Patented: History of Inventions
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Patented: History of Inventions
This podcast investigates the curious history of invention and innovation. Did Thomas Edison take credit for things he didn’t actually invent? What everyday items have surprising origins? And would man have ever got to the moon without… the bra? Each episode host Dallas Campbell dives into stor...
Episodi recenti
160 episodiThings vs. Humans: the spiteful behaviour of inanimate objects
If you can never connect to a printer, if furniture jumps out to stub your toe, if when you do the dishes the water jumps out the sink to soak you - t...
First Ever Submarine
400 years ago on the River Thames a mad genius showed off the world's first submarine. A crowd of thousands including King James watched as Cornelis D...
Inventing Fire: the First Spark of Humanity
Fire is the unsung hero of human evolution. We could not have turned into the big-brained, deep-thinking animals we are on raw food alone. The moment...
Rise and Fall of High Heels
For most of their history, High Heels were resolutely masculine. The most manly of manly footwear. How did they turn into burning icons of femininity?...
Sunglasses
What do all incredibly cool people have in common? They wear Sunglasses. Whether you're Miles Davis or Audrey Hepburn, James Dean or Bob Dylan, your s...
Deep-Sea Submersibles & the Titan Disaster
The Titan submersible implosion was a tragic example of marine exploration going wrong. Today Dallas speaks to one of the world's leading marine archa...
Patriarchy
Why are men in charge? Who invented Patriarchy?
Was it chest-thumping primate ancestors? Was it spear-wielding hunter gatherers? Was it at dawn...
Donald Hebb: Brainwashing in the Cold War
In 1950, a new word ‘brainwashing’ entered the English language. From the paranoia of the Cold War a new type of Evil Scientist had emerged — the Mind...
Medieval Swords
No invention conjures up the 'Old World' as much as the Sword. It's an utterly iconic object that whisks us back to knights in shining armour. But wha...
Marie Curie
In a leaky shed in Paris, Marie Curie turned two tons of pitchblende (aka special rocks) into a single test tube of radium chloride - its green glow l...
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology may seem like something from a sci-fi movie plot, but it’s a very real thing and has likely affected many areas of your life, whether y...
Wernher Von Braun: Nazi Father of Rocket Science
Wernher von Braun launched America's space programme, and took Apollo 11 to the moon. He was also a Nazi member who served in the SS, and developed th...
Digital Calculators
What did humans do before calculators? How big was the very first electronic calculator? And what do monkey bones have to do with the history?
D...
Oppenheimer: Inventor of the Atomic Bomb
Robert Oppenheimer was the father of the atomic bomb - a weapon of unprecedented power, which, when dropped on Japan, would end WWII and would change...
Coca Cola: A Backyard Invention
Was Coca Cola originally made with Cocaine? Did Coca Cola invent Santa? Who knows the Coca Cola recipe? Dallas is joined by Bart Elmore, an award-winn...
Fritz Haber: Inventor of Poisonous Gas
Fritz Haber is an undisputed genius and is considered one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th Century. He’s an incredibly complex person, who has...
Inventing Hello Kitty
She’s the most famous cat’s in the world. She’s definitely the most expensive. She’s worth a cool $84.5 Billion. She’s none other than Hello Kitty!
Thermos Flask: A Hot and Cold History
Isn’t it mind-blowing that a thermos flask can keep your drink hot or cold for 8 hours, despite what’s happening in the climate around you? A real sip...
The Walkman: The First Intimate Technology
Think about how intimate our relationship with technology is. In today’s day and age, it’s almost impossible to function in the modern world without i...
Chewing Gum: From the Aztecs to Avocados
Spearmint, peppermint, double-bubble. You may think that chewing gum is a modern invention, when in fact we've been chewing the stuff since the year 2...
Karaoke: The History
When you think about it, the Karaoke machine is a simple invention. Basically two existing inventions, the tape deck and the microphone, were stuck to...
Ectoplasm: Seances & the Rise of Spiritualism
Communicating with the dead has a long and winding history. The rise of seances and the showmanship of paranormal activity rose to prominence in the l...
Fish & Chips: The Unexpected Origins of Britain's Favourite Dish
Fish and Chips. About 382 million portions of the iconic national dish are consumed every year. That works out to around 6 servings per person, per ye...
Black Boxes: Recording Airplanes' Final Moments
They can survive in lava for half an hour and accelerations of 3,400 Gs. Their beacons can be detected 20,000 feet beneath the waves. Most shocking of...
Rise and Fall of Cinema
What was the first cinema? When were the heydays of cinema-going and where are we now? How has the experience of going to the cinema changed?
To...
Dogs: Domesticating Wolves, Inventing Breeds (& Killer Beavers)
How do we go from wolves to modern dogs? And where do Killer Beavers fit into the story?
Humans domesticated wolves long before any other animal...
Ejector Seats: Death Defying Invention
"Eject! Eject!" Imagine hearing that and the next second flying out into the sky at hundreds of miles an hour, your life in the hands of a chair. Luck...
McDonald's: Roadside Stand to Worldwide Brand
Every second McDonald’s sells 75 hamburgers. It serves 70 million customers each day (more than the population of the UK). All this began at a roadsid...
Kitchens
Who invented the Kitchen? It might seem silly to ask that but there is in fact one kitchen that people point to as the mother-of-all-kitchens. It was...
Pride Flag: Birth of a Rainbow
The first ever Pride Flag was 30 ft high and 60 ft wide. A suitably epic beginning for a flag that has had a massive impact on the world.
Who de...
Pencils: A Surprising History
Is the pencil an example of perfect design? What is the greatest pencil of all time? What does a fallen down tree in the Lake District have to do with...
Locks and the Great Lock Controversy
In Victorian England, a prisoner was promised their freedom if only they could pick a lock...
This week on Patented it's the history of locks an...
Suffragette Scientists
Hold onto your lab coats, because the suffragette scientists are here to shake things up! Patricia Fara, author of A Lab of One's Own, joins Dallas to...
Hieroglyphs
Vulture. Snake. Baboon in a Basket. Get ready for hieroglyphs, history, and hilarity as Dallas talks to Egyptologist Chris Naunton.
We discover...
Stone Tools: The First Ever Invention
Stone Tools are technology 1.0. They’re where it all begins. For millions of years, Stone Tools were our primary piece of technology. At some point we...
Colours: from Cave Paint to Nanotube Black
There's a theory that the invention of paint had something to do with the dawn of humanity. We are on a never-ending quest to create brighter, better...
Inventing Disneyland: The First Themepark
Giant mouse ears at the ready, we're off to Disneyland! Hop on board and travel with us inside Walt Disney's mind (for better or for worse). We discov...
Rise and Fall of Encyclopedias
The 15th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1974, cost $32 million to create. The largest investment in publishing history. And yet...
Inventing Bond: Wiretapping
We live in a world where everything is bugged. We all know we are being monitored. The surprising thing is that this is nothing new.
From tapped...
Chicken Nuggets: A Bitesized History
The most famous chicken nugget of them all, the McDonald’s McNugget, turns 40 this year. So we’re asking, who invented the Chicken Nugget?
Ente...