Latest / Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities / Float On

Transcript

Float On · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. It might be a
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: blur in the sky or a strange round craft zooming
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: by that captures the attentions of people on the ground.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: The authorities try to pass them off as weather balloons
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: and military training exercises, but not Everyone can be dissuaded
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: so easily. They know what they've seen. The problem is
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: while everyone is looking up, they miss what's going on
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: down below them. You see not all unidentified objects. Why.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: In eighteen oh three, Japanese fishermen off the coast of
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Hitachi Province notice something floating adrift in the ocean. It
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: was a ship of some kind, though it didn't resemble
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: any ship they'd ever seen before. It was about eleven
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: feet tall and eighteen feet wide. It resembled a giant
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: wooden pot more than a boat. It was also fitted
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: with rectangular crystal windows around its rosewood top half. The
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: bottom half was coated in copper plates. The fisherman hooked
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: it and brought it to shore, with them. Now that
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: they could get close enough, they were able to peek inside.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Strange writing had been scribbled on the inner walls of
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: the vessel. There were also bedsheets, some meat, a bit
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: of cake, and a bottle of water. And there was
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: also a woman. She was around twenty years old, they said,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: pale and small, just under five feet tall, with long
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: red hair. Within her hair, she had weaved streaks of
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: white fur, and she wore long, flowing clothes, unlike anything
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: the fisherman had ever seen before. The woman looked up
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: at them through the window and spoke, but her language
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: was foreign to them, and she could not understand them either.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: She emerged from the vessel clutching a box roughly twenty
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: four inches in size. No one else was allowed near
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: the box, and she would not open it under any circumstances.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Villagers had their theories about where the girl had come from,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: of course, and what she was carting around in that box.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: One possibility was that she was a queen from a
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: far away land who had been unfaithful to her husband.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Her lover had been executed for his misdeeds. The young
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: woman was exiled from her country, set afloat in the
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: wooden vessel with enough food to last for a few days.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Whatever happened to her afterward would be left to fate
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: and the box well. One reason why she might not
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: have wanted anyone to touch it is that because it
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: held the head of her lover. Though the box could
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: also have contained any number of untold objects, like a
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: that the virus, or a powerful weapon. No one knew
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: for sure, and no one in the village could communicate
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: with a girl to find out the truth. All of
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: these unknowns put the villagers on edge, so to spare
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: them of a potential threat, they placed her back in
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: her round vessel, sealed her inside, and then set her
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: adrift again on the ocean. Today, there are three prominent
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: versions of this legend. These stories have been passed down
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: for hundreds of years, but each one varies only slightly
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: from the other. Sometimes place names are different, or certain
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: descriptions are changed, but each iteration always has the same
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: basic characteristics. A young girl, far from her homeland is
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: found in possession of a box that no one is
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: meant to open. Scholars have attempted to explain the legend
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: as a simple folk tale meant to highlight a time
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: when Japan was isolated from the rest of the world.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: There are even ancient stories that could have served as
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: the basis for this tale. However, the lack of variation
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: among the three versions tells us a different story of
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: an encounter with a being from another world. Given the
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: roundness of the girl's vessel, the strange text written on
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: its walls, and her unknown language, some people believe that
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: she was a visitor not from another country, but from
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: another planet, and a craft she i'ved in was one
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: of the first recorded cases of a UFO and unidentified
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: floating object. They say that necessity is the mother of invention.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Entrepreneurs and inventors come up with all manner of devices
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: to make our lives easier. The incandescent light bulb brought
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: a safe form of light into every home. The steam
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: engine revolutionized multiple industries, including travel and textiles. Even something
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: as ubiquitous as paper was once considered a seismic change
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: in how people communicated. We remember people like Guttenberg and
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: his printing press, or Marconi and his wireless radio, and
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: of course Thomas Edison's moving camera. But there's one person
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: who predates all of them, and he's kind of a
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: hero to inventors everywhere. Literally, his name was here on
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Hero for short, and he wore a variety of hats. Mathematician, engineer,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: and professor. He was also a student of the greats
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: that came before him, taking their teachings and using them
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: as a springboard for his own work. Hero's interests varied
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: as widely as his professions. He wrote extensively about topics
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: like physics and pneumatics, and was among the first to
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: discuss how animals and machines communicated with each other, known
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: today as the study of cybernetics. But above all else,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Hero like to experiment using simple technology. From his day,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: he would build complex machines to accomplish different tasks. For example,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: he developed a kind of steam engine called an aola pile,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: which stored water in an enclosure vented on two opposite sides.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: When the water was heated, steam would escape through the
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: vents and spin the enclosure like a rocket engine. This
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: knowledge led to another engine that used water heated to
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: pull ropes and open doors. If there was a way
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: to simplify daily life, Hero searched high and low for it.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: One of his devices was a large box with a
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: slot in the top, a silver coin could be inserted
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: and would land on a plate inside the box. The
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: weight of a coin on the plate tripped a lever
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: that would open a valve and allow holy water to
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: flow from a small spout inside. As the plate continued
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: to tilt, the coin would slide off and the plate
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: would rise up and turn off the lever, closing the valve.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: With his box, Hero had invented the first vending machine.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: There was also an organ which utilized a large wheel
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: of paddles that spun as they caught the wind. The
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: wheel would share in a pump that forced air through
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: the organs pipes to create music. Hero had been the
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: first person in history to harness the power of the wind.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: He brought his ingenuity to the theater, too, where he
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: incorporated advanced mechanics to create an automated puppet show. Sand
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: would flow from one central chamber through holes into different
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: weights that pulled levers and turned wheels attached to the
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: puppets on stage. They'd move and perform for the audience
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: for up to ten minut it's at a time. But
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Hero didn't stop there. His creations benefited the public in
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: ways beyond entertainment and vending machines. He developed a fire engine.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: It's attached pump used compressed air to shoot streams of water.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: There was also an endless cup of wine, a goblet
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: attached to a reservoir of wine that automatically refilled as
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: the person drank from it. And unlike inventors who patented
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: their creations to make money, Hero made all of the
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: instructions for building his inventions public. Over a dozen volumes
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: on topics ranging from pneumatics to mechanical engineering to automata
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: were published. The principles behind his inventions are still used
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: today in their modern counterparts. Jet engines, vending machines that
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: dispense candy, bars and soda, and big red fire trucks
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: can all trace their origins to this one man and
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: his amazing mind. Perhaps even more amazing, though, was that
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Hero didn't develop any of these things during the twenty century,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: or the nineteenth century, or even the eighteenth century. Hero
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: lived between ten a d and seventy a d. During
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: the period when Rome controlled Egypt. He also taught at
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: the Great Library of Alexandria, home to tens of thousands
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: of texts from cultures all over the world before fires
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: and war reduced it to rubble. Here On of Alexandria
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: was a man way ahead of his time, though he'd
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: laid the groundwork for devices that made our lives easier
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: and faster. Today, very few know his name, making him
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: truly an unsung hero. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,