Latest / Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities / About Time

Transcript

About Time · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grim & Mild.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. For a better part
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: of the last century, if you were to look at
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: a map of the Coral Sea, you would notice, just
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: there midway between the coast of Australia and the French
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: territory of New Caledonia, a small island. Roughly the size
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: of Manhattan, the island was on nautical charts, Google Earth,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: in nearly any atlas, too. Long ago, it was named
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Sandy Island, and that name stuck. But in all the
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: recent years, it remained on the map no one ever visited.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Not a human set foot on its beaches, for that matter,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: and neither did any creature. No birds, no rats, no crabs.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: None could, in fact. Because Sandy Island, well, it never existed.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Labeled Ile de Sable on French charts, its whereabouts were
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: first recorded as early as the 19th century, and even
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: after it was faithfully reproduced on maps, databases, charts for
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: the next hundred years or so. You see, cartographers of
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: the era would gather data not only from maps that
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: came before, but also from sailors and explorers. it was
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: impossible to produce a perfect map. And when one mistake
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: was made and copied enough times, well, it became something
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: of an inheritance to subsequent mapmakers. And over generations, that
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: small error became gospel. It's not as if nobody ever
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: noticed its absence, or that it seemed to exist everywhere
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: but in reality. In fact, in 1974, the French Naval
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: and Oceanographic Service removed the island from its own charts.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: But that change did not make its way onto other maps.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: In April of 2000, a group of amateur radio enthusiasts
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: were on a trip called D-Expedition. This is a sort
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: of trip to distant locales to set up shortwave radios
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: where there aren't any. And on this particular trip, travelers
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: noted that the island had appeared on some maps, but
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: not others. And, spoiler alert, they did not set up
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: a radio there. Even then, the island persisted on many maps,
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: including those of Google, the National Geographic Society, even the CIA.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: And then, in November of 2012, a team of scientists
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: from the University of Sydney were sailing the Coral Sea,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: conducting research on plate tectonics, when their instruments alerted them
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: that there was land ahead. But in the spot where
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: the charts placed a 15-mile-long sandy beach, they found nothing
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: but deep blue water. Aboard the Southern Surveyor, this team
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: measured depths of roughly 1,400 meters where the island should
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: have been. When they returned home and told the tale,
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: the media jumped on the story. and cartographers everywhere rushed
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: to correct the mistake. Within days, the British Oceanographic Data
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Center issued a rare statement that they were correcting their maps,
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: and Google, NatGeo, and others removed the phantom item from theirs.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: It quickly became subject to fringe conspiracy theories, too.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: But there it was. Sandy Island had officially been undiscovered.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: So how did this island that didn't exist ever get
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: onto maps at all? And how did it manage to
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: stay on so many of them long after the technology
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: to easily disprove it existed? Well, map historians believe they've
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: traced it back to an admiralty chart from 1908, which
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: is currently housed at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, which
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: exists to honor soldiers from New Zealand who died during
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: the First World War. And this single map, they believe,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: could have begun the long chain of inaccuracies. Sandy Island
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: existed for over a century on the map. It says
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: less about the fallibility of old sailors than it does
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: about the perils of institutional trust. The island was never
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: a lie. It was an honest mistake made by a
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: single navigator, followed by a chain of unquestioned citations and reprintings. Nobody,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: it seems, thought to double-check the original source. And in
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: the end, it took a modern research vessel sailing deliberately
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: to those coordinates to finally set right a century-old mistake.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: All they had to do was simply go and see
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: it for themselves. Time may seem like one of life's
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: only constants. A ticking clock is steady, unchangeable, and it
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: marches on at predictable intervals no matter where you are
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: in the world. But in the 1800s, Well, time moved differently.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: In July of 1876, a Canadian engineer named Sanford Fleming
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: was traveling through Ireland. He had consulted a travel guide
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: and was planning to take a train from the town
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: of Bundaran to Londonderry at 5.35pm. He arrived at the
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: station 20 minutes early, with plenty of time to catch
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: his train, but the platform was completely empty. Sanford sat
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: down and waited, but the train never arrived. He eventually
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: went up to the ticket booth, showed the timetable in
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: his travel guide to the clerk, and asked why the
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: 535 train had never arrived. The ticket clerk squinted at
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the guide and compared it with the timetable hanging on
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: the wall. He looked up at Sanford and apologized. There
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: was a misprint. The train had actually left at 535 a.m.,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: not p.m. Sanford went back to the bench and sat down, frustrated.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: He would have to stay there overnight until the next
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: train arrived 12 hours later, and all of his plans
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: for the next day would be thrown off, all because
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: of a tiny typographical error. He realized how little sense
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: it made to divide the day into two sets of
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: 12 hours in the first place. It would clear up
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: so much confusion if they simply numbered the hours from
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: 1 to 24, instead of bothering with a.m. and p.m.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: And the more Sanford thought about the concept of time,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: he realized this was just the tip of the problem.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: In his era, there was no standardized time at all.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Each town made its own decision about what time it
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: would be at any given moment of the day based
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: on their own calculations of the local solar time. It
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: was 5.35 there in Bundaren, but it could be 6
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: or 6.30 in the next town over. Sanford was constantly
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: having to check the local clocks and reset his watch
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: while he was traveling. and it was no small miracle
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: he ever made it to the train station on time
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: at all. There had to be a better system. Stanford
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: thought about it all night, until he came up with
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: his solution. He proposed creating a standardized 24-hour clock, dividing
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: the entirety of the globe into 24 sections based on longitude,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: with all the clocks in each section set exactly one
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: hour apart. This way, travelers wouldn't have to keep multiple
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: watches on them to remember what time it was in
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: any given city. They'd only have to consult a time
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: zone map, add or subtract a few hours from their
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: own time to get their current time. Sanford spent the
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: next few years traveling to international conferences and presenting his proposal.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Many people had already been thinking about ways to standardize
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: time internationally, but getting everyone on the planet to agree
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: to one plan was no easy task. Eventually, in 1883,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: the U.S. and Canada agreed to establish standardized time zones
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: for the North American railways. And once other countries saw
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: how much it improved railway operations, they jumped on board
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: as well. The very next year, at a conference in Washington, D.C.,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Sanford convinced 25 different countries to adopt standardized time zones.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: And this led to the creation of Universal Time, the
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: system that we still use all over the globe today.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: One missed train led to a fundamental change in the
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: way humanity measured time. I hope you enjoyed today's guided
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: by me, Aaron Manke, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: and written by the Grim & Mild team, and produced
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: people who make it over at grimandmild.com slash curiosities. You'll
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: also find a link to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: hardcover book, available in bookstores and online, as well as
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: ebook and audiobook. And if you're looking for an ad-free option,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: consider joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: without the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: and sign up over at patreon.com slash grimandmild. And until
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: next time... Stay curious.