round number one, the pacemaker. Did an accident play a notable role in the development of this invention? Mm hmm. Okay. Round number one, the pacemaker. Was the pacemaker an accidental invention? Gosh, I feel like a lot of stuff with electricity, you probably are accidentally going out, out yours. And I have a great idea now. Like Doc Brown. Oh, no, he had his head on a toilet.

I think somebody dropped a something on a frog and it made the frog's heart go do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do- I don't think I actually do. I don't, pacemaker is one of those things that I know in the broadest strokes what it does. It like keeps your heart beating at the right pace. So it's like electrical shocks to the muscle. I'm gonna just do the opposite and say it was intentional. We were like, let's make sure we're doing it right. Yeah. Sure. It does seem like something that you'd wanna get right

and not do on accident. And yet, Sam, congrats. So in 1956, an engineer, his name was Wilson, and he was working on building a device that could record heartbeats. So he was trying to record the heartbeats, but as he was working on the circuit, he misread the color codings on his resistors

and installed the wrong one. And the result was a device that began to produce electrical pulses that resembled the activity of a normal heart. And he realized that had the potential to work as an implantable pacemaker in 1958. He worked with a surgeon named Dr. William Chardak to test that on a dog's heart.

And Great Batch, this is Wilson Great Batch, he would go on to patent that device and it would be first to be used in humans in 1960 on a 77 year old man. It would feel so good to accidentally invent something because it eliminates all of the anxiety of having to have an idea and having to like do anything. You're just like, here I go, I've done it.

And with the last name, like great batch, really in the annals of history, is that that word? Just like, oh, whoops, I messed up, but you know, destined for greatness, destined for great batches. Yeah, nominative determination or whatever, yeah. Yeah, well, good work, everybody. Next we have the snow globe. Was the snow globe an accidental invention?

I feel like I've heard some kind of beautiful story behind why snow globes exist, or interesting, at least. I wait. I don't know. Yes, it's also accidental. I think somebody fucked up somewhere along the way. That's the thing. Snow globe feels like someone fucked up. It feels like someone was like, I want to create a normal globe. And then you coated it with paint badly. And then you shook it and we're like, it's like snow. Yeah, it's like cheese or felt or something where it's like somebody obviously just like left something in a bucket of piss for too long. Somebody obviously just like left something in a bucket of piss for too long. And then they're like, ah-ha.

I just flipped it upside down and went, I was like, snow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So we got two more winners. So the first snow globe patent was issued to a Viennese tradesman named Arad Pursey, whose job was to repair surgical instruments.

And the globe that he was making was not intended to be a delightful object of whimsy. It was intended. He was trying to improve on the electric light bulb to improve the lighting in hospital operating rooms. To do that, he needed a magnifying glass. So he decided to turn to a tool that shoemakers had used, a glass globe filled with water. And he set up near an Edison light bulb and he added reflective materials to the liquid so that that would increase the illumination. But he also included semolina, which is a white powder that

was used as baby food at the time. And that slowly descended, it may be still is, I don't know. And that would slowly descend into the bottom of the globe. So he also happened to make models of a church in Vienna for a friend who sold souvenirs. One day he decided to combine those two things. Why? This is truly anything. Simeon put some food in a bowl, as you mentioned. Totally an invention. So he just he shoved a little model church inside of it.

And it was like, oh, this is a nice object. That doesn't sound accidental, though. That sounds like he had something else. And then he was like, it's true. So it's really this would look great if it had a little church. That's a you know, it's a good point. I think one of the things that you know about inventing and doing stuff is that like making you make something weird and you're like, what if I like slammed all the other

things I've ever known about the world into this new thing? Yeah. And it did. But it is very weird to be like, it looks like it's snowing in there. I think that's natural as can be. I don't think it was an accident. I reject. All right. Well, you get the point anyway. Okay, thank you. Round number three,

was the stethoscope an accidental invention? These are only gonna be interesting if they all were accidental, don't you think? Maybe, maybe not. Ah, this one to me seems like you can hear it through somebody's chest, so it like makes sense that you would put your brain on the path of like, I could amplify this somehow.

So I suppose put a cup like put a cup on the wall. Then you're like, put a cup on your chest. Is that what a stethoscope is basically? It's a little bit. Yeah. OK. It's a little more complicated than that. But basically, I think it was an accident because I am standing by. They wouldn't be interesting unless they were accidents. I think this was intentional. This might be apocryphal the story that I have in my brain about a stethoscope is that it was a

time when doctors were mostly men and they needed to detect heartbeats and they didn't want to get near they didn't want to The boobs yeah the boob area. And so they were like, let's do something to get our ear a little bit farther away, a societally respectable distance away. It's a modesty device? Well, it was, yeah. And then now. This is correct. Okay, and so I think it's intentional.

And it was like, no, I shall not put my ear to that boob. Yes, it was. It was as Deboki has written. It was the product of embarrassment. Oh, no accident. Just it was a little it was like, like they're just used to putting their ears right on the chest of a guy, but they could not put their ear right on the chest of a woman. They were like that. Nobody's going to be happy about that situation, which I think that's

that's like a legitimate thing to create an invention for. It would be weird if your doctor had his head just pressed right up against you. No, yeah, yeah, for sure. Especially if if like if there was like a lot of sort of cultural norms around boobs that are, you know, make me feel weird about that very thing. You could smell their hair though if their head was that close to your like, right? Yeah, that'd be kind of nice though. Just like sniff a doctor sometimes. Yeah. And they're like, now take a deep breath and you're like, oh, doctor.

That sounds like the beginning of a romcom to like take a deep breath and your heart beats a little faster. And they're like, ma'am, sir, your heart is fluttering. You're quite. I was not thinking a romcom personally, but OK. There's other films that might fit well for that. It's a dirty book. So this was a person named Rie, theophile Hyacinth Linneck.

Yeah, except all of that was in French because he's a French doctor. And so he created this thing, but then it turned out that you could actually hear better through the stethoscope than you could with your ear. And yeah, he just rolled up a sheet of paper very tightly and held it over the chest so that he could hear the heart beating on the other end. So that was like the first step.

It was just like a long cup, basically. So just a cup at the door, but extra long. But then continued to reform it from there. He spent three years testing out different materials and designs and ended up with a hollow wooden tube that would become the first stethoscope. And he never had to come in contact with a boob again. Happy ending for all.

All right, so that means Sam has two, Sari has two. We're going in as a draw. Next up, we're going to take another short break and then it'll be time for our second game. We're back, everybody. Because we were going to have a guest, we're not doing a fact off. When we have guests, we format the show differently. But that means that it's all going to be weird and wild

because Sari is going to have our second game for us. It's just like my special day where I don't have to do anything. I feel like you're going to win, Sam. Show up, answer six questions, and if I don't win, I'm just really stupid. I have all the advantages in the world. You start out, yes, leading, and also, if Sari ties with you, it means

you really messed up this game. Well, she already tied with me in the first game. Yeah, that's right, I see what you're saying. Yeah, I mean, come on. This is actually secretly Sam's second dream episode, which is that he wins. I win. I win. It was a misconception that I didn't win the first two years of this show.

I know. You're winning this season too, according to my records. Okay. So this is the scientific definition. The rules of this game are very simple. I'm gonna give you the name of an invention. Then you're going to explain what that invention did or what problem it was trying to solve through the powers of deduction or guessing. All right, all right, all right, all right.

Whoever gets closer by my supreme all-knowing judgment will win that round and get a bat meringue since we're not doing handbooks. a bat meringue, like a pie. Do you mean a batarang, Sarah? No. Do you mean a boomerang, like a bat boomerang, like a bat boomerang? Yeah, a bat. They have batteries. They don't have bat meringues, but they probably do. This is what I get.

Can we make a little silly joke. You're the freaking Joker. Yeah. So a Batarang is a real thing that already exists. So yeah, I've seen these. I've seen these. Batman's got Batarangs. These look very dangerous, I'll say.

He's got a lot of them. He's throwing them all over the place in the movies. To throw one of those things, you need a very special glove. But I guess he has those. He's got, oh, let me tell you, the most special glove of all. Is that a bat glove? Yeah, a glove. A glove. It's called a glove.

OK, OK. Round one is the pigeon vest. OK, that's all we get. That's all you get. You get the name. I feel like the name gets has a lot of lot of it's a loaded term. Yeah, I know. There's a lot of, it's a loaded term. Yeah. A pigeon vest. There's a lot of information in there. A pigeon vest is a, so I know one thing about,

I know about pigeons is that they produce crop milk. And so a pigeon vest is a way for a man to breastfeed. Wow. Dang, I feel like that's just out of the box it up that will apply to many things that could be more true than what I'm gonna say is that when you're taking care of pigeons, you got a big vest. It may be if you're a carrier pigeoning guy

and you're like, go, go, you got a vest. It's like a bandolier like the guy from Blues Traveler has with all of the harmonicas in it, except it has the pigeons, pigeon, go, pigeon, for speed, pigeon, bandolier. Just like pigeons pigeon go pigeon for speed pigeons. Yeah, just all just like it's a vest full of pigeons. Yep. I would say of those two, Sam is surprisingly close. So it is a pigeon vest is a vest that swaddled carrier pigeons

and allowed paratroopers to attach them to their equipment. As they jumped out of planes, parachuted down and then could release the carrier pigeon from their protective wrapping. You had to jump out of a plane to release a carrier pigeon? So this was during World War II where carrier pigeons were a main method of communication, carrying messages or blood samples or tiny cameras or all kinds of things. But you couldn't release carrier pigeons from the altitude and speed of a plane in the air. So the paratroopers would like strap in their pigeons in their

little protective pigeon vest shaped to the body of the pigeon leaving their head and neck and tail and feet exposed. And then jump out, land safely, and then be like, okay, pigeon, go. Oh, they wouldn't release it in while falling? Not while falling. It's just like protection for the pigeon. They could've. Once you're like parachuting,

I bet you could let it out, and that would be, I know that that's not what they did, but still, I feel like they should have, just to be amazing. It's like having a cell phone that only works once and in one direction. Yes. Yeah. And these pigeon vests were designed and manufactured,

going back to boobs, by the bra company, MadeInform. Oh, wow. I mean, a little bit, I had a little something. Yeah. Yeah. A little something. Maybe we each get half a point. No, a little bit. I had a little something. Yeah. Yeah. A little something. Maybe we each get half a point. No, no. Okay.

It's the whole purpose. The whole purpose of it is to hold a pigeon. Yeah, okay. Okay. Sam's got one. Round two is the Bat Bomb. Hey. I know a guy who'd be interested in that.

I know. I know. I know. I know. Is it Sam Batman, a franchisee of Batman industry? Is it just you? I think, I feel like, Sari, in the times that we've done tangents together, there have been many times where I've said, please, Sari, please, please give me an idea for a fact. And I feel like you have sent me a fact that is a bomb that makes bats come to where you are and go crazy.

And I think that's what this is. It's a bat. Oh, it's like a bat attractor. And they say, hey, get over here, bats, come fuck some stuff up. Well, I think it's the exact opposite of that. I think it's a device that is used to get bats away from you.

A bat detractor. You set the bat bomb, you blow it up, and the bats are like, I will never go back there again. Those people are crazy. Well, unfortunately, I might've tipped my hand. Sam is in fact closer, but it doesn't attract bats. You are delivering bats with the bomb. There's bats inside of it.

Yeah. So it is a- Is this a weapon that we used in war? Oh my God. A theoretical weapon used in a world war two? Not used though. Nuts at times. Not used.

This is- Tested, but not used. Oh God. So it is a container filled with bats. So that's the outer bomb. And then each of the bats has strapped to them a tiny incendiary bomb. No!

Oh! So then you would drop the bats, which would then scatter theoretically, and then the bats would fly into structures, and then you'd detonate. And they would die. And the bats would die. Yeah, I think probably the bats would fly into structures and then you detonate and they would die And the bats would die. Yeah, I think probably the bats would die Batman wouldn't like this invention at all Does Batman like bats? He was terrified of bats. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

Oh well in that one movie he gets scared of him once, but no, he just sees a bat and he's like, those guys are pretty freaky. I'll dress like that. That's basically the long and short of it. Yeah. Okay. I mean, look, you know, one thing I like about a World War II scientist is they definitely don't care about the lives of animals.

Nope. Yeah. And the thing is the person who dreamed this up was not a scientist. It was a dentist, a dental surgeon named Dr. Little Adams, who was vacationing in New Mexico. First name was Little Little Lytle. OK, OK. And he was vacationing in New Mexico.

And he saw all the Mexican free tailed bats in Carlsbad Caverns and was like. And he thought, what is the fuck. He was like, I could blow that cave up. I could catch so many bats on fire. Yeah. What the fuck? He was like, you know what would be good in this war? Bats.

What could be more devastating than bats? How was the bat bomb held together? How did they get all the bats together in one little place? So in the tests, they tested them starting in around like 1942, 1943, and it was the army entrusted with this at first. And so there is one person who is in charge of the big bat container and one person who is in charge of the small incendiary bombs. And the big bat container-

Just a little cherry bomb in a bat. Bats cannot carry much. They're very small. They're very small, but these are, yeah, also, these were 17 grams, or about like three quarters of weight. That's like way more than a bat weighs. I think the bats are strong. Well, obviously.

These bats are strong, yeah. But the bigger container, it looked kind of like a normal bomb, like sheet metal with a tapered nose and fins. But then inside there was heating and cooling controls and cardboard trays. So they would refrigerate the bats to force them into hibernation and then kind of like stack them in with the other things attached to them. And the big problem in all these trials, like throughout the year of 1943 was that many of the bats would not recover from hibernation fast enough.

Once you loaded them on the cardboard trays, had them in a cooled environment, and then you released them all, they wouldn't wake up and start flying and flittering around. So kind of gruesome in the grand scheme of things, but they made several trying to do it. They made it and they tested them and bats died.

Yeah, more than 6,000 bats were used in army experiments and then the army punted it to the Navy. Used. And then the Navy punted it to them. Used is a word. The bats some might say were useful as an invention. Yeah, so then they punted it to the Marine Corps and then someone eventually was like,

we gotta cancel this, this is not working. I think- Yeah, I don't feel like you'd do very much damage. Well, I think the damage that they did do was some bats escaped with live incendiary bombs. Bats also seems likely. And set fire to a hanger nearby and a general's car and they were like

So they really goofed up and they only damaged their own property Which they probably deserved after harming so many Mexican free-tailed bats Take that general. I would love to be in that pitch meeting where the dentist was like, guys, you gotta see this, pull down this project. Who did that dentist know? Lots of dentists have dumb ideas, but very few of them end up accidentally blowing up a General's car.

I think he knew Eisenhower. I think he was like, He was Eisenhower's dentist. Yeah. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. He was an acquaintance of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. OK, different. He's got you down on the chair and he's like, and then you put all the bats in a bomb

and you strap fire to me like, huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? You're going to give me a meeting. OK, round three chicken eyeglasses. Chicken eyeglasses are a device that are they are eyeglasses that are put on pigeon. Nope, probably chickens. I think it's more likely they're put on chickens and they are there to test how animals respond to having their perception changed somehow. I know we're always doing tests on chickens and so I think that there's like a it's like a it's a device used to test how

animals interact with their world through sight. I think it's to help them see their eggs. Says, make sure they know what an egg is. Pfft. Ha ha ha. Easier objects to see, I feel like, but okay. Oh, wow. I'm gonna give that to Hank,

because it is sort of a vision experiment. Okay. So these are glasses that get clipped to a chicken's face. So you're both right on that. But they're either normal or rose tinted to make their vision worse, so that egg laying chickens, egg laying hens, don't attack each other so much.

Oh, wow. So it's like, chickens can be very aggressive to one another. So this is useful. Yeah. Especially if they're in tight quarters, especially if there are bright lights and whatnot. And so starting around the early 1900s, people were like,

what if we just put glasses on a chicken or blinders on a chicken? Feels like it'd be easier, like, if we're just being cruel to just put blinders on them. Yeah, just like blindfold completely. Then they won't be able to see their eggs. Gotta be able to see the eggs. That's a vital part.

That's probably for the best because we're just going to take them away. Oh, you're right. Yeah, so chickens only attack like what's directly in front of their faces usually and if there is already damage to another chicken like blood spatters or things like that, that tends to rile them up.

And so by having rose colored glasses, by having these glasses, theoretically, the chicken is the be calmer. Everything looks like blood. And so they just kill everything. Chicken man. And when they can't see as well, they become a little more mellow. But understandably, these like eyeglasses went out of fashion because it's just like create better environments

for your chickens. And then maybe they'll stop attacking each other as much. I don't know that that's what we did, but okay. Yeah, there are other ways I feel like you can either separate them all, restrict them all as their laying eggs, or you can like create better environments so they don't cannibalize each other.

Well, I like eating chicken, so I can't really blame them. Yeah. I have a bonus question that we can do, or we can skip it for time. Lay it on me, you know? We only have so many episodes left, we gotta take full advantage. Okay, so the bonus round is almost impossible to guess

just from the name, which is experiment. Oh. Oh. The invention is just called experiment? Yes, and I have a hint. Okay, that's good. And it is a patent, a US patent in the category boats to ascend rivers.

And it's called experiment. The technology itself is not like I couldn't find the patent itself, but like the demonstration, like the building of the thing was. A boat named experiment, it was a experiment. OK. All right. Experiment was a boat that was powered by an airplane. So an airplane just dragged it up the river. That's just get in the airplane at this point.

Don't you? I think I think experiment is the first propeller powered boat of any kind. Oh, oh, his eyebrows went up. Oh, this is hard. I want to give half a point to both of you because you're both like, it was not an airplane involved. There's not an airplane involved, but you got the weirdness and Hank and Sam got the propeller. So I'll give it to Sam.

Because technically the patent was for like a mechanical screw propeller under the water's surface as opposed to a paddle wheel, like in a paddle wheel boat. But what was important about this patent is like, it's gotta come with all the components of the inventions is that this boat was powered by horses. Oh. Oh. So.

That's a little bit like a plane. Yeah, a little, you know, horsepower, literally. And I, in researching this, I found that there were actually horsepower boats invented in Europe before this. So this wasn't the first example of a horsepower boat. But in February, 1801, someone patented this idea of a screw propeller under the water

that was rotated by the action of horses walking around in a circle on a wheel. And just like, as the horses walked around, the propeller whirled in the water. Yeah, they figured out some gear stuff. Do you think did the propeller was the propeller just like really big or was it fast? I think it was big rather than fast. It was eight horses on a treadmill.

Oh, brother. That propelled this boat. And this this boat appears to have made one voyage before it got stuck in the mud and then got reclaimed by the inventor's bank because he owed them a lot of money. Oh, shoot. What are we going to do with this? Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's got horses, at least. Yeah. Picture myself putting together a contraption like this, because everybody makes a contraption every now and then, you know, you're like, I think I can make this work. And then like Rachel coming out and looking at my big boat with my horses on it and my little propeller and just being like shaking her head like no no what have you done? I'm feeling such deep shame. She wouldn't feel a little bit proud that you came up with an underwater propeller instead of above water propeller? Absolutely not. She'd say you've gone too far afield. The horses is one step too far.

Be like, Rachel, I need to buy some horses. You got to trust me. And then as the banks come in to collect it, she'll just be there arms crossed. Yeah, I told you. Wow. That means that I end the episode with one point. Sam has five. Oh, yeah.ari has two. Oh yeah, look at that.

Big, big brain, huh? And now, congratulations Sam, on your win. Thank you. Again, dream episode. Well earned. And now it is time to ask the science couch where we got a listener question for our couch of finely honed scientific minds.

Adam Foote on Patreon asked, what is the most, quote, ahead of its time, end quote, invention? In my mind, this is something that was invented and was pretty useless for a long time until technology or society caught up with it. But feel free to interpret it however you want. The first thing that popped into my head, it was the satellite, which I feel like was patented exactly the number number like almost exactly the number of years between when it was patented. And when the patent expired was when the first

satellites actually started being useful and used. I know that's like a thing that's popping out in my head as a fact that I heard one time. But I don't know if that's actually true. I feel like you feel like Wi Fi got invented like a bazillion years ago. But I'm not even sure if that that could be apocryphal So maybe Wi-Fi and now I'm like googling Wi-Fi. I don't know what Hedy Lamar didn't like anything That's what I was thinking of. Yeah, she helped whatever she was part of yeah with Wi-Fi GPS Bluetooth things like that

Yeah, I feel like I don't know anything about satellites either, but I feel like those are fair. I was thinking initially before doing any research, like a toilet or things like that, like thinking of an invention that was useful and has been relatively unchanged for a really long time. Like the idea of plumbing is we just did it and then there isn't like new, there are some new toilets, but there aren't like radically new toilets. The basic idea is the same of the toilet

for the most part. Yeah, but then when I was starting to like research ahead of its time, I feel like there are two, one is like a special interest of mine and one is objectively maybe the thing. My coolest thing that I have dug into is undersea cables. So I think in an episode a couple, however many episodes ago, I was like, I want to just be a maintainer of undersea cables of the internet.

And we laid fiber optic cables in the 1980s. So early internet laying these fiber optic cables that crisscrossed the transit Atlantic for telephone and other telecommunications. But we laid the first communications cables in the 1850s for telegraphs, which is weird to me. The fact that we had boats just laying these cables so that we could send dots and dashes to each other across the Atlantic Ocean way faster than a boat message.

Like that to me feels unfathomable that we were like, let's just create a gigantic thing and stick it down in the deep. Just a cable, just a wire from one side of the Atlantic to the other. Now I will remind everyone the Atlantic isn't that big. It's big. It's very big. But it but I just I some at some point in the last five years, I realized that the

Pacific is just a monster. And the Atlantic is like a baby dinky ocean. How do we how much does that weigh that cable? Oh my god. And they had to like splice them together over and over again. Oh, they did. I didn't know that. It wasn't just one continuous thing. Yeah, I don't know. It was 2242 nautical miles-ish, which I have no concept for. But it must have been so heavy. You had it in a huge coil, dropped it down, hooked it up, dropped it down, hooked it up. Wow. And like, just that concept that we could talk to each other so quickly across the ocean. But then the other thing is the that I have fallen on a YouTube rabbit hole, how you just kind of watch video after video, the Antikythera mechanism.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I feel like is like the quintessential, it was like an ancient Greek mechanism. We've seen it now, it's like really rusted in the museum somewhere. And it used to be able, we think it was used to predict like astronomical positions and eclipses and a bunch of stuff to do with time. It was like a timekeeping device and seems way, way more advanced as up to the level of like an

analog computer. And there is a YouTuber, his channel is ClickSpring and he creates videos about like watchmaking and such. And he developed an interest in the Antikythera mechanism and is now trying to like recreate it from scratch and has contributed to research papers about how it works because in trying to think through how these pieces would have come together he's discovered things about yeah or learned things about this this like invention. That's so cool. Which is, I love people doing their niche little things. And so I feel like that as an objective thing of like, oh, that is something that we could see in modern times.

We have physical proof that it existed thousands of years ago, question mark, second century BC. And we can recreate it and know that it works and would work to a degree that would be useful today as a timekeeping mechanism. It's like a very cool thing. I did, I looked up mine and this is what is called in the business a persistent myth.

My satellite fact is not a thing. Arthur C. Clarke wrote a speculative paper about geostationary orbits and how that was a thing that was possible, but that is not a thing that he could patent or tried to patent. So some stuff, wires got crossed, et cetera. And then we eventually used geostationary orbits. So it was more like Arthur C. Clarke was like, this is possible. And eventually we were like, you're right. So my alternate is electric cars,

which we had in the beginning. And then that was just like way ahead of its time. And now it's like, we got it. We figured it out everybody. But there is some of this stuff that's like, we did it pretty good the first time. And then a bunch of people were like, we can do it better.

You know, like I feel like I keep thinking of like like almost like the internet is kind of like we did like it used to be better and now we made it bad. It's like reverse like reverse good good. But this is a really interesting question. I feel like there could be like a whole book about like this. This microchip got invented 200 years ago and then somebody was like, man, I need the perfect microchip and then they're like, yeah, here it is. Yeah, there's stuff like that in math too,

where like they come up with ideas, like just weird math thoughts and they're just not useful. They're not useful, not known to be useful, but then somebody stumbles across and was like, you know, that would solve a problem I have. Yeah, this happens to me all the time where I like look under my sofa and I see like a piece of wood.

And then like two years later, I'm like, God, I wish I had this perfect piece of wood. I know it's under my sofa. You know what I'm talking about? Is that right? It happens to you all the time? I feel like I save a lot of pieces of wood and it never happens to me.

Or like at work, I like work on something and I'm like, this is a waste of time. And then like two years later, it'll be like, I need this exact thing, amazing. I've got a bunch of those scripts that are sort of like waiting for me to care again. Yeah. Or for other people to care again about a topic.

And now for our listeners on Patreon, we're gonna answer a bonus Science Couch question. Sam, what do we got? Mix Brock on Patreon asked asked when someone patents an invention Do they have to prove it can be made? Does it have to function in any capacity? If you want to hear the answer to that question in which we talked a surprising amount about Batman as well as enjoy our Episodes ad free head on over to patreon that's patreon.com slash size show tangents at our $8 a month tier

You can get our episodes ad free and all the extended stand against as we answer a bonus science catch question every episode The tangents patreon and all of its perks are staying up through the end of the show and then we'll be sharing Updates on where to find patreon content after the show ends So keep an eye on our socials and the patreon itself for those updates But you won't be charged after we stop making tangents. Our patrons, you're the best. We're so grateful for your support of the show. If you wanna ask the science cat your questions,

you can follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents, or check out our YouTube community tab where we'll send out topics for upcoming episodes every week, or you can join the SciShow Tangents Patreon, of course. Thank you to at Emma Warner on Twitter, at Luis Varela, I4J on YouTube, and everybody else who asked us your questions

for this episode. If you like this show and you wanna help us out, it's really easy to do that. First, go to patreon.com slash SciShow Tangents, become a patron. Also shout out to patron, Les Aker, for their support. Second, you can leave us a review wherever you listen. And finally, if you wanna show your love

for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Tell people about us. Tell people about us. I forgot I'm literally reading a Wikipedia about Batman right now. Sam's already like don't tell people about us. I'm moving on to my new career. Batman, ghost writer. Batman man. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Jess Stempert. Our associate producer is Eve Schmidt.

Our editor is Seth Glicksman. Our social media organizer is Julia Buzz-Bazio. Our editorial assistant is Debuki Chakravarti. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our executive producers are Nicole Sweeney and me, Hank Green. And we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you, and remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. The American businessman John Henry Kellogg was obsessed with health and building a wellness

empire. And while he had a couple good ideas, including Kellogg's cornflakes and caring about the gut microbiome, he had many, many more awful ones, like decades of promoting eugenics and treatments like electrified baths. One of his more benign inventions was a vibrating dining chair that would supposedly stimulate your bowels to help you poop, in addition to curing headaches and back pain. Safe to say, it probably didn't do any of that. I disagree. That would definitely help you poop. Yeah, I'm losing it up I think the second I sat in the vibrating chair. I'll be like