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Does Not Compute · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
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  Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
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  Speaker 2: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
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  Speaker 2: to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Ada Lovelace had always been
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  Speaker 2: someone who threw herself into her hobbies. As an aristocratic
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  Speaker 2: young woman in seventeenth century England, it was all she
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  Speaker 2: really could do. Many of her friends found passion in
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  Speaker 2: the few pastimes deemed ladylike enough for them, like embroidery, music,
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  Speaker 2: and writing poetry. But Aida had a significantly different pastime,
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  Speaker 2: advanced mathematics. She came by it honestly. Her mother, Annabella,
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  Speaker 2: was an amateur mathematician herself, and her father, Lord Byron,
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  Speaker 2: was one of the most famous poets and intellectuals of
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  Speaker 2: his time. Just as famous was his reputation for debauchery,
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  Speaker 2: thrill seeking, and his strong will, which led Annabella to
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  Speaker 2: separate from him when Ada was just a year old.
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  Speaker 2: Fearing her daughter would inherit what she called Lord Byron's madness,
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  Speaker 2: Annabella insisted Ada fill her brain instead with languages, classic literature, science,
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  Speaker 2: and mathematics, and these latter subjects were always Ada's favorite.
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  Speaker 2: She would doodle designs for flying machines and her workbooks,
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  Speaker 2: and ask insightful questions about the science of everyday phenomena
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  Speaker 2: like rainbows. AIDA's interest in math took a turn from
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  Speaker 2: hobbyist to professional when she attended a party in eighteen
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  Speaker 2: thirty two, at the age of seventeen. The host, a
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  Speaker 2: man named Charles, showed Ada and her mother his latest invention,
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  Speaker 2: a steam powered math machine. Now, at the time, to
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  Speaker 2: solve any sort of complex calculations, you would have to
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  Speaker 2: write them out by hand or use a rudimentary tool
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  Speaker 2: like an apicus. The Thinking Machine, as Ada called it,
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  Speaker 2: was impressive. It was able to raise numbers to the
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  Speaker 2: second and third power and add and subtract numbers quickly.
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  Speaker 2: Ada was fascinated, and she and Charles became instant friends.
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  Speaker 2: For the next decade, the two exchanged hundreds of letters
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  Speaker 2: debating mathematic principles. Charles quickly took to bouncing ideas off
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  Speaker 2: of Ada for his newest invention, an even more complicated calculator.
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  Speaker 2: Charles envision the machine would use a series of punched
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  Speaker 2: cards to represent different mathematical values, which a person would
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  Speaker 2: input manually. This machine would be able to solve formulas,
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  Speaker 2: find square roots, and perform even more complex calculations.
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  Speaker 1: Aida had been keeping busy for several years in the
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  Speaker 1: eighteen thirties by marrying and giving birth to her three children,
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  Speaker 1: but by eighteen forty she wanted to put her mind
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  Speaker 1: back to work helping her old friend Charles. The British
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  Speaker 1: Scientific communit Unity had turned its nose up at his
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  Speaker 1: new calculating machine, so he had gone to the continent
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  Speaker 1: to raise funds for its development. In Europe, a fan
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  Speaker 1: of Charles had published Charles's lecture notes in French, and
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  Speaker 1: this Ada realized was her opportunity. She would translate the
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  Speaker 1: notes to English and publish them in Britain. Charles agreed
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  Speaker 1: on one condition that Ada would publish her annotations alongside.
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  Speaker 1: The ideas in Ada's notes stretched beyond the bounds of
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  Speaker 1: what Charles had created. Charles had originally envisioned his machine
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  Speaker 1: as merely a mathematical tool. It was Ada who realized
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  Speaker 1: that they could use it for other data. The most
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  Speaker 1: logical use was for algebraic formulas, not just arithmetic, as
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  Speaker 1: charles first machine did. In her notes, she also mused
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  Speaker 1: about replacing the numbers for symbols and notes, envisioning a
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  Speaker 1: future where his machine could write music or even generate images.
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  Speaker 1: In her final note, titled Note g Ada described how
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  Speaker 1: in detail to perform a specific calculation, invited step by
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  Speaker 1: step instructions for how to arrange the cards in the
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  Speaker 1: machine for it to produce the Bernoulli numbers, a specific
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  Speaker 1: sequence of rational numbers. When AIDA's final translation was published
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen forty three, that work was sixty six pages long,
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  Speaker 1: forty one of which were AIDA's notes. All told, Charles
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  Speaker 1: machine was never created in real life. It remained theoretical. Therefore,
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't until nearly one hundred years later that the
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  Speaker 1: scientific community realized the full impact of what he and
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  Speaker 1: Ada had done. You see, AIDA's friend Charles was none
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  Speaker 1: other than Charles Babbage, the celebrated English polymath. His invention,
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  Speaker 1: the Analytical Engine is considered today to be the first
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  Speaker 1: general purpose computer, which is impressive, but almost pales in
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  Speaker 1: comparison to what Aida did. You see, if the Analytical
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  Speaker 1: Engine was a computer, that means that Ada Lovelace's detailed
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  Speaker 1: instructions for calculating Bernoulli numbers, was the world's first computer program,
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  Speaker 1: written almost a hundred years before the term computer ever existed.
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  Speaker 1: Outside of George Washington, baseball games, and apple pie, there
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  Speaker 1: are very few things more American than a good old
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  Speaker 1: fashioned UFO sighting. The United States leads the world in
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  Speaker 1: flying saucer encounters, with over one hundred and five thousand
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  Speaker 1: reported sightings since nineteen forty seven. That's, of course, is
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  Speaker 1: the year that a mysterious aircraft crashed near an army
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  Speaker 1: airfield in Roswell, New Mexico. The government rushed to collect
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  Speaker 1: the debris and cover up the incident, sparking conspiracy theories
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  Speaker 1: that the downed aircraft was extraterrestrial in nature. We now
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  Speaker 1: know that it wasn't the case if you believe the
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  Speaker 1: official story. The aircraft was actually part of Project Mogul,
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  Speaker 1: a top secret balloon project designed by the military toy
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  Speaker 1: on Soviet nuclear tests, but that wasn't revealed until nineteen
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  Speaker 1: ninety four, and in the decades between, UFO sightings really
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  Speaker 1: took off.
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  Speaker 2: But while Roswell is.
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  Speaker 1: Often cited as the start of America's infatuation with UFOs,
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  Speaker 1: it's not actually the first sighting on record. There are
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  Speaker 1: at least two others that precede it. One occurred in
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  Speaker 1: the same year as the Roswell crash. In June of
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  Speaker 1: that year, an amateur pilot named Kenneth Arnold was flying
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  Speaker 1: near Mount Rainier in Washington when he saw nine crescent
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  Speaker 1: shaped objects darting through the sky. He told journalists that
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  Speaker 1: the craft were incredibly fast, moving hundreds of thousands of
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  Speaker 1: miles per hour. They moved like saucers skipping on water.
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  Speaker 1: The other sighting is a bit older, and in some
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  Speaker 1: ways even stranger. It happened to a man named James
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  Speaker 1: Everell and two of his friends. The trio were rowing
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  Speaker 1: across the Charles River one night when they saw an
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  Speaker 1: incredible light zipping across the sky. Their description is eerily
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  Speaker 1: similar to what Arnold's experienced in nineteen forty seven. For
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  Speaker 1: close to three hours, the light darted back and forth
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  Speaker 1: between the river and nearby Charleston. At times, it would
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  Speaker 1: stand completely still in the sky, pulsing vibrantly before it
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  Speaker 1: started to move again. When the light finally faded away,
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  Speaker 1: Everell and his friends were startled to discover that they
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  Speaker 1: had traveled a mile up river. They had no memory
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  Speaker 1: of how they'd gotten there, which is especially strange since
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  Speaker 1: they moved against the tide, meaning that they couldn't have
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  Speaker 1: just drifted. It was like the lights had transported them
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  Speaker 1: in an instant, or like they'd briefly blacked out and
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  Speaker 1: forgotten part of their experience. If that's what happens, it
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  Speaker 1: aligns with countless other alien abduction stories from later years.
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  Speaker 1: The most famous is probably the case of Betty and
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  Speaker 1: Barney Hill. The couple was driving through New Hampshire's White
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  Speaker 1: Mountains in nineteen sixty one when they saw a strange
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  Speaker 1: light in the sky that seemed to be following them.
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  Speaker 1: The next thing they knew, it was dawn and they
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  Speaker 1: were pulling up in front of their house. They couldn't
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  Speaker 1: remember what had happened with the lights, but their clothes
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  Speaker 1: were torn and dirty. It was only through hypnosis that
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  Speaker 1: they eventually recovered traumatic memories of what had happened. For
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  Speaker 1: the rest of their lives, the Hills maintained that they
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  Speaker 1: had been abducted and forcibly examined by aliens. James Everell
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  Speaker 1: never underwent hypnosis treatment, so we have no way of
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  Speaker 1: knowing what happened during the time that he lost. He
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  Speaker 1: never claimed to have been abducted, nor did he identify
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  Speaker 1: the lights he saw over the Charles River as a UFO.
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  Speaker 1: But it's an interesting case for a few reasons. The
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  Speaker 1: lights were verified by several other witnesses in Charleston, and
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  Speaker 1: the local governor, John Winthrop personally recorded James Everel's account.
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  Speaker 1: Unlike the Roswell incident, it's highly unlikely that the lights
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  Speaker 1: he saw that night were from a military aircraft or
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  Speaker 1: balloon because this sighting occurred well before planes or weather balloons,
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  Speaker 1: or even the US government existed. It happened on March
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  Speaker 1: first of sixteen thirty nine, less than twenty years after
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  Speaker 1: the First Thanksgiving. James Everell and his companions were Puritan
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  Speaker 1: settlers in the Massachusetts Bay colin, which means that whatever's
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  Speaker 1: causing all those lights in the sky, they've been here
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  Speaker 1: for a very long time. We've been seeing them since
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  Speaker 1: the Pilgrims stepped off of the Mayflower. I hope you've
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
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  Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
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  Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
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  Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Mankey 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 Worldoflore dot com.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.