Simon, I have a personal link to this show, In 1944 as a 2 years old I was very ill from blood poisoning due to a very serious eye injury. A hospital in New York City was able to save my eye(not the sight) and cure the poisoning with massive doses of the "wonder drug" Penicillin which had been massed produced as a product of World War medical research. Cheers, Rik Spector
"Whittle had originally pitched his idea for a jet engine to the government back in 1929 but it was rejected. Cash-strapped, he allowed the patents to expire in 1933. However Whittle's son Ian, himself a former RAF man, believes the failure to take his father seriously was a missed opportunity." "It's all conjecture, of course," he said. "But had the authorities sat up and taken notice, then we could have had RAF planes with jet engines in operational service and it might have given Hitler something to think about." BBC
I feel like it should be mentioned that the Boeing 707 wasn't actually the world's first commercial jet airliner, but rather America's first commercial jet airliner. The world's first commercial jet airliner was the DeHaviland Comet. Unfortunately it wasn't very successful.
There's a few industries that ban the use of ballpoint pens on the manufacturing area. If a pen accidentally falls into a vat of molten metal, the ball won't melt; instead, it acts as a massive stress riser inside of whatever it ends up in.
My great uncle Job Whitehouse had an important job involving Eniac. He was a slender man who ran back and forth inside the machine changing vacuum tubes.
You can't mention penicillin without mentioning gangrene. This infection that set in after an operation cost enormous numbers of lives until brought under control by penicillin. Its application also made countless amputations unnecessary.
It has literally saved billions from grevious injury's that didn't get infected to simple infections from everyday life to STDs, penicillin was the first widely available and paved the way for future antibiotics.
When i was going to college and needed pens I found a bag of 100 pens at a dollar store 50 black 50 blue just 1 dollar. I figured for that price if only 10 pens worked i still won, so i took them home and went through the bag to test them. All 50 black pens worked and not one blue pen worked. Still ended up lending out pens regularly. Since then having learned how they work it seems that whoever makes pens that reliably bad must know it.
There is still problems with pens. When I first get one and start writing. The ink is full and my writing but over time I suppose the ball picks up lint or dirt and the ink streaks. I hate that.
This is the earliest I've gotten to one of these videos. I always know at least one of his channels will have something fresh for me to listen to on my way to work
You should cover ball point pens a little more deeply. I can't remember if it was bic or biro, but one of them came up with a way to manufacture the balls in ball point pens in a way that they were ridiculously smooth and cheaper to produce, which is what caused the price to drop massively. Edit: of course, there's always the chance I learned that from another Simon whistler video... Another edit: i think they covered it on one of the "fascinating origins of everyday things" episodes on Simon and Davan's Brainfood podcasts, which they really should bring back
How strange, I listen to your channels daily and I visited Bletchley Park today and so "today I found out" about Colossus twice. Very fun coincidence :)
Well Done, It would be nice to see "Space Race Innovations the Changed Civilian Life" covering those by products of space travel that we use today. From CorningWare to Transistors.
Don't forget Tang. Sadly, the real Pyrex is no longer made (except maybe in Japan). Corning sold off it's consumer products division and the stuff under that trade name is no longer the material they made the shuttle tiles from (and has been known to explode in ovens).
I don't know if it would be appropriate for this channel, or maybe mega projects, but I would love to see a video about the Oroville dam (it is the biggest earthen dam in the united states)
It's always funny to me to see those "penicillin saves lives!" pamphlets, cause I found out I was allergic to it by coming within a nap of dying after taking it. They gave it to me for pneumonia when I was 18, and later that night, the ER doctor basically told me that if I had decided to let myself fall asleep instead of coming in - or, possibly, if they had made me wait much longer to be seen - that I likely would've suffocated internally. Moral of the story: always pay reeeal close attention when given any antibiotic for the first time.
I too am allergic to the stuff, though not to the same degree you are. It makes me pretty sick and gives me a full body rash, not pleasant at all. When I first had it my doctor diagnosed the symptoms as chicken pox and gave me, yes, penicilin, to cure it (wrong treatment we know now, as chickenpox is a viral disease, but giving penicilin for everything was common in the 1970s) which of course only made things worse, so more penicilin was prescribed. It wasn't until after 3 courses of penicilin didn't work to cure the "chicken pox" that he prescribed something else and within days the "chicken pox" was gone...
My father became allergic to penicillin late in life, when he was in his early fifties. Any use of penicillin can trigger an immune response that will cause an allergic reaction on subsequent uses, so the stuff should be used judiciously rather than indiscriminately.
Just to be clear, pretty sure the good antibiotics (and vaccines) have done in our lives FAR outweighs the downsides to a micro-sample of humans. After all, some people having nut allergies doesn't mean that we should outlaw nuts or humans shouldn't cultivate, sell or eat them.
I'm sure World War III will bring us many new inventions in the future. Inventions such as: stone tools, diy radsuits, glow in the dark camping gear, ...
My Dad was a pathologist who worked for Chain & Florey at Oxford Radcliffe Hospital developing penicillin and injected Rudolf Hess with penicillin as he had syphilis.
Never heard of Jonas Salk but have def heard of Charles Drew. And no one uses regular penicillin anymore, not for at least 30 years. These days it's all derivatives like ampicillin or amoxicillin.
My Dad was a first generation programmer on one of those old computers (ENIAC no less), at the Pentagon c 1943-46. They also use them to do calculations for large guns, that is what he did...then at IBM after the war. Prior to WW2 (1936 I think) my Dad was also a test case for penicillin after an injury that would normally have taken his arm. He was the 1st person to survive gas gangrene (you can look up my last name in medical journals of the time) without an amputation. So, if it weren't for 2 of these discoveries and WW2. I would not be here...kinda freaky. Oh, and of course, I work in IT...
On fountain pens, a surprising number of people use them today, for their perceived better writing experience. In the past there was a fairly clear class division in writing equipment. Rich people wrote with fountain pens, middle income people used dip pens, and poor people used pencils. Many schools continued to use dip pens into the 1970s. Even today, some desks in older schools still have holders for ink wells. Today, disposable fountain pens are available for as little as US$1 each at retail. Some Asian manufacturers mass produce fountain pens in huge quantities. Fountain pens do take some skill to use well, but that's kind of the point. Notably, in signing the Brexshit agreement, Ursula von der Leyen used a Pelikan M800, and BoJo used a Parker Duofold, which still carries a royal warrant. HM, The Queen is known to prefer the Parker 51. Fountain pens even have their own social media following. Try them, you may like them.
Middle and Eastern Europeans at the beginning of the 20th century carried their fountain pens in their jacket breast pockets. Status symbols signaling that they were literate and doing nicely enough to afford them.
And yet, there are Internet Idiots who claim that all Human Innovation comes from Aliens. Why they can't just accept that some people are SMART will always baffle me. Love these videos. Hope to see many more.
War only accelerates some innovation, but at a reckless speed and at tremendous cost. We shouldn't give war the credit for innovations, it was just an unavoidable side effect of it.
My great-uncle was one of the people that designed and built the first Colossus at Bletchley and used it break Lorenz/Tunny. There is a tree there that he used to have lunch under which is now named after him.
Sorry, the De Havilland Comet was actually the First Commercial Jet, the Boeing 707 (and it's cousin the ORIGINAL 717 aka C-135) were the first successful large jets used to move people (and in the case of the C-135 both people and cargo, but rarely both at the same time!)!!! Also, in the US, the first Microwaves were made by Amana and called Radar Ranges. I think the USAF used earlier versions for their long range (and long flight time) aircraft, I do know that we "owe" SAC (Strategic Air Force) for the entire concept of "TV dinners"
The marks they make are also a lot easier to mess with and the tips prone to breaking. Can't take the time to bust out a sharpener while trying to take aerial notes of the battlefield.
Has anyone ever heard of the lost pen paradox ?, also associated with the coat hanger, missing sock & cloths peg paradoxes ?. The theory goes that in everyone has these mysterious portholes that open up & either spit out or suck in these household items, they usually center around couches or sets of draws. Just ask yourself how many pens, etc, you remember buying & how many you actually have, also with socks but the other way. This had to do with the advent of the ball point pen as I bet fountain pens didn't have this problem, but who has ever bought a coat hanger ?.
My house was previously owned by the man who invented the electroplating process for the combustion chamber of the bomb. Of course electroplating existed prior to WWII, but his method became the primary method for commercial use after the war.
Although chilling in its destruction and its slave-labor production, no list of WWII innovations should leave out the one technology that has had the most pronounced impact on the world...the gyroscopic liquid-fueled rocket. The Nazi's V-2 rocket is the precursor of just about every space vehicle launched even today. In fact, the most successful rocket platform, the Soviet R-7 series rockets, still use many of it's designs.
Technically more of a post war thing, nuclear processes were invented and weaponised for the war but the idea of using them for power generation is distinctively a post war invention, thus the link is fairly tenuous.
Hi Simon and the team. (Free Danny ) been a fan for years across most of your channels. Sorry but there are many many vids like this one (not complaining) but could you also return to little known subjects? You were my bastion of new knowledge for a while but now everyone seems to be doing the same subjects.
Even if that's today's money, it seems like they would have been a bad deal, as there were several fountain pens by that time that were as leak free as ballpoint pens on aeroplanes. And the iconic Parker 51 (like is still used by Queen Elizabeth II) wasn't much more expensive (around $150 in today's money.)
@@murdelabop Ironically, the design hasn't really changed from the flawed ballpoint pens that were rushed into production early on. I use exclusively fountain pens. Not out of anything but necessity, as they are not painful to use, for me. With the right pen/ink combination, I don't have a need for a ballpoint pen at all.
When will Science discover how and why handwaving and gesticulation became endemic in the visual media? The gesticulations of Italian men have long been a source of mirth in the West but now everyone is eager to out do the Italians. It does worry me that sometimes Simon's right hand tires somewhat, leaving the left flipper to flap, wave, pinpoint, gather, baton, grasp, point, etc all on its own in this important work. Maybe something to mention to the Doc?
The time was just ripe for computers, but the first one was build during the war, but not for the war. Konrad Zuse made it in his parents living room, in Germany
The Antikythera Mechanism is thought to be an analogue computer used to predict certain astronomical events. It was found in a second century BC shipwreck.
@@BeaglefreilaufKalkar Nah, you're more right. That ancient one is amazing story, but when thinking of computers today the V1 take home the prize for first.
War certainly pushed innovation hard, even the likes of television were helped along the way as the experience manufacturers in radar gave them the boost they needed to make better and more reliable television sets post-war in the UK...
