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The Delightful History of Steam Technology · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there this
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: stuff you should know? What was that? That was? I
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know a little extra something on top.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: I guess little hot sauce. Yeah to Lula. Uh So,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: we just got back from our wonderful tour of the
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: United Kingdom in Ireland and it could not have gone better.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: And you may be hearing more about this in the future,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: or we may never speak of it again. That's true too.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Oh before we go though, um, before we go, Yeah,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: we're still we're just starting out. Before we get started. Um,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: I started my own little personal Chuck Charles W. Chuck
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Bryant Facebook page as a public figure. Yeah, I've got
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: one of those two you do. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: it's largely neglected. I should probably pay attention to it.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Huh So basically, you say, I have a haunted ghost
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: house that I feel free to walk by it right now,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: and my house is populated by me, and uh go
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: like the page and I'm gonna be sharing a little
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: more personal stuff like my opinion on things and sharing music.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: I like photos of your bare knees, photos of my knees,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: photos of my animals, just a little more stuff like
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: that because I get yelled at now when I do
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: anything semi personal stuff. You should know page. Yeah, I
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: think I'll go and have in mind too. Yeah. So
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: if you want a piece of me as gross as
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: that sound, look for Charles W. Chuck Bryan on Facebook
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: and uh, it's gonna be a party, it is. That's
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: the logo. Um, I do I neglect my Facebook page,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: but I am fairly active on Twitter. Twitter thing. Yeah,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: it's a Josh underscore, um underscore Clark, of course it is. Yeah,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: that's that. I do the same thing on that though.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: It's like I'm a little more opinionated and share more
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: personal stuff. We're a lot of real human beings exactly.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: We don't have to be brand ambassadors. We can take
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: our sashes off, all right. So that's all for announcements
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: for me. So, Chuck, have you ever encountered water? Yeah?
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: So you know that there's three states of matter, and
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: water is a great demo of these different states, right, Yeah,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: I encounter every morning when I washed my horse. Yeah,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: well you should share pictures of you washing your horse
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: on your Facebook page. Um, what's your horse's name? Uh
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: ganho ganev nice man. There's just a few hundred people
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: who know what you're talking about. Um. So when you're
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: washing gancho and that nice water is like coming down
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: all over his horsey body, it is in its liquid state, right,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: And when it's in its liquid liquid state, it's density
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: is different than when it's in its solid state. It's
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: more dense in its solid state. E g. Ice r
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: I E ice. Sorry, But then if you really heated
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: it up and turn it into steam, it would turn
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: into water vapor, right, yes, Then then it's in its
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: gaseous state and it's less dense. Those molecules could not
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: get further apart. They probably could. So while it's density
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: is smaller and ice, it actually takes up less space, right,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: It's correct. So if you put that water in a
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: space and you froze it, it would shrink inside the space.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: If you expanded it into water vapor, it would take
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: up more space. And as it takes up more and
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: more space, it's pressure increases. That's right. And if you
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: could only be clever enough to figure out a way
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: to harness that pressure. My friend, you would have harnessed
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: what's called steam power. That's right, and that is the
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: show for today. And uh Robert Lamb of Stuff to
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Blow your mind wrote this one how steam technology works
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: on our website How stuff Works. It's a good one.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Robert can write a fine article that guy. Uh So,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: let's go back in time a little in the old
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: way back machine steam powered one. Uh yeah, today it is.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Uh so it might take a little longer to get
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: these coal fires burning and sound different. But Jerry, it's
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: hard at work over their shoveling coal throwing the levers.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: So let's go back. Uh we're gonna need a lot
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: of cold Jerry, because we're going back all the way
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: to a D seventy five shovel faster Jerry, how out
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: a smile? Oh, it's just about to say, you'd be
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: a wonderful uh whip guy for for the coal shovelers.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: But not if you're asking him to smile, because then
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: it turns into a Broadway show. How about a smile?
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Then the next song is called how about a smile?
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: And the cold shoveler singing, Yeah, that's not bad. Actually
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: I'm picturing Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom all
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, Yeah, were they shoveling coal? No, they
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: were mining. Okay, so I guess in a way, they're
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: shoveling coal, but they were getting out of the ground.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: They were extracting it rather than depositing it into a fire.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: That was all wrong. So let's go back to and
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: a true hero named Hero, the Great mathematician Hero. He
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: was writing books on mechanics. He was thinking a lot
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: about air and payback he us, and way back in
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: he actually conceived of steam as an engine in a
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: way that we'll see came back to roost a bit,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: back to roosts at the right. It left for a
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: while like a chicken, and then it came back and roosted. Yeah, exactly. Uh.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: He didn't have the technology to pull it off at
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: the time, but what he thought about was a hollow
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: sphere with these bent two tubes coming out the side,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: and then fill that that thing with water. Let's say
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: it looks like a football with arms. Fill up that
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: football with water, put it over a fire, and eventually
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: that water is gonna boil. It's going to turn into water.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Vapor inside and it's gonna come out those arms and
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: it's gonna spin that little football and its perfectly thrown spiral,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: or it's gonna go spin around in an axis like
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Curly on his shoulder on the on the floor from
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: the Three Stooges. Yeah, but it's attached to something over
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: the fire. Yeah, exactly, so it's spinning, spinning. Um. He
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: called that thing in a Leo pile. And he actually
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: had a number of different ideas and inventions too, theoretical
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: ones using steam. One was a steam powered bird and
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: this would have been about the right time for the
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Clash of the Titans. Remember that little robot steam bird
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: in there? Uh the first movie, Yeah, the original one
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: with Harry Hamlin. Yeah, I mean that's basically this guy
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: is the one who came up with that boy. That
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Medusa really scared me when I was here, and I'd
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: completely avoided that remake because it looks so bad. Yeah,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: I was thinking about that when I was like, oh wait,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: that was a Clash of the Titans, and I thought
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: about the remake Clash of the Titans. Nobody's actually they're
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: not making these movies as like an homage to a
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: great movie. They're doing it because they're like, uh, we
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: don't have any ideas, so we're just gonna poke your
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: nostalgia and and hopefully get a few bucks out of
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: you and disappoint you and probably ruined the original one
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: for you. That's true. But while I do love nostalgia.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Is evidence in our show on Nostalgia, my nostalgia poke
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: button as a cover over it, so when people go
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: to poke it, they just get rebuffed. You should get
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: one of those ones that shock people when they should.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: But I have to raise that cover to allow my
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: button to be pushed. So how do you I mean, like,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: how did that cover get raised? I have to allow it,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: you know, I have to want to dive into the
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: pool of nostalgia. You can't just come along and be like,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: oh look another red dawn poke button. You know, did
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: that ever get made? Yeah? Okay, so Hero right, yeah, hero,
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  Speaker 1: Hero comes up with this thing. He was very much limited,
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  Speaker 1: and this would be the case for hundreds tens of centuries.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Um that steam power was the theoretically far more advanced
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: than practical material science. Yeah they were. He was way
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: ahead of his time. Yeah, I mean steam that the
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: power you can harness from steam is practically unlimited by
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: the depending on the materials that can hold the thing. Right,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: if you have material that can hold the infinitely dense
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: amount of steam or infinitely pressurized pressurized amount of steam,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: you could run the world, my friend. But we don't
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: have that, and Hero definitely didn't have it. He basically
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: could just draw it and say this will be great someday. Yeah,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: which was great. I mean, that's that's how things get made.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: He was just ahead of his time, like by about
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: six years. He was a futurist. Uh So flash forward
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: will rev up the machine again and we'll put her
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: along to sixteen o six. We're in Italy now, and
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: one that Giovanni Batista de la Porte, the of Naples, said,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: you know what, I've got some theories about steam too,
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  Speaker 1: and I think what we can do is actually create
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  Speaker 1: a vacuum. So if we take that water that's steam
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  Speaker 1: and it's in a closed container, it's going to increase
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: pressure in there, like we're talking about. So if we
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: condense it back down to water by cooling it in
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: that same chamber. Because they hadn't quite figured out that
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: you should do this separately, which we'll get to uh.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: He said, that will decrease pressure in in theory, it'll
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: create a vacuum, it'll create a pull. Right, they went genius, Yeah,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: that's great. In the French of course, said let's see
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: how we can apply this to cooking, and they did,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah. Within them, I think about seventy years
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: a guy named Denipe Papin who was not related to
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Jacques Pepin. I wonder why I heard that name, but
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: may have been who was Jacque Pepin, very famous French chef. Okay, right,
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: great guy, I couldn't I thought you were talking about
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: Mario Tally. No, that's Italy. This is France. Right. They
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: basically took this idea and they said, surely there's a
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: way to use this for cooking, and Dinny Popan created
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: what is essentially the first pressure cooker. Yeah, the name
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: is so great, the digester or engine for softening bones.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: It would extract like proteins and fats and all that
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: stuff from the bones and leave the bones brittle, so
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: you can turn the bones into bone powder and get
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: all the good stuff from it and cook with that. Right, yeah, well,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure though. He ended up attaching a piston
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: essentially to it. Why did he do that as a
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: pressure release valve? Okay, yeah, alright, now that that makes sense, right,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: So he added basically the world's first pressure relief valve
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: to the world's first pressure cooker. Yeah, the first steam
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: powered piston. Like he didn't know it yet, he was
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: laying the groundwork for an engine. Yeah. That's definitely one
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: thing that emerged from researching this, Chuck, is that, like
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: the history of steam power is definitely built on the
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: backs of earlier people. That's neat you can trace it
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: all back to one guy. Yeah, who's like, go forth
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: and make this. Do you know what struck me was
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: I was researching all these great men doing these things,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: and I thought, how much further would we be along
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: in the world if women, all throughout antiquity just could
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: do whatever they wanted as well? Yeah, and contribute themselves. Yeah,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Like they literally cut off half of society and said
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: you just go do this and that that's valuable to
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: two raise families and to you know, cooking clean and
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: do all the things that women were forced to do
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: back then. But they could also do other things. I bet.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: I mean they were doing other things. And I'm not
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: trying to say that they weren't making advances, but they
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: certainly taking it that way. They weren't allowed to go
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: into the science labs. No, but you make a good point,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: like if if raising a family is an extremely important pursuit,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: which I think we both agree it is, would society
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: be as far as it is now if men and
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: women had been equally involved in pursuing science and nobody
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: was raising the family. Yeah, Like, what two hundred years ago,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: there's a lady who could have figured out a cure
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: for cancer, but in her family like no, no, no,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: you you scrubbed that thing and turned that butter wonder
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: and she just muttered to herself, like I cure you anyway. Uh.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: And necessity as a mother of invention is the other
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: thing that really came to mind, because all these advancements
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: usually came along because they wanted to do something like specifically, well,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: almost every time there was an advancement, and definitely material science,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: there was somebody who had invented a new steam thing
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: that was limited by the the poor materials available at
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: the time. When the new materials came along, they just
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: immediately used it for the steam invention that had been
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: drummed up a hundred years but four yeah, you know,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: so it just constantly was advancing. Now I think I
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: have just bungled my message so poorly that people are
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: gonna say, chuck, there were plenty of women of science
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: in the early days. So to make up for that,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: we're gonna have to do a podcast on the early
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: pioneers of science who are women? Alright, I pledged to
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: do that now. But my message was pure, you know
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Anybody who doesn't get that, sometimes I
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: don't talk so good, which is funny because it's your job, right.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: All right, So seventeenth century, we're going forward in time
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: a little bit more, and over in England where we
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: just got back from, they had a timber crisis because
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: they were they were advancing. They were building so many
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: things made out of wood, uh, namely ships and of
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: course homes and things. Uh. And they were in those
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: homes they need a lot of firewood. So you still
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: needed the wood to build ships and things. But they
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: found out, hey, we can use coal for fires at least. Yeah,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: we're running low on timber, so we need to allocate
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: it smartly. Yeah, so let's use coal, which was great,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: but to get more coal, you have to dig deeper,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: and to dig deeper means it's gonna be wetter. You're
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: gonna hit the water table eventually. And so eventually this
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: all led to a problem, which was, Hey, we're down
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: in this coal mine now and it's full of water.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: How can we rectify this? Right? So necessity once again
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: pops up. Everybody just stood around thinking for about fifty years.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Everything came to halt, and then finally was a woman
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: in the background going, I'll tell you how to do
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: this the student name. Finally a man spoke up and
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: everyone listen, that's right. The guy in named Thomas Savory.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: He was a military engineer. He had come up with
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: something that he called a miner's friend, right, which I
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: don't know if that's the best name for it, but
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: maybe it was. So his miner's Friend was basically, it's
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: it's really neat. So it's very tough to describe this
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: stuff from here on out. Every time we describe something,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: you're gonna get lost. So just go look up a
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: diagram of what we're talking about helps and it definitely helps.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: For sure, it helped me big time. Basically, what it
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: was was there was a pot of boiling water. And
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: in this pot of boiling water there the steam would
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: be created. And a pot I mean an enclosed pot
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: with like pipes coming out but valves keeping it shut, right,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: and they you would create steam and this the steam
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: would be transferred into another chamber with a pipe that
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: was going down into the to the water that you
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: wanted to get out of the ground. Okay, okay, you
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: would introduce steam into this right, and then you would
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: introduce cold water into that steam filled chamber and it
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: would suddenly condense the water, create a vacuum, and that
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: vacuum would pump the water out of the ground. Then
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: you had another pipe that would siphon off the water
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: from that chamber because there was a non return valve.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Once the water came up, it couldn't go back down.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: That was the key. And then they would pump the
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: water out of that tube that pipe and then do
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: the whole process over again. Yeah, and it worked pretty well.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: He didn't sell a ton of them to the mining
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: It didn't become the miner's friend like he thought. What
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: it really became was the rich person who wanted to
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: garden friend this. Let's pump our swampy es stayed out
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: friend pretty much. And the reason why is because to
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: to run it effectively and safely, you could only get
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: about of water out. If you're pumping water of a
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: five foot mine, then then you had to have one
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: of these huge setups everyt and be pumping up to
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: a reservoir that eventually pumped it up out of the mine.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: So there's no way you could do that. Plus, every
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: one of these setups had to have people running the valves,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: like all the valves and things were operated manually, and
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: they had a pretty bad reputation for blowing up. Well
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: that too, right, but it was a really it was
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: almost this guy wanted to sell it and change the
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: mining industry. He didn't, but he did end up creating
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: a scientific and historical proof of concept. Yeah, and well,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: you know what, let's take a break and we will
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: come back and pick back up with a couple of
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: other brilliant dudes who advanced on those inventions. Alright, so
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: was the miner's friend. I don't know why it's so
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: funny to me. Uh. And just about fourteen years later,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: in seventeen twelve, there was a blacksmith named Thomas Newcoming
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: and his little buddy John Kelly, who was his assistant,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: a plumber and glassblower. I get the feeling like everybody
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: back then, blue glass, I just knew what you're doing. Yeah,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: make your own window. Like today how everyone? Uh what
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: do is something everyone can do today? Um? Drive a car? Yeah,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: or complain on social media. That's stop posting personal stuff. Yeah,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: that's the glass blowing of today, posting on social media,
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: complaining on it. I think you might be right. So
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: he was a glass blower and plumber. His assistant was
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: and um, they said, you know what, let's create a
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: better system. It's more efficient. He took it was called
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: the Newcoming Engine. I guess Callie as an assistant, getting
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: didn't get his name in there. I would have lobbied
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: for the new Callie or something, maybe combined the names.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: It's clever, but newcoming. No, it's my name, assistant. So
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: they took Savori's uh separation of the boiler and then
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: added Poppins steam driven piston, and all of a sudden
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: they had the Newcoming Engine. Well they no, they took
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: the boiler and put it combined it together, right, so
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: like you had you had this piston and it was
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: heated and then cooled, and then heated and cooled, so
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: it's like combined into one. Yes, but it was a
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: piston that was moving up and down right. Well yeah,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: but it was a piston that was moving up and
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: down via this thing that looks kind of like a seesaw. Yeah.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: I was connected to that, right, And on the other
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: end of that seesaw was the pump. So one end
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: is a piston moving this thing up and down like
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the seesaw. On the other ends the pump. Yeah, And
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: what it's really doing is it's pulling it down on
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: either side. Yeah, it's not pushing ever, like one side
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: pulls making it one side go up. On the other
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: side poles making the other side go up. Right, So
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: you've got a um, you've got that that steam being
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: generated and it's pushing the piston up and then you
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: hit it with some cold water and the vacuum is created. Right,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: And this thing could go through twelve cycles a minute. Hey,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: not bad, It's true, and um, it was. It was
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: beyond improved concept, Like this thing actually really worked. You
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: could use it to do all sorts of work with Yeah,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: And it was in hundreds of minds all over Britain, uh,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: and in Europe. So people were like digging into this
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: thing called the engine for the first time. Yeah, it
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: was pretty amazing. But what happened was with everything, these
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: engineers start to say, you know what, let's improve on this,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: let's improve the efficiency with the pump, let's improve these cylinders. Uh.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: You get better iron along the way, stronger iron. And
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: this newcoming engine is just kind of refined over a
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: period of years, right, just from people tinkering with it. Right,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: it's working better and better. And there was one guy
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: whose name you'll probably recognized. His name is James Watt.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: I think he was born in England, but he made
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: his name in Glasgow, Scotland. Yeah, my new favorite country. Yeah,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: it's a great country. I think his his I think
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: his name was James the game change or what. Yeah,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: if he was a boxer, that's what he would have
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: been called. Although he took he took the Newcomban engine
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: and changed it back closer to the miner's friend though,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: because the new coming combined the um the the boiler
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: with the condenser and he separated him out again. What
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: he figured out was if you just keep the piston hot, right,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: the piston chamber hot and you have a separate condenser,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: you're gonna use less energy keeping the condenser cool and
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: the piston hot. Because one of the dumb things about
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: the Newcomban engine and the reason why it took so
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: long to go through these cycles so where you could
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: only do twelve a minute, was because when when it
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: was hot and the steam rose, when you hit hit
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: it with that cold water, it cooled off and a
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: vacuum was created. You had to wait for the thing
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: to heat up again to get the steam. If you
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: had the cool water over here and the steam over here,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: you would keep the hot side hot and the cool
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: side cool. Dlt it us and you could hit him.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: You could use them to hit the the piston as
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: often as you wanted, and it really really improved. Um
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: it's efficiency. Yeah, like the engine is really starting to
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: take hold now and hum like an engine should. So
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: he partners up with a guy named Matthew Bolton. Um,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure now spelled differently than Michael. There's a
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: U in there. Michael's just b O L t O
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: N right. Well, the this guy's is the British spelling. Oh,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: so he could be a distant relative. You never know.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: I like to think, so, uh, whatever happened to Michael Bolton?
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: You guarantee he's still touring and making records and stuff.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Guys like that. They don't go away. They might not
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: be in the international limelight and more, but they're still
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: doing what they do. There's always a home in Branson,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Missouri or Vegas, all right. So what has partnered up
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: with Bolton? Um they are making it more fuel efficient
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: engine now with that separate condenser. And this led to
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: to other inventions, one called the flyball Governor and one
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: called the double acting Engine. The flyball Governor is so difficult,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: got to look it up. There's videos on YouTube. You
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: can't just look up a picture of it. You have
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: to see like an animated version of it. Yeah, and
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: once you see it, it all makes sense. And I
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: want to say I want to give a huge shout
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: out to a site that I found extremely helpful. UM
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: it's called Animated Engines dot com and they have all
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: these like just just graphics of engines and you can
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: speed up the friends persecutor slow it down and it
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: shows you like all the moving parts. You get it,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: You just get it. But the flyball governors. So we'll
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: confuse you now with words. Well, no, the fireball governor,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: We're just gonna say just go look it up. But
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: basically it is a way to automate the opening and
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: closing of valves using steve the steam that's being produced itself.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: So what figured out this thing is making a lot
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: of steam, and a lot of steam is going to waste.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: What if I took this waste steam and redirected it
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: to do other stuff like open and closed valves. That
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: was a huge innovation. They also came up with the
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: double acting engine, where they figured out, like, you don't
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: need to create a vacuum anymore, guys, we can just
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: use steam to make the pists and go up and
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: steam to make the piston go down. Double acting engine.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Pretty neat. Yeah, that was Those were enormous, enormous changes.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Again that laid a bunch of groundwork, Like they kicked
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: the thing forward and said, hey, twenty years from now,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: get your inventors together, because we just came up with
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: some new ideas that you guys need to go build
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: better metal to contain it with. And don't forget about us. Yeah,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: James Watt and I'm the other guy exactly. So what
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: this is what would set the table for the beginnings
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: of the industrial revolution which began in the textile industry.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Uh and and wolves specifically, for many many years had
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: been process by hand. Then they eventually took it down
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: by the river and had a water mill that would
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: that would you had a van by the river and
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: this water mill would would you know? You've all seen
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: how those work if you've been to any think still
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Mountain Park here still has one pretty neat basically just
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: using hydro well les but say hydro electric, but hydro
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: power to spin a wheel. And they figured out, hey,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: why don't we steam instead? And Bolton and Watts engine
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: works really well and people are using it like crazy.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: But they were so early in the game. They had
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: all these patents that sort of made it hard, Like
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: these mines were going broke paying money on these patents
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: to to use this technology. What are they called royalties.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: And so this other dude comes along, a guy named
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Richard Trevorth Thick from Cornwall in England, I think it's
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: southwest south what yeah, known for their game hens and
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: they're supposed to have a great witchcraft museum there. I've
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: always wanted to go to but still have not been
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: able to make it. So they're known for game hens,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: the Cornish engine which we're talking about, and a witchcraft museum.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah not bad. No, that's not bad at all. Uh
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: and corn Yeah corn. So he was living in Cornwall
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: and he saw what was going on with all these miners.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: He said, you know what I'm gonna do. Screw those
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: guys in their patents. I'm gonna just think of brand
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: new technology. That's better that you don't have to pay
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: royalties on their patents on patent. He had a real
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: bad attitude. Yeah, but he was smart. He was he
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: actually was super smart. This guy may have pushed them
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: further ahead than even Watt. And I've never heard of
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: the guy before you. No, I have the impressiment. He's
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: a national hero in England probably so um. But he uh,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: he had some he he had the great fortune of
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: having some much more improved materials available to him. So
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: for a long time people had said, like, man, if
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: we could just get these containing vessels to hold really
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: high pressure, we could do amazing stuff with this. Yeah,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: the new pressure is what drove the pistons. So the
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: more pressure the better, right, yeah, I mean if you could,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: if you can, like you also, not only the more
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: pressure the better, the less um initial input you would
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: have to put in with energy would be more energy efficient, right,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: you could just get right, So try to think. Um
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: had the advantage of having really good, better materials available
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: to him to make this stuff. So he um created
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: this Cornish engine, and the Cornish engine used higher pressure.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: But not only that, it was a compounding engine, meaning
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: that UM it had it used the steam in more
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: than one way. Right, So rather than like one piston,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: He's like, why not have four pistons and one piston
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: is fired and then some steam from that piston escapes
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: and fires another pistons, another and another, and all of
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: a sudden you're doing four times the work. I'm from Cornwall.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: It was amazing, and he was. There was an American
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: and men her name Oliver Evans, who was kind of
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: doing similar things in the United States, and then a
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: guy named Arthur wolf I'm sorry, Arthur Wolfe was the
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: when it came up with a compounding Oh right, yeah, yeah, Travis.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: His main contribution was basically just making a more rock solid, cheaper, lighter,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: more efficient engine that used high pressure Yeah, it's a wolf.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: Have you O O l F Virginia Woolf not wolf?
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Well wolf, It just seems funny looking. Uh. He was
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: a brewery engineer. He made beer, and he's the one
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: that said, yeah, why don't we get all these pistons going,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: pistons firing more pistons, pistons everywhere? It just made total sense.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: Should we take a break? Yes? All right? They got
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: steam coming out of everywhere, steam engines, they're working there,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: they're turning pistons and so all of this eventually would
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: lead to used to move things and people around. People like,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: I'm so tired of walking my legs for so bad?
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Can you take the steam technology and like make a
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: steam powered car? And apparently people have been working on
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: it for a while. There's some debate over who created
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: the first steam powered vehicle, And supposedly there's a guy
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: named Ferdinand Verbist who's the verby Ist fir to end
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: he supposedly created a steam car in sixteen seventy two,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: but I guess that's up for debate. Um, there's a
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: lot of like you could draw a schematic of something,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: but it doesn't necessarily mean you actually created it. I
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: think is the issue, Like we we have no idea
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: what was actually on the other side of a newcomb
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: in um steam engine. We just because none of the
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: diagrams ever mentioned it. It's all about the steam engine itself.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: They don't talk about like the pumps, so we don't
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: really know what kind of pumps they were using. That
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: kind of thing. So if we go back, we can't
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: say for certain that this guy did it. It's possible,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: but I think widely the guy named Nicolau Joseph Kuno,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: who is a friend inventor, obviously created a steam powered
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: vehicle in seventeen sixty nine. But steam powered cars they
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: went virtually nowhere. That's like when I've been at the snowboard,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: I thought, because evidence by my crayon drawing the skiboard,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: and then we heard from people who said, sorry, the
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: snowboarders actually before that even so whatever, But like you said,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: I created that in a vacuum, a vacuum created by
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: condensing water vapors. So as far as I'm concerned, I
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: did in the snowboard. Sure, yeah, you're tapped into the zeitgeist.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: People wanted to go really fast on a skateboard down
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: a mountain while it was snow covered, and you just
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: wanted to deliver on that. In six year old Chuck
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: and Stone Mountain, Georgia, it was I was so keyte
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: to see a water wheel, right, I'd seen my first
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: ski movie, which one Now I was just kidding, but
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: those were big back then. Sure remember Better Off Dead? Yeah,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: sure that was a ski movie of sorts. Yeah, part
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: that was. Someone said something funny on Twitter today about
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: I can't remember who it was, some politician, he said,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: reminds him of an eighties ski movie villain. It was
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: really good because every ski movie the eighties had a
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: bad guy. Oh yeah, it was always the developer looking
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: to build condos at the ski resort. Exactly. All right,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: So you're right, the car is one thing, but what
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: if we could make something larger? Uh? Treviorthik actually was
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: kind of key in this, and he said, you know what,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: we've got these things they whether, they don't call them
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: railroad tracks yet, they just called them rails on the ground.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: But yeah, and you hook a donkey up to a cart. Yeah,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: and it's to help. It's really to help the donkey, sure,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: because they're so stupid they can't walk in a straight line. Really.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: But but if they're pulling a cart on rails that
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: have already been laid out on the path they're supposed
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: to follow, they're fine. Just give him a couple of
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: carrots and maybe a nice scratch behind the ear and
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: they're okay. Yeah, they were called tramways officially. I was
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: just kidding. So Trevior think is like, hey, let's let's
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: put something steam powered on these tracks. Brilliant, and he
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: tried it. He actually came up with something UM called
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Trevor Thicks portable steam engine, which he called the Puffing Devil.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: That was his name for it, and uh, it worked.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: He did a demonstration where it hauled ten tons of
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: iron for ten miles. You know how huge that is
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: at the time. Sure, yeah, amazing because everything, everything up
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: to that point had been hauled by donkeys horse power, Yeah,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: literal horse power. Right, um yeah, obviously not just donkeys.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: There were horses too, but everything was very much localized.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: And I don't think we've said it yet, but steam
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: power was the um the literal engine for the industrial revolution.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: This is where it all started, you know. And the
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: way that it started was you could suddenly take timber
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: in this area and move it over to this area
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: hundreds of miles away. The coal in this area to
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: power these steam engines over here changed the course of history.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: It did water turning into water vapor and containing that.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: It's amazing and it's it's started it in England. Yeah,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: it's just pretty neat. You're pandering. No, it's true, the
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: like over here in America. We're like, yeah, the Industrial
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Revolution really picked up in the nineteenth century with America.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: But I mean it's it's roots are definitely further back. Yeah,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: this is in uh what eighteen o four? I think
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: I learned that England cannot be flattered, right, flattery, don't
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: pander to us? All right, so it's eighteen o eight,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: you've got what do you call it? The the Industrial Revolution? No,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: the Devil's puffer, the puffer devil, the puffing devil, puffing devil,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: like the Devil's puffer. Sure that is, uh miner's friend.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: You got those got a party? Uh so this is
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: a portable steam engine. He takes it to London, Central London,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: puts it on a circular track and everyone goes blind, me,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: what is that it is of the devil? It's a
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: puffing devil. Yeah, and it's amazing. Uh And that was
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: an engineer there named George Stevenson and a couple of
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: decades after Treviorthick, he said, you know what, I'm gonna
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: take that and I'm gonna like everyone else before, saying
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna make it better, more efficient, And all of
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: a sudden things got so good. They actually opened up
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: what I think is the first town to town railroad
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: line between because they're trying to move coal from Durham
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: to Stockton at a shipping port and it works so well,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: they said, all right, let's do this. Let's let's put
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: in the infrastructure, build what this guy is calling a
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: locomotive track, and that was I think the very first
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: operating locomotive track rail line and it didn't just carry cargo,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: it carried six hundred passengers. Yeah. Yeah, so why don't
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: we put people on that thing? And they're like, is
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: this safe? And he's like, no, not at all, But
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: I really have a lot to prove. So just pick
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: six criminals who cares, Yeah, don't sit near the boiler
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: and you'll be fine. Yeah. Uh So in the meantime,
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: there's people are still tinkering around with the steam car
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: that didn't go away, but it never took off. No,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: and um, the steam locomotive was just this beautiful design
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: to think about it. So let's go back to all
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: the steam engines we talked about. It's um, steam moving
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: a piston back and forth, back and forth, right or
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: up and down, of course, sure, but in this case
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: it's going um, it's moving horizontally. The piston is and
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: the piston is attached to a bar that's attached to
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: a wheel, and if you want to get kind of fancy,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: you can attach several wheels to this bar. And as
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: the pistons moving back and forth, this bar is actually
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: making an a lipse and as far as the wheels
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: are concerned, they're making circles. And you're moving forward as
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: this is happening. And again, go to animated Engines dot
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: com and look up a steam locomotive and it's just
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: amazing and it's design like these people really just got
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: in there and roll up their shirt sleeves and they
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: had like cold dust down their faces and really they
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: were doing like some real engineering. Oh yeah, I'm just
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: so impressed with the guys who who made this stuff.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: It was amazing. You know there, of course, there's no surprise.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: But there are I don't know what they call themselves,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: but there are big time train officionados that go and
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: just watch trains, trainoids. They might be called train watchers,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: even train spotters. No, are you sure? I don't think so, probably,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: but they trainees. I can't remember where I came across it,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: but it was in another podcast I was researching and
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: found this whole subculture of people that that find these
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: old you know us. I mean they watch all kinds
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: of trains, but mainly they what really like get them going,
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: We really get some out of in the morning. It
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: really gets there's their miner's friend up. Yeah, it's the
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: promise stuff, the promise of an old fashioned steam locomotive
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: that's going through town because they still have them. You know,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: it's amazing. It's pretty cool. I mean, I get white
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: people do it. It's sort of like birding, you know.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: It's a very solitary kind of quiet thing. Yeah, and
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: then that train rumbles by, and I mean, like I
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: I understand, I've never been into trains or whatever. I'm
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: more just I think the steam engine on a steam
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: locomotive is amazing. Yeah, and you like to take trains. Sure,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: we took a train from Manchester to Edinburgh. Lovely. It
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: was a really nice ride to the English countryside. In
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: Scottish I couldn't tell the difference. I could. I was like, yeah,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: we're in Scotland now I know, all right. So the
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: steam engine is chugging along. Um Stephen, they called it
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: so so cool. He was a conductor on locomotion number one.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: That one was six center passengers. Yeah, it's just so
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: cool that they named it like locomotion number one. This
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: is the very first time they've been done. They were
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: very prescient. Just so cool. It's like the first plane
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: flight or something. We need to do one on the right, brothers, Okay,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: I'm happy to do that there from Ohio. No. Sorry, ever,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: would't even say their name, So Chuck the steam locomotive is.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: It was pretty much an out of the gate hit.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Some poor people were still working on the steam powered car.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: But in the meantime other people are like, what about
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: steam boats, let's come up with something like that, and um,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: some people have been kicking around the idea for that
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: as well. And apparently it followed pretty closely the evolution
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: of the steam locomotive too. Um, just people building on
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: ideas and people coming with proof of concepts. And it
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: was an American guy named Rob Fulton who created the
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: first steam powered paddle wheeled boat that showed that it
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: was actually capable of moving up and down rivers. Yeah,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: and that there was There was a guy in England
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: and about forty years earlier named Jonathan Hall who had
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: the first steam powered tugboat, but it didn't work too
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: well because again the technology with these newcomen and savory
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: engines just weren't good enough. But it was really Fulton
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: who said, you know, come aboard, how quaint is this? Yeah?
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Do you like my captain's hat? Yeah? Traveling up and
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: down the river with a paddle boat? How quaint. They're like, well,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: we don't have any future things to compare it to,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: so it's just contemporary to us. Well in dudes that
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: were professional oarsmen were like, no, I really like the
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: looks of this exactly. It's wonderful. So Fulton created, um,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: the first one. But it was a guy named WILLIAMS.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: Symington who gets credit for the full first fully steampowered passenger. Yeah,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: the Charlotte dun Duss and uh, Fulton's was the Claremont
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: yea and uh in eighteen nineteen, what what they would
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: do with these these sailing ships, because they would now
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: outfit them with steam power for when the wind was
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: down and just to augment the wind. And it worked
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: out great in in eighteen nineteen, the Savannah became the
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: very first steam powered ship to make a transatlantic crossing. Yeah,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: and apparently this theme power was such a threat to
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: sail makers that this is a consortium of salemakers lobby
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: the British government saying hey, can you can you do something?
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: Can you stifle the steam technology? Can you shut down
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: this amazing evancement because we make sales? Yeah, it didn't work.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: That's you know, every time something is automated, like the
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: A t M or something and people say, oh, people
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: are gonna lose jobs, you're looking at history, buddy. That's
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: all his tree has been is one advancement that puts
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: people out of work, creating a new industry where people
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: can work. And it's sad in a way, but it's
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: just part of it, you know. Yeah, it's called moving forward. Yeah,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: too bad, So sad for the sale industry, sale making industry,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: but you know, there's people still sale recreationally. Sure. Yeah,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: so now he gets the best part in my opinion, Chuck, Yeah,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: I like the locomotive. So the steam turbine, the electricity
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: producing steam powered turbine. Yeah, there's a good argument for that.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: I love it. Remember how electricity works episode So electricity
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: is created when you spin a copper coil inside a magnet, right,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: And Michael Faraday created what he called a dynamo, which
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: is basically that, And he said, hey, steam guys of
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: the future, I got an idea for you. Go ahead
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: and come up with a steam power our dynamo. Can
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: you do it? And they set about trying to make
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: that happen. Um. Part of the problem though, is they
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: figured out that with a steam powered piston, which is
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: what all steam power or steam engines powered were pistons
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: up to that point, you could only do so many
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: um cycles. Yeah yeah, and that's you need the dynamo
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: going pretty fast to create some electricity or enough to
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: use on an industrial scale. So this dude named um
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: Charles Algernon Parsons who's British. In four he figured out
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: that there was a new type of steel available and
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: you could create a pretty nice turbine from it. And
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: if you took that turbine and went all the way
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: back to basically Hero's original idea, which was spinning, but
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: rather than having the steam spin the actual vessel, you
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: had vessel vessel creating steam that you're shooting out at
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: the turbine. You can spin a dynamo pretty fast. Eighteen
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: thousand revolutions a minute was his dynamo, and in Jack
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: that was enough to generate electricity, and they installed it
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: forthwith at the Fourth Bank's power station, and the rest
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: of Europe said, holy cow, we have electricity. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact that something like eight
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: percent of the electricity in the United States still today
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: is made through steam steam turbines. Amazing worldwide is made
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: through steam turbines. So like this, this guy changed the world, um,
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: along with Faraday. Yeah, of course and everyone else before, right,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: because everybody's building on the work of everybody else, and
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: all the women who supported those men who probably had
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: better ideas, who were like, we could have come up
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: with this years ago. So we mentioned a few times
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: that this was dangerous, uh, exploding boilers or a problem man.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: Even when they figured out safety valves. Um, early safety
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: valves wouldn't work. Actually, later safety valves have proved to
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: not work on occasion in the case of Three Mile Island.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: But um they it got a bad rap in the press,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: of course, and that probably um slowed progress a bit,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: but progress continued nevertheless. Well even today there's boiler explosions,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: like there's a big one at a plant, a Danta
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Corporation plant in Tennessee, just blew up like a significant
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: portion of the plant. And it's it's not just um
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: that it's like throwing hot water out everywhere. The the
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: pressure that can build up in these high pressure systems, uh,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: in these vessels, if the vessel gives when that when
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: that steam hits the regular atmosphere, it expands right, and
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: you have basically I think I read something like a
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: ten m vessel of water, which is what you would
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: find on like a steam locomotive. If it blew up,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: it would blow up to with a force equivalent of
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: one ton of TNT. Crazy. Yeah, so it's a it's
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: a big deal if you're blower blows up. And it
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: all comes down to the safety valves and whether or
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: not they're allowing too much pressure to build up, and
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: then your vessel's ability to withstand that added pressure pretty scary.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: It is kind of scary, but it's yeah, no, that's
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: my scense there. Scary. I don't want to be evolving
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: a boiler accident. Uh No, I don't think anyone wants to. UM.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna finish, I think with this, right
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: unless you have other stuff beyond super critical fluid. Oh,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: I do kind of all right, we'll finish with that then,
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: but right now, super critical fluid we'll talk about it.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: Is earlier when you talked about solid, liquid and gas
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: each having their molecule distribution at different densities. Um, something
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: really strange happens, as Robert points out, when you heat uh,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: when you when you go through the from solid to
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: liquid to gas, and if you heat up that gas enough,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: those molecules actually eventually are forced back together and it
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: becomes like a liquid again, but it still has the
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: properties of a gas. Yeah, it's kind of like a
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: plasma state or something almost. It's super critical fluid. Yeah,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: you know, that has its own name. So when when
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: water in particular hits its um, its critical point is
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: that seven and five degrees fahrenh height and two seventeen atmospheres.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: So it's very high temperature, very high pressure. When it
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: goes beyond that point and it starts behaving quite weirdly. Um,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: you actually can get more steam power out of less
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: initial fossil fuel input. So it's a sleep, it's more um,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: it's more efficient when you can heat something to these
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: higher pressures, these super critical pressures, way more. Yeah. So again,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: the reason that you can do this is we could
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: have always done it. We could have heated it up
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: to this this amount, but we never had the materials
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: to hold it. Now we have the materials to hold it.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: And they're they're um creating more and more electricity with
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: supercritical steam. Yeah. And here's a little mind blowing fact
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: for you. Uh. This water to create the supercritical liquid
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: fluid is heated at such a high pressure that it
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: doesn't even boil. No, it goes right from water to
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: water vapor. That's fast. And apparently they're figuring out now
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: that you could actually use c O two instead of
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: water because it has a much lower critical point. It's
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: like um five degrees fahrenheight and seventy three atmospheres, which
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: is like nothing, and they're figuring out, we'll wait a minute,
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: we could use a bunch of c O two in
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: lieu of water vapor and get even more um energy
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: out of this, Yeah, but from less input. So they're
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to how to use supercritical
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: c O two to create electricity now to power steam turbines.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: It's a decent band name, super Critical CR two. Sure, sure,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: it's not bad. You got one more tidbit? That was it? Oh?
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: That was a tidbit? Yeah? Oh great? Can I go home? Yeah,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: in just a minute. Uh, since we don't have anything else.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: If you want to know more about steam power, you
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: can type those words into the search bar at how
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Since I said steam power, it's
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: time for listener mail. This was written by one of
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: our jingle writers, you know, our little jingle bumpers. Sure yeah, Hey, guys,
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: just want to appreciate the fact that s Y s
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: K gives joke mos like me the opportunity to feel
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: famous for just a leading moment. Whenever I'm listening to
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: an episode and I'm cut to commercially here one of
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: my little songs, it really takes me by surprise, and
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: I think that sounds familiar. Oh yeah, I wrote that. Yeppee.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna stay at home dad. I'm trying to make
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: my name for myself as at home dad, as a
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: versatile graphic artist and film composer. And it's nice to
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: know that at least something of mine is making it
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: out to the masses. And speaking of being a dad,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: I just finished my first children's e book, which we're
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: gonna plug since he give us says, uh, oh yeah
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: for sure, Yeah, we plug it anyway. I'm very proud
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: of it. It's called Hector's Song. It's a tale about
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: being who you are no matter what. That's a great message.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: You can get the regular read words on a page
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: version on Kindle or or an enhanced version with narration
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: and music on eyebooks that jacks into your brain. Yeah.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: He recommends it for kids zero to six or so.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: And you can go to his website which is Elaine
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: Osborne E A L A N elon probably O S
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: B O R N E dot com, or just go
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: to e books or Amazon. And thanks again, guys, J
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: Money and Chuck E. D. You guys are the real deal.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: Thanks so long. We appreciate that. Man. You're the real
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: deal too, man writing books and music and yeah stay
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: at home dad, and yeah pretty neat, yea super neat.
• 52:13
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• 52:15
  Speaker 1: you submitted a jingle and have now written a book,
• 52:19
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• 52:21
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• 52:24
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• 52:31
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• 52:35
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• 52:37
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• 52:39
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• 52:41
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• 52:49
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