Did you know that
a surprising number of objects
you use every day
are thanks to accidents?
Let me show you what I mean.
On this episode,
we discover how a drooling dog
got us addicted to our phones.
Ooh, Craig's lunch looks good.
Find out how a damaged delivery led
to America becoming a superpower.
What looked like a disaster
now has turned into an opportunity.
And learn how a mysterious disappearing gas
led to well pretty much everything else.
And he says, oh, that's interesting.
"Oops I Changed the World."
Today almost 70% of American households have pets.
And the most popular is the dog
with over 63 million homes
having at least one.
So I can't be alone in wondering,
does your pet seem
to have strange psychic powers?
So I was opening a can
of dog food the other day
and as soon as I touched
that can to the opener,
is it reading my mind?
Stranger still, pets manage
to mysteriously disappear whenever you try
to take them to the vets.
No, they're not telepathic,
they're reacting to a fascinating impulse
first discovered in 1890
by a Russian scientist called Ivan Pavlov.
Russia in the 1890s is
ruled by the czar
and if you're rich,
if you're a prince or a duke,
it's absolutely marvelous.
You're leading a sumptuous lifestyle.
But for 99% of Russians either
on the land or in the factories,
it's really pretty miserable.
During the 1890s in Russia,
there was famine,
lots of political tensions.
It's a dictatorship.
There's a secret police
and you're itching for a revolution.
It was in this world
that Pavlov was starting
to make his mark.
Ivan Pavlov is working in
a physiology department studying digestion.
Saliva is basically step one
in your digestive system.
When you put that
tasty food into your mouth,
your saliva basically gets to work
because it contains something called amylase,
a digestive enzyme
which breaks starches down into sugar.
That's why you salivate
when you smell a delicious pizza.
Which is why Pavlov decides
to focus his research on digestion
on saliva specifically, dog saliva.
He puts a vial next to their mouths
and puts a bit of food
in front of them.
When the dog starts to salivate,
he takes a bit of their drool,
puts it in the vial and documents it.
Pavlov's work isn't exactly glamorous
but it's all worth it
when he stumbles across something remarkable.
He notices that the dogs are salivating
before the food is ever in their presence.
And he starts to wonder,
why are the dogs drooling
if they don't see the food?
Maybe they already know
what time the food's gonna come
so they're anticipating it.
He realizes something weird
is going on here.
It's the oops moment for Pavlov.
So it got him thinking
and it got him experimenting.
First he exposes the dogs to a buzzer
and they hear the buzzer
and of course they don't salivate.
Then he gives them some food.
Well, of course they salivate.
Then he gives them the buzzer
and the food together.
And he keeps doing this and doing this.
Eventually he takes away the food
and he just exposes them to the buzzer.
At that point, the buzzer alone is
enough to cause the dogs to copiously salivate.
And it's not a decision
the dogs are making,
it happens, their salivary glands
just pump out saliva
when they hear the buzzer.
It's automatic.
Now, aha, buzzers,
you may be saying.
That's right buzzer.
While people usually talk
about Pavlov using bells, he never did.
He needed to precisely measure
the duration of his stimulus
so he used buzzers
and metronomes but never bells.
Clearly, if he had to use bells,
he'd have never ended up
winning the Nobel Prize.
What's happened is
that the dogs have learned
to associate the sound
of that buzzer with getting food.
What he found is
that he could get salivation
to happen in the presence
of any old stimulus.
And it was the foundation of
what he called classical conditioning.
Watching dogs drool,
Pavlov has uncovered the cogs,
motors, and motivation
of a powerful subconscious mechanism
hidden inside the animal brain.
Now Pavlov has, well,
unfortunately, a bit of a dark side.
And one of the things
he did was he tried
to get conditional responses in dogs
where they were absolutely terrified of something.
He would do things
like push dogs downstairs
to see if they could associate stairs
with an immediate fear response.
If you're thinking,
I can't believe they gave
this dog botherer a Nobel Prize,
then I've got some bad news for you.
It gets worse.
Now you're really gonna hate Pavlov
because not only does he experiment
on cats and dogs,
he also goes to the local orphanage
to find some candidates for experiments.
There were no ethical committees
back then on these things.
And he would feed food like sweets
or bad tasting sweets to orphans
to get these physiological responses.
So all of this activity
by Pavlov and his successors may
seem incredibly cruel but let's remember
that it did shine a light
on the inner workings
of the animal and the human brain.
Since then scientists have built
on Pavlov's research to teach humans
how to overcome their phobias,
pigs how to play video games.
The final level
of this game is much harder
Dogs to detect diseases,
bees to play football,
elephants to sniff out landmines,
and pigeons to fly American missiles.
During World War II pigeons were used
in a training technique
where they would put their beak
against a screen to tap for targets.
And the idea is that
that would actually be able
to shift the way that the missile went.
This is before computers.
This is like pigeon computer.
It didn't actually come to fruition,
but it was the start
of a whole field of research.
Pavlov's accidental discovery shines a light,
not just on animal behavior,
but also on the unexplored mechanics
of the human brain.
He found that the same basic system
of expectation and reward
that rules animals rules us too.
Are you my kind of guy?
My kind of guy drinks Ballantine Ale.
It's brewed with a little
more courage for a taste you can feel.
This revelation was soon seized
upon by wily companies
intent on using it
to make us spend, spend, spend.
Yes for smoking
that you're bound to like,
you just can't beat a Lucky Strike.
Since the 1930s Coca-Cola has
launched advertising campaigns
around the Christmas period.
We all get that happy, jolly feeling
when we see the fat man in the red suit.
So Coca-Cola cemented
in our minds effectively
that this fat jolly man should
be associated with the lovely feelings
that oh, perhaps you could get
from something like a Coca-Cola.
It's the feeling of Christmas,
the feeling of happiness.
And because of that,
it's why people want
to buy Coca-Cola all year round.
And so associating that
with your product from a company point
of view was a no-brainer.
But you don't need to be
a Mad Men style advertising executive
to use these tricks to manipulate people.
These warm associations can
be used by any of us.
You just need to know the triggers.
Having just sold my parents' house,
I can tell you that either baking bread
or making lots of coffee
makes prospective buyers just
that little more inclined
to say yes, I'll take it.
How can any creature
that can make a space rocket
or even a wrist watch
still be so primitive,
so easy to manipulate?
When we think of American adverts,
you think of the pinup women
and how they market cars.
They'd always have this beautiful woman
who was there to draw the attention
of the male viewers
and to associate it with the car.
The association of sex and cars is
all about creating an unstoppable desire
to own that product.
Of course, it isn't just selling products
that Pavlov's discoveries transformed.
Classical conditioning's been harnessed
by social media very effectively.
More recent research has even shown
that we get literally
a rush of endorphins
when we hear the ping
that tells us that
our social media post has been liked.
It's almost like the social media companies have
taken a page from Pavlov and are
intentionally conditioning our responses.
That little rush
we get is enough to train
the reward centers in our brains.
There's all these associations
that we subconsciously have
and that's all
a part of behavioral psychology.
But it's not all bad news.
This understanding of what
makes us tick has also enabled people
to live better, more manageable lives.
People with anxiety will be thanking Pavlov
because the whole science
of cognitive behavioral therapy
is about unlearning those responses
that people with anxiety often have
where they have a response
that really doesn't fit
what's going on in the outside world.
So it's through Pavlov
that we're able
to get people to unlearn
those essentially irrational responses.
So there you have it,
whether it's instinctively reaching
for your cell phone
when you hear a beep.
Wait a minute.
I gotta get this.
Ooh, Greg's lunch looks good.
That's making me drool.
Curing our anxieties
or making us feel
unnecessary feelings for products,
we can thank Pavlov
and his accidental discovery
for enabling us to understand
the inner workings of our brains.
Still to come,
an accident in a munitions lab
that has explosive consequences.
I'd been absolutely terrified.
And we find out
how a Hollywood A-lister
accidentally invents the modern world.
This is about serendipity.
But first a quick question,
what links your fridge...
The world's tallest bridge.
And this.
The answer is Teflon,
an accidental invention with
a world changing impact.
But first to set the scene...
When a world that had plodded
down the centuries suddenly found out
how to use a force
that had waited to go to work
since before the daybreak of history.
By the mid 1920s,
60% of American homes have electricity.
For the middle classes,
this heralds the dawn
of the electrical appliance,
full of promise to make housework easier.
First came the vacuum cleaner
and then the washing machine.
Maybe my tie's caught in the ringer.
And then the big one.
In 1927, General Electric actually
launches the first domestic refrigerator.
But the thing is,
it costs $7,000 in today's money.
I love cold food as much
as the next person
but not that much.
Enter Roy Plunkett,
a poor farm boy from Ohio
who has dreams of becoming a scientist.
So Roy graduates from college
in the Great Depression.
And he goes home to his parents' farm.
This is a time
when America is on its knees.
He's dying to study chemistry
but it's just, it seems impossible.
His dad says I don't have two pennies
to rub together, but there's this guy
down the road who owes me 15 bucks.
Now in those days,
that was a lot of money.
And so he says to Roy,
if you can go talk him out of it,
you can keep it.
So Roy wanders off to go
and see this guy and somehow manages
to weedle the $15 out of him.
And that's enough to get him
to a high university
to go and study for a Ph.D.
While Roy's away studying,
the price drops for domestic refrigerators.
And they're suddenly within the grasp
of the average American household.
The refrigerator in the kitchen
is a kind of cooling device.
A basic principle of refrigeration is
that cold is the absence of heat.
Refrigerators become a little bit
more accessible but they use a lot
of chemicals and refrigerants
that are actually quite toxic
so it's kind of a health hazard.
Those cooling coils
are filled with gases
including ammonia and ether.
As the liquid boils inside the tubing,
it removes heat from the refrigerator.
Which works well
until there's a leak.
So there's only one little problem
with the early fridges and that is
that they could be completely deadly.
When a leaky fridge kills
a whole family as they sleep,
some of the biggest brains in the world,
focus on finding a safe way
to keep food cool.
Incredibly one of the people
who gets onto the case is
none other than Albert Einstein.
And he's fresh from getting a Nobel Prize
for the theory of relativity.
Now he turns that
great planet sized brain
of his to fridges.
Einstein develops his own fridge
that didn't have really any moving parts
and actually used a heat source.
There is his name on the patent
but while it's understandably clever,
it wasn't without its own issues.
He managed to invent a fridge
that was inefficient, noisy,
and never really took off.
Actually Tony, because there are
no moving parts to go wrong,
Einstein's fridge is still used
inside nuclear reactors today.
But you're right,
it was never a domestic success.
At this point,
Roy Plunkett gains his Ph.D.
and starts to look for a job.
Perhaps you've considered the idea
of working for a chemical company.
That's great advice and Roy takes it,
joining one of the giants
of the chemical industry.
His new job is
to find a way of making fridges
both safer and cheaper.
Around this time, a rival company ended up
developing a new type of refrigerant
that was actually safer to use.
So in response, Roy started working
with a similar compound known as tetrafluoroethylene.
Tetra, oh, hang on.
Tetrafluoro, no that's not it.
Tetrafluoroethylene?
This is mercifully shortened to TFE
and he's creating a lot
of that gas to experiment with
to find that safe refrigerant.
Roy stores his gas in iron cylinders
where it's frozen and compressed.
The next morning, he turns up at the lab,
he opens a cylinder,
and nothing comes out, zilch.
He keeps turning, the tap comes off
and there's nothing coming
out of the cylinders.
A normal human like me would say,
well, I must have screwed up.
I'll have to do it all over again.
Somehow I must have let this gas escape.
But Roy is really sharp and he says,
let me weigh the whole thing first
in case somehow the gas is still there.
Like he's really thinking
outside of the box.
And it turns out when he weighs it,
it weighs the same as it would
if it were full of gas.
Roy decides to cut one
of the cylinders open.
And what he finds inside is amazing.
In the cylinder
is a strange white powder.
The gas has polymerized
into this powdery white solid.
And he says, oh, that's interesting.
The combination of the iron
and the cold has caused the gas
to form a polymer.
The iron walls of the container acted
as a catalyst to allow the gas
to link together with itself essentially.
And this was not thought
to be possible but here it was.
Several of the smaller molecules
are combining to form larger molecules.
The result is a material
of the same chemical composition
but with entirely different physical properties.
Those properties depend on
what molecules are bonded
and how long those bonds are.
Some polymers bend and bounce like rubber,
others are see-through like glass.
The powder that Roy's discovered appears
to do nothing at all.
So it's this kind of strange,
sort of slippery substance.
It turns out that it's
more inert than sand.
It won't really react with other things.
It won't react with acid.
It therefore might be totally useless
or perhaps the opposite.
You may think
that a slippery substance
that doesn't react isn't very exciting
but you'd be wrong.
He realized that it had kind
of anti-superpowers if you will,
it didn't react with anything.
All the magical nonstick properties
of Plunkett's new material come
from its molecular structure.
So Roy has just accidentally invented
polytetrafluoroethylene.
So we've gone from TFE to PTFE.
It's this long chain of carbon,
but it's surrounded by fluorine atoms,
and they're interacting so strongly
with that carbon backbone
that they don't want
to interact with anything else.
So they make this big, long caterpillar,
but it's like the caterpillar's wearing armor.
Nothing can get to it
and it won't stick to anything else.
So whether you bake or broil or stew,
the Frigidaire Kitchen does it all for you.
Roy's invention of PTFE
never did help with fridges.
But Du Pont wondered can this substance
that doesn't react with anything be put
to some useful purpose.
Plunkett's material which they trademark as Teflon
becomes the go-to nonstick coating
for machine metal parts
in industrial processes.
But Du Pont is reluctant
to sell their product to the public
until they're absolutely sure
it's safe in untrained hands.
But while they hesitate,
others aren't quite so cautious.
So now we go to la belle France.
There is an engineer
over there called Marc Gregoire.
Marc's day job is
in an aerospace research lab
which is how he manages
to get his hands on some Teflon.
Marc puts it on his fishing tackle
so the line won't bind.
And his wife says to him one day,
what are you doing?
He says, well, it doesn't stick to anything.
And she says, well,
how about doing something useful with that
like putting it on my pots and pans?
Marc figures out that if you actually
etch the aluminum with acid,
it develops these pores,
these kind of grooves
where you then are able
to fill in that area
with the Teflon powder
at the right temperature.
This is what then can produce the
right surface for the frying pan.
The pans are
wildly popular in France
but American retailers are
yet to be convinced.
In fact, nobody wants
to sell the pans at all
until Macy's decides to take a punt.
Macy's takes 200 of
these nonstick pans and sells
all of them in just two days
and that's during a snowstorm.
I don't even go out when it rains.
So people are battling through the weather
just to get these nonstick pans.
That's the real moment of change
when people buy into this product.
Cookies won't stick to Teflon.
Even oatmeal won't stick to Teflon.
I don't think anything sticks to Teflon.
Since then more than 1 billion pans
have been sold worldwide
revolutionizing cooking as we know it.
And I know I've contributed
at least three or four to that number.
And outside of the kitchen,
Teflon has continued to fuel innovation
in some unexpected ways.
This is the Millau Viaduct,
the tallest road bridge in the world.
Built in 2004, this 8,000 foot long,
mega structure is taller
than the Eiffel tower and considered one
of engineering's greatest achievements.
This viaduct is so tall
that you can literally drive above the clouds.
So why was Teflon important here?
Well, there were no cranes big enough
to help build this bridge
by taking one section
and bringing it out
to the end of the other.
These big, heavy pieces of road
that had to be slotted in place would
just have too much friction
if you were to push them
without something slick in between.
But the use of the Teflon wedges
and a hydraulic pump behind them meant
that they could just
be moved right along
and slotted into place.
So an invention
from a company whose name is
French for bridge played
a crucial part in building this French bridge.
Impressive.
A journey that previously took three hours
now only takes 10 minutes.
So imagine the impact that's had
on families and businesses.
In fact, Plunkett's accidental discovery
has been so successful that
there's almost no aspects
of our lives untouched by it.
Carpet.
Cars.
Furniture.
Clothing.
Light bulbs.
Paint.
Windshield wipers.
Cables, artificial limbs.
Nail polish.
Wow, Teflon.
Yep and your dentures too.
It's everywhere on this planet
and also everywhere we've been off it too.
It's been used in outer space.
Four computers now have primary control
of critical vehicle functions.
It's particularly useful
in the Mars Rover
because the material can undergo
extreme changes in temperature without reacting.
Mars has these huge sand storms going on.
The Mars Rovers are mainly
powered by solar panels.
If they're covered in sand,
the Rover can die.
And so if you have Teflon
that actually can protect the Rover
from getting piled with sand
and extend the Rover's life.
Strong, lightweight, and long lasting,
it must have a sticking point somewhere.
So if you're thinking
that maybe Teflon being everywhere
might have a downside,
well, give yourself a star
because the gases that we use
to make Teflon, PFOA, have been found
contaminating everybody and everything.
We now estimate that nearly
every human on the planet has some
of this stuff inside of them
even babies in the womb.
We're finding it in food chains,
we're finding it
in animals and in plants.
We know that this
can cause some cancers.
What other effects it might have
are still being discovered.
That's how we are as humans.
We're curious and we're inventors
but until we thoroughly understand applications
and inventions or discoveries,
I think we should be
more conscious and hesitant.
So on balance,
how do we judge Plunkett's discovery?
In one sense, we don't know the
full effects of Teflon on our health
and on the environment.
But in another sense,
we certainly know that it's led
to all sorts of incredible inventions
that have really improved
our quality of life.
For myself, I'm glad I don't have
to spend my evening scrubbing pans.
Coming up, the woman
who invented the future.
We wouldn't have Bluetooth,
driverless cars, cell phones, or GPS.
But first...
Chinese monks discovered gunpowder
while looking for the elixir of life.
So somehow, while looking
for the secret of eternal life,
they actually found out
how to kill a lot of people.
Gunpowder is first used in fireworks.
But it's quickly adapted
for rifles, cannons, grenades,
and now forms the basis of almost
every new military weapon to date.
Before the arrival of gunpowder,
people could hide behind castle walls
and just ignore the enemy outside.
But with gunpowder,
the castle walls came tumbling down.
The only problem was
it left an awful lot
of smoke on the battlefield.
It's the 1800s
and something's about to be discovered
that will blow gunpowder
out of the water...
dynamite.
Our story begins in 1833
with the birth of the founder
of the Nobel Prize, Alfred Nobel.
Alfred is born into a family
of engineers, inventors, and scientists.
Alfred grew up in
quite a dynamic family.
His father was the chief inventor
and they had a factory in Russia
where they made mines for the military.
Alfred and his brothers were schooled
like crazy from an early age.
Each of them learned five languages,
English, German, French, Swedish, and Russian.
Soon Alfred is jet-setting across the globe
and he's getting a world class education
from the brightest and the best
wherever they may be.
Well, maybe not jet-setting.
This is the 1800s after all.
So meanwhile, around this time
down at the University of Turin,
a certain professor,
Ascanio Sobrero is carrying
out some interesting experiments.
He adds glycerol to a mixture
of nitric and sulfuric acid.
And the result is...
Boom.
He's invented nitroglycerine.
It's an oily substance
that's more explosive than gunpowder
bearing in mind gunpowder has
been used for hundreds of years.
It's just an amazing discovery.
Explosions happen
when a huge amount
of energy is being released
in a short space of time
but exactly how that happens,
differs depending on the type of explosive.
Gunpowder is what's known
as a low explosive.
It relies on combustion
to generate a quick release of energy.
Have you ever tried
to smother out a firework?
Yeah, you can't.
And that's because the oxygen is
already inside that gunpowder.
The carbon and the sulfur inside
of the powder takes up the oxygen
and converts it to gases.
The pressure that creates
and the heat gives you
that lovely combustive quality.
Nitroglycerin on the other hand
is a high explosive.
When those molecules break apart
in that nitroglycerin and convert to gases,
those gases take up 1,200 times
the volume of the liquids
so there's a rapid increase in pressure
and that's what creates the explosion.
The problem with nitroglycerin is
that it only takes a small knock
to set it off.
So Ascanio Sobrero had
to spend a lot
of time being very careful.
But unfortunately for him,
he wasn't quite careful enough.
Ascanio suffers
lifelong scars from the accident.
He's terrified of what he's created
and tries to keep it a secret.
Alfred Nobel must have had
his ears to the ground
because he soon gets wind of nitroglycerine.
Alfred learns of it
when his old chemistry tutor comes over
to him in his dad's house,
puts a small drop of it on a table,
and hits it with a hammer.
Alfred and his dad are inspired.
As we know, the chemical is pretty unstable.
Alfred sets a mission to himself.
He wants to contain the substance
so he and his father
start to conduct experiments.
But as Ascanio Sobrero's learned,
nitroglycerine is so unstable
that even the slightest jolt
or friction can cause it to detonate.
Ultimately, there is a major disaster.
An explosion at Alfred's dad's factory
kills several workers
and his younger brother.
After the death of his brother,
there's an obituary that appears in
enough newspaper of Alfred mistakenly.
Now the obituary says
that the master of death is dead.
Alfred reads this and thinks,
oh my God, this is
how I'm going to be remembered.
And he resolves then to become a man
of peace and not a man of war.
Despite all this,
Alfred goes on to manufacture
and sell nitroglycerine on an industrial scale
while at the same time,
he's looking for a way
to make it safer to handle.
But something strange begins to happen.
Nitroglycerine has some really weird effects
on Nobel's factory workers.
So the ones who are really healthy
complained of headaches during the week,
that then disappeared when they were
off work at the weekends.
The ones who had heart problems,
however said that their condition
actually got better during the week
when they were at work
and then got worse again at the weekend.
It turns out
the nitric oxide in nitroglycerine
is a powerful vasodilator which helps
anyone with high blood pressure.
The veins around the heart dilate
which makes blood flow a lot easier.
However, if you're healthy,
that's gonna give you a splitting headache.
So local physicians thought
they'd found a wonder cure
for these medical problems
and were prescribing nitroglycerine based products
but they had absolutely
no idea how it was working.
By now, nitroglycerine is
being mass-produced and sold.
The trouble is it's still highly unstable
and there are more
and more accidental explosions.
Alfred reckons that if he mixes
the nitroglycerin with another substance,
perhaps he can make it safer
to handle and more stable.
So he tries charcoal.
Sawdust.
He tries cement.
Nothing he tries works.
Then one day when Alfred's at the factory,
there's a terrifying accident.
Inside of a crate,
a container of nitroglycerin has leaked out.
This looks like an incredibly dangerous situation.
If I'd been Alfred Nobel,
I'd have been absolutely terrified.
But he discovers that it
can handle that crate
and it does not explode.
This man clearly has nerves of steel.
But why is this nitroglycerine
suddenly safe to handle?
Alfred recognized that what looked
like a disaster now has
turned into an opportunity.
This factory was different
from his other factories
because the other factories used sawdust
to contain the packages,
sort of the way that we
use bubble wrap in packaging today.
But this factory used
a white clay-like substance instead.
And it was many times more absorbent
than the other materials that were used.
That earth used
for packaging is rich in white peat.
Of all the materials
that could have been used,
this turns out to be fantastic.
It's highly absorbent.
It's much better than sawdust.
But even better than that.
It won't explode
unless it's ignited by a charge.
So Nobel has chanced
upon an ideal solution to the problem.
So Mr. Nerves of Steel is excited.
He might have finally
found the right ingredient
to make his explosive safe.
But Alfred starts to experiment
to make this an actual,
practical product that can be used.
I mean this is exactly
what Alfred Nobel's been looking for,
a safe way to handle nitroglycerin.
By mixing it with this local white peat,
it's safe to handle
and it explodes when you want it to.
He gets the white peat,
dips it in nitroglycerine,
and then wraps it in paper.
Dynamite.
This new explosive
changes America almost overnight.
So the Industrial Revolution is
full steam ahead at this time
and what it needs is minerals.
It needs coal.
It needs iron and that has
to be extracted from the earth.
And it's thanks to Alfred Nobel
that it's a lot easier to get
to those precious minerals.
Dynamite is a catalyst for incredible change.
America is able to blast
through rock more efficiently.
And the mining industry explodes
extracting minerals and metals
like copper, coal, and iron,
100 times faster than before.
Minerals of course are used
everywhere in our modern day lives
from our telephones to toothpaste,
even talcum powder.
Every day in the United States,
35 million paperclips are purchased
and 4 million light bulbs,
all made of minerals.
Speaking of light bulbs,
thanks to dynamite, we've been able
to mine all the copper that's needed
to lay the thousands of miles
of electrical cable in all our homes.
And without dynamite,
the Hoover Dam wouldn't have been built,
helping to create the electricity
to power those light bulbs,
TVs, and everything else.
The Hoover Dam has 17 electric generators,
each one able to supply
energy to 100,000 homes.
At the time it was built,
the Hoover Dam was the
largest dam in the world.
It's 726 feet high.
For perspective, that's taller
than the Washington Monument in D.C.
And there is enough concrete
in the Hoover Dam
to build a four foot wide sidewalk
around the entire earth
at its widest point.
That's huge.
It certainly is.
By 1890, America is the world's
most productive economy producing twice
as much as its closest competitor, Britain.
So thanks to a carelessly handled shipping crate,
Alfred Nobel invented a new type
of explosive that changed the world
and helped America to become a superpower.
Every time you use GPS in the car,
every time you use
your internet on the go.
Sorry, what?
I was just saying
that every time you pair
with a Bluetooth speaker,
you're using a technology
accidentally invented by one
of the most famous stars
of Hollywood's Golden Age.
Yes, you've seen her before,
but somehow we didn't think you'd mind
another look at Hedy Lamarr.
This story is a little bit different.
There's no accidental spillages or knocks.
This is about serendipity
and an awesome female inventor.
It's the 1930s
and we are in Austria.
We're now recovering from World War I.
We're in the Great Depression.
There's quite a lot
of political tension in Europe.
Hitler gains power.
He is gaining a lot of a following.
And despite all this political tension
that's happening around the world,
there's this blossoming actress
and engineer named Hedy Lamarr.
She's bold, she's brave,
and she's brilliant.
In fact, it's rumored
that at the age of five,
she took apart a mechanical toy
and then put it all back together.
That's amazing.
She's appeared in a lot of European films.
And with that, she gets a lot of admirers.
And eventually she catches the attention
of one of the richest men in Europe,
an Austrian named Mandl.
Mandl succeeds in charming Lamarr
and they get married in 1933
but this isn't the case
of happily ever after.
Her husband is a controlling, jealous maniac.
He stops her from acting
and he forces her to become a housewife.
What she does with her time instead is
host dinner parties for him
and his business friends.
And she ends up really
just being under kind
of like a house arrest.
If you're thinking
that Mandl sounds like a nasty bit
of work then you'd be right.
Mandl has the nickname,
the merchant of death.
He's an arms dealer.
He has ties to Hitler and Mussolini.
Hedy is able to listen in on some
of the most important conversations about weapons.
They all happen in her house
and because she's a woman
and married to Mandl, they speak freely.
Then one day,
Lamarr makes her great escape.
She comes up with a cunning plan
that would finally grant her freedom
from her abusive marriage.
She slips the maid
some sleeping pills,
slips out the servant's entrance
with nothing but the clothes on her back
and some money and small jewels
that she can stuff in a small purse.
She gets out of Austria,
makes her way to Paris,
and eventually to London.
Then she's free.
From there Lamarr makes
her way across to America
where she uses her charm and determination
to strike a lucrative deal with MGM Studios.
She rises to stardom.
She co-stars with Judy Garland.
She has two Oscar nominated films.
But Hedy Lamarr has more
than just one incredible talent.
Hedy was not just a brilliant actress,
she's an engineer at heart.
She's carrying out experiments
even in her trailer when she's offset
during the shooting of movies.
Hedy loved solving problems
so she starts inventing
all sorts of things.
She invents a new
traffic control system for traffic lights,
a glow in the dark dog collar.
She even comes up
with a way to improve airplanes,
making them more aerodynamic and therefore faster.
Let's keep in mind,
she's never earned
a degree in engineering.
She hasn't learned
or been technically trained
in these aspects of physics.
And yet she has transformed
so much of our technology.
Hedy's inventions don't stop there.
Germany invades Poland
and Warsaw is bombed.
Not long after World War II breaks out,
she comes up with the design
that she hopes could help defeat Hitler.
The Nazis have a choke hold around Europe
and things aren't looking good for the Allies.
Being a beautiful film star,
she's rolled out into fundraising.
Hundreds of millions
of dollars of war bonds have been sold
as a result of the personal appeals
of America's most appealing personalities.
And she actually raises $25 million.
In today's dollars, that's 380 million
but for her that's not enough.
That's not really what she wants to do.
She wants to do more.
Hedy wants to use
her brains not her beauty.
She's determined to invent something
that will undermine the Nazi U-boat tactical advantage.
Hitler's U-boats strike
desperately sinking six ships in one week.
These two seamen were wounded,
46 shipmates lost their lives.
Now at the start of World War II,
German U-boats are wreaking havoc.
They're operating with near impunity
and they are ruthless.
They're not only taking down boats
that are coming in
with supplies going into the UK
but they're also taking
down boats of Jewish refugees trying
to escape and get to safety.
When Hedy was married to Mandl,
she had been at the table
when top Nazis were talking
about how these U-boats
defend themselves against threats.
One thing she remembers
specifically is how torpedoes work.
Part of the reason
that German U-boats are so successful is
because they have the technology
to jam the signal of oncoming torpedoes
which are controlled using radio waves.
Because if you know the frequency,
you could dial in on that frequency,
identify what it is,
and then block it.
But thanks to
an unexpected source of inspiration,
Hedy comes up with a brilliant idea
of countering this and it all starts
when she meets a composer
at a Hollywood party.
Hedy meets a guy named George.
George has composed a song
that requires 16 pianos playing simultaneously.
To people at the time,
it looks like magic
but actually his system is quite simple.
George's Ballet Mecanique
has 16 player pianos synchronized
so they all play together.
The piano roll has holes in it.
These holes tell the piano
when to play each notes.
The piano's able to play the music
without any human interaction.
Hedy's inspired by this wondering
if a similar technology could be used
to prevent Nazi torpedo jamming
but rather than the tune
switching between the pianos,
it would be the signal
that's jumping between radio frequencies.
Hedy and George work together
and they design a system
that uses 88 frequencies
which happens to be the number
of notes on a piano.
And with these 88 frequencies,
they would do something
known as frequency-hopping.
So you would go
from one frequency to another,
without it getting interrupted.
And this was a great technique
because there is a higher probability
of well, not being detected.
This would allow
a high altitude observation plane
to steer the radio controlled torpedoes
without interference.
Hedy and George offer
their new invention to the U.S. military
who promptly turn it down.
What a bunch of idiots.
Hedy said that her beauty was her curse
because the American military did
not take her seriously
and they did not pick up her invention.
Luckily they found another way
to defeat the German U-boats.
But Hedy isn't done yet.
Fast forward to 1962,
the Cold War is reaching its climax.
Good evening my fellow citizens,
unmistakable evidence has established the fact
that a series of offensive missile sites
is now in preparation
on the island of Cuba.
The Cuban Missile Crisis
was the closest human beings have
ever come to all out nuclear war
between two powerful nuclear powered nations.
We were on the brink.
Cuba allows the Soviets
to build a military base on their island,
putting nuclear missiles
within range of mainland America.
Ships and aircraft of all services
kept watch over thousands
of square miles of ocean.
All sightings were relayed swiftly
to sink land at Norfolk.
And so what JFK initiates
with the U.S. Navy is basically
putting kind of like a barrier
so that no other Russian ships
or submarines can come in
to bring in more missiles.
Unbeknownst to Lamarr,
these ships are secretly using her invention.
The American submarines that participated
in a naval blockade
use Hedy's technology in order
to have secret communications
that could not be spied upon.
And also they use it
exactly like Hedy had recommended.
Their torpedoes used this
frequency-hopping technique in order
so that they could not be blocked.
So the Russians knew this
and the blockade worked.
One week later, Premier Khrushchev
issued a new order calling
for the return of the weapons to Russia.
In a way, her inventions
helped end the Cold War.
Finally, Hedy's invention was
being put to use.
Without credit to her,
without paying her,
and without her even knowing.
What happens next is
so far removed from Hedy's original idea
that it's inconceivable
anyone could have foreseen it.
It's 1971 and we're in Hawaii.
A team of computer scientists are
on the verge of changing the world
as we know it.
The University of Hawaii is
working on a system
to connect multiple computers together
simultaneously but without using cables.
They get a system together
where they can connect seven computers
using a high-frequency radio signal.
However, they're only able
to send one message at a time.
Enter again, Hedy Lamarr's
frequency-hopping invention.
Using Hedy's technology,
multiple computers can now communicate
with each other at the same time.
This was the first wireless network
or as we call it, Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi has completely changed our world.
Products in our homes are connected by Wi-Fi.
Walking through an airport
and being able to check emails
or let's admit it,
maybe checking the amount
of likes we got on our most recent post
on Instagram or Twitter.
Wi-Fi has completely innovated
and disrupted humanity.
For all I know you might
be watching me right now
on a Wi-Fi connected device.
Lucky you.
The freedom it's afforded us is immense.
And it's completely changed
how people communicate, interact,
socialize, and form relationships.
About 40% of Americans have met
their partner through the internet.
That first message was probably
thanks to a Wi-Fi signal.
Wi-Fi has even changed how we work.
We don't even have to go to work.
We can work from our couch, from our bedroom,
from the beach, from the garden,
or even while sitting on a train
riding across the country.
Frequency-hopping is instrumental
not just in Wi-Fi,
but also in a whole host of modern technology.
We wouldn't have Bluetooth,
driverless cars, cell phones, or GPS.
It's completely transformed
so many other aspects of our lives.
From smartphones to smart homes,
digital assistance to streaming services.
Hedy Lamarr could never have
realized it at the time,
but her invention designed to beat Hitler
helped to save us from nuclear disaster
and then took over the world.
We really should be thanking this woman
who just completely transformed everything.
Hedy Lamarr is a name
that I hope everybody is
now going to remember.
(upbeat music playing)