Latest / Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities / Face the Facts

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Face the Facts · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
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  Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. It's the quiet ones who often surprise us,
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  Speaker 1: the ones with their nose in a book or their
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  Speaker 1: head in the clouds. They're the people who are quietly
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  Speaker 1: watching the world, learning how it works and what makes
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  Speaker 1: everything tick, People like Elizabeth Smith born in Huntington, Indiana.
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  Speaker 1: In Smith lived all over the country, first in Indiana
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  Speaker 1: before moving to Ohio to attend college for a few years.
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  Speaker 1: She left school to help her ailing mother in nineteen thirteen,
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  Speaker 1: until transferring to Hillsdale College in Michigan to finish her
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  Speaker 1: first degree. While in school, Smith discovered a love of language,
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  Speaker 1: many of them, in fact. Though she earned her degree
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  Speaker 1: in English literature, she also managed to squeeze in German, Latin,
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  Speaker 1: and Greek with a side of poetry. Smith studied works
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  Speaker 1: by great English authors, but it was her love of
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  Speaker 1: Shakespeare that earned her one of her first jobs out
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  Speaker 1: of college, she had gone to visit the Newbury Library
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  Speaker 1: in Chicago to see a collection of the Bard's first place,
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  Speaker 1: known as the First Folio. A librarian helping Smith noticed
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  Speaker 1: her fascination with a collection and knew of someone with
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  Speaker 1: a Shakespeare related project who could use her expertise. This
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  Speaker 1: man's name was George Fabian, a business owner living in Geneva, Illinois,
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  Speaker 1: just outside of the city. Fabian had hired another woman,
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  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Wells Gallop, who was hard at work cracking a
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  Speaker 1: seemingly impossible puzzle. Had Shakespeare's plays really been written by
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  Speaker 1: Sir Francis Bacon and Stead. Fabian believed the text was
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  Speaker 1: rife with cryptographic clues left behind that would reveal Bacon
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  Speaker 1: as the true Bard of Avon. Smith moved to Fabian's
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  Speaker 1: estates and began to work on the project. This also
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  Speaker 1: made his company, Riverbank Laboratories, the only place in the
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  Speaker 1: country performing this kind of work, which piqued the interest
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  Speaker 1: of a United States military about to enter World War One.
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  Speaker 1: Riverbank hired more analysts to handle the government's requests. They
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  Speaker 1: not only assisted in deciphering coded messages, but also trained
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  Speaker 1: military personnel to do the same and one of those
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  Speaker 1: crypto analysts was George Friedman, who worked closely with Smith
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  Speaker 1: during their time there. The two were inseparable, so much
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  Speaker 1: so that their partnership and eventual marriage were key to
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  Speaker 1: the facility success. With her ability to recognize patterns and
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  Speaker 1: his cryptography experience, the couple became quite adept at breaking
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  Speaker 1: through even the toughest ciphers. Together, they managed to break
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  Speaker 1: up Prohibition era smuggling operations, Chinese drug rings, and put
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  Speaker 1: away over six hundred criminals. They even unearthed an American
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  Speaker 1: spy during World War Two. Her name was Velvoe Dickinson,
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  Speaker 1: and she had been using her antique doll shop to
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  Speaker 1: funnel military secrets to the Japanese. But Elizabeth Smith now
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  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Friedman, didn't stop there. Some of her most important
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  Speaker 1: work was performed during World War Two. She cracked messages
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  Speaker 1: from Nazi spies who had been moving into neutral territories
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  Speaker 1: like South America while also infiltrating the United States. She
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  Speaker 1: broke several Nazi Enigma codes and dealt with messages from
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  Speaker 1: one of the war's most wanted spies, Johannes Siegfried Becker,
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  Speaker 1: who went by the nickname Sargo Sargo was based in
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  Speaker 1: South America and had been sending messages to his people
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  Speaker 1: in Berlin. His army of dozens of Nazi agents had
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  Speaker 1: been collecting everything they could on Allied operations, relaying the
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  Speaker 1: information back to Sargo's base in Argentina. He would then
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  Speaker 1: encrypt those messages, which numbered in the thousands, before sending
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  Speaker 1: them off to Germany. Friedman's efforts helped bring down Sargo's operation,
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  Speaker 1: as well as every other Nazi spiring in South America.
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  Speaker 1: Yet so few people know about Elizabeth's work today, and
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  Speaker 1: that was by design. Though her techniques and research helped
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  Speaker 1: to form the n s A as we know it,
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  Speaker 1: she was practically erased from the history books by FBI
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  Speaker 1: director J. Edgar Hoover. Friedman had been the one deciphering
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  Speaker 1: Nazi communis and teaching FBI agents how to do it
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  Speaker 1: as well, but when the war was over, Hoover made
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  Speaker 1: sure the Bureau got all the credits. It wasn't until
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  Speaker 1: very much later that Elizabeth and her husband received the
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  Speaker 1: honors they so rightly deserved. After the war, they returned
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  Speaker 1: to their first love, Shakespeare. One of their final acts
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  Speaker 1: of crypto analysis occurred in nineteen fifty five, when they
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  Speaker 1: published a book about George Fabian's pet project at Riverbank Laboratories.
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  Speaker 1: His Baconian theory, the idea that Sir Francis Bacon had
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  Speaker 1: been the true author of all of Shakespeare's plays, was bogus.
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  Speaker 1: There were no ciphers hidden in the text, after all.
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  Speaker 1: But Fabian's plan wasn't a total waste. After all, he
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  Speaker 1: brought Elizabeth and William together, and their marriage helped to
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  Speaker 1: win two World wars. When you stop and think about it,
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  Speaker 1: the variety of communication methods available to us is pretty incredible.
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  Speaker 1: I typed this into a document on my computer screen,
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  Speaker 1: but now I'm speaking it out loud for you to hear.
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  Speaker 1: Take a drive around town and you'll see even more
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  Speaker 1: methods as well, road signs, traffic lights that use color
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  Speaker 1: to send instructions, and even basic shapes like lines. Open
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  Speaker 1: your mobile device and you can send your friends all
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  Speaker 1: manner of memes and avatars and whatever else your heart desires,
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  Speaker 1: even if that's just a little cartoon heart. But back
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three, the options were a little less abundant,
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  Speaker 1: and that's the job that Harvey was asked to overcome.
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  Speaker 1: But that's okay, he was equipped for the job, after all.
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  Speaker 1: Harvey was a graphic designer. He was born in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: twenty one in the city of Worcester in central Massachusetts,
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  Speaker 1: and that's where his parents raised him, and it was
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  Speaker 1: clear even as a kid that he had a knack
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  Speaker 1: for putting basic communication ideas to paper. While most kids
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  Speaker 1: in high school might get a job on a lawn
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  Speaker 1: crew or in a fast food restaurant, Harvey worked alongside
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  Speaker 1: a sign painter, learning skills that would be valuable for
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  Speaker 1: the rest of his life. It needs to be pointed
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  Speaker 1: out that before computers, designers needed to create a lot
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  Speaker 1: of stuff by hand. Painting straight lines or the lettering
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  Speaker 1: for a sign above a local business wasn't for the
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  Speaker 1: faint of heart. I've personally watched that sort of work
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  Speaker 1: being done, and it's nerve racking. Before pixels and vectors
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  Speaker 1: and exporting p the fs, there were the steady hands
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  Speaker 1: and sharp brushes of trained professionals. In college, Harvey studied
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  Speaker 1: right there in Worcester at the Art Museum School, and
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  Speaker 1: then after working for other companies after graduating, he eventually
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  Speaker 1: started his own business, an advertising agency, in nineteen fifty
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  Speaker 1: nine and four years later, opportunity came knocking. It was
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  Speaker 1: another local business, the State Mutual Life Assurance Company, to
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  Speaker 1: be exact. They had recently purchased another insurance company, Guaranteed Mutual,
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  Speaker 1: out of Ohio, and had run into some problems. You see,
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  Speaker 1: few people really enjoy change, and many people find it
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  Speaker 1: downright annoying. And as a result of the merger, everyone
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  Speaker 1: under their corporate roof had felt a drop in morale.
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  Speaker 1: And that's where Harvey comes in. Desperate to cheer up
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  Speaker 1: and boost their company morale, the fine folks at the
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  Speaker 1: insurance company hired him to design a single iconic image
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  Speaker 1: that could lighten the mood and inject a bit of
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  Speaker 1: happiness back into their work day. They offered to pay
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  Speaker 1: him for his time, and so Harvey put brush to paper.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not going to hide the results from you until
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  Speaker 1: the end of this story. After all, that wouldn't make
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  Speaker 1: you happy. No, I think it's worth getting it out
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  Speaker 1: of the way now, you see. Harvey ross Ball, sign
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  Speaker 1: painter and freelance artist, returned to his client with a
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  Speaker 1: yellow circle upon which he had painted two black ovals
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  Speaker 1: and a long semi circular curve a smiley face. Now
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  Speaker 1: it could be argued that the icon of a circle
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  Speaker 1: containing a smile is probably not even something a person
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  Speaker 1: can claim they invented. Most kids, when scribbling out their
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  Speaker 1: first stick figure cran drawings usually top those basic bodies
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  Speaker 1: with a smiley face, and they do it instinctively. It's
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  Speaker 1: pure and simple and almost universal. But Harvey Ball was
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  Speaker 1: the first to see its potential as a morale booster
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  Speaker 1: and maybe even the first to put those black lines
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  Speaker 1: on a yellow background, and as insurance company clients, was
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  Speaker 1: even more pleased with it. They had one buttons made
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  Speaker 1: with the image on it and manage it. Passed the
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  Speaker 1: buttons out to employees whenever they noticed someone was smiling
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  Speaker 1: while they worked, and with that the floodgates burst wide.
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  Speaker 1: Because neither Harvey nor his clients ever trademarked the image,
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  Speaker 1: just about everyone with an ounce of entrepreneurial spirit started
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  Speaker 1: to make and sell all manner of merchandise with the
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  Speaker 1: smiley face upon it. Posters, check t shirts, check coffee mugs,
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  Speaker 1: you bet, and Harvey, oh, he didn't mind. Honestly, how
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  Speaker 1: ironic would it have been if the guy who invented
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  Speaker 1: the smiley face took the world to court over the
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  Speaker 1: use of such an iconic symbol, No, Harvey just sort
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  Speaker 1: of rolled with it. He sold reproductions of his original painting,
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  Speaker 1: he did signings at conventions, and even started a charity,
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  Speaker 1: the World Smile Foundation. Amazingly, even the paycheck for that
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  Speaker 1: original design job was less than ideal, and yet Harvey
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  Speaker 1: never complained. After all, his client had promised to pay
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  Speaker 1: him for his time and that's exact what they did
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  Speaker 1: for ten minutes worth of work. I hope you've enjoyed
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  Speaker 1: today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
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  Speaker 1: free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
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  Speaker 1: by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
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  Speaker 1: by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
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  Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
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  Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
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  Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,