Inventions That Shook The World - SO1E07 - THE 1960S

doing it by hand - doing it by machine they revolutionized the world of work from passive viewing to active gaming it transformed how we play and from looking up at the moon to walking on it changed our view of the universe these were all inventions of the 1960s a decade of protest free love and Cold War rivalry the turned science fiction into science fact robots the Taser and the spaceship that took us to the moon they were inventions that shook the world terrible weather conditions can arrive at a moment's notice so being prepared and knowing what's coming can save your life satellites have removed the guesswork and it is all because of a scientist who made it is objective to launch the world's first meteorological eye in the sky in 1944 dr. Harry Wexler was about to prove he was no ordinary meteorologist as a hurricane approached the east coast of the US Wexler prepared to observe it by flying right into the eye of the storm sir are you ready for your flight I'll be right there it was the first time a scientist had attempted this type of firsthand research but he was a pioneer and he was willing to take a chance oh I think he was truly curious and he thought that the plane could go out and bring back useful information back in the 1940s hurricanes were a complete mystery there were no eyes in the sky there was no way to tell what was out there except scattered ship reports and that was not even in real time so it was guesswork Harry Wexler was a curious and brilliant scientist educated at Harvard and MIT mathematics was his speciality but it was whether that was his passion Harry Wexler never turned down a challenge Harry was a gregarious very outgoing kind of fellow extremely smart very bright and was interested in just about everything that had to do with meteorology Wexler and his pilot flew into the hurricane in a US Air Force bomber battling winds of up to 200 km/h on reaching the eye of the storm the plane was suddenly sucked upward by strong vertical wind currents until this moment scientists had assumed hurricanes only had horizontal currents it was a major advancement in hurricane research but the new information was not helpful the Hurricanes sank five ships killing three hundred and forty-four sailors dozens more people died when it made landfall to save lives a hurricane warning system had to be created this meant a way to track the hurricane long before it reached land needed to be developed the inspiration Wexler required came from an unexpected source the British science fiction writer Arthur C Clark who had been following Wexler's research one day in the early 1950s Harry Wexler opened his mail and had a letter from arthur c clarke asking him his ideas about a meteorological satellite it was an idea ahead of its time as satellites were still at a concept stage both the Soviet Union and the US were racing to launch the first into orbit Wexler was intrigued that led Wexler to think about all the things you might be able to see from outer space looking down on the atmosphere Clarke really did lead Harry Wexler into a train of thought which was very fruitful and helped develop some of the early technologies for weather satellites Wexler imagined a satellite that would orbit above the earth taking pictures of weather patterns while they were forming he saw the satellite orbiting around the North and South Poles crossing the same lines of latitude at the same time every day each time it passed a particular point it would take photographs and transmit them back to earth it would take a huge amount of resources to make he took his idea to everyone he knew in government for years nothing happened then in October 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik the world's first artificial satellite Wexler's idea was given the go-ahead and NASA began to build his weather satellite tyrus one Wexler's idea was given the go-ahead and NASA began to build his weather satellite tyrus one Perry was right there able to shape the early developments Wexler's idea required two cameras one that was wide-angle to photograph 2,000 square kilometers at a time the other a high resolution for close-ups on the 1st of April 1960 at Cape Canaveral Florida Wexler's satellite was ready for launch Tyrus went into orbit 800 kilometers above the earth it circled the planet once every 99 minutes Wexler waited anxiously for the first set of images if the pictures were not clear enough to show weather patterns the mission would be a failure however the results were even better than Wexler had hoped the first pictures from Tyra's they clearly showed ice in the Gulf of st. Lawrence they showed cloud formations that could be matched to the storm theories of the time this is actually a holy grail of meteorology but it was not until September 1961 the Tyra's faced its first test hurricane Carla was headed towards the Texas Gulf Coast Carla was the largest storm ever that that landed on the US soil it's larger than Katrina Tyra's photographed Carla as it formed in the Gulf of Mexico allowing meteorologists to track her it gave authorities time to evacuate more than half a million people Harry Wexler's vision was saving lives Harry's contemporaries called the weather satellite Harry's dream Harry Wexler's contribution really marked a turning point in our quest to get a complete view of the Earth's weather a view that can be shared internationally they can cover the oceans in the southern hemisphere and remote areas and so it really is a fulfillment of an ancient quest of the meteorologists enabling them to predict and prepare for whatever was approaching other inventions of the 1960s 1968 the water bird made waves and bedrooms across the continent this is the latest American sensation in indoor living marketed as a pleasure pit for free love and aspiring ladies men 1961 the Amphicar rode the waves but the concept sank without trace as it didn't float anyone's boat 1963 the lava-lamp cast a groovy glow thanks to a British inventors brew of water wax and carbon tetrachloride they work around the clock are never ill and do not complain yet these robots do most of the repetitive work all because an inventor thought humans shouldn't have to Gorge Duvall's favorite place was his garage in Connecticut where ideas percolated and inventions were born George Devol was a serial inventor he was a guy who chose not to go to college because he was so brilliant that he was capable of making a living just by coming up with inventions on his own by the mid-1950s George had helped invent all sorts of devices such as the Phantom Dorman that used a photoelectric cell to open doors George Devol was kind of a nerdy guy who was really focused on the details you know he wasn't thinking about the big picture he was really focused on how his inventions actually worked and not so much on whether people would want to use them or what the applications were or anything like that which is why he wasn't the greatest businessman while looking through a technical journal he saw an assembly line an image of monotony that set his imagination working George wondered why should human beings have to do such mind-numbing work you're doing that job again and again and again and once you do it all day human beings just lose concentration and losing concentration meant that you could get injured and people did George thought that if something else were to do all the repetitive work the workers lives would be improved if that tool were to move similar to the human arm grab onto things and lift them up it's possible uses would be mind-boggling had to be able to pick up heavy parts had to be dexterous so it had to be able to get a hold of those parts and hang on to them and move them to another place and let go of them George pictured a machine that had a wrist that could bend and rotate similar to a real hand with two opposing fingers to do the grasping the arms actions would be controlled by a computer which could be reprogrammed for different jobs George obtained a patent but he was unable to find anyone to listen to his idea he's really focused on details he's really technically proficient but he's not really very good at explaining what he's doing to anyone else his break came by chance at a friend's party George George George Duvall I'd like you to meet Joe angle burger I have a feeling you boys have a lot to talk about George nice to meet you let's meet you Joe I think we need a drink Joe engelberger was an engineer with a background in physics who was also a very sharp businessman so George what line of work are you in well I had this idea the to get to talking and Joe suddenly realizes that what George is describing is something that he's read about in science fiction only it's real a robot very interesting Joe spotted the huge business potential and all the possible uses for a robotic arm it was the beginning of a fruitful relationship Joe is it no it doesn't look like much but we can clean all this stuff out of here George concentrated on building a working prototype and solving engineering problems that arose Joe began to identify all the potential uses and buyers for a robotic arm he was going to factories and he was trying to figure out the lowest hanging fruit where can robots help first so he was trying to identify really important jobs for robots and that means jobs that people don't want to do one of their biggest engineering challenges was how to adjust the robot's grip so it was adaptable for different tasks the solution was to install pressure sensors inside the machines hand the heavier the pressure the stronger the grip was needed to be the robots movements were programmed into a computer you just move it through the motions and then it would record that and it would play it back again and again and again all night long never going to sleep never asking for a break the prototype was called the unum eight the duo continued to refine and test it proving that their invention was adaptable to a multitude of tasks it seemed as if success was inevitable but George and Joe had not counted on the image that robots had in the u.s. at the time robots were just like witches or werewolves they were completely made-up it was just like any other boogeyman that was used to scare people in a story when robots appeared in popular culture they were typically killing everybody so this is a tremendously difficult business problem the USA's lack of enthusiasm was disappointing George and Joe had to expand their horizons and in Japan the post-war economy was booming in Japan robots were much better perceived and so there was no drawback for the Japanese companies to tell everybody hey we've got robots Japanese car manufacturers began to use you animates and productivity boomed the rest of the world took note and the robot revolution began this was a real turning point for humankind because one minute we were just using tools and the next minute we were letting our tools do their jobs on their own completely autonomously in 2003 the UNAM 8 was inducted into the robot Hall of Fame but it was George and Joe who deserved the real credit for working out that almost anything can be made with a robot also invented in the 1960s 1962 the touch-tone phone was quicker than the rotary phone 1963 the rocket belt hoisted military pilots into the air on a blast of steam but they ran out of fuel in 21 seconds so the concept never stayed aloft 1964 astroturf a significant improvement on nature plastic grass that turned a mud bath into a field of green passive viewing to active gaming was an unimaginable leap in the early days of television interacting with the TV was a stuff of science fiction until a brilliant man invented the game box by the 1960s Ralph Baer had already made his mark as an electronics genius as a teenager he escaped Nazi Germany to the US where his scientific intellect flourished after the war Ralph Baer is one of the finest examples I can think of inventive ingenuity Ralph was the kind of person who was constantly thinking you know five to seven steps ahead of everybody else in society during the late 1940s and 1950s Ralph created everything from high fire accessories to snooping devices that observed the Soviet Union he was also convinced television could be less passive and more interactive it was a radical concept in the 1950s so no one listened at this point in time was absolutely insane to try to think of reacting to a television set in any way other than just viewing in any way other than just being spoon-fed by whatever the network's or the the small independent companies thought they could they could feed you basically it was a medium where you just took it in you had no say in what you saw except for changing channels and in those days you didn't have that many channels to change in 1966 ralph was designing equipment for a military contractor he was working with an alignment generator that created test lines on a TV screen you had these testers that would put cross hatches of horizontal lines of vertical lines on the screen so that you could test them and make sure they were working the Machine inspired him to imagine a completely new type of game he realized this will be really fun if we could put it in the users hands and the user could play with it you know what if I could bounce those lines around what if I could chase a dot around on the screen to turn his idea into reality he needed to find a way to generate a signal that changed those static lines into symbols that moved around the screen it was in September 1966 while sitting at a bus stop that it started to fall into place Ralph pulls out a spiral bound notebook he starts making notes he creates this memo in the first page it visualizes you know a whole gamut of game types that could be useful in videogames ralph realized that if a radio frequency or RF signal could display moving pictures on a TV screen it should also be able to generate game symbols you get none buddy ralph knew it would be difficult to persuade people at the office about his new idea where the focus was on serious military technology so he started to develop his TV game in secret at this point in time Ralph has enough people reporting to him in enough budget to be able to disguise what he's doing Ralph set to work using the components of an alignment generator he used a radio frequency oscillator to generate a video signal then a component called a sync generator synchronized that signal into one that the television understood a modulator then sent the signal to the TV and placed it on channel three or four as the signal entered the TV a spot appeared on the screen which could move horizontally vertically and change shape he had proven that his concept worked Ralph then built an actual game box but it wasn't user-friendly he had used glass vacuum tubes to regulate the flow of electricity and these took up too much space and blew you couldn't put out a consumer game unit that was based on vacuum tubes because you know they would they would blow out and you would have to replace the tubes however new technology enabled Ralph to progress he enlisted a talented colleague bill Harrison who knew all about transistors tiny silicon semiconductors that performed the same function as vacuum tubes but without the bulk or fragility they also met Ralph's game box could be smaller and more user-friendly finally a prototype game box is completed each game came with a plastic overlay such as a ping-pong table to make the game more realistic thus we John in June 1967 Ralph and his colleague decided to unveil their secret project to the bosses he was tired of hiding all of the expenses in the budget and he hoped that maybe he could loosen some of the purse strings Ralph had no idea how they would react to a game that was built without their knowledge at first the executives didn't know what to make of Ralph's game but once they got the hang of it they were hooked imagine if you will two men with military experience all the maturity that you expect to see but here they are playing on a television screen with all the intensity as though their life's prestige depends upon it that's the way it was in that 10 by 20 room rounds bosses gave him over $2,000 for staff and $500 for parts so Ralph could develop the game box further imagine that the video game revolution began on $2,500 worth of R&D money Ralph's TV game box became the Magnavox Odyssey the world's first home video game console Magnavox presents Odyssey the electronic game of the future it arrived in the shops in 1972 and over the next decade raus idea transformed the home entertainment business I don't think he would have dreamed that he was creating an industry that would be in the billions of dollars by this time today in 2006 Ralph received the prestigious National Medal of Technology in honor of his video game inventions from the US president police officers can now apprehend a difficult suspect by subduing them with a zap a grownup invention that had it start in a childhood fantasy in the 1920s a young jack cover could not get enough of his favorite book it was called Tom Swift and his electric rifle and was about a boy who could neutralize criminals without killing them Jack grew up got a PhD in nuclear physics but then changed course and was drawn to the new world of aerospace technology he just was really effusive with both energy and intellect he's willing people who just had to be on the move was always looking for new intellectual challenges and new adventures in life by the late 1960s Jack was a chief scientist involved in the USA's race to land on the moon but it was the national news that sparked his imagination can you believe what's going on in Chicago race riots and anti-war protests were affecting many parts of the u.s. in 1960s this country was torn apart over the Vietnam War there were protests that were turning violent across this country and at the same time we had the rise of hijackings and terrorism so it was a violent and unpredictable world that was emerging the 96 and it must be met by the President Johnson wanted the development of a non-lethal weapon to subdue protesters without killing them while reading the paper Jack noticed a strange unrelated story paper he reads an article about a man who's walking through the woods who goes to climb over a fence and apparently that fence had been hit by a power line and just enough electricity was flowing through the fence and through this this manatee couldn't let go the man was temporarily incapacitated but not injured and I believe that was the Eureka moment where Jack said well the country needs a safer way to subdue people so you don't have to kill him electricity can immobilize and yet people can recover fully why don't we take electricity combine it back with my boyhood memories of Tom Swift and his electric rifle he had the vision of how to solve a major problem Jack found the most up-to-date science on electricity in the body and then began to build a prototype with bits and pieces from his garage Jack would take ordinary parts sometimes as simple as a tongue depressor or a rubber band into extraordinary things bicycle tire valves and some plastic tubing and some other parts the next thing you know he's got an advanced ballistic cartridge system for firing electrified electrodes Jack hoped that by firing at a living target he could temporarily halt that body's own electrical signals inside my bodies I'm sitting here right now there are trillions of electrical impulses moving through the nerve fibers back and forth between my brain and every sensor in my skin they control all of my muscular movements my sight my smell every sensation in the human body are electric signals that are being transmitted around within the body his device used electricity stored in a battery gunpowder charges fired two insulated wires with darts on the end when both darts hit the target the electrical circuit was completed delivering a shock that temporarily disabled the body I can shut you down like a Star Trek phaser I can stop your brain from being able to control your body so that you can't attack me you can't harm me but like the light switch when I turn it off you return right back to normal djaq calculated a combination of voltage and current required for any given target enough to ensure the muscles contracted but not enough to damage the body so once they've built the first tasers they've done the engineering calculations of course they need to then begin testing them in and that would include some animal tests one of Jack's first test subjects was a buffalo from a local animal park Jack was able to take a buffalo put it safely on the ground and yet allow it to get right back up back to normal immediately there was only one way to take testing to the next stage there's nothing that speaks to the safety of a product like an inventor who's willing to use it himself so Jack willingly volunteered to take the next hit with a little help from his sons so far so good when his sons saw that example they too stepped up they were part of this taser mission as well and they also volunteered to take this these were only the first tests of hundreds but jack cover knew he had invented a super effective non-lethal weapon he named his invention after the childhood fantasy that started at all he used the book's title to create an acronym taser it took another two decades and lots of modifications before police forces began using the device in the US Jack was excited to see it finally take off it had been a long hard road for him and to see law enforcement adopting the Taser and masts around the world was a nice capstone for his life today the Taser is used in 44 countries by police and military personnel thanks to a maverick scientist who wasn't afraid to take the first hit also invented in the 1960s 1969 the ground proximity warning system alerted pilots so they could ascend quickly to avoid a crash but as far superior to what we had before which was nothing 1968 the jacuzzi turned the pool into a bubbling social event some delievered makes werewolves howl or crazy people prowl myths about the moon have enthralled for decades but no lunar legend compared to the true story of a small spaceship that went there for real on the 25th of May 1961 space engineer Tom Kelly and his wife were among tens of millions of Americans glued to their TV sets I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth President Kennedy's speech was a rallying cry the USA's rival at the time the Soviet Union had been achieving victory after victory during the Cold War space race the Soviets had demonstrated over and over again from the late 1950s all the way to 1961 that they could do pretty much whatever they wanted or so it seemed in space they'd been the first to launch a satellite they've been the first to send a robotic probe to the moon they'd been the first to photograph the backside of the moon they were the first in 1961 to send a human into orbit all of those first suggests that that they were perhaps the world leaders we nevertheless were required to make new efforts on our own oh well we cannot guarantee the US desperately wanted a first music - Tom Keller's ears and to his bosses a groom and aerospace a company that built jet fighters NASA wanted to land on the moon and Tom's company wanted to take part but they had to convince NASA that they had the most achievable idea should they fly the astronauts directly to the moon or launch them from the mothership Tom Kelly's team preferred a third concept a command module would orbit the moon not the earth one astronaut would wait in orbit while two others would descend to the moon in a separate vehicle then they would rendezvous back with a command module lunar rendezvous was was very controversial at the time there were a lot of people didn't think it would work they thought it was far too risky and that their chances of stranding somebody on the lunar surface was too great and didn't want to go that route Tom helped to convince people that it was the only way to succeed and his company won the contract to build the vehicle that would actually land on the moon Tom was put in charge of the project he knew the lunar vehicle would not look like the jet fighters his company usually built the new invention only needed to fly in low gravity and what was required was a vehicle influenced by science fiction but how to build a machine in a laboratory that would never actually work in the Earth's atmosphere and how to design landing gear not knowing the type of surface the vehicle would land on the design mutated into an insect type structure with long legs the legs of the lunar module have to do two important things the first thing they have to do is they have to absorb the shock of the landing they're all so long and gangly in case there is some dust that you might sink into you would still be above that with the major part of the spacecraft another challenge was how to maneuver the lunar module once it had left the command module a propulsion system on the bottom of the descent stage the vehicle would help it to land on the moon a second propulsion system which separates the top of the vehicle or the ascent stage so it will be able to lift off from the lunar surface now we have to build er construction of a lunar lander began in January 1963 one of the biggest challenges was to keep weight to an absolute minimum anything that flies anything that flies weight is the primary consideration and with the lunar module that's especially the case because it had to go to the to the lunar surface and then back up and you only had a certain amount of throw weight with the rocket to be able to do those things Tom Kelly's team stripped the lunar lander to its bare essentials they even redesigned the interior so there's no need for seats but the seats are in a lunar module first were tossed because of the weight there's just no question about that they were also big and bulky didn't see any reason that they had to have them the astronauts were not going to be in there that long they were just going to essentially ride it down to the lunar surface so they could stand while they're doing that they replaced large windows with a small one the glass is very heavy and over time they realize that they didn't need to have that much picture window space tests also proved that the vehicle could land safely on just four legs instead of five when you're doing major engineering problems it's all about finding solutions to problems it's it's a real delicate task and Kelly was a master at it by 1967 the Lunar Module had taken shape astronauts were busy training how to use it and the command module then on the 27th of January 1967 disaster what a command module simulator caught fire during training three astronauts were killed it was a devastating setback for the first time in the program astronauts in the line of duty in and spacecraft were killed the tragedy shocked the entire US space program the future of the moon mission was in serious doubt NASA spent months rethinking for Tom Kelly and the team building the lunar module it was a reminder that if scientists neglected even one small detail the astronauts may never return training intensified astronauts were put through their paces in zero gravity the astronauts had to learn to fly the lunar module on earth but they would never fly it in a gravity environment or with an atmosphere in real life so they had to build vehicles that simulated what the lunar module is going to be like when it flew in space so they built this machine to simulate what it was like to fly the lunar module training was hazardous as some vehicles crashed sometimes astronauts had to escape using their parachute but by 1969 they had successfully finished their earth-based training the lunar lander was then tested in space it was launched into Earth's orbit so scientists could do a final check on everything from engines to docking mechanisms then it was full steam ahead for the ultimate test on the 16th of July 1969 the Saturn 5 rocket was waiting on the launch pad Tom Kelly and his team were among the thousands of scientists engineers and technicians whose futures depended on what happened next the biggest rocket at the time blasted the lunar lander and the command module toward the moon a few hundred kilometers above the earth the command modules separated from the rocket it turned 180 degrees and withdrew the lunar lander out of the rocket storage Bay when the vehicles entered the moon's orbit the lunar lander detached and began its rapid descent to the surface of the Moon Griffen a quality base here the eagle has landed rocket tranquility we copy on the ground you got a bunch of guys about to turn blue we're breathing again cycle on at once for man as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the first steps on the moon Tom Kelley was with them for every step it's fascinating what the lunar module is able to accomplish as it took us to another world it shaped our understanding of the cosmos our understanding of the solar system the lunar module shape the world by helping us change our perspective on the universe and it's spurred us on to contemplate even greater challenging journeys further out into the universe you you

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Id: q6aP83qeOwc

Length: 44min 4sec (2644 seconds)

Published: Tue May 21 2013