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High Tech · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
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  Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
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  Speaker 1: 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. As we get older, we tend to think
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  Speaker 1: about the things that could have been, lives we could
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  Speaker 1: have led, choices we could have made, careers and loves
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  Speaker 1: and kids that never were. We like to think that
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  Speaker 1: we made the choices we did, because ironically we never
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  Speaker 1: really had any choice to begin with, and had things
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  Speaker 1: been slightly different, that dead end office job might have
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  Speaker 1: been a movie studio, or a startup or a career
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  Speaker 1: as a bestselling author. Of course, we'll never know what
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  Speaker 1: could have been, because well, we never got the chance
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  Speaker 1: to live it. But Charlie knew. He knew because he'd
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  Speaker 1: been obsessed with the possibilities. But sadly others did not
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  Speaker 1: share that obsession. Charlie was a professor from London, England.
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  Speaker 1: He taught mathematics at Cambridge for almost ten years, but
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't his passion. His mind was often elsewhere, either
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  Speaker 1: on writing his next best seller or working on his
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  Speaker 1: brand new invention, the computer. See. Charlie was something of
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  Speaker 1: a pioneer in the computing world. He believed that all
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  Speaker 1: the office work being done by hand at the time
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  Speaker 1: could be accomplished more efficiently using a machine. Often tasks
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  Speaker 1: such as navigation, calculations, and processing information were done by hand,
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  Speaker 1: there was a lot of room for error, and Charlie
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  Speaker 1: knew that there had to be a better way. He
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  Speaker 1: just had to invent it first. Others had started working
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  Speaker 1: on their own computers already, but they'd all been rudimentary machines.
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  Speaker 1: They could only store a small amount of information or
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  Speaker 1: do a handful of calculations before needing to be reprogrammed,
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  Speaker 1: so Charlie got to work on his own version. His
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  Speaker 1: computer would be the first digital device to calculate the
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  Speaker 1: values of polynomial functions automatically, as it used discreete digits
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  Speaker 1: to perform the tabulations rather than smooth quantities, but his
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  Speaker 1: skills were tailored more toward how the computer would work.
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  Speaker 1: He wasn't an engineer, nor did he have the capital
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  Speaker 1: to fund his own project on his own, so Charlie
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  Speaker 1: reached out for help. He went to the British government,
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  Speaker 1: who sell value in what the mathematician was proposing. They
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  Speaker 1: were also tired of doing all their paperwork by hand,
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  Speaker 1: so they granted him the funding he needed to get
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  Speaker 1: his start up off the ground. He then brought in
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  Speaker 1: an engineer named Joe to handle the design of the device,
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  Speaker 1: the Steve Wozniak to his Steve jobs, so to speak. Unfortunately,
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  Speaker 1: the two men didn't see eye to eye on how
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  Speaker 1: their prototype was progressing. Joe had high standards and wanted
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  Speaker 1: the computer to use specific tools that Charlie could not
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  Speaker 1: pay for. After arguing over the growing costs and Charlie's
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  Speaker 1: refusal to prepay Joe for his work, the two men
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  Speaker 1: had a falling out and the British government pulled their funding.
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  Speaker 1: The age of the computer was already over before it
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  Speaker 1: had even started, but Charlie wasn't discouraged. He got to
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  Speaker 1: work on a new design. This more modern computer would
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  Speaker 1: be programmed using punch cards, similar to the IBM mainframes
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  Speaker 1: of the fifties and sixties, and to display the output
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  Speaker 1: from the device, Charlie planned on developing a printer for
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  Speaker 1: it as well its internal memory could have been capable
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  Speaker 1: of storing up to a thousand numbers each up to
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  Speaker 1: forty decimal digits long. Unlike its predecessor, this updated model
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  Speaker 1: was designed to do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division plus
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  Speaker 1: square roots and number comparisons. His first prototype could only
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  Speaker 1: do addition and subtraction calculations, though he created three types
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  Speaker 1: of punch cards to handle the different operations, as well
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  Speaker 1: as a programming language light years ahead of anything else
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  Speaker 1: on the market. Unfortunately, despite the advancements made between Charlie's
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  Speaker 1: first and second iterations of his computer, he couldn't get
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  Speaker 1: it built. He tinkered for the years and asked for
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  Speaker 1: help from people like his son Henry to assist with
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  Speaker 1: some of the engineering, but without funding, he couldn't get
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  Speaker 1: it off the ground. Charlie died without ever seeing the
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  Speaker 1: computer built to completion. If only he had lived another
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  Speaker 1: hundred years or so. Because Charlie didn't design his computers
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  Speaker 1: in his garage in the nineteen seventies, he didn't drop
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  Speaker 1: out of college to start a billion dollar corporation either.
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  Speaker 1: Charles Babbage designed his difference Engine and Analytical Engine before
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  Speaker 1: there was a Microsoft, before there was an Apple computer,
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  Speaker 1: and even before IBM was ever a company. He designed
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  Speaker 1: them in the mid eighteen hundreds. As the saying goes,
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  Speaker 1: one person's trash is another person's treasure. When Matt Barchuk
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  Speaker 1: was invited to see a ninth en seventy five Corvette
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  Speaker 1: someone was planning on selling him, he instead stumbled upon
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  Speaker 1: the greatest find of his car collecting career fifty seven corvette.
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  Speaker 1: It's red and white shell was coated in dust, and
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  Speaker 1: the engine was sitting on a stand several feet away
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  Speaker 1: in an old barn. The wheels had been tossed haphazardly
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  Speaker 1: on shelves and even inside the car. To anyone else,
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  Speaker 1: it was nothing but a hunk of junk, but not
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  Speaker 1: to Matt. He bought the vehicle and all its pieces,
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  Speaker 1: took them home, and got to work restoring this piece
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  Speaker 1: of automotive history to its former glory, because all it
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  Speaker 1: takes is one person to see the value in something
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  Speaker 1: everyone else sees as garbage. Back in the early nineteen sixties, though,
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  Speaker 1: that one person happened to be the sales rep for
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  Speaker 1: a food distribution company. The salesman worked for Alex Foods,
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  Speaker 1: which delivered supplies to one very special Mexican restaurant in Anaheim, California,
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  Speaker 1: called Casa de Fritos. If that word Fritos sounds familiar,
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  Speaker 1: it's because the restaurant was owned by none other than
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  Speaker 1: the Frito Lay Corporation. But that wasn't what made this
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  Speaker 1: particular of the restaurants special. Casa de Fritos was built
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  Speaker 1: in Frontier Land inside Disneyland. Alex Foods was responsible for
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  Speaker 1: providing the tortillas the restaurant served in its dishes. One day,
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  Speaker 1: while the rep was in the kitchen, he noticed that
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  Speaker 1: the staff was throwing away a hefty supply of tortillas
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  Speaker 1: that had gone stale. They were hard and couldn't be
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  Speaker 1: sold to customers, But rather than have the restaurant waste food,
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  Speaker 1: he suggested they do something with them. His advice was
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  Speaker 1: to cut them up, fry them, and season them. They
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  Speaker 1: would be similar to another Mexican dish called to topos,
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  Speaker 1: which were nothing more than flattened corn pancakes that were fried, toasted,
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  Speaker 1: or baked. This new preparation would help the restaurant increase
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  Speaker 1: its profits while saving money on lost food product. The
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  Speaker 1: kitchen staff took the reps advice and started saving their
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  Speaker 1: stale tortillas, slicing them up, frying them, and sprinkling them
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  Speaker 1: with a little seasoning. The pieces were then bagged up
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  Speaker 1: and sold to customers coming into the restaurant. Things were
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  Speaker 1: going well when one day the vice president of Friedo Lay,
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  Speaker 1: Archie West, Dry, to buy to check on Casa de Fritos.
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  Speaker 1: He was thrilled. The restaurant was bustling and people were
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  Speaker 1: buying up all the bags of its new fried tortilla chips.
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  Speaker 1: West bought a bag for himself to see what the
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  Speaker 1: hubbub was about. One bite and he instantly got it.
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  Speaker 1: They were delicious. He went back to Friedo Lay and
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  Speaker 1: told them what he'd found. The company believed that they
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  Speaker 1: had a hit on their hands and gave West the
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  Speaker 1: green light to help turn these homemade chips into a
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  Speaker 1: real product. He contacted Alex Foods, the company whose rep
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  Speaker 1: had kicked all of this off in the first place,
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  Speaker 1: and asked them if they would like to be the
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  Speaker 1: sole producers of this brand new Friedo Lay product. The
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  Speaker 1: company couldn't say yes fast enough, but one vice president
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  Speaker 1: and a bunch of Disneyland patrons wasn't enough of a
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  Speaker 1: focus group to test whether the chips had a chance
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  Speaker 1: on a natural level, so Friedo Lay quietly launched them
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  Speaker 1: in the southwestern United States to start. While the launch
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  Speaker 1: wasn't that quiet even in one corner of the country,
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  Speaker 1: the demand was too great. Alex Foods was quickly out
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  Speaker 1: of its depth, and FRIEDA Lay had to step into
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  Speaker 1: manufacture the chips itself. By May of nineteen sixty six,
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  Speaker 1: the bags of fried stale tortillas were now available in
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  Speaker 1: grocery store shelves all across the US. A few years later,
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  Speaker 1: a new taco flavored version of the chips was released
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  Speaker 1: and they performed well, but the best was yet to come.
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  Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy two, Friedo Lay produced Nacho cheese flavored
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  Speaker 1: chips and sales skyrocketed. Nacho Cheese is still available today,
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  Speaker 1: as is a cool ranch flavor that was released in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six. Most people who buy these chips today
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  Speaker 1: don't realize the history behind them. They don't know that
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  Speaker 1: back in the early nineteen sixties, a restaurant in Disneyland
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  Speaker 1: decided to curb food waste by frying pieces of stale
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  Speaker 1: tortillas and selling them to customers, accidentally giving birth to
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  Speaker 1: one of the most popular and successful snack foods of
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  Speaker 1: all time Derrito's. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided to
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  Speaker 1: were of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on
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  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting
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  Speaker 1: Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me
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  Speaker 1: Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make
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  Speaker 1: another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
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  Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
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  Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,