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Secrets Kept · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
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  Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Since the beginning of time,
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  Speaker 1: civilizations all over the world have found new and innovative
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  Speaker 1: ways of telling time. The sun dial, which calculated the
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  Speaker 1: time of day for ancient Egyptians using the sun's position
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  Speaker 1: in the sky, is one of the oldest techniques we
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  Speaker 1: know of. The Saxons cut candles into sections, with each
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  Speaker 1: segment meant to burn for just one hour. As time advanced,
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  Speaker 1: so too did the methods by which people measure it.
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  Speaker 1: It was in the late hundreds when the first mechanical
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  Speaker 1: clock chimed for the world. Although the device has been
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  Speaker 1: lost to history, we can get a good idea about
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  Speaker 1: how it might have functioned thanks to the Salisbury Cathedral
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  Speaker 1: in Italy, which boasts the oldest working clock in the world.
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  Speaker 1: As with most new inventions, early clocks tended to have flaws.
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  Speaker 1: They were notoriously inaccurate and complicated due to their use
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  Speaker 1: of weights, which made them too large for the average house.
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  Speaker 1: Churches were the primary locations for most mechanical clocks until
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  Speaker 1: the coiled spring was invented in the mid fifteenth century,
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  Speaker 1: allowing clockmakers to shrink them down to a more manageable
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  Speaker 1: and accurate size. Later on, new materials and techniques were added. Pendulums,
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  Speaker 1: hair springs, quartz, and magnets all found their way into
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  Speaker 1: these machines, bringing their costs down and allowing them to
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  Speaker 1: live in our homes and even on our wrists. Over
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  Speaker 1: the centuries, they've transformed from enormous structures to mass produced commodities.
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  Speaker 1: And that's the funny thing about the common clock. We
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  Speaker 1: don't really think about it anymore. We expected to be
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  Speaker 1: there on the wall or on our wrist were now
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  Speaker 1: on our cell phones. We've never had a reason to
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  Speaker 1: ask the biggest question of all, why can't we tell time?
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  Speaker 1: Our bodies are capable of incredible things like creating life
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  Speaker 1: and healing our own wounds, but counting the seconds to
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  Speaker 1: the same degree as a ten dollar watch is impossible.
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  Speaker 1: Some extraordinary people are capable of hearing a tone and
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  Speaker 1: telling you exactly what musical note it is. Others have
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  Speaker 1: photographic memories so vast they're able to recall ten year
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  Speaker 1: old conversations word for word, as though they were reciting
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  Speaker 1: lines from a play. But an accurate internal clock has
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  Speaker 1: alluded our evolution for millennia, at least until eighteen, when J. D.
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  Speaker 1: Chevallet demonstrated his unique talent for telling time. He developed
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  Speaker 1: it as a child, when he began counting the intervals
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  Speaker 1: between bell chimes and pendulum vibrations of the clocks around him.
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  Speaker 1: He once gathered a crowd on a steamboat on Lake
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  Speaker 1: Geneva and told them he could calculate any number of
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  Speaker 1: minutes or seconds that they called out without fail. When
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  Speaker 1: the time had passed, he would announce it with startling accuracy,
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  Speaker 1: while a spectator with a watch verified his claim. He
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  Speaker 1: was never wrong. What's more amazing is that he did
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  Speaker 1: this while carrying on conversations with members of the crowd.
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  Speaker 1: His internal clock was wound so tightly nothing could throw
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  Speaker 1: it off. He once said of his gift, I have acquired,
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  Speaker 1: by imitation, labor and patience, a movement which neither thoughts,
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  Speaker 1: nor labor, nor anything can stop. Not much else's known
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  Speaker 1: about Chevallet. He'd had his fifteen minutes of fame, which
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  Speaker 1: I'm sure he counted down to the second and wasn't
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  Speaker 1: heard from again. Telling time better than a wristwatch is
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  Speaker 1: a fun party trick, and that's something to earn a
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  Speaker 1: living on, though I do wonder why no one else
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  Speaker 1: has come forward with a similar ability. Perhaps our reliance
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  Speaker 1: on technology has made such a talent unnecessary. Maybe our
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  Speaker 1: memories will go next as we rely on the internet
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  Speaker 1: to do all of our remembering for us. Or maybe J. D.
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  Speaker 1: Chevallet was just born at the right time in the
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  Speaker 1: right place, like he'd been destined to become the perfect
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  Speaker 1: human clock. After all, he was Swiss. Most people already
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  Speaker 1: know of James Joyce, the Irish author of some of
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  Speaker 1: the most beloved books of all time. Ulysses, Dubliners and
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  Speaker 1: A Portrait of the Artist as a young Man have
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  Speaker 1: found their way to numerous best of lists, as well
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  Speaker 1: as high schoo curriculums all over the world. It's that
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  Speaker 1: last title, a Portrait of the Artist as a young Man,
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  Speaker 1: that's particularly special because of one character. Grandly Grantly, is
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  Speaker 1: described in the book as the main character's best friend
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  Speaker 1: at university and someone content with the status quo. He
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  Speaker 1: has not called to greatness the way his friend is,
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  Speaker 1: which is odd because the man the character was based on,
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  Speaker 1: did some pretty great things in his own life. His
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  Speaker 1: name was John F. Byrne, or JF as he was known,
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  Speaker 1: and he attended college with James Joyce. They became good
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  Speaker 1: friends over the years, so it seemed fitting for Joyce
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  Speaker 1: to write him into one of his books. But why
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  Speaker 1: he made Burn such a pushover, we'll never know. You see. J. F.
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  Speaker 1: Byrne was, among other things, an inventor. In nineteen eighteen,
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  Speaker 1: he devised a secret code system using nothing more than
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  Speaker 1: a cigar box and a few bits and bobs from
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  Speaker 1: around the house. He called his invention the Chaos Cipher,
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  Speaker 1: which sounds a bit like a weapon a supervillain might
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  Speaker 1: use against Superman, but it's really more benign than that, well,
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  Speaker 1: unless you're sneaking messages across enemy lines and you don't
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  Speaker 1: want the opposition to know what you've written. The Chao
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  Speaker 1: Cipher consisted of two discs side by side, each disc
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  Speaker 1: rotating on a spindle. A mixed up version of the
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  Speaker 1: alphabet was written along the outer edge of each disc,
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  Speaker 1: and as you turn it, the other would move in
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  Speaker 1: the opposite direction, similar to the gears on a clock.
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  Speaker 1: As each letter was enciphered, the alphabet shifted again, making
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  Speaker 1: the encoded message practically impossible to decipher without the algorithm.
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  Speaker 1: Now you would think such a method for inciphering messages
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  Speaker 1: would earn top dollar from anyone wanting the utmost security
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  Speaker 1: for their classified communic case, burn took his cigar box
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  Speaker 1: to the top cryptoanalysts of the U. S. Army Signal Corps,
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  Speaker 1: the U. S. State Department, the Navy, and even a
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  Speaker 1: T and T, but no one wanted anything to do
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  Speaker 1: with the Chao cipher. But Burne was resourceful, as he'd
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  Speaker 1: clearly demonstrated, and he decided to put his little box
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  Speaker 1: to the test. He compiled a book of popular texts
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  Speaker 1: that he had enciphered and then challenged readers to crack
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  Speaker 1: the codes. In his nineteen fifty three autobiography, he enciphered
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  Speaker 1: a message using the Chao cipher and offered five thousand
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  Speaker 1: dollars to anyone able to break it. Not a single
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  Speaker 1: person was able to decode the booklet or the message.
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  Speaker 1: He even mailed copies to the American Cryptogram Association and
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  Speaker 1: the New York Cipher Society, groups whose members spent their
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  Speaker 1: lives encoding and decoding secret messages using all sorts of
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  Speaker 1: tricky methods, but Burne's Chao Cipher proved too difficult for
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  Speaker 1: anyone brave enough to face it, and then in April
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  Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty, Burne passed away, taking his algorithm with
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  Speaker 1: him to the grave. No one had come close to
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  Speaker 1: solving the Chao Cipher's mysteries. In the decades following Burne's death,
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  Speaker 1: The passage within his autobiography was still enciphered, as was
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  Speaker 1: the small booklet he published of known texts. It seems
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  Speaker 1: his cigar box and the secrets inside it were lost forever,
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  Speaker 1: and no one knew how any of it worked well,
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  Speaker 1: almost no one. J F. Byrne, perhaps knowing what he'd
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  Speaker 1: created was too much for anyone to figure out on
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  Speaker 1: their own, passed his knowledge down to his son John
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  Speaker 1: before his death in two thousand ten, almost one hundred
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  Speaker 1: years since the device's inception, John donated his father's work
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  Speaker 1: to the National Cryptographic Museum in Fort Meade, Maryland. In
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  Speaker 1: doing so, he proved two things. First, unlike the James
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  Speaker 1: Joyce character based on him, j F. Byrne had never
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  Speaker 1: been one to uphold the status quo. And second, truth
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  Speaker 1: is definitely stranger than fiction. I hope you've enjoyed today's
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  Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
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  Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
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  Speaker 1: me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
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  Speaker 1: make 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.