Inventions That Shook The World - S01E05 - THE 1940'S

from propellers to jets it transforms how we travel from in the oven to in the microwave it changed how we eat and from adding machine to a laptop changed the way we were they were all inventions of the 1940s a decade shaken and inspired by war the computer the jet engine crash-test-dummy were all inventions that shook the world it was an advancement that revolutionized travel taking planes higher faster further than before the jet engine made it possible to circle the planet in a single day and it was all because a boy had a dream Coventry England during World War one seven year-old Frank Whittle was obsessed with machines and how they worked especially planes he saw them being built and then witnessed one crash land near his home he had always wanted to fly and dreamt of joining the Royal Air Force and as soon as he was old enough he applied he was very short about five feet tall and quite thin at the time and the story is that he tried a couple of times and was rejected but Frank Whittle was stubborn and persistent eventually the RAF allowed him to join he was recognized as a really talented pilot but is also a pilot who would push the limit and doing all sorts of things that you weren't supposed to do Whittle took chances recording hundreds of flight hours at top speeds forcing his plane and its propeller to the limit by the time you get into the 1930s in poured world war two propellers they were being pushed close to their ultimate limit if a pilot pushed the aircraft to speeds approaching 800 km/h shock waves would tear the proper part Whittle recognized that it was time for a radical departure just for a completely new kind of of engine Whittle began to think he soon realized that to make planes fly faster they had to fly higher where the air was thinner reducing drag on the aircraft and of course when you do that there's a problem with engines not getting enough oxygen and higher altitudes and propellers not having enough air to bite into at higher altitudes wicker concluded that the propeller would have to be replaced with a new type of propulsion system he was invited to talk to one of the great aeronautical scientists in Britain EA Griffith to get his idea past the blueprint stage Whittle needed the support of Griffiths and the rest of the British government I have here plans for a new type of propulsion system that will give us speeds after five a propulsion system he called the jet engine the engine relied on a fan to suck in air from the front which then compressed the air in the combustion chamber spraying it with fuel and then igniting it Whittle believed the burning gases would blast the plane forward at speeds of up to 960 kilometers per hour the young inventor was sure his idea was ready if only he could get the support and financing from Griffiths but the senior engineer dashed whittles hopes impressive you'll never work Griffiths told him that no metal was strong enough to withstand the intense heat generated in the combustion chambers the engine would melt so what he said was maybe in the future but not right now but Whittle had already faced sceptics so he just became more determined he raised private money and spent the next eight years trying to perfect his engine and build a prototype one of the reasons that the early people who heard him talk about the jet engine were sometimes negative or cautionary was the fact that they were smart engineers who knew what the problems were and here comes this guy who literally is ahead of his time and sees challenges instead of problems and pushes pushes pushes in the spring of 1937 he was ready for his first full-scale engine test the engine revved out of control there was too much fuel in the combustion chamber wickel just managed to shut it down and prevent a disaster what was worse it appeared his work might be for nothing because a rival nation was putting a lot of effort into perfecting the jet engine in Germany the government became becomes hugely interested in Jets pretty early on they're just interested in cutting-edge stuff they're willing to invest in it Hitler made the jet engine a top military priority the Germans installed their own jet engine prototype into a fighter plane the Heinkel 8178 and on the 27th of August 1939 they tested it the engine died it was only a flight of six minutes that was it it was forced to land because the Germans had also not found a strong enough metal to withstand the heat of a jet engine the following month Hitler invaded Poland and plunged Europe into war in the British government now realize that this is something worth investing in and it's how they spend their money and what they do with it that counts Frank Whittle was finally given the money that he had needed for more than a decade and was put in charge of a crack team of Britain's finest engineers then metal manufacturers began the task of trying to invent a material that could withstand super high temperatures their experiments led to finding a metal so strong it is almost indestructible a mixture of nickel chrome steel and molybdenum Whittle was ready to test his new engine on the 11th of April 1941 Frank Whittle climbed into the cockpit of a gloucester pioneer and conducted some preliminary ground tests the next day Whittle watched as his invention prepared to fly would his new improved jet engine survive his first flight 17 minutes later a triumphant touchdown wickles engine had worked and there were no signs of overheating the invention of the jet engine is the great turning point right in the middle of the history of the airplane and it is a radical change in the history of how we fly and it's real impact on the world on the way you and I live our lives is the fact that the jet age meant air transportation for everybody almost anybody could now afford to fly to see grandma to go halfway around the world on a vacation or whatever you wanted to do Frank Whittle faced extraordinary obstacles to reach his goal but was one thing he never doubted the science that fueled his idea after it landed one of the other people who was there said that whittled well Frank it flew and boodles response was well things bloody well what it was supposed to do other inventions of the decades 1942 super glue an unexpected discovery by a chemist who've been trying to invent a clear plastic 1943 scuba diving pioneered by a French resistance fighter who braved the deep to locate German mines and also in 1943 the slinky invented by an engineer who watched a spring fall off a shelf imagine the world before rams and chips where the work now done by computers used to be calculated by humans in frustrated one man so much that it drove him to invent the world's first electronic brain konrad zuse --i was a science nerd and inventor of the future but in 1935 he was just another engineer in berlin trying to progress and get along with his colleagues but he had a sharp mind and he was easily bored as a student my father started at the same university where I'm working the name was at this time technical Shula Charlottenburg and there he started a machine construction then it was bowling for him then he changed to architecture it was bowling for him at the Heinkel Aircraft Company he did endless maths equations to calculate the effect of wind on airplane wings but the adding machines at the time were not easy to use everything had to be inputted by hand the monotony was sending Zeus are crazy and he was driving his colleagues up the wall - there's this calculations for hopper for him and he thought about at this time he thought about how can I make it easier Zeus who thought he must not be alone in his hatred of the adding machine he was sure there was a huge amount of people that would appreciate a machine that could do complex calculations without having to input every tiny detail by hand he saw a market in Germany this time and he thought everyone gets such a machine and then I can get clutch Zeus's idea became obsession he left his job and moved in with his parents to work on it he came to his parents and said I need the living room I want to build up a big machine which makes mathematical calculations they have no idea that their son's eccentric tinkering would change the future of the entire planet Susa began work on a machine that would do more than just complex calculations it would be able to be programmed to actually think for itself a computer but to program it he needed a language that both man and computer could understand zoos have found that the solution lay in an ancient mathematical system called binary he learned how to use sequences of ones and zeros to represent numbers similar to Morse code it was a language so simple even a machine could follow it the next challenge was how to physically represent these ones and zeros in a machine Zuzu thought he could do it with thousands of mechanical switches a sequence of switches turned on or off would represent any number he started to build the switches by hand he took metal sheets and then he took a saw and he made a template and structures he had the power 30000 metal sheets one by one Zeus had turned the sheets into the thousands of intricate metal switches that would create his binary sequences however if even one switch was out of alignment none of them would work he had to find a better way but world events threatened to derail his entire project in 1939 Konrad Zuse er was called up to fight for Hitler but instead of heading for the frontlines zeus are managed to work in aerodynamics with a german airforce he tried to convince them about his computer concept but they didn't see a use for it so zeus our persevered on his own after work at night then he came up with a brilliant solution to replace the cumbersome mechanical switches he salvaged electrical relays from old telephones and used them instead the relays became the switches that would create his binary sequences it was the major turning point for Zeus's conception no more awkward moving parts just the efficient hum of electricity December 1941 the computer was finished six years of work and 2,500 electrical relays were waiting to be switched on it was the moment of truth zoo Safed a complicated mathematical problem into the computer within minutes it delivered the correct answer he had done it konrad zuse a-- had built the world's first fully programmable electronic computer he had a vision he constructed a completely new type of calculating machines or computers partially he was clearly a genius but because of the raging war the world's attention was elsewhere there was no press it was no sensation as well as no report in any newspaper after the war Zeus has started one of the world's first computer companies and Konrad Zuse is binary-based design is the universal standard for every computer in the world more inventions to the decade 1946 the air phibian a brilliant way to beat rush hour but the car with wings was so expensive it never took off 1948 velcro arrived onto the scene Walda cos a swiss engineer became covered in burrs and realized their tiny hooks had an incredible grip 1945 the atomic bomb changed the course of warfare once the only way to cook was by using an oven until these arrived just microwaves of energy to cook a meal in minutes discovered by an observant man who realized that what he stumbled across had huge potential palaces Spencer was a 50 year old inventor by the end of World War two he had an impressive list of patents to his name he wanted to beat Thomas Edison's record of over a thousand patents a big target for a man with no formal education my grandfather grew up in Holland Maine and it was a logging community in fact his father died when Gramps was 18 months old in a sawmill accident so he grew up as an orphan and my grandfather went through sixth grade and then left school and became an apprentice at a local machine shop and that's as far as his education went Spencer was an orphan by the age of two but his heart start to life had introduced his scientific ambitions he taught himself calculus trigonometry physics and worked his way into engineering during the war he worked for Raytheon a world leader in radar technology his design for radar sets helped the Allies detect and blow up enemy subs it earned him the Navy's highest civilian honor an achievement of a lifetime for most but not Percy Spencer my grandfather was very competitive with the more elite well-educated individuals the stories often told then they had heard that he only had a sixth grade education so they made him address any letters to them with doctor in front of their name the rivalry between Spencer and his colleagues fueled his determination to leave a lasting mark an invention everyone would remember his great moment arrived completely by chance in the Raytheon lab when he stopped in front of a magnetron inside the device was a filament that gave off electrons these electrons moved outward coming into contact with a magnetic field which generated electromagnetic energy basically it's a small series of cavities that electromagnetic energy vibrates in and much like a whistle it produces consistent waves that can be used for detecting things with radar but Spencer noticed something bizarre in his pocket a chocolate bar had liquefied he knew body heat could not cause it to melt was it the magnetron Spencer set up an experiment to test his idea under the curious gaze of his Ivy League colleagues he placed some unpopped corn in front of the magnetron Spencer's instinct was right microwaves were agitating the water molecules inside the corn as molecules banged into each other they created friction and heat which turned the water to steam and caused the kernels to explode his thinking was gee if we can melt a candy bar and we can pop some popcorn maybe we can cook an egg Spencer's colleagues watched in disbelief as the egg began to shudder with greater and greater intensity and one of the more skeptical engineers looks over the shield to see well this is really cooking and unfortunately the egg blew up in his face so I was thought that was the derivation of the expression egg in one's face Spence's experiment also revealed the microwaves heat food but not the containers this was because the containers didn't have water molecules within them the whole concept of being able to cook without using heat was science fiction and if you can imagine what it took to convince people to invest in this to verify his findings Spencer installed a magnetron inside a metal box when the microwaves couldn't escape their power was concentrated so food cooked up to eight times faster than in conventional ovens Percy Spencer had just invented the world's first microwave oven 20 years and plenty of modifications later the first countertop model went on sale and the microwave Revolution began grants shared with a lot of inventors the ability to see the unseen to visualize something that does not yet exist while I recall is a boy having one of the first microwave ovens it was as large as a refrigerator you had to let it warm up for 20 minutes before he could cook anything in it but it would cook ten times faster than anything you could buy nowadays because it had ten times more power it ran off at 220 volts and required plumbing to keep it cool for his achievement Spencer received an honorary degree from the University of Massachusetts in 1949 vindication for a man who started with nothing and a comeuppance for his colleagues it was a great honor but he didn't make a big deal about it except for these individuals who had to from then on address an email to him where the word doctor and front Percy Spencer never did break Thomas Edison's record there by the end of his life he did have 150 patents to his name it was an invention that meant that cats could stay indoors so increasing their popularity as a family pet and it's down to an American who changed the way felines did their business agloe had recently returned home from military service at the end of World War two a Navy man full of ideas he was in search of the American dream but he was broke when the war was over a head low hitchhiked home and he went to work for his father and he went home to a wife and small child so he had responsibilities knocking on his door his dad's business was selling sand and sawdust to soak up chemical spills and factories he went and worked for his father's delivery business and tried to expand that business his father had a Tavern in Vandalia and so he wanted really ed to take over the delivery business which I did very successfully he expanded the client base and he also expanded the product lines that they were delivering ed dreamt of capturing new markets with a super-absorbent clay called Fuller's earth but there was no interest in his idea by January 1947 he was a frustrated man but his neighbor was also having a hard time Kay Draper was trying to dig up enough sand so her cat could stay inside on a cold winter's night but the ground was frozen solid she asked it if he had any sawdust and she was very persistent saying well you must have something here that I could use for my cat box in the 1940s cats were not the favorite house pet that was because dogs could be trained to go outside when nature called then there was the odor problem cats produce highly concentrated undiluted waste because they've evolved from desert creatures that have to conserve water so the feline of the 1940s spent its nights out in the cold the day Kay came calling edge was trying to find a market for the Fuller's earth that was in his garage Kay said she'd try anything later in Kay's basement Cesar investigated the new substance and got right down to business the first deposit in a billion dollar industry it seemed that Fuller's earth was a geological wonder it has formed more than 200 million years ago when volcanic ash was buried and compressed under seawater and silt so its chemical composition changed the result extremely fine particles each with an electrical charge that attracts and binds other molecules meaning Fuller's earth was super absorbent Fuller's earth clay because of its absorbency allowed the the urine from a cat to be absorbed which reduced the development of bacteria and therefore there were than the the obnoxious odors can you help us out k was so thrilled with Ed's product she returned back the next day for more and it brought friends Eddie became the most popular man in the street well this was as Eureka moment knowing he had a product that he could provide a use for that no one else had done Ted knew his product worked he just had to sell it he packed five pound bags of Fuller's earth came up with a snappy brand name and then went on the road to sell kitty litter and cat shows and to pet stores he actually toured the entire United States with this product in his car was a trailer behind it going door-to-door the response was often skeptical people laughed at him because of just the nature of the product it was like really that's really what you do but everyone who used the cat litter came back for more so Edie took a gamble and bought a Fuller's earth processing plant soon he was exporting kitty litter all around the world consumers were knocking on the door for this product because it deodorize it was efficient and now their cats could be inside hi I'm ed Lowe since I invented cat box filler in 1947 I've been improving it ever since today the cat box filler industry is a billion dollars in global sales ed Lowe is responsible for bringing the cat out of the cold and inside our households with the use of Fuller's earth as a cat box filler and Edie lo the rags-to-riches inventor became wealthier than he ever dreamed possible other brainwaves the nineteen forties nineteen forty eight a robot that could find its own way guided by a photoelectric cell that navigated it around obstacles 1944 motor powered rollerskates the British inventor spent 20 years trying to persuade people to buy them they got me but they never proved popular with the public but frisbee did take off brainchild of a world war ii veteran who called it the pluto platter to take advantage of the fascination with UFOs it'll break its neck smash in its face and suffer death blows also we don't have to but the crash-test-dummy wouldn't be saving lives today if it wasn't for a doctor who risked his own life again and again in 1947 captain John Stapp was a doctor in the US Air Force it was an exciting time a time when the new world of jet power began to revolutionize flight but it was also proving harmful on the pilots too many of them were getting hurt or killed in crashes this is the era of supersonic jet powered aircraft that brings with it a whole host of problems you can no longer just jump out of an aircraft with a parachute and hope to survive stop superiors knew that if the u.s. wanted to rule the sky they would have to make jet flights safer the Air Force launched a project codenamed MX 981 as study into crash survival dr. Stapp was assigned to lead the study his bosses thought he had the background for this sort of research a medical degree a PhD in biophysics and an instinct to solve problems he took it upon himself to do everything he could to figure out how do we how can we save lives can we do it through equipment can you see how much acceleration a man can stand what do we need to do stop needed to establish what killed a pilot when he was ejected during a crash extreme g-forces were designed mistakes in the safety gear in 1947 it was believed the maximum g-force a human body could withstand was 18 times its own body weight 18 G's was the limit of what they thought at the time was what you could survive in a crash so you would might blackout under that but you should your body should at least be able to take that much without dying stop suspected the limit was higher and would subject himself to life or death research to prove it he used a rocket-propelled sled to simulate a jet flying at various speeds it had a powerful hydraulic braking system built to mimic different levels of g-force the contraption was nicknamed the g-wiz the sleds first test pilot was a primitive dummy made of sand and weighed 84 kilos similar to a pilot so he actually kind of looks like a person he's got some joints he's he's hard he weighs 185 pounds and he you know he's got something that looks like a face but really he and in fact he looks more like the Tin Man from the wit and The Wizard of Oz something like that stap used the dummy to test the safety harness and braking system but a flight suit filled with sand could not show how a human body reacted to g-force and the dummy tend to lose its head during the test there was only one solution to get accurate GeForce data use a real live body the first volunteer who strapped himself into the rocket sled was John Stapp he wasn't willing to kind of take half measures and so when he decided that he need to find out the truth about something he did it to the very best of his abilities everything else be damned it wasn't that he wanted the glory or he want to set records himself it was that he felt it was his responsibility as the person in charge and as a doctor that he should take the biggest risks himself over the next year dr. Stapp took 16 rides in the rocket sled at ever-increasing speed he would actually be nervous ahead of time some stories say that he got so nervous eventually that he would throw up before these rides so he wasn't really looking forward to it and again it suggests that perhaps he wasn't really doing it for the thrill but for the medical knowledge he could get from it dr. Stapp subjected himself to greater and greater g-forces pushing past the accepted limit of 18 GS however it is making his bosses very nervous even more so when he was carried off on a stretcher after testing I think the line between obsession and scientific objectivity for John Paul Stapp was a little blurry that's not all that was blurry Stapp was temporarily blinded and it also cracked his ribs broke his wrists knocked out his fillings and has bruised all over his body the Air Force decided enough was enough captain a lot of his bosses thought that maybe he was a little bit reckless or that he didn't adhere to bureaucracy which was certainly the case but from their perspective he was taking a lot of unnecessary risks stop was ordered to stop testing immediately before he killed himself or someone else if stop wanted to continue his research he had to create a realistic humanoid replica an innovation that would change transportation forever you need a dummy that has a face that looks like a person that has you know the chest build of a person that has arms and legs and things that can move so that they can design the proper safety equipment to to protect real pilots the first mold was made from the real thing a pilot was plastered from head to toe to create an accurate full-scale shell the mold was then wired with accelerometers transducers and gyroscopes instruments that measured how the body reacted when the RocketSled suddenly stopped he would have things like accelerometers to see how fast they were going he would have pressure transducers to see for instance how much pressure was on the neck as it snapped forward they also had he also had a clavicle bone that was breakable so they could see if if during these these abrupt stops that fit with fit would break here your collarbone the world's first fully instrumented crash-test dummy nicknamed Sierra Sam was ready for action he needed help getting to the test site but all that mattered was how he performed once strapped into the g-wiz rocket sled Stapp's dummy was subjected to crashes of greater and greater force eventually his instruments proved it was not g-forces that were killing people in crashes it was poor safety equipment what he proves is that people can are a lot more durable than what we thought we are so if we given the proper safety equipment they can survive almost any kind of crash as long as the airplane itself can survive Sierra Somme enabled Stapp to push testing to new heights starting a revolution and safety standards for jet aircraft but stop was already thinking laterally he realized far more lives would be saved if the dummy was also used to safety test cars so what he does is staged the first-ever series of crash tests using vehicles they requisition a bunch of of junker cars from a junkyard put these dummies in them and start crashing them into walls steps research found that bumpers of the 1940s did nothing for car safety seats dislodged too easily on impact dashboards were too close to the driver and most importantly seatbelts saved lives the findings turned step into a crusader without staffs work there was really no interest in safety equipment for cars so it was up to him and his missionary zeal to to really push that on to the automotive industry and to demonstrate first to the air force and then to the car manufacturers that people can be saved through this type of safety equipment he spent years lobbying the US government to encourage it to create tough new car safety rules to win President Johnson signed the bill mandating incorporation of lap belts into cars it's John Paul Stapp who's in the room with them anytime you get in a car accident and then you're safe and sound you've got John Paul Stapp to thank

Channel: Suzy Sertic

Views: 435,828

Rating: 4.6899061 out of 5

Keywords: Discovery, Channel, Inventions, that, shook, the, world, New, season 1, s1, s01, episode 5, e05, Season Episode, Watch, Series, Full, Episodes, discovery channel, s01e05, Free, THE 1940S, tv show, tv, show, series, now, free, Youtube

Id: CKgRZ0Ttfzw

Length: 44min 5sec (2645 seconds)

Published: Mon May 20 2013