Patented: History of Inventions

When you think about it, the Karaoke machine is a simple invention. Basically two existing inventions, the tape deck and the microphone, were stuck together, add some lyrics on a screen and BOOM, you have Karaoke. 

Anyone could have thought of it. And indeed Karaoke machines were independently invented five times in a row between 1967 and 1972…

But the funny thing is that ALL FIVE times are in Japan.

Why was Japan so desperate to invent the Karaoke machine in the late sixties? Who was the first? And what was the first ever Karaoke song?

Matt Alt, the Author of Pure Invention, How Japan’s Pop Culture Conquered the World is joining Patented today to tell the story of one of Japan’s most iconic inventions; Karaoke. 

Edited by Alex Carlon, Produced by Freddy Chick & Alex Carlon. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.

Get 50% off your first 3 months with code PATENTED. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe

You can take part in our listener survey here.

Communicating with the dead has a long and winding history. The rise of seances and the showmanship of paranormal activity rose to prominence in the late 19th century. 

Spiritualism was entering a new wave, and communicating with the spirit world was now making itself physically evident through bodily manifestations of Mystics. Enter Ectoplasm. 

For some of us, our first introduction to Ectoplasm was seeing it on the big screen watching Bill Murray get slimed in Ghostbusters, or Regan excreting from the mouth in The Exorcists. However, Ectoplasm exists outside the silver Screen and Efram Sera-Shriar is joining us to discuss its rough and tumbling history.

If you’re a sceptic, spiritualist or some in-between, there’s no denying how fascinating the topic is. Join us for the weird, wonderful and out-right disturbing history of Ectoplasm, Seances and Spiritualism. 

Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Freddy Chick & Alex Carlon. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.

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Fish and Chips. About 382 million portions of the iconic national dish are consumed every year. That works out to around 6 servings per person, per year! 

But who invented it? 

Panikos Panayi, the Author of Fish and Chips: A History and will be serving up a steaming portion of deep-friend facts today.

Get ready to tuck into a delicious history of one of Britain’s most iconic dishes. 

Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Sophie Gee & Alex Carlon. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.

Get 50% off your first 3 months with code PATENTED. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe

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They can survive in lava for half an hour and accelerations of 3,400 Gs. Their beacons can be detected 20,000 feet beneath the waves. Most shocking of all - they aren't actually black! (They're bright orange = the least common colour in nature.)

Today it's the invention of the iconic Black Box (or Flight Recorder). We'll meet David Warren, the Australian who invented them. We'll learn how they work and try to fathom the strange fascination they hold.

Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.

Get 50% off your first 3 months with code PATENTED. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe

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What was the first cinema? When were the heydays of cinema-going and where are we now? How has the experience of going to the cinema changed?

Today’s show is about the rise and fall of cinema. Or should that be the rise and fall and rise again of the cinema.

Dallas's guest is Trevor Griffiths, historian at the University of Edinburgh who studied the history of cinemas and cinema-going in Scotland and beyond.

Edited by Siobhan Dale, Produced by Sophie Gee, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.

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How do we go from wolves to modern dogs? And where do Killer Beavers fit into the story?

Humans domesticated wolves long before any other animal (or even any plants). Yet what exactly happened is shrouded in mystery.

We cover ancient origins, the explosion of breeds in the Victorian era, and some very strange experiments in Soviet Russia.

Dallas’s guest today is Greger Larson, an evolutionary geneticist at Oxford University.

Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.

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"Eject! Eject!" Imagine hearing that and the next second flying out into the sky at hundreds of miles an hour, your life in the hands of a chair. Luckily it's a very special chair that has rockets, restraining harnesses, parachutes and more.

Today is the story of the invention of Ejector Seats and there's no one better to tell it than John Nichol, who had to eject while on duty in the first Gulf War. His new book "Eject! Eject!" is out now.

Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.

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Every second McDonald’s sells 75 hamburgers. It serves 70 million customers each day (more than the population of the UK). All this began at a roadside stand manned by two brothers: Dick and Mac McDonald (no joke). Then along came Ray Kroc who turned the roadside business into a global brand.

To hear the origin story of McDonald’s Dallas is joined by Lisa Napoli, author of Ray & Joan : The Man Who Made the McDonald's Fortune and the Woman Who Gave It All Away

Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.

Get 50% off your first 3 months with code PATENTED. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe

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Who invented the Kitchen? It might seem silly to ask that but there is in fact one kitchen that people point to as the mother-of-all-kitchens. It was built in 1926 in the middle of a German housing crisis, by an architect called Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. It became known simply as the "Frankfurt Kitchen".

Dallas is joined by S.E. Eisterer, a historian of architecture who has long been fascinated by Schütte-Lihotzky, her kitchens and her life.

For more on this check out:

“Die Frankfurter Küche,” (The Frankfurt Kitchen), 1926; shows the contrast of working in the “old” and in the new “Frankfurter Küche” (Frankfurt Kitchen)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41pyty0-lgs

“The Frankfurt Kitchen” by Rotifer;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbV5tUWhpGg

“Neues Bauen in Frankfurt am Main“ (New Building in Frankfurt), 1928, short documentary; gives a great overview of construction techniques and implementation at the time

https://www.filmportal.de/video/neues-bauen-in-frankfurt-am-main-1928

Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.

Get 50% off your first 3 months with code PATENTED. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe

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The first ever Pride Flag was 30 ft high and 60 ft wide. A suitably epic beginning for a flag that has had a massive impact on the world.

Who design that first flag? Why? And is Judy Garland involved in all this?

Dallas is talking to Journalist Jake Hall, author of The Art of Drag.

Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.

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Is the pencil an example of perfect design? What is the greatest pencil of all time? What does a fallen down tree in the Lake District have to do with its invention? 

Dallas talks to Caroline Weaver, pencil expert and author of “Pencils You Should Know: A History of the Ultimate Writing Utensil in 75 Anecdotes” about the origins of the pencil.

Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.

Get 50% off your first 3 months with code PATENTED. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe

You can take part in our listener survey here.

In Victorian England, a prisoner was promised their freedom if only they could pick a lock...

This week on Patented it's the history of locks and the wild stories of the race for perfect security during the Industrial Revolution. Culminating in the Great Lock Controversy of 1851.

Dallas's guest is David Churchill, a historian of locks and security at the University of Leeds.

Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.

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Hold onto your lab coats, because the suffragette scientists are here to shake things up! Patricia Fara, author of A Lab of One's Own, joins Dallas to tell the stories of forgotten pioneers of invention during the Suffragette era.

Patricia and Dallas also discuss the wider question of why there are so many more men in the history of invention than women (at least in our telling of it).

You can take part in our listener survey here.

Vulture. Snake. Baboon in a Basket. Get ready for hieroglyphs, history, and hilarity as Dallas talks to Egyptologist Chris Naunton.

We discover the mysteries of the Narmer Palette and the birth of hieroglyphs, crack the code with the Rosetta Stone and ponder where Emojis fit into the story.

Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

You can take part in our listener survey here.

Stone Tools are technology 1.0. They’re where it all begins. For millions of years, Stone Tools were our primary piece of technology. At some point we became dependent on them for survival. They became a defining part of what it meant to be human.

Dallas's guest today is John Shea, an anthropologist whose latest book is The Unstoppable Human Species: The Emergence of Homo sapiens in Prehistory.

Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

There's a theory that the invention of paint had something to do with the dawn of humanity. We are on a never-ending quest to create brighter, better colours. From grinding rocks, to crushing bugs, concocting chemicals and now manipulating nanotubes - a mind-boggling array of beautiful pigments and dyes litter our history.

Today's guest is Kassia St Clair, author of international bestseller The Secret Lives of Colours.

Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Giant mouse ears at the ready, we're off to Disneyland! Hop on board and travel with us inside Walt Disney's mind (for better or for worse). We discover how he came up with the idea, what it all means, and how his dream of a Utopian city led indirectly to the Magic Kingdom.

Dallas's guest today is Sabrina Mittermeier, author of 'A Cultural History of Disneyland Theme Parks: Middle Class Kingdoms'.

Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

The 15th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1974, cost $32 million to create. The largest investment in publishing history. And yet you can now buy the complete set for pennies.

Who invented encyclopedias? Who wrote for them? And why did Samuel Taylor Coleridge get so upset about them?

Dallas is joined by Simon Garfield, author of All the Knowledge in the World: The Extraordinary History of the Encyclopaedia.

We live in a world where everything is bugged. We all know we are being monitored. The surprising thing is that this is nothing new.

From tapped telegraph wires to bugged Martini olives, Dallas is finding out about the history of Wiretapping with Brian Hochman, author of The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States.

Before that though Dallas chats to comedian, writer and masterful impersonator Anil Desai. Can Dallas finally learn how to do a Sean Connery impression?

The most famous chicken nugget of them all, the McDonald’s McNugget, turns 40 this year. So we’re asking, who invented the Chicken Nugget? 

Enter food-scientist Robert Baker who came up with them twenty years before the McNugget was even a glimmer in Ronald McDonald's eye. Baker was a poultry alchemist who could turn a chicken into anything he wanted. And he did it all to try to save the chicken farmers he loved so much.

Editing and sound design by Stuart Beckwith, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

It's Cocktail Hour! In honour of James Bond we ask who invented cocktails? Have they always been a cool thing to drink? And where do horses bottoms fit into things?

Dallas' guest today is the pre-eminent historian (and maker) of cocktails David Wondrich, author of 'Imbibe! From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash'.

In this story, the cart really does come before the horse. Horse transport doesn't begin with people riding around on horses' backs. It starts with the invention of the Chariot.

Dallas's guest to explain the origins of horse transport and how it changed the world is William T. Taylor, anthropologist at the University of Boulder and expert on all things ancient horse related.

Saddle up partners, it's time to gallop back into the mists of time for another exciting story of invention!

Edited and produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

Who was the first King of England? Who invented a place called 'England' anyway? And what on earth are the 'bracelets of sincerity'?

With coronations in the air Dallas is going back in search of the origins of all things regal with his guest Matt Lewis, host of the History Hit podcast 'Gone Medieval'. If you are not a listener to Gone Medieval yet then go check it out! It's a fantastic show.

Edited by Stuart Beckwith, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

How’s this for a CV? 1821 - invented the Electric Motor. 1831 - invented the Electric Generator. Oh, and I also created the first Electric Transformer, discovered Benzene and liquidised Chlorine. 

Michael Faraday is a giant of invention. Here to help Dallas tell the story of how he laid the foundations of the modern world is Frank James, editor of Michael Faraday’s correspondence and author of Michael Faraday: A Very Brief Introduction.

Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Fast and sleek with a satisfying rumble in the engine. What else could you want from a car?

Well, for James Bond, the answer to this question is usually a couple of hidden weapons and some form of camouflage device.

For this episode of 'Inventing Bond' - our series marking the 70th anniversary of Fleming's Bond - Dallas is joined by Jason Barlow, author of 'Bond Cars: The Definitive Guide'.

We also spoke to David Butler, who drove some specially modified cars behind the Iron Curtain, about how close Bond cars come to the truth.

Edited by Tom Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick and Sophie Gee. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

The Book. It’s the most powerful object in history (sorry Sword fans). But how did it come to be? And what was wrong with good old scrolls in the first place?

Dallas is joined by Keith Houston, author of The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time to unpack the story of how the book came to be.

Edited by Siobhan Dale, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Dagger shoes, Lipstick gas grenade, Razor rimmed hat, Milk bottle Grenade…Prosthetic Nipple.

We’re continuing our exploration of the inventions that have made Bond, James Bond. This time it’s gadgets, gadgets, gadgets.

Dallas talks to Andre Millard, author of Equipping James Bond, about the role of inventions in the Bond books and films.

And to Andrew Hammond, curator of the Spy Museum in Washington D.C., to hear about Bond-esque gadgets in the real world.

Produced by Freddy Chick and Sophie Gee, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Get ready for the story of how the telegraph went from a long line of monks holding hands to a technology that straddled the earth. One which foreshadowed the internet in many strange ways, from online dating to fraud.

Dallas’s guest is Tom Standage, author of The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers and deputy editor of The Economist magazine.

With special thanks to Frances Grey for her wonderful acting.

Edited by Stuart Beckwith, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Well before Bond was lasering and limboing himself out of fictional situations, these were the questions faced by the British forces trying to repatriate prisoners of war during the Second World War. In this episode, we explore the solutions that they came up with.

Dallas is joined by Helen Fry, author of MI9: Escape and Evasion, to find out who the inventive 'Clutty' was, and how he managed to get men out of POW camps with the help of some playing cards and a monopoly board.

Edited by Tom Delargy, Produced by Freddy Chick and Sophie Gee, Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.

Why did Sigmund Freud want a vasectomy at 67 years old? Why were goat gonads all the rage in the 1920s? Who was the first person to get the snip?

Today we're handing over the mic to our sister podcast at History Hit - "Betwixt the Sheets" - to bring you the weird history of vasectomies.

Host Kate Lister is joined by Georgia Grainger (https://twitter.com/sniphist) to discuss the vasectomy’s place as a contraceptive, as well as its relationship with eugenics and masculinity.

*WARNING this episode includes mentions of mental illness, eugenics and themes of an adult nature*

Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Pete Dennis.

Get ready for the coming of our robot overlords by listening to this episode all about the history of AI. Who was Shakey the robot? Why did we spend thousands of hours trying to tell a machine the basic facts of life (like that the hot tap is coloured red)? What was King Charles’ grey goo theory all about?

The first half of the show is with Matthew Sparkes of the New Scientist. Matthew spends his life covering the latest developments in the field of AI and is a regular contributor to the New Scientist’s podcast ‘New Scientist Weekly’.

Then in the second half Dallas is with Professor Michael Wooldridge, author of The Road to Consciousness: the story of AI.

Edited by Stuart Beckwith, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.

When does spaghetti grow on trees? When can you milk a duck? When does Google read your brainwaves? On April Fool’s Day!

Come with us into the chaotic world of April 1st as we explore where the tradition originated and how many kinds of hilarious pranks there are.

Dallas’s guest today is Moira Marsh, a folklorist at Indiana University and author of Practically Joking.

Edited and Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Early aquariums didn't have much more in them than some sorry looking trout. Yet such was the excitement at being able to see this underwater world for the first time people queued for hours to get a peak.

Taking Dallas through the surprising history of fish tanks and aquariums is the world's only fish tank historian (that we know of) Samantha Muka, author of Oceans Under Glass: Tank Craft & Science of the Sea

Edited and Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

The Ouija Board was patented in 1890. But in did not appear out of thin air. It was only one in a long, long line of devices attempting to pierce the veil between this world and the next.

Come with us, if you dare, on a journey through the Spiritualism that rocked America in the 19th century and the wild world of inventions the movement spawned.

Dallas’s guest today is the wonderful Brandon Hodge, expert on all things talking board. Find out more at Brandon’s website: http://www.mysteriousplanchette.com/

Edited by Stuart Beckwith, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

In 1890, the Governor of New York called for a new method of capital punishment. A more modern, efficient, scientific method was being sought. There was still a buzz around the recently harnessed power of electricity, which, when delivered. at high voltage to a prisoner strapped to a chair, would do the job (though not quite, at least the first time). The terrifying prospect of the Electric Chair was also hoped to put off potential criminals. Mark Essig, author of Edison and the Electric Chair: a Story of Light and Death, tells Dallas how it came about.

Mixed by Benjie Guy. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer: Charlotte Long.

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Every bottle of Tabasco sauce on earth comes from one place - Avery Island, deep down in Louisiana. The same place where the sauce was invented by one Edmund McIlhenny in 1868.

Joining Dallas to uncover the origin story of the world’s favourite spicy sauce is the official Tabasco historian Shane Bernard.

Edited by Joseph Knight, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

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If you’d like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

Concrete is the second most used material on earth after only water. There are more than half a trillion tons of it weighing down the earth. Which is a problem. Where did concrete come from? And why are we so addicted to it?

To get into the nitty gritty with Dallas is Barnabas Calder who is Head of the Architectural and Urban History Research Group at the University of Liverpool and the author of “Raw Concrete: The Beauty of Brutalism” and “Architecture: From Prehistory to Climate Emergency.”

Edited by Stuart Beckwith, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

The war in Ukraine is being fought with tanks designed in the Cold War. The US Abrams. The German Leopard. The British Challenger. All have been sent to fight Russia’s soviet era machines. T-72s, T-62s, T-80s.

One year into the war in Ukraine we explore the origins of the tanks being used to fight the battle with David Willey of the Tank Museum.

Produced and edited by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

This is the story of the first modern computer program and the extraordinary woman who wrote it, Klara von Neumann.

The program Klara wrote was a list of numbers eight hundred odd lines long. Gibberish to look at now but to the room-sized computer she was working with, it translated into a sophisticated set of instructions telling it how to map out the path neutrons would take inside nuclear bombs.

To mark International Women’s Day we’re going in search of Klara von Neumann and giving her the recognition she so richly deserves.

Dallas’s guest to make this happen is Ananyo Bhattacharya. Ananyo wrote a wonderful book about John von Neumann called The Man from the Future and has championed Klara and her work.

Edited by Stuart Beckwith, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

The keyboard on the first ever commercially successful typewriter and the keyboard on your smartphone are separated by a gulf of time and technology. Yet their layout is essentially the same (plus or minus a few new buttons along the way).

Who invented the QWERTY keyboard layout and why hasn’t it been updated?

What is the Shift button all about?

Who else remembers the weird way it felt to type on the ZX Spectrum?

To tell the stories that lurk underneath the keyboards you use every day, Dallas is joined by Marcin Wichary. His book ‘Shift Happens’ is available via Kickstarter now: bit.ly/3ETOn8c

Produced by Sophie Gee, Edited by Freddy Chick, Senior Editor is Charlotte Long.

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If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store 

It’s perhaps the most overlooked invention of all time. Consigned to a forgotten corner in the basement of history. The Filing Cabinet.

Yet the humble Filing Cabinet was at the centre of an information revolution and became critical to the infrastructure of 20th century nation states and businesses. One sign of the deep mark it has left on us are the names we give things on our computers - Files, Folders, Tabs.

To help us restore the filing cabinet to its rightful place is Craig Robertson, author of The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information.

Produced and edited by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

In the year 2000 Japan was asked what its greatest invention of the twentieth century was. They had a LOT to choose from. The Walkman. The bullet train. Digital Cameras. Pokemon. But the winner was Instant Noodles.

Today Dallas learns about Momofuku Ando, the inventor-cum-tax-evader who invented instant noodles. Listen to Dallas’s chat with Barak Kushner, author of “Slurp! A Social and Culinary History of Ramen”, to discover:

Who invented the original ramen dish that these noodles are based on;

What America’s preparation for a land-invasion of Japan in WWII has to do with the story;

and Dallas’s recipe for a curry Pot Noodle sandwich!!!

Produced by Freddy Chick, edited by Anisha Deva, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

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If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store 

At its peak, the BlackBerry was the world’s most popular smartphone with almost 50% of the US market. They were called the ‘CrackBerry’ so many people wanted one. Now they have a 0% share of the market. This is the story of their rise-and-fall.

Today on Patented we’re handing over the mic to a podcast we think you’ll like called ‘Today In History…with The Retrospectors’. A podcast where hosts Arion, Rebecca and Olly tell a ten minute story from this day in history in each episode.

If you enjoy what you hear then you can discover over 450 episodes over at podfollow.com/retrospectors

If God invented Heaven and Earth, then who invented God? To explain how gods ‘are invented’, how they evolve and why so many seem to have vanished, Dallas is joined by Francesca Stavrakopoulou, author of ‘God: An Anatomy’. They explore the human instinct to create deities and the origins of the God of Abraham, of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Who, it turns out, was once a lowly storm deity with black eyeliner and a pierced ear.

Produced by Freddie Chick. Mixed by Benjie Guy. Senior Producer: Charlotte Long.

It’s the most famous bath of all time. But what exactly was Archimedes so excited about?

We discover the truth behind the legend of Archimedes, and find out about the industrial revolution that almost happened in Ancient Greece, with today’s guest Armand D’Angour. He’s a Professor of Classics at Oxford University and author of How To Innovate: An Ancient Guide to Creative Thinking.

Edited by Joseph Knight. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

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If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store 

It turns out that all those times you played Snakes and Ladders (Chutes and Ladders) as a child you were playing a game that once symbolised the whole universe and our place in it. Instead of crying when you landed on a snake you should really have been reflecting upon the nature of reality.

Get ready for a story that takes us back through Victorian England, to an India where boardgames were steeped in mysticism, and on to the empty nothingness at the heart of the universe. Leading Dallas down the rabbit hole is the wonderful Jacob Schmidt-Madsen from the University of Copenhagen, a historian of Indian board games and the culture surrounding them.

Edited by Stuart Beckwith, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

Exactly when, where, how, why our ancient ancestors ‘invented’ farming is one of the great questions of archaeology.

Surely if we can answer it we will understand something profound about humanity and the journey we are on.

But like all good invention stories, this one isn’t straightforward.

Dallas’s guest today is Robert Spengler, director of the Paleoethnobotany Laboratories at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, author of Fruit from the Sands, with an upcoming book about domestication.

Edited by Thomas Ntinas, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Spam Spam Spam, glorious Spam! Who invented Spam Emails? Just how much Spam activity is there online? And how will we survive once Spam AI gets going?

Spam has been the nemesis of the internet since its earliest days. And soon AI-powered spambots will force us to radically change our online behaviour if we don’t want to be perpetually duped.

Taking us on a tour of the murky world of spammers is Finn Brunton, Professor at UC Davis in Science and Technology Studies and author of the book Spam: a Shadow History of the Internet.

For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here. 

Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

Fonts are usually invisible to us; we absorb the written word without noticing the medium (unless someone sends you an email in comic sans and then you can’t see past the choice of font!)

But every font is a piece of design, created for a specific purpose at a specific point in time. Laden with meanings, some of which we subconsciously absorb when we see it.

Today’s guest is Sarah Hyndman, author of Why Fonts Matter and whose company Type Tasting delves into the power that typography has over us.

Edited by Joseph Knight, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

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How would you feel if you found out you had a very high or a very low IQ? Would it change you? The IQ test has an awful allure to it. A single number that ranks your mental ability against everyone else’s, for better or for worse.

Helping Dallas explore the origins of this blasted test is John Carson, historian and author of The Measure of Merit: Talents, Intelligence, and Inequality in the French and American Republics, 1750-1940.

Edited by Joseph Knight, produced by Freddy Chick, senior producer is Charlotte Long.

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It’s time to talk about the toilet, or crapper, or bog, or the john, head, the comfort station, khazi, dunny, can, throne, pissoir.

Join Dallas and his guest, Rose George - author of The Big Necessity, on a trip down the toilet bowl of history as they uncover the origins of the flush toilet.

Listen in to find out how Queen Elizabeth’s naughty cousin tried to win back her favour, why sewers don’t smell as bad as we think, and what a condom filled with miso paste has to do with all this.

Edited by Aidan Lonergan, produced by Freddy Chick, senior producer is Charlotte Long.

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A hundred years ago next to no one was born via Caesarean Section. Today, one in five new arrivals on planet earth come via a Caesarean. Its meteoric rise is down to an invention most people won’t know. The Foetal Heart Monitor.

This is a story about how the law of unintended consequences led to Caesarean Section becoming the world’s most common major surgery.

Our guest today is Jackie Wolf, is a historian of medicine and author of Caesarean Section: An American History of Risk, Technology, and Consequence. She’s also a repeat guest on Patented. Go back and check out her episode on Baby Formula if you haven’t heard it.

WARNING: This episode contains descriptions of childbirth and the death of a baby during childbirth.

Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

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When this trick was first performed, ushers poured buckets of blood down the gutter outside the theatre to entice people into the macabre spectacle. Today Dallas is joined by Jim Steinmeyer to talk about the invention and development of the most iconic magic trick of all - Sawing Someone In Half.

It turns out that Dallas is something of a magician himself and has been fascinated by the history of magic for a long time. And Jim, author of Hiding the Elephant and many other books on magic, is something of a hero.

Edited by Joseph Knight, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

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150 years ago a patent was lodged for the first ever pair of jeans (what we’d think of as jeans today at least). There were two names on it. One was the inventor Jacob Davis. The other was the company he was going into business with: Levi Strauss & Co.

How did Levi’s jeans come to be? Why are there a pair of horses on the label? What’s with the tiny rivets on all the pockets? And why are they called ‘501s’?

Find out on today’s episode of Patented with our guest Tracey Panek, historian for Levi Strauss & Co.

Produced by Freddy Chick, Editing and Sound Design by Thomas Ntinas, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

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250 million years ago the armour-plated Placoderm fish invented the act of sex as we know it. Hubba Hubba. Dive in the historical sack as we go in search of the origins of nature’s greatest ever invention.

Dallas’s guest on this episode is Australian palaeontologist John Long, author of The Dawn of the Deed.

Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior producer is Charlotte Long.

You can argue that plastics were invented to save nature from human depredation…that plan backfired a bit!

Early plastics were designed as substitutes for scarce natural products like ivory and shellac or the shells of endangered snails. But it didn’t take long for things to get out of hand.

In this episode we trace the story of plastic past, present and future by way of three inventions.

1. The invention of plastics
2. The dawn of disposable plastic culture
3. The possibly new creatures that will emerge in response to the vast amounts of plastic littering the earth

Our guest today is Heather Davis, professor of media and culture and the New School in New York. She’s pondered these questions for a long time and her book, Plastic Matter, looks at how plastics change our way of life.

Produced by Freddy Chick, edited by Thomas Ntinas, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

The Open Plan Office. A little bit of you might die inside every time you hear those words. But we promise you the history of how they came to be is worth hearing.

Born at the same time as the counter cultural revolution of the 60s, Open Plan was supposed to create the offices that the egalitarian, free-thinking children of that revolution would want to work in.

The Open Plan Office was supposed to do away with stultifying hierarchies of post-war offices (think Mad Men). To give workers the flexibility to be their best selves and to allow the free flow of ideas.

Oh how the best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry!

Here to tell the story is Jennifer Kaufmann Buhler, a design historian and author of the book Open Plan: A Design History of the American Office.

Produced by Freddy Chick, edited by Joseph Knight, senior producer is Charlotte Long

Today we’re bringing you an episode from Dan Snow’s History Hit. Normal Patented service will resume in the New Year.

Accurate timekeeping is at the very root of all of the technological advances in the modern world, but how did it all begin? From Roman sundials to mediaeval water-clocks, people of all cultures have made and used clocks for thousands of years. Dan speaks to horologist, historian and former curator of timekeeping at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, David Rooney, about the importance of time, and what clocks can tell us about the history of human civilisation. David’s book, About Time: A History of Civilisation in Twelve Clocks, is out now.

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Ho ho ho! Come with us on a Christmas tale of invention as we talk to the world’s only Christmas Cracker historian, Peter Kimpton of Norwich.

🎄Hear about Tom Smith the inventor of the Christmas Cracker

🎁Discover the strangest Christmas Cracker ever made

🧑‍🎄Learn what makes the “CRACK”!

Produced by Freddy Chick, senior producer is Charlotte Long

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There’s so many versions of Monopoly these days. Which one is the original? London? No. Atlantic City? Uh uh. The original had property names like ‘Poverty Place’ and ‘La Swell Hotel’ and was designed as an anti-Capitalist game.

Our guest to tell the story of Lizzie Magie, the real inventor of the game we now know as Monopoly, is David Parlett a games historian and inventor.

And don’t all rush off to play Monopoly at the end because we’ve got a special update to one of our previous episodes.

After news that US scientists had made a breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion Power we got Arthur Turrell, author of The Starbuilders, back on to update us on what’s happened.

If you’ve not listened to our amazing episode all about the race to conquer Nuclear Fusion Power then go back to October and check it out.

Produced and edited by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

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Today it’s a Tupperware party and you’re all invited! Tupperware epitomises the post-war suburban dream. But pop open the lid and peep inside and not all is as it seems. There was a battle for the soul of Tupperware. A battle fought between the inventor of the Tupperware box, Earl Tupper, and the woman who made it famous through her Tupperware parties, Brownie Wise.

Helping Dallas uncover the true nature of Tupperware is the wonderful Alison Clarke, professor of design history and theory at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and the author of Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950's America.

Produced by Freddy Chick, edited by Aidan Lonergan, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long

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The hieroglyphs seem to hold a lot of secrets about Ancient Egyptians. What do emojis say about us? What on earth is their story?

Emojis originate in the notebooks of 1970’s Japanese schoolgirls obsessed with adding cute illustrations between words.

Their story ends in boardroom meetings in California where the emojis that we are all allowed, and the ones we aren’t, are decided.

What a strange journey for a form of communication to take. It must all mean something…but what? 

Today’s guest is Philip Seargeant a lecturer in applied linguistics at the Open University and author of The Emoji Revolution: the technology shaping the future of communication.

Produced by Freddy Chick, edited by Lewis Mason, senior producer Charlotte Long

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Why did the chicken cross the road? What came first, the chicken or the egg? Who invented the chicken anyway?

We answer at least one of these questions on today’s show.

We follow the chicken from the time of the dinosaurs (the chicken is the closest living relative to T-Rex) until today’s genetically engineered bird with today’s guest Sally Coulthard, author of Fowl Play: A History of the Chicken from Dinosaur to Dinner Plate.

Produced by Freddy Chick, edited by Lewis Mason, senior producer Charlotte Long

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Who invented LEGO, the world's favourite toy? To find out we have to head to a Danish fishing village where a family of toy makers live. A family who over the course of three generations, created the LEGO world we know today.

Dallas’s guest is Daniel Konstanski, a lifelong LEGO fanatic who builds breathtaking LEGO models and has recently published a book called The Secret Life of Lego.

Produced by Freddy Chick. Editing and sound design by Anish Deva. Senior producer Charlotte Long.

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CROISSANTS WEREN’T INVENTED IN FRANCE. Mon dieu! C’est pas vrai!

Today Dallas finds out about the person responsible for bringing the croissant to France.

It wasn’t Marie Antoinette and it has nothing to do with the Turkish flag.

The person we have to thank is an Austrian entrepreneur called August Zang who set up a wildly popular Viennese bakery in Paris in the early nineteenth century. In amongst the Viennese goodies on show was a certain crescent shaped roll….

Our guest today is Jim Chevallier, author of August Zang and the French Croissant. Check out Jim’s website chezjim.com for more information on the croissant and beyond.

Produced by Freddy Chick, edited by Joseph Knight, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

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Who invented aliens? We did. Each age invents its own. When we invented robots, aliens became robotic beings. In the Cold War, intergalactic peacemakers appear. Aliens came to abduct us in a decade when the news was full of kidnappings.

In this episode Dallas discovers when we first started to think about alien life and explores how our ideas about aliens have evolved over time. And we hear three stories of people who claimed to have met aliens.

His guide to alien lifeforms is Greg Eghigian, professor of history at Penn State university and author of an upcoming book about the phenomenon of UFO sightings and alien encounters.

Produced by Freddy Chick, edited by Aidan Lonergan, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

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The world’s first Loop-the-Loop roller coaster gave so many people whiplash that they kept a medical team on the payroll.

Find out where roller coasters began; why your hands sweat when you’re on them; and how long it takes the human brain to realise that it’s fallen to its death (perhaps).

Dallas’s guest today is the world’s only thrill engineer Brendan Walker, the guy roller coaster designers turn to for advice on how to make their rides as thrilling as possible.

Keep your arms and legs inside the podcast at all times as we go on another roller coaster ride into the history of inventions!

Produced by Freddy Chick, Edited by Anisha Deva, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

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The Frozen Food industry was invented by the Birdseye company. And that company was started by a living breathing Birdseye; Clarence Birdseye.

Clarence Birdseye was a small, bespectacled New Yorker who lived a life somewhere between Buffalo Bill and Thomas Edison.

He came up with the idea for frozen food while starting a family in the barren wastes of North Eastern Canada, where he ate polar bears, skunks, lynx stewed in sherry, and horned owls.

He became a self made millionaire who invented not only the frozen food industry but also new kinds of lightbulbs, automatic whaling harpoons, and a whole new paper making process while living in the Colombian jungle. He died with more than two hundred patents in his name.

Our guest to tell the story of this remarkable inventor is Mark Kurlansky, author of Birdseye a biography of Clarence Birdseye.

Produced and Edited by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer: Charlotte Long.

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***Real life inventor alert*** We speak to Rick Priestley the co-creator of the weird world of Warhammer where valiant humans, noble elves, savage orcs and a variety of monstrous creatures battle eternally. How on earth do you invent something like this?

If you have no idea what Warhammer is then don't worry; neither did Dallas before this! In his chat with Rick, Dallas tries to work out where Warhammer came from and how you invent a fantasy world that people will actually believe in. Whether that's Warhammer or Narnia or Hogwarts or [insert favourite fantasy world here]. Any of the fantasy worlds that millions of us love to lose ourselves in.

Buckle on your shields and swords at the ready as we embark on one of our stranger adventures in the history of invention.

Produced by Freddy Chick. Edited by Anisha Deva. Executive Producer is Charlotte Long.

If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code PATENTED for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription. To download, go to Android or Apple store.

Hold onto your fishing rods guys. We’re tracking down the origins of batteries and it turns out it has a lot to do with a fish with a nasty sting in its tail. Zzzaaap!!

Human’s have known that an electrical force existed for thousands of years. But it wasn’t until the turn of the nineteenth century that we were able to harness it for the first time in a battery. It opened the doors for a whole new way of life.

Get ready for stories of reanimated corpses, bitter scientific rivalries, shocking ancient medicine and electric fish.

Our guest today is Tim Jorgensen, author of Spark: The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life.

Produced and edited by Freddy Chick. Executive Producer is Charlotte Long.

If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code PATENTED for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription. To download, go to Android or Apple store.

Hope you’re hungry because today we’re opening a can of historical worms as we discover the origins of canned food. 

How did canned food go from something only explorers would consider eating to the centrepiece of kitchen cupboards? What does a competition run by Napoleon have to do with things? And is it true that the can opener wasn't invented until decades after the can was?

Our guest today is Anna Zeide, author of Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry.

Produced by Freddy Chick. Editing and sound design by Thomas Ntinas. Executive Producer is Charlotte Long.

If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code PATENTED for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription. To download, go to Android or Apple store.

They were cigars the size of ocean liners that floated through the clouds. Cow intestines filled with hydrogen held them up. The world’s first flight attendant served champagne and caviar.

Zeppelins seem almost too strange to have been real now. But they once carried paying passengers across the Atlantic in style. People foresaw a time when Zeppelins would dock at the top of the Empire State Building. For a moment they looked like the future.

And then came that awful day in May 1937 when the greatest Zeppelin of them all, the Hindenburg, exploded.

Who invented the Zeppelin? (The clue is in the name!)

What was it like to fly in one?

And why did the Hindenburg explode?

Find out all this and more on today’s episode! Our guest is the wonderful Dan Grossman, aviation historian and the man behind airships.net, one of the great websites of our time (if you’re into airships).

Produced and edited by Freddy Chick. Executive Producer is Charlotte Long.

If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code PATENTED for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription. To download, go to Android or Apple store.

What was the first ever internet ad? When was the last time someone actually clicked on one? What happened to all the proper ads with catchy jingles?

Today Dallas investigates one of the most infuriating aspects of modern life, online advertising. We discover how they started and the mind-boggling ways they work.

Is it possible that online advertising is a bubble that will one day burst? A world without online ads might sound appealing until you consider all the free services they underwrite, from emails, to search engines, to this very podcast (please don’t skip the ads guys!).

Our guest today is Tim Hwang author of the book Subprime Attention Crisis.

Produced by Freddy Chick, edited by Aidan Lonergan. The Executive Producer is Charlotte Long.

If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code PATENTED for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription. To download, go to Android or Apple store.

Welcome to Patented-Gone-Paranormal!! Thomas Edison tried to make a telephone that called the spirit world. One of the pioneers of radio believed he could talk with his dead son through the 'Ether'.

Technology might seem the antithesis of the spirit world. But just at that point in our history when technology began to dominate our way of life, it also sprouted supernatural arms and legs.

Spiritualism emerged in the middle of the nineteenth century. A new form of an old belief that it is possible to communicate with the dead.

And from the beginning it was deeply meshed in the new technologies that were emerging in the Victorian era and changing the way people saw the world.Ghostly photographs, haunted typewriters, spirit voices from the radio, paranormal podcasts even?

My guest today is Efram Sera-Shriar who studies how the occult intersects with science and is the author of a new book Psychic Investigators: Anthropology, Modern Spiritualism, and Credible Witnessing in the Late Victorian Age.

Produced by Freddy Chick. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Executive Producer: Charlotte Long.

With thanks to Denna Cartamkhoob and Tom Chick

If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code PATENTED for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription. To download, go to Android or Apple store.

For almost a century we’ve been trying to build a star on earth. Not easy with temperatures reaching 150,000,000℃.

Today on Patented it’s the story of our efforts to make a nuclear fusion reactor with Arthur Turrell author of The Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion and the Race to Power the Planet.

Find out what people used to believe the sun was made out of; just how powerful the world’s biggest laser is, and what Argentinian fake news has to do with all this.

Produced by Freddy Chick

Executive Producer Charlotte Long

If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code PATENTED for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription. To download, go to Android or Apple store.

Linoleum, or “lino”, once ruled the world (of flooring). It appeared everywhere from the Titanic to your gran’s kitchen. But where did it come from?

We hear the story of the Victorian inventor, Frederick Walton, who came up with lino whilst trying to find an alternative to rubber.

And we discover the Scottish town that was at the epicentre of world lino production during the golden years.

Our guests to tell the story is Lily Barnes, curator of Flooring the World, a project to celebrate Fife’s history of linoleum. And Angus Fotheringhame, the General Manager at Forbo Flooring Systems UK.

If you want to reach out to Lily with memories or questions about lino or anything else then you can email: [email protected] 

Produced by Freddy Chick

Edited by Anisha Deva

Executive Producer Charlotte Long

If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code PATENTED for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription. To download, go to Android or Apple store.

If a Victorian met Elon Musk they would completely get him. The world’s richest man, determined to use technology that doesn’t yet exist to colonise Mars. Classic Victorian thinking.

The Victorians didn’t really take us to the moon. But what they did do was give us a way of thinking about the future that helped us to.

Before the Victorians, people assumed the future would look a lot like the present.

After the Victorians, we started assuming that great inventors would make the future wildly different from today. And we began to look to the Elon Musks of the world to shape the future for us.

This is what today’s guest thinks anyway and it’s a convincing argument.

Iwan Morus is the author of How the Victorians Took Us to the Moon and a historian at Aberystwyth University.

Music from: www.motionarray.com

Produced by Freddy Chick

Edited by Thomas Ntinas

Executive Producer Charlotte Long

If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code PATENTED for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription. To download, go to Android or Apple store.

George Washington Carver is well known to Americans as the Peanut Man. It’s been written of him that ‘peanuts were like paintbrushes: They were tools to express his imagination’.

If that sounds a bit ridiculous, it’s because it is.

George Washington Carver was far more radical and innovative than ‘the guy who did stuff with peanuts’.

At a time when the scientific consensus was pushing farmers to use more and more chemicals and machinery on their lands, Carver urged them to learn how to farm in harmony with nature.

He saw the direct link between the social injustice of the Jim Crow South and the ecological damage being wrought on the landscape.

He was a pioneer of ecological farming, a warrior for environmental justice before there was such a thing.

Our guest today is Mark Hersey, author of “My Work is that of Conservation: An Environmental Biography of George Washington Carver” and a historian at Mississippi University.

Produced by Freddy Chick

Edited by Aidan Lonergan

Executive Producer is Charlotte Long

If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code PATENTED for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription. To download, go to Android or Apple store.

The birth of DNA fingerprinting will forever be tied to Leicester, England. It was invented in a lab in the city’s university by Alec Jeffreys in 1984. And it was in the outskirts of the city that it was first used to catch a murderer – Colin Pitchfork who raped and killed the young girls Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth.

It has gone on to revolutionise policing.

Our guest to tell this story is Turi King who was taught by Alec Jeffreys and is now professor of public engagement at Leicester University and the inhouse geneticist on the BBC TV show ‘Family Secrets’.

Since this is the final episode in our mini-series on forensics we thought it would be nice to round things out with a chat with a real forensic scientist. Niamh Nic Daeid is the head of Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science in Dundee. We talk about the realities of being a forensic scientist today and what the future might hold.

Produced by Freddy Chick

Edited by Thomas Ntinas

Executive Producer was Charlotte Long

Have you ever heard the story of how punk began?

“They are Dickensian-like urchins who with ragged clothes and pockmarked faces roam the streets of foggy gaslit London…Some of these ragamuffin gangs jump up on tables amidst the charred debris and with burning torches play rock and roll…One of these gangs call themselves the Sex Pistols.”

Those are the words of Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols. Together with other artists & designers who worked with the band, Malcolm created the image of the Sex Pistols and in doing so created the image of punk. The Sex Pistols were a giant art project.

That’s what today’s guests think at least.

Paul Stolper and Andrew Wilson are collectors of Sex Pistols’ artwork. Their horde is the stuff of any punk fan’s dreams. A ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’ poster that hung on Sid Vicious’s wall in the Chelsea Hotel; Johnny Rotten’s handwritten lyrics; Jamie Reid’s notebook with designs and so much more. Dallas went to see their amazing collection and hear the story of the birth of punk. Enjoy!

The collection is going up for auction at Sotheby’s from October 10th until October 21st 2022. If you want to nab yourself some punk history then have a look: 

https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2022/the-sex-pistols-the-stolper-wilson-collection

*WARNING this episode contains explicit language*

Produced by Freddy Chick

Executive Producer is Charlotte Long

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From talking sponges to voices frozen in ice, the history of recorded sound is not what you expect.

People fantasised about being able to record sound long before it was possible. We begin by hearing a few of the most remarkable ways that were dreamt up. Then we meet the first person ever to record sound. *Spoiler alert* it wasn’t Thomas Edison.

Our guests for this episode are Will Sutton, author of the Campbell Lawless series of Victorian mystery novels, and Patrick Feaster who is part of a small team of people who discovered and brought back to life the earliest ever sound recording.

Produced by Freddy Chick

Sound Design by Thomas Ntinas

Executive Producer is Charlotte Long

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What does Wonder Woman have to do with the invention of the lie detector? Does refusing to yank a donkey’s tail make you a liar? Is it folly to believe that a machine can ever peer inside the human mind?

The invention of the lie detector is a strange story full of eccentric characters, fascinating true crime, and some incomplete science at its heart.

These days there are lie detectors based on artificial intelligence and MRI scans and detectors are used in policing across the world. But the fundamental problems at the heart of ‘lie detectors’ have not changed since they were invented a hundred years ago.

Our guest today is Amit Katwala, a senior writer at WIRED and author of Tremors in The Blood: Murder, Obsession, and the Birth of the Lie Detector.

This is the third episode in our mini-series about the invention of forensics. Next week is the fourth and final instalment – DNA Fingerprinting.

Produced by Freddy Chick

Editing and Sound Design by Anisha Deva

Executive Producer is Charlotte Long

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If humans travel to Mars then by the time they come home all the food they eat will be five years old. Want a bite?

Food often gets overlooked in stories about space flight. Yet space food has a fascinating history and will become an ever-increasing challenge the further we journey into space.

Our guest today is Vickie Kloeris who worked in the NASA food program for 34 years and was head of food systems for both Shuttle and the International Space Station. She takes us on a potted history (or maybe that should be a freeze-dried history) of the history of food in space. From early space flight to life on Mars.

Produced by Freddy Chick

Editing and sound design by Thomas Ntinas 

Executive produced by Charlotte Long

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If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

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We hear from London’s most inaccessible museum, the Met police’s Crime Museum, and take you back to India in the time of the British Raj. We hear about the first murder case ever to hinge on fingerprint evidence.

No one had to invent fingerprints. They’ve been around for ages…But to be able to use fingerprints in fighting crime required an obsessive colonial administrator, hard science and the invention of an ingenious filing system that would revolutionise policing around the world.

Our guests today are Chandak Sengoopta, historian at Birkbeck University and author of Imprint of the Raj: How Fingerprinting was Born in Colonial India and Paul Bickley, curator of the Crime Museum housed in New Scotland Yard.

This is the second episode in a mini-series we’re bringing you all about the invention of Forensics. Next week it’s Lie Detectors.

Produced by Freddy Chick

Executive Producer is Charlotte Long

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First Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel shocked the world’s eyeballs with her fashion designs. Then she shocked its nostrils with a new smell - Chanel No. 5. 

“It’s punk rock but with feather boas and fragrance”. That’s how today’s guest, Suzy Nightingale, describes the impact that Coco Chanel had on society. Coco was at the heart of a revolution that was overthrowing the old world’s traditions and ideas of propriety.

In 1921, in search of a perfume that would capture the smell of the modern woman, she launched Chanel No. 5. It changed perfume forever and now more than a hundred years on remains the most famous perfume in the world.

Suzy Nightingale is Dallas’s guest to talk about all things perfume and Chanel. She is an award winning writer on perfume and co-host of the wonderful podcast On The Scent (https://pod.link/1573786577).

Produced by Freddy Chick

Edited by Thomas Ntinas

Executive Producer is Charlotte Long

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Death by tiger bites. Death by prodding. Death from sexual excess. Deaths from over-eating and over-drinking. The opening of graves.

These are a few of the chapter headings in a 13th century Chinese book called ‘The Washing Away of Wrongs’. It is a compendium of grizzly, gory, bizarre murders and deaths.

Its author was Song Ci, a Confucian trained bureaucrat who, like his fellow officials all over China, was responsible for investigating murders in his jurisdiction. According to the Wikipedia page for ‘forensic science’ this book is the earliest written evidence of forensic thinking. Is that correct?

Our guest today is Daniel Asen, a historian of China at Rutgers University.

This is the first episode in a mini-series we’re bringing you all about the invention of Forensics. Next week it’s Fingerprints.

Produced by Freddy Chick

Edited by Pete Dennis and Anisha Deva

Actors were Lucy Davidson and Tristan Hughes

Executive Producer is Charlotte Long

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We take PowerPoint for granted. It's as much a fact of life as concrete. Or rainy afternoons. But it hasn’t always been here. It has a story. And once you’ve heard it, you’ll never look at PowerPoint the same way again.

Those old enough can remember the world before PowerPoint. A world where presentations were done on overhead projectors or 35mm slideshow carousels. In 1985, in the US alone, people made over 600 million 35mm slides and more than 500 million overhead transparencies. Large companies had departments dedicated to producing them.

Robert Gaskins, the inventor of PowerPoint, had a vision of how computers could produce these slides and transparencies more efficiently, and eventually consign them to the dustbin of history.

Russell Davies is our guest today and author of Everything I Know about Life I Learned from PowerPoint. He’s here to tell us that the inventor of PowerPoint, Robert Gaskins, is the tech hero we should all have.

Produced by Freddy Chick

Edited by Anisha Deva

Executive Producer was Charlotte Long

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We talk to the real life Siri in this episode. Susan Bennett was the original voice of Siri back in 2011, although she didn't know it at the time...

But before that it's a conversation with Dallas's friend Ali Maggs (from Chaos Created) about the history of virtual assistants - everything from a mechanical dog that jumps out of its kennel, to that helpful digital paperclip Clippy, to the incredibly smart assistants of today and tomorrow.

Produced by Freddy Chick

The Executive Producer was Charlotte Long

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The Contact Lens. The humble Contact Lens. Oh boy, do we have a rip-roaring episode for you about the humble contact lens.

Nazi villains, arrests by secret police, chance encounters on trains and fear of Soviet invasion. And in the middle of it all, an unlikely hero: a Czech chemist called Otto Wichterle.

On Christmas Eve 1961, Otto Wichterle created the world’s first soft contact lens at his kitchen table with the help of his son’s toy mechanics set.

Who was Otto?

How did he manage to create the world’s first contact lens behind the Iron Curtain, despite political opposition?

Why is his story not better known?

Our guest today, Riikka Palonkorpi, works at the University of the Arts in Helsinki and wrote her PhD thesis on Otto Wichterle back in 2012. As part of her research, Riikka met Otto’s wife and visited their home, so naturally is the perfect person to help us answer these questions as we unravel Otto’s story.

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick.

The editor was Anisha Deva.

The senior producer was Charlotte Long.

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REAL LIFE INVENTOR ALERT!!!

Two jockstraps cleverly sewn together. That was how the very first sports bra was made in 1977. The product built out from this prototype, the “Jog Bra”, went on to change women’s athletics forever.

Today we’re talking to Lisa Lindhal who, together with her friends Polly and Hinda, unleashed the sports bra on the world. 

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick.

The editor was Anisha Deva.

The senior producer was Charlotte Long

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If you feel confused and left behind by cryptocurrency then this is for you. We're taking you on a journey through the strange history of cryptocurrency. Why and how does it exist?

It turns out this history isn’t so much about clever codes as good old-fashioned politics.

Our guide is Finn Brunton, author of Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency.

Get ready for a rip-roaring tale of Bletchley Park codebreakers, the wild west early days of the internet, dystopian visions of the future, and a man with a fortune buried somewhere in a rubbish dump in Wales.

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick.

The editor was Thomas Ntinas.

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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The patent for the Ring doorbell cites this as the starting point. A Heath Robinson looking design with peep holes, sliding cameras and radio controlled alarms. An invention, and an inventor, ahead of their time.

Marie van Brittan Brown was an African American nurse living in Queens in New York in the 1960s. In 1969 she and her husband received a patent for what is the first modern home security system. It had many of the same fundamental features as the smart doorbells of today. But after the patent and some positive press coverage, nothing happened. No big companies swooped in to help build the system. Marie never became a millionaire.

Who was Marie van Brittan Brown? What was her invention? And why didn’t it take off?

My guest today is Shontavia Johnson, vice president for entrepreneurship at Clemson University and patent lawyer in a former life. Shontavia has been helping to revive Marie’s remarkable story as we will hear, thus allowing us to explore what Marie’s story teaches about who gets to be an inventor.

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Find out what Play-Doh has to do with sooty walls. And how we have a nursery teacher called Kay Zufall and a TV presenter called Captain Kangaroo to thank for it.

Our guest is Chris Bensch from the Strong Museum of Play, surely the world’s funnest museum. Chris takes us for a jaunt down memory. Along the way we sniff deeply from a tub of everyone's favourite modelling compound.

If you could spritz yourself with a Play-Doh scented perfume, would you?

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick

The editor was Anisha Deva

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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Pyres on the Appalachian mountains. Planes spraying chemicals into clouds. Mirrors in space. “I can make it rain, I can make it rain, I can make it rain…by waggling my stick”.

For more than a century, scientists, soldiers and charlatans have tried to manipulate the weather, wildly exaggerating what is possible.

Does any of it actually work?

And even if we could control the climate, should we? Whose hand would be on the thermostat?

Today we’re joined by James Fleming, a leading historian of meteorology and climate change and author of Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control.

James helps us chart the dubious history of attempts to control the weather from the 19th century meteorologist dubbed the ‘Rain King’, to Cold War efforts to drench opposing armies, to cloud seeding at the start of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick

The editor was Anisha Deva

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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!!!REAL LIFE INVENTOR ALERT!!!

Usually we talk about dead people on this podcast. It is history after all. But this week we’ve got living, breathing Ben Jen on talking about his invention Vantablack.

Vantablack is so dark, so black, that all details of the objects it covers dissolves. 99.965% of light that hits it is absorbed. It is no longer possible to tell what you are looking at. All you see is a black hole in space.

It was created by Ben and his colleagues at his company Surrey Nanosystems. They produced it for the space industry who had asked for something really, really good at absorbing light.

But this darkest of materials has gone on to have a life of its own causing outrage in the art world and provoking emotional responses in everyone that sees its strangeness.

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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The Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest building in the world for nearly four thousand years…until it was beaten by Lincoln Cathedral.

This week Dallas is joined by Egyptologist and friend Chris Naunton for a crash course in pyramid construction and the mysteries that surround them.

Discover where pharaohs were buried before pyramids came along; find out who is believed to have designed the very first pyramid; and learn why they wanted to build giant triangles in the desert in the first place.

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick

Edited by Thomas Ntinas

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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The transistor; solar panels; the first telecommunications satellite; cell phone networks; UNIX code; information theory. All these and more were invented in one place: Bell Labs.

Bell Labs was where the future, which is what we now happen to call the present, was conceived and designed. It was the research and development arm of AT&T, which had monopoly control of the American phone system for much of the 20th century, and had more than ten thousand employees in its heyday.

Why is Bell Labs not a household name?

How did the transistor chip come to be?

Which genius rode a unicycle around the office while smoking a cigar?

Our guest today is Jon Gertner, author of The Idea Factory as we explore the secret to Bell Labs’ success.

With thanks to AT&T Archives and History Center for the archive recordings.

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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90% of everything you own arrived by sea.

And there’s one invention to thank above all else – the humble shipping container.

Today on Patented we’re joined by Rose George - journalist and author of the book Deep Sea and Foreign Going about her experience of spending five weeks on board a container ship.

Who do we have to thank for the modern shipping container?

Which country provides a quarter of the world’s merchant seamen?

Batten down the hatches and man the riggings as we set course for another edition of Patented.

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick & edited by Joseph Knight

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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Barbie. What is it about Barbie? Love her or loathe her this 11 ½ inch doll gets a big reaction.

Which is strange in a way because she’s over sixty years old. Few things have managed to stay relevant so long, surviving seismic cultural change.

This week it’s the story of how the doll that changed childhood for millions came to be.

Our guest is Tanya Stone author of The Good, the Bad and the Barbie. 

And we meet Tristan Piñeiro and some of his more than 600 barbies.

Find out what Barbie has to do with a 1950s cartoon hooker…And what Teen Talk Barbie said that so incensed the world…

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick & Seyi Adaobi.

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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*tap* *tap* *tap*

That’s the sound of physical cash being consigned to the dustbin of history by us tapping cards/phones/watches instead.

Contactless payments are growing so rapidly that it seems a safe prediction that a cashless future is not far away.

In the UK contactless payments rose 52% between 2019 and 2021. Some shops already don’t take cash. And it’s a similar picture in countries across the world.

We’ve been using hard cash as the primary way to pay for things for millenia. How has this new technology crept up on us so fast?

Today we find out how contactless payments began, how they work, and who really benefits from them. Joining us today are guests Natasha de Teran and Gottfried Leibbrandt.

The episode was produced by Emily Whalley

The editor was Peter Dennis

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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No summer blockbuster. No Las Vegas and no skyscrapers in Dubai. No chocolate bars when the weather gets hot. Air conditioning is one of those things we take for granted but that has transformed the world around us, for good and for bad.

There are 1.6 billion air conditioners in the world today and they consume an estimated 10% of all electricity. Both these figures are likely to rise dramatically as the climate changes.

But when air conditioning first appeared people were slow to adopt it. People were so used to suffering extreme heat that it's as if it was hard to believe this godsend was real. Now it is hard to imagine life in many parts of the world without it.

Who do we have to thank for this transformative piece of technology?

How did Queen Victoria keep cool?

And what is the connection between Hollywood's summer blockbusters and air conditioning?

Our guest to explore this world-changing technology is Salvatore Basile, author of – Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything.

The episode was produced by Emily Whalley

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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The United States has been suffering from a baby formula shortage for months now. It’s shown how reliant we are on this one commodity. People need it to feed their babies. It doesn’t get much bigger than that.

But we managed without baby formula for a very, very long time. So when did the United States along with large swathes of the rest of the world become so dependent on baby formula?

Learn the real origins of Baby Formula and its rise and rise on Patented with our guest Dr Jacqueline Wolf.

The answer will surprise you.

The episode was produced by Emily Whalley

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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A pint might be Britain’s most beloved measurement. But what’s the name for the distance a reindeer can walk before it needs to pee?

The way we measure things changes the way we see the world. Measurements have shaped our history and are bound up in ideas of statehood, power and control.

“Measurement is as important to human civilization as language or mathematics.”

That’s the view of today’s guest James Vincent, journalist and author of Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement.

The episode was produced by Emily Whalley

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

Edited by Freddy Chick

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Imagine knowing no language at all…

*wordlessness*

…and then giving birth to one.

This is what happened amongst the children at a school for the deaf in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

 And my guest today was there to witness and document it.

Judy Shepard Kegl is a linguist who specialises in sign languages. Back in 1985 she had recently completed her PhD when out of the blue she was invited down to Nicaragua’s then relatively new school for the deaf.

What she saw tells us something about the nature of languages - regardless of whether they’re signed or spoken -  and about how each and every one of us learn our mother tongue.

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

Edited and mixed by Thomas Ntinas

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When the ancient Egyptians mummified their dead they were trying to stop time, to preserve the body so well that it would last throughout eternity.

They succeeded (sometimes). There are mummies that when we look at their faces today it’s as if they’re about to wake up and say hello.

How did they do it? What chemicals were involved? How many mummies even are there?

We speak to Egyptologist Salima Ikram. Salima works to unpick the mysteries of mummification both by analysing ancient mummies and by having a go at making some new ones herself!

This episode was produced by Emily Whalley and Freddy Chick

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

Edited and mixed by Aidan Lonergan

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Often mistakenly called Cryogenics, Cryonics is the speculative practice of preserving and storing recently dead bodies at very low temperatures — all in the hope we may one day be able to bring them back to life.

Crucially, the technology to execute that final step, reanimation, doesn't exist. At least not yet. Individuals who sign up to a Cryonics service today are betting on people of the future to solve that particular problem.

Despite these scientific roadblocks, the concept of cryogenic preservation has certainly captured our imaginations with references littering pop culture — from rumours about Walt Disney's Head, to characters like Austin Powers and Futurama's Fry.

So, what attracts us to the idea of living into the future? And what is the technology that could possibly get us there?

Today on the show, we speak to two guests to explore the past and future of Cryonics — from its origins in 1970s California to today, and a possible tomorrow.

First, I speak with Haley Campbell, journalist and author, about her visit to The Cryonics Institute, a facility founded by the the “Father of Cryonics” Robert Ettinger, whilst reporting her latest book.

Then, I am joined by Tim Gibson from Cryonics UK. He walks us through how they actually conduct procedures, how much services cost, and the legal status of cryonics.

This episode was produced by Emily Whalley

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

Edited and mixed by Emily Whalley and Pete Dennis

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A whistle stop tour of the 50 year history of video games — and all the innovations along the way, from our TV sets to virtual reality.

• Why are the roots of gaming in universities and labs?
• What technology helped gaming spread and grow?
• How do you explain the console wars of the 1990s?

Find out all that and more today on the show with our guest John Wilis, the Director of the Centre of American Studies at The University of Kent and author of Gamer Nation: Videogames and American Culture.

This episode was produced by Emily Whalley and Freddie Chick

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

Edited and mixed by Stuart Beckwith

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The drones are coming. In twenty years there’s going to be a hundred times more flying planes, taxis, parcels in the airspace than today thanks to drone technology. Assuming we don't try to stop them first...

Today on Patented we're handing over the mic to the incredible Jacob Goldstein (former host of Planet Money) and his new podcast ‘What’s Your Problem?’. Jacob explains the problems that really smart people are trying to solve right now. And how they’ll change the world if they succeed.

In this episode he’s joined by Keenan Wyrobek, co-founder of Zipline (they make drones) to discuss the obstacles that lie between us and flying pizza deliveries.

Thanks to Pushkin Media for giving us this episode to share with you.

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Today we are talking warships: from the revolutionary Tudor ships to modern aircraft carriers, and all the innovations along the way. 

Our guest is History Hit’s own Dan Snow. 

Dan, a self-confessed Martime history nerd, gives Dallas a whistle stop tour of nearly 200 years of history — from the rise of wooden warships, to how these feats of engineering were built and how they transformed the world, forever. 

This episode was produced by Emily Whalley

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

Edited and mixed by Seyi Adaobi

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The history of Special Effects — from stop motion to motion capture.

In just over a century, we special effects have been subject to rapid innovation. What were the biggest breakthroughs? How did the digital revolution transform the industry? And, what does the future hold?

Today on the show, we speak to film historian Julie Turnock who answers all that and more, revealing the biggest technological secrets behind movie magic.

This episode was produced by Emily Whalley

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

Edited and mixed by Stuart Beckwith

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_CW: This episode is a bit saucier than normal with explicit sexual references and some swearing. If that isn’t your cup of tea or are listening with kids, please check out one of our past episodes instead_. 

It is fair to say, Sex Toys aren’t the taboo they once were. The stats show they are incredibly popular — over 52% of women in the US have used vibrator, and many men - 1 in 3 - use them too. And we are more comfortable than ever talking about them. 

But where did it all start and how long have they been around? 

So today on the show, sex historian Kate Lister joins us to chart their — from ancient myths, to victorian quackery through to the decline of euphemistic marketing and societies embrace of the sex toy. 

Listen to more from Kate on the History Hit podcast _Betwixt The Sheets_.  

This episode was produced by Emily Whalley

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

Edited and mixed by Stuart Beckwith

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If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - [subscribe today](https://access.historyhit.com/?utm_source=audio&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=Podcast+Campaign&utm_id=Podcast)!

The success of the Apollo Missions relied on hugely imaginative engineering. There is perhaps no better example of this than the first off-planet electric car, The Lunar Rover.

Today on the show we ask: Why did we send a car to the moon? How did we design something for an environment we knew nothing about? How did we get it up there?

Dallas is joined by by Eddie Alterman, the longtime editor at Car and Driver and host of new Puskin's new podcast, Car Show!.

You can listen to Car Show! with Eddie Alterman, from our friends at Pushkin Industries, here.

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This episode was produced by Emily Whalley.

The senior producer is Charlotte Long.

Edited and mixed by Stuart Beckwith.

As a result of all the military and medical advancements of World War One there were more seriously injured and disfigured soldiers surviving the battlefield than ever before. And so World War One also lead to a huge leap forward in plastic and cosmetic surgery.

In this episode Dallas is joined by award winning historian and author Lindsey Fitzharris to talk about the birth of reconstructive surgery, and the Grandfather behind it - Harold Gillies. Repairing missing jaw bones, gunshot wounds to the face, and leading the way on the first phalloplasty in 1949 - who is Harold Gillies, and why is he so important to the modern medical community?

Warning this episode contains graphic discussion of war injuries and surgery.

Introduced just over 100 years ago, Daylight Savings have always been divisive.

So, why are people for and why are people against — and how have those arguments changed over time?

We find out with today's guest, Dr Kristin Hussey - a science historian currently based in Denmark who is working on a book about the history of circadian rhythms.

This episode was produced by Emily Whalley.

Edited and mixed by Aidan Lonergan.

The senior producer is Charlotte Long.

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If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

Chicken, mayonnaise, curry powder - and wait, sultanas? What exactly is Coronation Chicken and what does it have to do with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II?

Created by students, beloved by many, how does this iconic sandwich filler fit into British culinary history?

In this Jubilee Special, Dallas is joined by food historian Annie Gray to talk all things TV chefs, supermarket sandwiches, and whether this creamy delight was ever really served to the Queen.

This episode was produced by Emily Whalley.

Edited and mixed by Seyi Adaobi.

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

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If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

A cup of coffee was once a luxury. Now it is quick, cheap and widely available — a daily essential for many. How did this happen?

Today on Patented, Jonathan Morris walks us through the evolution of coffee: from how people first figured out its psychoactive properties, to the transformations in roasting, processing and preparation that resulted in a coffee shop on every high street.

Listen to the History of Coffee podcast here: A History of Coffee

Find Jonathans book, Coffee: A Global History here.

This episode was produced by Emily Whalley

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

Edited and mixed by Seyi Adaobi.

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If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

“As ancient as time, as modern as tomorrow.’

Why have tattoos been reinvented in so many cultures - and with so many different meanings - throughout history?

And yet, tattooing is constantly portrayed as a new ‘thing’, when tattoos were just for criminals or sailors.

Far from truth, tattoos and the art of painting ones skin is as old and as fascinating as humankind itself.

On this episode we focus on the evolution of tattooing with Dr Matt Lodder. A Senior Lecturer in Art History and Theory, and Director of American Studies at the University of Essex.Dallas and Matt explore the inventions that led the way to modern tattooing from 17th century pilgrims in Jerusalem getting religious iconography inked on their skins, through to the first tattoo parlour in the late 1880s, and to King George V.

This episode was produced by Emily Whalley

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

Edited and mixed by Thomas Ntinas.

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If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

The telescope marked, arguably, the first invention to truly transform a human sense. For the first time it allowed our eyes to observe the universe beyond the bounds of our Earthly home.

But how did this groundbreaking instrument first come about? Today on the show we find out who really invented the telescope (it wasn't Galileo, actually), why it was embraced by some and shunned by others, and explore its lasting impact on how we see our own world.

Our guest is Susan Denham Wade, author of A History of Seeing in 11 Inventions. You can find out more about Susans book here: https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/a-history-of-seeing-in-eleven-inventions/9780750997164/

On 17 December 1903 the Wright Brothers successful completed the first manned, controlled and sustained flight in human history.

They made it 'just' 120 ft in that first attempt. From there, aeroplane technology took off at a pace. Only 16 years later came the first non-stop transatlantic flight, and just six years after that the first round-the-world flight touched down without stopping.

Today we revisit one of the most iconic and impactful invention stories with the help of Peter Jakub, Senior Curator at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

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Invented in the mid-1800s, bicycles have had enduring popularity. Across cultures, they have been embraced, promising freedom and mobility at a low price point. 

Today on the show we are joined by Tim Harford, host of the podcasts Cautionary Tales and The BBC’s 50 Objects That Defined The Modern Economy. 

Tim and Dallas discuss the history of the bike, from the invention story through to bicycle booms, the C5 Sinclair and the rise of dockless bike sharing schemes. 

Listen to the episode of Cautionary Tales about the Sinclair C5 here: https://timharford.com/2022/04/cautionary-tales-the-false-dawn-of-the-electric-car/

How — and why — did Prozac become the best-selling antidepressant of all time? 

As it is Mental Health Awareness Week, we are diving into this fascinating story that speaks to a greater shift in psychiatry and attitudes towards mental health since the invention of the first antidepressants in the 1950s. 

We’ll also look at how depression was treated before drugs, types of antidepressants, why Prozac was so revolutionary, and what its long-term impact of it has been. 

Today's guest is Dr. Mark L. Ruffalo - a psychotherapist in private practice in Tampa, Florida who teaches widely about the history of psychiatry.

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This episode was produced by Emily Whalley

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

Edited and mixed by Seyi Adaobi

How did LSD go from accidental discovery to the counter cultures go to drug?

On April 19th 1943 Albert Hoffman had the first ever LSD trip in Basel, Switzerland. He was testing a substance of his own making, that he had initially developed 5 years previously and been thinking about ever since...

Today on the show are joined by Tom Shroder, author of Acid Test: Lsd, Ecstasy, and the Power to Heal, who takes us through this incredible invention story, how the uses of LSD changed through the 20th century and

what the future holds.

You can find more about Tom here: (Home - Tom Shroder)

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If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

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This episode was produced by Emily Whalley

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

Edited and mixed by Seyi Adaobi

Many of us became familiar with robots through science fiction — R2D2, C3PO, Rosie from the Jetsons, Marvin the Paranoid Android. In comparison, it can feel like the robots we actually interact with today fall a bit short of this imagined future.

In this episode we are joined by Dr Beth Singler, Research Fellow in Artificial Intelligence at Cambridge University, to discuss the invention and evolution of the robot, as well as the gap between our popular imagination and the technology scrambling to keep up.

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We put man on the moon before we invented the wheeled suitcase. 

Why did it take so long? 

Find out in todays episode with guest Katrine Marçal, whose research has revealed a hidden chapter in invention story of rolling luggage. 

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Tanks defined 20th century conflict — they conjure to mind images of Tiananmen Square or the Soviet Army rolling into a liberated Berlin. But over the past couple of weeks, we have began seeing them again on our TV screens during the current fighting in Ukraine. 

Today on Patented, we are joined by war historian James Holland to explore where the idea of the tank came from, how they have been used through time, and what role they play in future conflicts. 

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Nada, naught, nil, zip, zilch, zero. Whatever you call it, it's hard to imagine the world without it. Zero is the basis for all modern computing and engineering, including trigonometry, algebra, and binary code. So, pretty important. But despite how integral it is to our lives now, there was once a time when zero never existed. Today we are joined by statistician and author Timandra Harkness, who is going to take us back in time to the invention of zero as a mathematical concept. Tune in to find out how it was discovered, the impact it had, and if we could possibly imagine a world without it today.

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This episode was produced by Emily Whalley

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

Edited and mixed by Seyi Adaobi

In 1890, the man who shot the first ever motion picture boarded a train in Paris — and was never seen again.

Shortly after his disappearance, another inventor showcased a camera with uncanny similarities. Is it coincidence or conspiracy?

Today on the show we are joined by author and filmmaker Paul Fischer who tells the extraordinary story of Louis Le Prince, his untimely disappearance and the scandal that followed. 

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Before they found their way into gyms, treadmills had a much darker history. In the 19th Century, they could most commonly be found in prisons. 

In contrast to their modern track record of improving health, the Victorians saw treadmills as a way to explicitly inflict pain and punishment. A tool for ‘grinding men good’ through gruelling hours of physical activity. 

What were the moral rationalisations of this corporal punishment? Who was the inventor responsible for these machines? And what cautionary tales can we learn from this punishing chapter of penal history? 

We answer all these questions and more on the show today with the help of Rosaline Crone, a Senior Lecturer in History at the Open University who specialised in nineteenth-century criminal justice history. 

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Ear Trumpets are seen as old fashioned and clumsy, mostly deployed in pop culture for comic effect as a snarky shorthand for how old and out-of-touch a person is.

But during the Enlightenment there was a wider embrace of this new technology as a means of increased participation.

This episode we are joined by medical historian Dr Ruben Verwaal to explore how the popularity and stigma of the ear trumpet tracks with attitudes towards deafness, and where our cynicism towards the ear trumpet came from.

In medieval times it was monks who were the masters of invention. They were the most educated members of society who saw scientific and philosophical investigation as a way to get closer to god. However, any experimentation had to be carefully balanced with religion, the threat of being labelled a heretic looming large. 

Today Dallas is joined by Matt Lewis, co-host of our sister podcast Gone Medieval, who explains how monks navigated this balance and tells the story of one man in particular: Roger Bacon. A friar and incredible polymath, Bacon has been credited with designing the magnifying glass but also predicted cars, powered ships and manned flight.

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Creating a successful spacesuit was one of the biggest challenges in man's quest to land on the moon. And, it required borrowing skills from some surprising places to pull it off.... namely, women's underwear.

With the help of Ryan Nagata, artist and replica spacesuit maker, we chart the evolution of the spacesuit from the Wiley Posts, to the iconic Apollo suits and beyond.

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Kellogg's Cornflakes are arguably the most iconic breakfast cereal, and for good reason. It was this product that launched breakfast cereal as we know and love today. But as with all good invention stories, it isn’t quite as simple as a good idea at the right time.

The invention of Cornflakes is wrapped up in 20th Century health fads, transformations in labour and the mother of all family feuds. Today Dallas is joined by food historian Sarah Wassberg Johnson to get the full story.

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In a world at war, and with no end in sight, the atomic bomb was positioned to be the one weapon that could end the conflict for good.

In this episode Dallas is joined by Dr Campbell Craig, who argues that it may have put an end to World War Two — but also laid the foundations for the Cold War that was to define the second half of the 20th century, as well as continued anxieties to this day.

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As today’s guest puts it, there have been condoms for as long as there have been penises. But, how did condoms as we know them — thin, latex and single use — come about?

This episode, Dr Jessica Borge, author of Protective Practices: A History of the London Rubber Company and the Condom Business, explains it all through the story of the world's most popular contraceptive brand, Durex.

Find out more about Jessica's work here: www.londonrubbercompany.com.

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Drone technology has transformed the way we wage war today. They have been key in every major conflict since at least 2008, including the current war in Ukraine. But military drones have a much longer history than you might imagine, dating all the way back to the First World War.

In this episode Dallas is joined by James Rogers, host of History Hit's very own Warfare podcast, who walks us through the century-long history of military drones.

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The revolution in speed ground to a halt in the 1960s. The previous half-century saw great leaps in how quickly people could get from place to place: high-speed railways, cars, intercontinental flight. In our lifetime transport may have become safer and comfier — but we aren't getting anywhere any faster. 

How did these great leaps happen? What grove this focus on transport innovation and where does collaboration come into play? And why has the focus shifted? 

In this episode, we talk to Matt Ridley, author of How Innovation Works, about the acceleration of transport innovation from the steam engine to space travel. 

This episode was produced by Emily Whalley

The senior producer is Charlotte Long

Edited and mixed by Seyi Adaobi

Over the course of only half a century, genetic engineering has developed from an intellectual concept to a medical reality. Yet the ethical and moral questions underpinning it remain unanswered.

Genetically modified crops, illegal human experimentation, and a handy hip-hop analogy - Dallas is joined by Dr Adam Rutherford (The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry, BBC R4) to help dig into the story of this invention, that is still very much in progress

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