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Big Fish · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production
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  Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world
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  Speaker 1: is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an
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  Speaker 1: open book, all of these amazing tales are right there
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  Speaker 1: on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to
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  Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Jacques Gusto once said, the sea,
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  Speaker 1: once it casts its spell, holds one in its net
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  Speaker 1: of wonder forever. And it's true. The sea is at
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  Speaker 1: once mysterious and graceful, like another planet below the waves.
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  Speaker 1: And although we don't know yet if life exists beyond
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  Speaker 1: the stars, there is a rich ecosystem of plants and
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  Speaker 1: animals waiting for us beneath the water surface. Or of course,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes the fish don't like to wait. Once in a while,
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  Speaker 1: they come up to see us for themselves, like what
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  Speaker 1: happened in the Baltic Sea in the mid four hundreds.
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  Speaker 1: According to the story, a particular fish had been captured
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  Speaker 1: and brought to the king of Poland, Sigismund, the first Sigismund,
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  Speaker 1: was fascinated by the creature, and he decided to keep it.
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  Speaker 1: The fish was described as being large larger than any
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  Speaker 1: fish anyone had ever seen before, with scales all over
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  Speaker 1: its mid section and flippers like a man's hands. It's
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  Speaker 1: pointed head resembled a miter or the head dress donned
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  Speaker 1: by bishops in the church, earning at the nickname the
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  Speaker 1: Bishop Fish. A wild animal, however, had no interest in
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  Speaker 1: living with the king. It longed to return to the
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  Speaker 1: open water where it belonged. No one quite knows how
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  Speaker 1: it happened, but a small group of Roman Catholic bishops
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  Speaker 1: managed to meet with the fish. Any records that existed
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  Speaker 1: regarding their interactions have been lost, or are maybe stored
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  Speaker 1: deep within the in archives. However, even without the official
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  Speaker 1: written account, one thing is clear. The Bishop fish did
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  Speaker 1: not want to be there. In fact, it said as
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  Speaker 1: much in a way only a fish could. It may
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  Speaker 1: have been how it flapped its flipper hands or splashed
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  Speaker 1: the men with water. Whatever it did, it inspired them
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  Speaker 1: to go to the king and plead for the creatures
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  Speaker 1: released back into the wild. Sigismund, though, was unsure. After all,
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  Speaker 1: how could a fish, even one as strange as the
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  Speaker 1: Bishop fish tell them it wanted to go home? But
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  Speaker 1: after some time he agreed to set it free, The
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  Speaker 1: bishops carried it to the sea and released it into
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  Speaker 1: the water. Now, most animals don't think their captors when
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  Speaker 1: they're released. They run or swim as fast as they
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  Speaker 1: can away from the perceived danger, but the Bishop fish
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  Speaker 1: didn't do that. Instead, it turned around and made the
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  Speaker 1: sign of the Cross to the men before it disappeared
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  Speaker 1: into the water. Almost a century later, another bishop fish
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  Speaker 1: was caught in the waters off the coast of Germany.
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  Speaker 1: It was offered food by the sailors who had captured
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  Speaker 1: at it, but it wouldn't eat. They kept it for
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  Speaker 1: three days, hoping to coax it into eating something. Sadly,
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  Speaker 1: its protests ended up costing it its life, and it
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  Speaker 1: died in captivity. It's captors then placed its body back
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  Speaker 1: in the sea where they had found it. Around the
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  Speaker 1: time as the second Bishop fish sighting, another bizarre fish
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  Speaker 1: was caught, this time in the Sound between Denmark and Sweden.
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  Speaker 1: The creature was depicted in a sixteenth century illustration as
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  Speaker 1: being half fish half man. One academic at the time,
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  Speaker 1: Guillonne rand Lay, described it as both a fish in
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  Speaker 1: a monk'st habits and a merman, giving it the name
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  Speaker 1: the Sea Monk or monk fish. Its face looked more
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  Speaker 1: human than that of the Bishop fish too. His observations
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  Speaker 1: were based on artist renderings of the creature that had
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  Speaker 1: made its way from the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the
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  Speaker 1: Fifth to France's Queen Marguerite of Navarre, who had in
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  Speaker 1: turn gifted it to Randelais. A gift from such a
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  Speaker 1: prominent member of the French royalty was to be taken
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  Speaker 1: as confirmation that the drawing was authentic, and although Ronda
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  Speaker 1: was incorrect about such details as where the sea monk
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  Speaker 1: had been captured, the story behind his sketch only added
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  Speaker 1: to its mythos. French naturalist Pierre Belan elaborated on the
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  Speaker 1: history of the sea monk with ancient tales of other creatures,
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  Speaker 1: such as sirens and Triton's. He wasn't so quick to
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  Speaker 1: dismiss Rondelay's opinions as wild speculation, although many others were.
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  Speaker 1: Since then, scientists and scholars have attempted to ground the
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  Speaker 1: sea monk in reality by making educated guesses as to
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  Speaker 1: the creature's true identity. One zoologist in the eighteen hundreds
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  Speaker 1: proposed the idea that it had really been a giant squid,
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  Speaker 1: and not some fish man hybrid. Today, marine biologists believe
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  Speaker 1: what Rondelay and the sailors had seen was actually an
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  Speaker 1: angel shark, also known as the monkfish. Whatever it was,
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  Speaker 1: it's clear that the sea continues to present us with
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  Speaker 1: more questions than answers, and it will always leave us
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  Speaker 1: feeling just a little curious. A new invention doesn't just
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  Speaker 1: appear out of nowhere. Years of research and development go
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  Speaker 1: into the creation of a brand new product. In his
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  Speaker 1: many attempts to find the perfect filament for his incandescent
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  Speaker 1: light bulb, Thomas Edison famously said, I have not failed.
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  Speaker 1: I've just found ten thousand ways that don't work. The
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  Speaker 1: inventors of the typewriter might have said the same thing.
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  Speaker 1: Today's modern computers can trace the roots all the way
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  Speaker 1: back to the mid sixteenth century, when an Italian printmaker
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  Speaker 1: named Francesco Rampazetto wanted an easier way to press letters
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  Speaker 1: into paper. Gutenberg's printing press was a massive machine that
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  Speaker 1: took time to set up and maintain. Rampazetto's invention would
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  Speaker 1: have simplified the process. Unfortunately, there is no evidence he
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  Speaker 1: ever built one. Over one years later, Henry Mill in
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  Speaker 1: England carried the baton a little closer to the finished line.
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  Speaker 1: He actually built his version of an automatic typing machine
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  Speaker 1: and was issued a patent for it. Over the coming decades,
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  Speaker 1: other inventors and engineers came up with their own designs
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  Speaker 1: on the typewriter. Augustino Fantoni built one in eighteen o
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  Speaker 1: two so his blind sister could be able to write,
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  Speaker 1: and William Austin Bert's eighty nine concept was so cumbersome
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  Speaker 1: and slow to use most people who tried it chose
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  Speaker 1: to write by hand instead. It wasn't until eighteen sixty
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  Speaker 1: eight when an early version of the typewriter as we
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  Speaker 1: know it today made its debut. Its creation was the
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  Speaker 1: work of Wisconsin residents Christopher Schulz, Frank Hall, Carlos Sklitten,
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  Speaker 1: and Samuel Soul. Schulz had come to Milwaukee to take
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  Speaker 1: a position as the editor of a local newspaper. His
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  Speaker 1: job was soon made harder by a strike at the
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  Speaker 1: printing press, so he started investigating a workaround. However, after
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  Speaker 1: one failed prototype of an automatic type setting machine, Eat
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  Speaker 1: pivoted to building a smaller, simpler device. Rather than making
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  Speaker 1: newspaper printing easier, Jolls focused on books well. One specific
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  Speaker 1: part of books, the page numbers. He wanted to make
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  Speaker 1: a machine that would stamp a number on anything made
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  Speaker 1: of paper, so he took his plans to Klein Stubor
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  Speaker 1: Machine Shop, where he and Samuel Soul began working on it.
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  Speaker 1: Once they had a working model, the men demonstrated it
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  Speaker 1: to Carlos Glidden, another inventor at the shop, who was
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  Speaker 1: in the midst of developing a mechanical plow. Glidden was
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  Speaker 1: intrigued by the numbering machine and its possibilities. He asked
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  Speaker 1: if it could do more than stamp numbers onto a page,
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  Speaker 1: could it also make letters. Scholes set to work along
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  Speaker 1: with Soul. Glidden provided them with a funding they needed,
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  Speaker 1: earning a spot on the project as a third partner.
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  Speaker 1: The men built the frame for their prototype out of wood.
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  Speaker 1: The letters and numbers were arranged in two rows, resembling
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  Speaker 1: a piano, with the first row of even numbers two
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  Speaker 1: through eight and the letters A through M made of ivory.
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  Speaker 1: The second row was made of ebony and included the
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  Speaker 1: odd numbers three through nine along with the letters and
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  Speaker 1: through Z. The numbers one and zero were left out
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  Speaker 1: as they would easily be replaced by the letters I
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  Speaker 1: and OH, respectively. The patents for shoals typewriting Machine, or
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  Speaker 1: typewriter as he called it, were issued in June and
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  Speaker 1: July of eight, and the device worked beautifully. Shoals, also
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  Speaker 1: the city's comptroller, used it to draft an official contract
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  Speaker 1: as part of his duties. It was the first document
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  Speaker 1: ever typed on a typewriter. His contemporaries were more mixed
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  Speaker 1: in their reviews, though. A Pennsylvania businessman named James Densmore
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  Speaker 1: bought a quarter of the patent site unseen after receiving
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  Speaker 1: a letter from Shoals that had been typed using the device.
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  Speaker 1: After finally testing one for himself, though Densmore told them
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  Speaker 1: that it was useless. If they wanted to sell it commercially,
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  Speaker 1: they had to make it better. Stenographer James Clappin also
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  Speaker 1: found flaws with the device. For one, it couldn't stand
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  Speaker 1: up to the intense punishment doled out by his furious fingers.
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  Speaker 1: He worked them so hard he destroyed several keys during
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  Speaker 1: his tests. The opinions of people like Densmore and Clappain
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  Speaker 1: were discouraged, but Shoals kept at it. In fact, their
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  Speaker 1: observations had shed light on another flaw of the original design,
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  Speaker 1: the key layout. While an alphabetical arrangement made sense at first,
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  Speaker 1: fast typists found that the keys would jam when common
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  Speaker 1: letter combinations were typed in rapid succession. So Shoals went
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  Speaker 1: back to the drawing board, trying all kinds of different
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  Speaker 1: letter pairings to see what worked best. In one layout,
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  Speaker 1: the numbers were moved to a new top row with
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  Speaker 1: the vowels directly beneath them. The remaining continents were split
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  Speaker 1: across two more rows below them. For five years, Shoals
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  Speaker 1: toiled over the arrangement of his letters. However, it was
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  Speaker 1: with the help of James Densmore's brother Amos, when he
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  Speaker 1: finally figured it out. Amos had done research into bigram frequency,
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  Speaker 1: or how often two letters appeared together in words. By
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  Speaker 1: the end of their collaboration, Shoals and Densmore had found
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  Speaker 1: the perfect way to lay out the keys for letters, numbers,
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  Speaker 1: and symbols. In eighteen seventy three, the manufacturing rights to
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  Speaker 1: the Shoals and glit Entie brighter were sold to the
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  Speaker 1: rifle company E. Remington and Sons. They tweaked the key
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  Speaker 1: arrangement by repositioning just a few of the characters, resulting
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  Speaker 1: in a wholy unique layout named for the first five
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  Speaker 1: letters in the second row, Q W, E, R T.
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  Speaker 1: And why we still use this layout today, nearly a
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  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years later. It can be seen on
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  Speaker 1: everything from computer keyboards to tablets, right down to the
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  Speaker 1: smartphones in our pockets, though today we call this un
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  Speaker 1: alphabetic arrangement of letters by a far simpler name, the
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  Speaker 1: cordy keyboard. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
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  Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
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  Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
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  Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey
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  Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
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  Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
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  Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
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  Speaker 1: over at the World of Lore dot Come and until
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  Speaker 1: next time, stay curious. Yeah,