Speaker 1: First things first, the U s Military has so much money.
Speaker 1: It's only tangentially related to our episode today. But if
Speaker 1: we're looking at a hard number. In Seen alone, the
Speaker 1: US military's budget was around a little over six hudred
Speaker 1: and ten billion dollars, then that can't be true. It's true. No,
Speaker 1: it's true, and you have to wonder where all this
Speaker 1: money goes. We have not been in the military ourselves
Speaker 1: that we're aware of right now, but I think you've
Speaker 1: spent some time around military type things. That's true in
Speaker 1: my other life. And uh, our super producer, Casey Pegram
Speaker 1: has also to our knowledge, not been involved in the
Speaker 1: military or cannot admit to anything. He's more of a
Speaker 1: sleeper agent type. You know. I always had impegged as
Speaker 1: that as well, and I mean that as a compliment Casey.
Speaker 1: Every time that we are looking into strange stories for
Speaker 1: ridiculous history, we have a pretty high likelihood of running
Speaker 1: into some shenanigan by one military or another. Because militaries
Speaker 1: and governments drive a lot of technological innovation right there.
Speaker 1: A lot of things that are now common in the
Speaker 1: civilian world started out as military initiatives for the purposes
Speaker 1: of waging war. It's right, and there's always kind of
Speaker 1: a disconnect where you think, oh, that's like crazy future technology,
Speaker 1: but turned out the military was doing it like twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, and then it kind of gets when they're
Speaker 1: like done with it, then it gets leaked out into
Speaker 1: the public sphere and you can kind of you know,
Speaker 1: get a thumb drive or like a PlayStation or whatever,
Speaker 1: or a GPS system exactly. And this this is something
Speaker 1: that's been on our collective minds for some time, both
Speaker 1: in this show and other shows that we've done. So
Speaker 1: we were over the moon when our good pal friend
Speaker 1: of the show, Christopher Hasciotaes hit us up earlier and said, Hey,
Speaker 1: what what do you guys think about weird military weapons
Speaker 1: that never quite made it. We said something to the
Speaker 1: effect of, holy smokes, will you please hang out with
Speaker 1: us on air, and by golly by gum he agreed,
Speaker 1: welcome back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Christopher hasiotis, Hey,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me, and then we all hugged, and
Speaker 1: then we all hugged again and again and again. We've
Speaker 1: been hugging this whole time and doing light handholds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Christopher, of course, thank you for returning to the show.
Speaker 1: If anyone listening through some gross miscarriage of cosmic justice
Speaker 1: hasn't had the chance to check out your appearance on
Speaker 1: our Louie Louis episode, I would say, I don't know
Speaker 1: what you think. No, I would say, pause this episode
Speaker 1: and listen to that. It's one of my personal favorite
Speaker 1: episodes we've ever done. So, Christopher, what inspired you to
Speaker 1: think about this topic? There are, as you mentioned, You know,
Speaker 1: the military contribute so many things to society in terms
Speaker 1: of technolological innovations, lots of great stuff that we've gotten
Speaker 1: out of, you know, the minds behind military weaponry. But
Speaker 1: to get to those successes, you know, sometimes you gotta
Speaker 1: break a couple what nuclear bombs eggs to make to
Speaker 1: make a We're gonna stretch this metaphor out to make
Speaker 1: some sort of omelet of death and destruction, and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I like that. But yeah, there are just a lot
Speaker 1: of examples of really strange things out there where you
Speaker 1: would think this is an Internet hoax the first time
Speaker 1: you hear about it, or you would think surely someone
Speaker 1: on some committee would have said, guys, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: that's that's just not gonna work. But you probably a
Speaker 1: lot of you out there listening have been in a
Speaker 1: situation where you know your boss has an idea and
Speaker 1: your boss really loves the idea, and you're thinking, I
Speaker 1: know that's not a good idea, and everyone around here
Speaker 1: knows that's not a good idea, but the boss really
Speaker 1: wants to do this. And sometimes bosses like to throw
Speaker 1: out big, wild ideas to justify their existence, you know,
Speaker 1: in the hopes that it'll like be a big splash,
Speaker 1: but a lot of time it just kind of fizzles.
Speaker 1: And today we're gonna talk about some good fizzles, fizzles, splashes, kabooms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all the onomatopia out there, that's true. Yeah, And we
Speaker 1: have we have compiled some of our favorites. We do
Speaker 1: have to say from the beginning, we're not going to
Speaker 1: get to every single spectacular, strange, hilarious failure. Now we're
Speaker 1: gonna do to a piece. Yeah, we're going, We're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna, maybe, if the winds at our back and
Speaker 1: everything goes according to plan, hit up a total of six.
Speaker 1: But we have curated these and we want to know
Speaker 1: what you think. You know, what do you think about
Speaker 1: this guy's Christopher centur Our guest today, would you like
Speaker 1: to do the honors and kick off the first invention? Guys,
Speaker 1: just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a
Speaker 1: tale of a fateful trip that departed from Russian ports
Speaker 1: upon a rounded ship. Sailing man, I'm sorry, I can't
Speaker 1: not do that. Yeah, I don't know what's Gilligan and Russian.
Speaker 1: Comrade Ben, I know you've got a Russian accent cold.
Speaker 1: I love it, I love it. Yeah. The first thing
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about are the round
Speaker 1: ships of the Russian Navy. We're talking eighteen sixties technology.
Speaker 1: Two ships, in particular, the v C. Admiral Popov and
Speaker 1: the Novgorod. Now, these were coastal defense ships. You have
Speaker 1: to think back to the time of the Russian War.
Speaker 1: So Russia had just suffered some defe eats at the
Speaker 1: hands of France and some of their allies, and they
Speaker 1: had actually been banned from building and maintaining battleships in
Speaker 1: the Black Sea. But Russia still needed to defend their
Speaker 1: land and their sea, and specifically we're talking about the
Speaker 1: Kirch Straight Now that's the if you think back to
Speaker 1: your geography class, the part of the world right between
Speaker 1: the Black sea and the Sea of asof So you've
Speaker 1: got a little straight where ships passed through and they
Speaker 1: need to defend it. And this task of creating a
Speaker 1: defense was given to Vice Admiral pop Off. He said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make you some ships to defend the waters.
Speaker 1: He said, I'm gonna make you some round ships to
Speaker 1: defend the waters. Degrees of protection, floating platforms, kind of
Speaker 1: tank like, not not intended for quick fleet battle, but
Speaker 1: just intended to defend. Yeah. So he came up with
Speaker 1: this circular boat. He wanted to build ten of them,
Speaker 1: but the Russian Navy said, let's let's go. Let's build too,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, and then we'll talk about the rest.
Speaker 1: So I want you to picture just a circular platform
Speaker 1: a couple feet across, six propellers on the back, two
Speaker 1: cannons on the top. Now let me ask you. Have
Speaker 1: you guys been canoeing? Yes? Yeah, kayaking? Kayaking? Okay, So
Speaker 1: have you ever been kayaking and just rode just on
Speaker 1: one side you kind of go around in circles. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now imagine you're just firing a cannon just on one
Speaker 1: side and then it accelerates your spin. Yeah, and you're
Speaker 1: a completely circular boat. So this wasn't moored in any
Speaker 1: way to the sea floor. So this was a ship.
Speaker 1: It was a monitor, which is a type of small
Speaker 1: light warship defined by kind of oversized guns. So you've
Speaker 1: got this round ship two guns on top, and anytime
Speaker 1: one gun would fire, it would just spin the ship
Speaker 1: around in a circle. And they tried and tried and
Speaker 1: tried to figure out a way to counterbalance this. They
Speaker 1: tried to run the propellers in the opposite direction of
Speaker 1: the firing. Uh, it just didn't work. And it just
Speaker 1: came down to a severe misunderstanding and or just just
Speaker 1: playing ignoring the physics on the part of Admiral pop Off.
Speaker 1: Isn't there a vodka named after him? I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's named after him, but it is named that. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe there was vodka vodka best Forgotten from the
Speaker 1: it's no Mr Boston, you know, it's pretty low shelf.
Speaker 1: But so maybe those were two big ideas. Round warships
Speaker 1: and uh, you know low Well, he thought that if
Speaker 1: you if you created a really shallow round broad boat,
Speaker 1: it would float really well on the water. And it did.
Speaker 1: It floated fine. But the problem is what makes boats
Speaker 1: so successful is the shape. They're sort of long. They
Speaker 1: cut through the water. Right. When you have a wide
Speaker 1: broad boat with six propellers trying to push forward, you're
Speaker 1: pushing the entire mass. There's a lot more drag. It
Speaker 1: just does not work. And nobody said, hey, pop off,
Speaker 1: let's not do this. So the ships were built. We're
Speaker 1: talking eighteen seventy. They actually, despite their ridiculous nature, were
Speaker 1: put into service, defended the straits. Uh, didn't do it
Speaker 1: particularly well. So they did these embarrassing tests and they
Speaker 1: tried to fix it, but they realized they couldn't, but
Speaker 1: they just went ahead and forged on. Well, the thing is,
Speaker 1: is the test themselves weren't that embarrassing. We're still in
Speaker 1: early days of tank testing. And by tank I mean
Speaker 1: a giant tank of water. You know, it takes a
Speaker 1: lot to build a ship, and you don't want to
Speaker 1: just put it out on the water and uh, because
Speaker 1: then there you are. So they did models, right, Well,
Speaker 1: they built a big tank of water, built some models,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, these tanks were still water and
Speaker 1: that's one of the things. These ships worked fine in
Speaker 1: still water. But let me read you a little bit
Speaker 1: about this ship. From the book World's Worst Warships, a
Speaker 1: very specific book out in two thousand two from Anthony Preston.
Speaker 1: He said the Vita Admiral pop Up and the Novgorod
Speaker 1: were quote too slow to stem the current and proved
Speaker 1: very difficult to steer. In practice, the discharge of even
Speaker 1: one gun caused them to turn out of control and
Speaker 1: even contra rotating. Some of the six repellers were unable
Speaker 1: to keep the ship on correct heading. They were prone
Speaker 1: to rapid rolling and pitching and anything more than a
Speaker 1: flat calm, and could not aim or load their guns
Speaker 1: under such circumstances. So wouldn't that throw off the trajectory
Speaker 1: of the shot as well? Right, So it would not
Speaker 1: only screw up the navigation of the boat in the direction,
Speaker 1: it would like be completely impossible to aim. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think you would have to just be really lucky or
Speaker 1: hit the broadside of a boat that's nearby, or try
Speaker 1: to shoot it, I don't know, at the water as
Speaker 1: a warning. Basically, these were insert These two boats were
Speaker 1: in service for about three decades. They just kind of
Speaker 1: floated there, they did their thing. Ultimately they were put
Speaker 1: into storage and right before the First World War kicked off,
Speaker 1: they were just scrapped because they figured they could use
Speaker 1: the materials for something a little bit less cartoonishly ineffective,
Speaker 1: or it was just wasting everyone's time. You know, you
Speaker 1: have better things to do than to just keep a
Speaker 1: giant round boat that honestly, it looks like a toy.
Speaker 1: It looks like a child's toy that would float in
Speaker 1: the bathtub. So it doesn't even look scary, No, it's
Speaker 1: it looks perfect, perfect circle. Yeah. Yeah, and we've got
Speaker 1: some photos we can share on ridiculous historians. What's the
Speaker 1: logic though, what is it? What is this pop off
Speaker 1: fellow thinking, like, is he trying to cut corners? Literally
Speaker 1: cut all the corners? He really did just want to
Speaker 1: come up with a really smart idea, you know, it's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing you want to be the one
Speaker 1: who solves the problem, and he just didn't. Uh. There
Speaker 1: were other round boat proponents at the time. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: a guy in England in the eighteen fifties who was
Speaker 1: really all about the round hall. People thought it would
Speaker 1: add stability to the ship, and it added stability in
Speaker 1: certain circumstances, but in rain and wind, in choppy waters,
Speaker 1: you know the kind of things that happened when you're
Speaker 1: at sea, no dice. So one important note for everyone
Speaker 1: listening who's thinking maybe the same thing I initially thought,
Speaker 1: which is, well, okay, sure, this ship rotates wildly anytime
Speaker 1: the gun is fired. The guns are fired. Rather, why
Speaker 1: don't they just make these weapons of absolute chaos and
Speaker 1: have the guns fire quickly? So this stuff is just
Speaker 1: sort of spinning Tasmanian Devil style firing on all sides.
Speaker 1: The problem, I believe is the loading time right, because
Speaker 1: every shot was so these were right type round. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is still e seventies, eighteen eighties, so we don't
Speaker 1: have machine gun technology on a boat like this, and
Speaker 1: they can't load it while it's spinning. Yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 1: I would be very curious to find out how long
Speaker 1: it took them to shoot, get back to a calm,
Speaker 1: stable state, and then reload and shooting it. I guess
Speaker 1: in theory, if you fired both cannons that precisely the
Speaker 1: right time, it would stabilize itself. But that seems so
Speaker 1: so unlikely, and it was a wasting a shot because
Speaker 1: obviously your targets only gonna be on one side or
Speaker 1: the other. Chances are so you gotta coordinate and be like,
Speaker 1: all right, guys, we gotta three to one. Go. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this is comical. Yeah. I mean, in Popoff's defense, he
Speaker 1: was trying to solve problems and gnoring the problems generated
Speaker 1: by his supposed solutions. The ships that were round like
Speaker 1: this could be much more heavily armored so they could
Speaker 1: withstand more attacks. So he did solve that problem, but
Speaker 1: it just kind of ignored with the failings. All right,
Speaker 1: I think we can definitely call that a military fail. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As it was known the type of ship they would,
Speaker 1: they named it after him, to his glory and Ora
Speaker 1: maybe in glory. Yeah, yeah, what's next? Do I get
Speaker 1: to go? Do you want to go? I do, because
Speaker 1: I really want to say these two words. Yeah, go
Speaker 1: for rocket bullets? Yes, okay, rocket bullets. That's fun, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: So one of the first questions would be aren't all
Speaker 1: bullets propelled? What makes these different? Well? These these are
Speaker 1: propelled using rocket fuel? Nice or jet fuel. Let's let's
Speaker 1: let's be fair. Um. Yeah, so this is uh, this
Speaker 1: might sound like something out of a James Bond movie,
Speaker 1: and as it turns out, it act really is. Um.
Speaker 1: This weapon called the gyro jet made by two gentlemen
Speaker 1: named Robert Mainhardt and Arthur T. Biale who started a company,
Speaker 1: an arms company called MBA, which was short for Manheart
Speaker 1: and Ble Associates. Um. They decided they wanted regular guns
Speaker 1: just weren't cutting it for them. They want to do
Speaker 1: something a little more futuristic because this is the time
Speaker 1: when we wanted to rocket size everything. And so that
Speaker 1: their company was NBA, right, yeah, NBA, and I should
Speaker 1: have been like Magic Bullet Association or something. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. Um. So the first thing they worked on
Speaker 1: was something called the fin Jet, which shot these tiny
Speaker 1: little needle type rocket bullets out of this weapon. And
Speaker 1: the thing that was cool about rocket bullets, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep calling them um, is they were self propelling.
Speaker 1: They didn't need that much complicated mechanisms in the gun
Speaker 1: itself because these bullets literally had a rod of jet
Speaker 1: fuel running through them and a little element that could
Speaker 1: get hit by the hammer. Didn't even need a firing pin,
Speaker 1: and then it would propel itself out of the muzzle.
Speaker 1: And I actually saw a really great video where some
Speaker 1: guys with the YouTube channel got ahold of one of these,
Speaker 1: um the gyro Jet model and you can see they
Speaker 1: did slow motion photography where the bullet exits the muzzle
Speaker 1: and then a little ways out it gets rocket sized,
Speaker 1: so when it comes out initially, it's actually going quite slow.
Speaker 1: So one of the issues with this gun was it
Speaker 1: didn't work very well at point blank range because you know,
Speaker 1: people would joke that you could stop it with your hand,
Speaker 1: and you know, it might break some bones in your hand,
Speaker 1: but it certainly would not penetrate your skin. If you
Speaker 1: fired a bullet that's moving not slowly, it's trajectory wouldn't
Speaker 1: stay constant. That's the thing about it. It used a
Speaker 1: technology called spin stabilization, which I'm a little foggy on
Speaker 1: the exact because I'm not like a ballistic specialist or anything.
Speaker 1: But the bullets had these three holes drilled in the
Speaker 1: back of them that when it would cause them to
Speaker 1: rotate really really fast, and they would achieve such an
Speaker 1: incredible speed once they actually got to their max velocity.
Speaker 1: And a lot of that had to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that they came out of the barrel like spinning,
Speaker 1: sort of like a rifling technology exactly like that, but
Speaker 1: not because the barrels were smooth. They didn't actually have that.
Speaker 1: That's what a regular gun has board out kind of
Speaker 1: like little whatever you call it, um markings or kind
Speaker 1: of grooves exactly that causes the bullet to do that,
Speaker 1: because otherwise it would just go wild and not be
Speaker 1: accurate at all. It turns out it still wasn't very
Speaker 1: accurate because of the fact that this rocket fuel would
Speaker 1: burn at pretty unpredictable rates and you could never quite
Speaker 1: predict what it was gonna do. So this video that
Speaker 1: I saw, which is really really worth checking out. If
Speaker 1: you just searched testing gyro jet rocket guns, why were
Speaker 1: they a commercial failure? On YouTube, you can find these
Speaker 1: guys that do this amazing test of this. You can't
Speaker 1: find these anymore because the parts don't exist. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: imagine that they look kind of like a like a
Speaker 1: bottle rocket, you know, where they just sort of spin
Speaker 1: off wildly. You can't quite know they were. They were
Speaker 1: much more stable than that, but they certainly were not
Speaker 1: as stable as a traditional gun. They did some tests
Speaker 1: where they measured, how, you know, how accurate they were
Speaker 1: compared to a regular gun, and it wasn't insane, but
Speaker 1: it was just very unpredictable. And there's one part where
Speaker 1: um it just kind of like went up all of
Speaker 1: a sudden and like shot the GoPro camera off of
Speaker 1: the dummy that they were firing at. So um, but
Speaker 1: they had other models. They had a more of a
Speaker 1: rifle with a scope on it, and they had something
Speaker 1: that kind of looks like a machine gun um carbine,
Speaker 1: but these were they loaded one bullet at a time,
Speaker 1: and it was semi automatic, so you could fire one
Speaker 1: after the other, but it certainly wasn't fully automatic. And
Speaker 1: this is pretty neat um. In order to keep the
Speaker 1: rocket fuel from like leaking out or to keep it
Speaker 1: contained properly, these guys were super innovative. They figured out
Speaker 1: that titanium oxide was the best chemical for containing this
Speaker 1: stuff so it didn't accidentally ignite, just like in the
Speaker 1: casing um, and they just went down to the local
Speaker 1: paint store and bought the white paint that had the
Speaker 1: most titanium oxide content. And so you can actually see
Speaker 1: they got these rocket fuel rods in these long kind
Speaker 1: of like almost like big thick pencil lead and then
Speaker 1: they laced it on a like an actual lathe to
Speaker 1: get it cut down to the right size to fit
Speaker 1: these bullets, and then they spray painted them white on
Speaker 1: the outside and then put them in the casing and
Speaker 1: it did not discharge a shell. It shot the whole
Speaker 1: thing out. So that's what made him different to um questions, Yeah,
Speaker 1: how much did these costs and did the cost play
Speaker 1: a role in their failure other than they're completely hilarious? Yeah,
Speaker 1: lack of reliability and this maybe is a very good
Speaker 1: military one because it doesn't feel like they were developed
Speaker 1: for the military, but it was too good of like
Speaker 1: a weaponry failed to not throw in here and especially
Speaker 1: the fact that it was very much featured in You
Speaker 1: Only Live Twice, the James Bond movie. Um, because of
Speaker 1: the fact that you look at them, they look like
Speaker 1: a cool, like, uh spy gun. Yeah, yeah, absolutely that.
Speaker 1: I mean, given that it's full of rocket fuel, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to carry that around in my pocket, but
Speaker 1: it's a it's a cool looking gun. It is a
Speaker 1: cool looking gun. To mention that, apparently they could engineer
Speaker 1: the bullets so that they would dissolve in the human body.
Speaker 1: Cool and that was a big part of it, I
Speaker 1: believe in the Bond film because that way you would
Speaker 1: leave no trace and there would be no forensic evidence
Speaker 1: to uh tie anybody to the to the bullets exactly.
Speaker 1: But I think that they did at least get tested
Speaker 1: by the U. S. Army, if not specifically this brand
Speaker 1: of rocket bullets, something something like this. They had. Gyro
Speaker 1: Jet had an assault rifle that the Army tested briefly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I didn't run across that myself. It was a
Speaker 1: very a bit, a bit of a blip in the
Speaker 1: history of this these weapons. But I mean, the Army
Speaker 1: is going to get wind of any new fangled device.
Speaker 1: They'll give it a go. They'll for a little money
Speaker 1: at it. And if you're going to miniaturize something, I
Speaker 1: mean you might. You could. You could load that thing
Speaker 1: with little tiny explosives in the tip. You have like
Speaker 1: a tiny little ballistic missile. And it's interesting. The weapons
Speaker 1: failed because of largely they were expensive and they were
Speaker 1: a pine to make because to drill those holes I
Speaker 1: was talking about that that creative the spin, they had
Speaker 1: to have these tapered drill bits which had to be
Speaker 1: custom machine themselves, and they would always break. So to
Speaker 1: make that the ammunition was very expensive because again the
Speaker 1: guns themselves only really had a hammer and the firing
Speaker 1: pin was fixed because it actually would push the hammer
Speaker 1: would push it backwards, and then the firing pin would
Speaker 1: pierce the little primer that would then set off the
Speaker 1: chain reaction that would like the rocket fuel, but you
Speaker 1: would see it come out of the gun and it
Speaker 1: wouldn't start shooting a little rocket tail out of it
Speaker 1: until it was about halfway to the target. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty fascinating. But the company n b A
Speaker 1: Actually went on to make a lot of non lethal
Speaker 1: ammunition like bean bag shot and um they made little
Speaker 1: pen guns like little pen projectile things that were that
Speaker 1: were used in in the military. So pretty cool, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's ridiculous. I don't know. I think it's more interesting.
Speaker 1: But it's just a very roundabout way of doing something
Speaker 1: that was already done pretty well. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: but but but but but these use rocket fuel. Please
Speaker 1: use rocket fuel, guys, have you heard about rocket fuel?
Speaker 1: I like to think in the future when humanity is
Speaker 1: gone and the world is overtaken by let's say, mice, uh,
Speaker 1: super smart intelligent mice. Yeah, absolutely, they're going to find
Speaker 1: these guns and these will act like giant bazookas or
Speaker 1: missile launchers. I'm just picturing a cute little mouse holding
Speaker 1: one of these guns on its shoulder launching rockets. Uh at,
Speaker 1: you know, cats, I love that image. The last thing
Speaker 1: I do want to say that in the video that
Speaker 1: I saw, um, the the ammunition they had was was very,
Speaker 1: very old and it all worked, you know. And I
Speaker 1: would have thought that the fuel would have degraded or
Speaker 1: something would have happened to make it not function properly,
Speaker 1: or it would just explode in the gun and not
Speaker 1: do what it was supposed to do. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: perfectly accurate, but it definitely reached the target every time
Speaker 1: and didn't just like zoom off somewhere else entirely. It
Speaker 1: just didn't, you know, keep a perfect bead, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Well, you know what the answer is
Speaker 1: tall this that the the expensive boring tips and all that. Lasers, lasers, las. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I am not a scientist, I'm not a ballistics expert,
Speaker 1: but as with all things in life, the answer is
Speaker 1: probably just lasers. And you are. You are a well
Speaker 1: known laser enthusiast. Why not. It's one of the first
Speaker 1: things people told me about you when we started working together.
Speaker 1: They're just neat, They're great. Oh man. We used to
Speaker 1: have a very like an industrial class laser at the
Speaker 1: office years and years ago and mysteriously disappeared. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: make a cool laser sound like in the really cheesy
Speaker 1: Technico songs. I feel like every time we played around
Speaker 1: with it and we were literally just playing with a
Speaker 1: dangerous laser, one of us was making sound making because
Speaker 1: it was better than the click click Why did you
Speaker 1: Why did you have this too? What was it? What
Speaker 1: was it for? You know, just to learn about stuff?
Speaker 1: Lasers are cool. Yeah, it wasn't powerful enough to physically
Speaker 1: cut things, but it was one of those lasers that
Speaker 1: would do permanent damage to your eye and shot it
Speaker 1: towards someone's eye when some good for kids, good for
Speaker 1: great for children. I was at a Black Crow's concert
Speaker 1: once and someone how when I those laser pointers and
Speaker 1: was shooting them at the singer guy, and he got
Speaker 1: very upset. He threatened to uh to take it away
Speaker 1: from him and put it someplace like, uh, pick keepsie
Speaker 1: in his pocket. Oh yeah, he's gonna confiscated, not give
Speaker 1: it back. So it's very substitute teacher vibe there. So
Speaker 1: we've talked about an amazing ship. We've talked about some, uh, some,
Speaker 1: I would say, very innovative bullets. Both of those things
Speaker 1: on the offset seemed like they are worth investigating, right,
Speaker 1: I'd like to give you one that I'm on the
Speaker 1: fence about, especially because in my past life hosting car stuff,
Speaker 1: I learned to love ridiculous vehicles. Have you ever looked
Speaker 1: at a jeep and thought I would get one of
Speaker 1: these if it was also to a helicopter, Because if
Speaker 1: you have been thinking about this, I want to introduce
Speaker 1: everyone to the Haffner Rota Buggy. It is a British
Speaker 1: experimental aircraft that looks kind of doofy, so it looks
Speaker 1: like exactly what you said, it looks like a helicopter.
Speaker 1: And what's ridiculous to me is there's having the rotors
Speaker 1: and the wheels. It's sort of transit wise. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like wearing in Paris suspenders and a belt. So
Speaker 1: the rotor Buggy came about as as a solution to
Speaker 1: the problem of air dropping off road vehicles, and a
Speaker 1: guy named Raoul Haffner of the Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment
Speaker 1: created this after they had an earlier invention that had
Speaker 1: some success, which was the rotor shoot. They took this
Speaker 1: rotor thing and ran with it. It was an experimental
Speaker 1: one person kite rotor thing. Wow. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a helicopter that you sit on that is sort
Speaker 1: of like a segue with blades. It just seems that
Speaker 1: seems dangerous. It looks like a wind sock or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hovering behind this like is it is it tethered
Speaker 1: to that truck? But it is tethered. They they they
Speaker 1: would probably be picking up speed and then the air
Speaker 1: would catch Here, it's a kite essentially with it. It's
Speaker 1: like a giant kite or like a big rudder that
Speaker 1: flies behind your back, but also you have helicopter blades
Speaker 1: on your head. I think the emphasis was to look
Speaker 1: whimsical in this, but it enjoyed some, as you said,
Speaker 1: some success, which led to the creation of the road
Speaker 1: of buggy. I I think similar to what you feel
Speaker 1: about rocket bullets. No, I think I just like saying
Speaker 1: road a buggy buggies fun. But Ben, do you think
Speaker 1: they were trying to strike fear into the hearts of
Speaker 1: their enemies with whimsy? I think they were trying to
Speaker 1: strike whimsy into their heart and their enemies. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: here's the crazy thing. It's so unerodynamic, looks so poorly
Speaker 1: designed because jeeps and helicopters have two very different ways
Speaker 1: of transporting people and uh, two very different footprints design wise.
Speaker 1: But their initial test, we're we're pretty promising because they
Speaker 1: weren't testing it stem to stern, soup to nuts, an
Speaker 1: entire operation. They were testing aspects of an operation. They
Speaker 1: started by dropping it from around eight feet or so,
Speaker 1: and then they say, okay, well it can just drop
Speaker 1: eight feet it will be fine. And things didn't really
Speaker 1: go wrong until November when they tried to tow it
Speaker 1: to get enough speed to get the Rodo buggy into
Speaker 1: the air. It didn't. It didn't work the first time
Speaker 1: on the sixteenth of November, and it wasn't till the
Speaker 1: twe of November that they got a Bentley auto to
Speaker 1: pull it and this unwieldy machine was able to become
Speaker 1: airborne and it reached gliding speeds of forty five miles
Speaker 1: an hour, which is surprisingly good for, you know, for
Speaker 1: for a totally not aerodynamic object, a jeep with a helicopter.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but okay, so what when did it all
Speaker 1: go south? Batman? That all go south? So would you
Speaker 1: believe me if I told you in the parking lot
Speaker 1: of our office. Now I'm kidding, I wish I could
Speaker 1: take us out of road a buggy ride it went,
Speaker 1: It went severely south. Um. As they continued testing, there
Speaker 1: were huge problems with vibration and speed and uh, you know, instability,
Speaker 1: and they kept improving it. They got it to a
Speaker 1: flight speed of seventy miles an hour or a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirteen kilometers, and the last flight on September of
Speaker 1: nineteen UM it broke a record for itself. It was
Speaker 1: able to fly for ten minutes and it was described
Speaker 1: as highly satisfactory. And the thing is that the British
Speaker 1: arm you probably would have continued trying to make road
Speaker 1: of buggies if it were not for the introduction of
Speaker 1: large gliders that could carry vehicles. So gliders like the
Speaker 1: airspeed horsa which are just they look like planes, but
Speaker 1: they're gliders. These things, if you see the picture, can
Speaker 1: carry vehicles. So it's the kind of situation where whoever
Speaker 1: came up with the road a buggy solved a problem
Speaker 1: pretty well, but as they were doing that, someone else
Speaker 1: is working on the same problem and just totally surpasses that.
Speaker 1: The laser disc conundrum. Yeah, I mean, but can't you
Speaker 1: just drive a jeep out of the back of an
Speaker 1: airplane and having like like a jeep parachute like and
Speaker 1: fastened and furious one would one would think. I guess
Speaker 1: what they were grappling with was a failure of material
Speaker 1: science at the time too, because then you would have
Speaker 1: to build a fabric strong enough and resilient enough not
Speaker 1: to just break. That's true. And maybe this this, uh,
Speaker 1: this jeapicopter could then speed up and take off again
Speaker 1: and return. So like let's say you were attacking a
Speaker 1: little island, you could drop them all off, they could
Speaker 1: come back. You could have a cheap acopter for a while.
Speaker 1: It does sound like fun, take a cheapicopter ride see
Speaker 1: the grand can see the world. It sounds like a
Speaker 1: like a nice whimsical holiday thing. I would just prefer though,
Speaker 1: if like the blades like folded up like in a
Speaker 1: really cool way with like a sound effect like you're
Speaker 1: talking about transformers. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of flying cars do that now,
Speaker 1: or flying car prototypes. This was in a minute. We
Speaker 1: have flying we have flying car prototypes, as in like
Speaker 1: one to two copies of something like Terrafugias, like Finally
Speaker 1: in the future. It's weird. So we're all good friends
Speaker 1: with our pal Scott Benjamin. He's a wonderful, brilliant aerodype man,
Speaker 1: but he hates flying cars, and for the better part
Speaker 1: of the last six years he and I have been
Speaker 1: very beefed up about this. Look. I get that they're dangerous.
Speaker 1: I understand that. I get there it would be disastrous
Speaker 1: to have flying cars, But I don't want everyone to
Speaker 1: have flying cars. I just want one because as long
Speaker 1: as there's only one, things are going to be relatively fine.
Speaker 1: You guys are cool. Would you guys want one? I
Speaker 1: think we could get the number up to four without
Speaker 1: we just wouldn't. There's a whole conundrum that goes into
Speaker 1: flying cars. I mean, you ever heard of airplanes. We
Speaker 1: have to have a whole system of air traffic controllers
Speaker 1: and you know, coordinated takeoffs and landings, and if they
Speaker 1: were flying cars just willy nilly, there would be a
Speaker 1: lot of air mid air collisions. I think, yeah, but
Speaker 1: we figured it out right. I mean, I imagine there's
Speaker 1: a podcast from the late eighteen hundreds on whatever format
Speaker 1: the podcasted in back then saying would you have an
Speaker 1: automobile horses? You know what, what would happen if you
Speaker 1: had ten people in a town with a car. That
Speaker 1: would be madness. I think they just etched podcasts right
Speaker 1: into wax cylinders. Yes, absolutely so, there we are the
Speaker 1: Road of Buggy. I I get if you are rhada
Speaker 1: bugged that you have missed this period in history, do
Speaker 1: not despair. The last thing you'll say about it is
Speaker 1: you can go to a town with an amazing name.
Speaker 1: You're gonna love this noole Middle Wallop. And in the
Speaker 1: Middle Wallop there is a museum of Army Flying that
Speaker 1: has a replica of a road of buggy, as well
Speaker 1: as a road a tank, which is the same thing,
Speaker 1: but a tank that seems like you would need much
Speaker 1: bigger blades to keep a tankle off. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a weird idea, but this is the kind of thing
Speaker 1: where if if any ridiculous historians are listening at home,
Speaker 1: and you're enjoying the show with your who knows you know,
Speaker 1: your your daughters, your sons, you could make a little
Speaker 1: toy road a buggy. You know, just go buy a
Speaker 1: toy helicopter, snap off the blades. That's called a transformer. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm taking it by two things, gloom together, make your
Speaker 1: own toys, have a little Roada Buggy warfare thing going
Speaker 1: on at home, toy mash up. I like, so, what's
Speaker 1: what's next, Christopher? Well, I started off with with with
Speaker 1: some wildly propulsive cannons, and that is where we're headed again,
Speaker 1: but this time we're staying stateside. We're not going to Russia.
Speaker 1: We're in the United States. Wow, let me correct that
Speaker 1: we're in the Confederate States of America or in the
Speaker 1: lead up to what would become that. You've seen a
Speaker 1: double barreled cannon. I feel as if I can picture
Speaker 1: it in my mind, popped words. Yeah, double barreled cannon. Right,
Speaker 1: you've got think of a shotgun, double barrel shotgun shots
Speaker 1: out twice as much shot. But can't you unloaded one
Speaker 1: barrel at a time as well? You can't, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: there's like a little compound trigger, right, Yeah, but you
Speaker 1: don't want to do that with a double barrel cannon,
Speaker 1: was wondering. Yeah, So the double barrel canon we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about is from the American Civil War, but
Speaker 1: it's not a purely American invention. The idea of this
Speaker 1: goes back to two so Renaissance Italy, Florence in particular,
Speaker 1: and there was an inventor named Antonio Petrini who came
Speaker 1: up with the idea of a double barrel canon. It
Speaker 1: was put into action though, in eighteen sixty two by
Speaker 1: a man named John Gilliland. Now Galleland was a mechanic
Speaker 1: and dentist living in Athens, Georgia. All yeah, not too
Speaker 1: far from where we are. We're here in Atlanta recording.
Speaker 1: So about an hour and a half up the road,
Speaker 1: Galiland said, I'm gonna take two cannons, put them together
Speaker 1: in one sort of one molded entity. They've got two
Speaker 1: side by side boars in a three in diameter, and
Speaker 1: you've got these two six pound balls next to one another.
Speaker 1: But that's not it. You've also got a ten foot
Speaker 1: chain connecting the two balls. I have heard of this.
Speaker 1: That sounds dangerous. Well, you know, think of the what
Speaker 1: are they called the yeah bolos that that gauchos in
Speaker 1: South America used to capture birds or horses or whatever.
Speaker 1: So you've got these two balls connected by a chain
Speaker 1: propelled from a cannon. Think of the destruction possible. These
Speaker 1: spinning balls of death a chain in between them. It's
Speaker 1: just gonna tear through the Union soldiers right, cut your
Speaker 1: right in half, you would you would think, yeah, you
Speaker 1: think so, it's not quite what happened. Now. Galiland was
Speaker 1: passionate about this idea. He actually put out a subscription
Speaker 1: service to raise funds to develop the prototype. He raised
Speaker 1: about three and fifty dollars. I don't know if those
Speaker 1: were Confederate or Union dollars. And he built it, he
Speaker 1: tested it, and reports from the time say they blasted
Speaker 1: the cannon two balls a chain. It tore through a
Speaker 1: cornfield and knocked down a chimney. It killed a cow.
Speaker 1: But it was just so wild and uncontrollable that the
Speaker 1: Confederate Army said, no, no, no, this is ridiculous. We
Speaker 1: do not want this. In terms of accuracy, yeah, you
Speaker 1: would have to fire both cannons simultaneously because they're they're
Speaker 1: sitting parallel to one another, but slightly splayed, a slight
Speaker 1: degree of difference in in the direction in which they
Speaker 1: propel the ball. And that's so that the two cannonballs
Speaker 1: that sit next to one another when they fly out
Speaker 1: of the cannon will spread out and kind of pull
Speaker 1: the chain between them. But getting that exactly right with
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixties technology, you can't. You can't be that precise.
Speaker 1: And so what happens is even a split second of
Speaker 1: timing difference in firing one or the other side of
Speaker 1: the cannon, or a little bit of wind or a
Speaker 1: little bit of who knows, some material in the barrel
Speaker 1: will just send one ball slightly faster than the other,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you get something that's sort
Speaker 1: of rip sawing through the terrain, going in completely the
Speaker 1: wrong direction. Now that could be destructive. It tore down
Speaker 1: some trees, but yeah, it's just too risky to bring
Speaker 1: into warfare. I got a good idea, what's your idea?
Speaker 1: Bigger cannons, bigger balls, bigger balls, longer chains. Well, no,
Speaker 1: not even just one, just one barrel, one barrel bigger,
Speaker 1: So a big big cannons, big cannons. That's that's interesting
Speaker 1: because I heard about the ball and change stuff before.
Speaker 1: But I always thought to your point, you know know all,
Speaker 1: I always thought that the it was a situation where
Speaker 1: there was a single cannon and they loaded the balls
Speaker 1: sort of atop each other, with the chain hanging out
Speaker 1: and then shot it out that. Yeah, that seems like
Speaker 1: that would make more sense than having two sources of propulsion.
Speaker 1: Let's double down. What did anybody try, like a triple
Speaker 1: barreled cannon. I think they have that at Burger King, right.
Speaker 1: It comes with comes with cheese, yes, but there's a
Speaker 1: special sauce. But yeah, So this cannon, it was just
Speaker 1: a total failure. But Galenland believed so passionately in his invention.
Speaker 1: He kept trying to make the case to the Confederate army.
Speaker 1: The cannon was shipped from Athens, Georgia to Augusta, where
Speaker 1: it was put into more testing because he really really
Speaker 1: thought it would work. Ultimately, no, no, no, is what
Speaker 1: the Confederate said. It was sent back to Athens. It
Speaker 1: was used in battle, but just as a signal, so
Speaker 1: kind of a warning shot to let let the Confederates
Speaker 1: know that the U. S. Troops were arriving. So you know,
Speaker 1: as as cannons are used. And you can see that
Speaker 1: cannon today. It still sits in Athens, Georgia. It was
Speaker 1: sold by the city for a while, luckily was not
Speaker 1: scrapped or anything, and the city bought it again and
Speaker 1: it now sits atop a hill in Athens, Georgia, right
Speaker 1: next to city Hall. There's a little plaque. You can
Speaker 1: kind of go look at it and say, that's weird.
Speaker 1: Have you seen it? I have seen it. Yeah, see
Speaker 1: I used to live in Athens and and this is
Speaker 1: this is all ringing a bell when you were talking
Speaker 1: about it, and I feel like I've I've seen it before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's at the corner of College Avenue and uh what
Speaker 1: not West Washington. I think corner of Clayton Street. I
Speaker 1: think that's right. Yeah, and it's it's it's on the
Speaker 1: northeastern corner, pointed straight up at the Yankees. Not that
Speaker 1: it's a threat or anything. It doesn't work, and it
Speaker 1: never worked, but you know, you might as well. Might
Speaker 1: as well have the impotent rage represented in his statue.
Speaker 1: Oh good, Christopher. Yeah, that's a great one. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you guys want to take a field trip, we'll just
Speaker 1: hop on over to Athens. Let's go. I'm all about
Speaker 1: I haven't been back in too long. It's a good place,
Speaker 1: all right. Well, Um, I guess I'm gonna stick with
Speaker 1: kind of retro futuristic kind of ones. Um, this one
Speaker 1: is I'm just gonna call it the the hoverboard. Heard
Speaker 1: of it? Yes, yes, yes, yeah. It turns out it
Speaker 1: was real. So I feel like a lot of what
Speaker 1: we're talking about, at least what you guys are talking about,
Speaker 1: could come straight out of the Back to the Future movies.
Speaker 1: You've got the flying cars, You've got a hoverboard, rocket bullets. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: it's a hoverboard is a bit of a misnomer. It's
Speaker 1: really more like a helicopter platform. Okay. So this is
Speaker 1: something that was designed by the Hiller Company for the
Speaker 1: US Navy. Originally it was called the v Z one
Speaker 1: Pawnee and it's basically a disc um with fans underneath it.
Speaker 1: And it used something called rotor duct technology. So here's
Speaker 1: the interesting part about it. I also used something called
Speaker 1: kinn esthetic control. Can you guys guess what that is?
Speaker 1: Controlling by moving your body, That's right, Which is why
Speaker 1: I think of the hoverboard. Um. So yeah, literally, a
Speaker 1: person manning one of these things, or um piloting one
Speaker 1: of these things rather would be standing atop the strange
Speaker 1: little disk uh in kind of like a cage with
Speaker 1: no controls except for a throttle. So all they had
Speaker 1: control over was altitude. With an actual device uh. To navigate,
Speaker 1: they have to lean to the left, lean to the right,
Speaker 1: lean forward, lean backward, UM. And so it's almost like
Speaker 1: a segue in that in that respect. UM. So they
Speaker 1: definitely tested these. They had a prototype which was much
Speaker 1: smaller than the second one. They kind of made the
Speaker 1: whole thing a little bigger, added a little bit more stability.
Speaker 1: And then the third one is massive, and it was
Speaker 1: so massive that it wouldn't even allow you to do
Speaker 1: the kinesthetic controls because it was just so unwieldy. A
Speaker 1: group of guys exact exactly now, come back center go.
Speaker 1: So they added a seat in to this one in
Speaker 1: more traditional helicopter type controls, So there were actually some
Speaker 1: steering capabilities on this third one. UM. So this was
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty three. The U. S. Navy's Office of
Speaker 1: Naval Research essentially gave this company, Hiller Helicopters UM, a
Speaker 1: contract to develop one of these. It was like twin
Speaker 1: engine DUC did fan v t o L, which I
Speaker 1: think we all agree stands for vertical takeoff and landing
Speaker 1: no runway required. That's that's the one positive thing about
Speaker 1: this this device. Well, also I imagined inspired a lot
Speaker 1: of mega man villains and to me it sounds like
Speaker 1: a kind of thing. It's right out of a Nighties
Speaker 1: video game, which is like bad Guys fun flying platforms exactly. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: these things were very slow and they couldn't really figure
Speaker 1: out like any kind of real practical use for it
Speaker 1: in battle. UM there is in fact a video though.
Speaker 1: I'd like to play a clip from UM of one
Speaker 1: of the first flight tests of this thing. Oh, this
Speaker 1: is quite a machine you have here. I suppose you
Speaker 1: have come as close as anyone to operating a flying carpet.
Speaker 1: How does it feel? Well, it feels fine. And the
Speaker 1: nice thing about it's very easy to fly. What do
Speaker 1: you think, phil is a truly revolutionary characteristic of this machine. Well,
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier it was so easy to fly. We
Speaker 1: do it by shifting our weight, is the way we
Speaker 1: control the aircraft. I say, but that you mean you
Speaker 1: don't have any uh, mechanical controls that we normally think
Speaker 1: of them in an aeroplane, such as a stick in
Speaker 1: the rudder. Oh, we have a throttle, which all aircraft have,
Speaker 1: but we control it by shifting our weight using our feet.
Speaker 1: So yeah, again, he even says the interviewer, like, I
Speaker 1: guess it is because close anyone's coming to the flying carpet.
Speaker 1: It's all about the future, you know, it's all about
Speaker 1: magic and technology. It's great, um, but yeah, they don't
Speaker 1: go very high. They seem a little The guy keeps
Speaker 1: talking about how easy it is to fly, but it
Speaker 1: just doesn't seem like you could really get it to
Speaker 1: go forward very quickly at all, or be very precise
Speaker 1: in your movements on it, you know. Yeah, And it
Speaker 1: seems like the kind of thing where if as you're
Speaker 1: training people to use it, you would just break a
Speaker 1: lot of them. And I also wonder what the point
Speaker 1: of it is. I mean, if it doesn't go that high,
Speaker 1: it can't be used for reconnaissance. If it moves as
Speaker 1: you move, you probably can't use it like a heavy rifle,
Speaker 1: because then you might, you know, throw yourself off and
Speaker 1: it'll be like your round ship. Yeah exactly. You could
Speaker 1: even sneeze, yeah, and just crash. So maybe it's more
Speaker 1: of a proof of concept because one would imagine there
Speaker 1: surely there would be ways to mitigate those issues. Even
Speaker 1: just fixing one of those issues would make it a
Speaker 1: more worthwhile investment by military, that's right, And of course
Speaker 1: they did take them out of commission entirely by nine three,
Speaker 1: but it did offer some pretty valuable information of research
Speaker 1: wise for technology they would later use for more practical
Speaker 1: vertical takeoff and landing planks, which which are a thing
Speaker 1: I don't thought that was kind of cool. I agree, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the kind of thing that reminds me too of
Speaker 1: technology you supposedly coming from Project Bluebook and that investigation
Speaker 1: into alien technology and area. This beard flying saucer stuff,
Speaker 1: it kind of makes me think of that, and I
Speaker 1: know it's not real, but I wish I had done
Speaker 1: that could be. I was having such a tough time
Speaker 1: off the air preparing for this episode because there's an
Speaker 1: extensive list of ridiculous experiments but also very promising, somewhat
Speaker 1: space age stuff that militarys have gotten up to in secret,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to find one of the dumbest ideas,
Speaker 1: not one that that has some promise, not one that's innovative.
Speaker 1: Let's try something new. The dumbest, dumbest idea that I
Speaker 1: found is the ball tank. The ball Tank tell me more,
Speaker 1: it's just we are a family show. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: a tank. It's been known alternately as the Cougle Banza
Speaker 1: or the tumbleweed tank. The thing about this is we'll
Speaker 1: start with one story. We'll start with the tumbleweed tank.
Speaker 1: There's an inventor in Texas. His name is A. J. Richardson,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen thirty six he he says, you know
Speaker 1: the First World War, which they just called the World
Speaker 1: War at that time. Yeah, can you imagine calling the
Speaker 1: First World War back then? It was? He said it was. Well,
Speaker 1: he was haunted frankly by the sheer mass of human
Speaker 1: suffering and carnage and death that occurred. And in his estimation,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons so many people died in World
Speaker 1: War One was because of trench warfare. People couldn't aim
Speaker 1: very well. They could just blindly throw mortars towards the
Speaker 1: enemies trench and hope they hit someone who is a
Speaker 1: soldier rather than a civilian, rather than a medical personnel
Speaker 1: and all this other stuff. So he said, the best
Speaker 1: idea would be too send heavily armored motorized bunkers across
Speaker 1: that no man's land that kills zone between the trenches,
Speaker 1: because again, I just want to emphasize this is important.
Speaker 1: Later he thought the main problem was that you couldn't
Speaker 1: really see who you were firing at. And so he
Speaker 1: decided that he would invent this thing called the tumbleweed tank.
Speaker 1: It is a sphere. It has room for three people.
Speaker 1: It has each of the three people are manning one gun.
Speaker 1: I would like to show you, gentlemen, a picture of
Speaker 1: this of this design. I want you to get a
Speaker 1: look at it because the guns you see, the guns
Speaker 1: you see have a lot of random placement. There's one
Speaker 1: pointing toward the air, there's one pointing towards the ground,
Speaker 1: and then there's one just out there on the right,
Speaker 1: and the one on the right can swivel. By the
Speaker 1: way ours in the newer Jurassic Park movies, I guess
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, yeah, because those are two seaters two seaters,
Speaker 1: so this one is an uncomfortable three seater. And just
Speaker 1: from that initial picture you guys saw, the tumble we
Speaker 1: tank has some problems. Yeah. This is the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that should just be drawn and then immediately torn
Speaker 1: up to roll. If there's random guns poking out every
Speaker 1: which way, do they collapse. It has a ring it
Speaker 1: is propelled by, so it only goes forward and back.
Speaker 1: It doesn't roll in like, not even degrees. But the
Speaker 1: entire spherical gyroscopic motion. It just goes straight and back
Speaker 1: and forward. Let me let me correct myself there in
Speaker 1: the diagram from what we understand the actual the sphere
Speaker 1: wherein the soldiers are located, that is enclosed within two
Speaker 1: rotating outer shells that are each like bowls around the thing.
Speaker 1: So it can it can turn a little bit in theory.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of like a deadly gerbil ball kind
Speaker 1: of hamster mechanism with guns and men. And it had
Speaker 1: some it had some good points. It could be very
Speaker 1: easily sealed against poison gas attacks. And Richardson also thought
Speaker 1: it would present a much smaller target for enemy shells
Speaker 1: and that they would glance off of the curved sides.
Speaker 1: But remember how we mentioned the part where his primary
Speaker 1: beef with World War One was that people were just
Speaker 1: blindly throwing You couldn't see people. So this was his
Speaker 1: way around that somehow. So the guys sealed inside this tank,
Speaker 1: Christopher frantically firing guns in all directions I could not
Speaker 1: see outside. They had no idea what was going on.
Speaker 1: So so it would maybe work if you could somehow
Speaker 1: catapult one of these balls into the middle of your
Speaker 1: enemy and just shoot in willy nilly directions. This just
Speaker 1: sounds like a terrible, terrible idea. I mean, imagine, Yeah,
Speaker 1: terrible is the right word. Imagine how terrifying this is
Speaker 1: for the operators they can't see outside. How terrifying it
Speaker 1: is for the enemy, what the hell is that? Are
Speaker 1: they even aiming for us? How terrifying it is for
Speaker 1: nearby troops who are like, hey, whoa, whoa, I'm on
Speaker 1: your side. The only way I could imagine this would
Speaker 1: be worse is if instead of a track, they all
Speaker 1: had to run inside to make it going, you know,
Speaker 1: like those big kind of translucent plastic balls you see
Speaker 1: on America's Funny some videos or whatever. Orders orbing, that's
Speaker 1: what what zorbeing zero are? What do you think that like? Furries?
Speaker 1: Zorbean zero R B I n G. It's where you
Speaker 1: get inside that giant plastic ball orbing zorbean? Is that
Speaker 1: an acronym? And then they fight? Uh yeah they fight? Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've they've fight. I don't know if it's I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's n acronym. I know it's it's meant
Speaker 1: to cite the fact that you're rolling downhill in an
Speaker 1: orb so like maybe zero gravity or I think there's
Speaker 1: but I think there's proper gravity. Well neither. I've also
Speaker 1: seen them on water. Yes, you can get inside those
Speaker 1: on on water and just roll them around, but like that,
Speaker 1: but you can see through those, which I think is
Speaker 1: key here. So aquas orbing, rhodocopter, battle rocket ship, bullet failure,
Speaker 1: disaster war. That's what we're talking here, That's what we're talking.
Speaker 1: Oh there's one other point. We do know that there
Speaker 1: was at least one other group of people who thought
Speaker 1: this ball tank idea was just the top notch military
Speaker 1: concept of the time. It was Germany. We know that
Speaker 1: during World War Two Germany designed that google pounds or
Speaker 1: the ball tank, and we don't know what they meant
Speaker 1: to do with it. We don't know how often it
Speaker 1: was used, clearly not that much, but we haven't on
Speaker 1: any plans or documents about it. Only one survived the war,
Speaker 1: was captured in Manchuria. You can go see it in
Speaker 1: the Kubinka Museum's collection of German vehicles. It was apparently
Speaker 1: used by some unfortunate German and the Germans, in their part,
Speaker 1: did include a small visor or a small slit so
Speaker 1: the operator could see what they were. Yeah, they learned
Speaker 1: from the tumbleweed tank, and that's what they learned is
Speaker 1: just let let them look outside. Just it feels like
Speaker 1: there's a lot more lessons to be learned from the
Speaker 1: ball tank. This was such a cool idea for an episode.
Speaker 1: Thank you for bringing this to us. Yeah, always a
Speaker 1: pleasure to have you in the studio and kind of
Speaker 1: kick the ball tank around. So, speaking of kicking, if
Speaker 1: any ridiculous historians want to kick it with me over
Speaker 1: on another show this week, you guys, Okay, if I
Speaker 1: plug something, please plug away, So ridiculous historians, If you're
Speaker 1: listening to this show, I know you like learning about
Speaker 1: stuff in the way back, So point your podcast machines
Speaker 1: over to this day in History Class. It's one of
Speaker 1: our sister podcasts here on the House Stuff Works Network.
Speaker 1: It's a daily history show, just really quick, five minute
Speaker 1: tidbits of one thing that happened that day in history. Now.
Speaker 1: Normally the host is Tracy V. Wilson, who you probably
Speaker 1: know from stuff you missed in history class. She's out
Speaker 1: this week. So the week that you are listening to
Speaker 1: this in your podcast machine, I'm going to be guest
Speaker 1: hosting over on this day in history class, So head
Speaker 1: over that way and you can find all sorts of cool,
Speaker 1: weird things that happened every single day of the year,
Speaker 1: day by day. Awesome, congratulations, and we are definitely going
Speaker 1: to check it out. We we can also go ahead
Speaker 1: and maybe post a link to that Ridiculous Historians. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll share that on the Facebook page. Ridiculous Historians will
Speaker 1: point you in that direction. It's a great show. I'm
Speaker 1: only on it for a week, but you should definitely
Speaker 1: take a listen. It'll be going through some cool changes
Speaker 1: in the coming or two. I think we're going to
Speaker 1: be getting a little more creative, but still a daily
Speaker 1: podcast kind of updating you just on the things you
Speaker 1: need to know about what's happened in the past and
Speaker 1: how that affects our days today. Awesome, and thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on this show. This is going
Speaker 1: to be one of a number of recurring appearances. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna mean there's a regular thing. I'll be around. Fantastic. Well,
Speaker 1: let's as always thank our super producer, Casey pegram Um.
Speaker 1: I think we've already thanked Christopher enough, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do it one more time. Feel mere. Thank you Christopher
Speaker 1: going sorb? Now do I have a choice. It doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like an Alien Overlord character. There is a zorb
Speaker 1: of the great I think, Oh wait, this works out
Speaker 1: with you? It does? Yeah, Thanks to you as well,
Speaker 1: Ben Hey, Thanks to you looking dapper as ever today, sir,
Speaker 1: and thanks to Alex Williams who composed our track. Thank
Speaker 1: you for checking out the show. We hope that you
Speaker 1: enjoyed it, and we hope that this is kindled a
Speaker 1: spark of inspiration. Let us know what strange military contraptions
Speaker 1: were otherwise ridiculous inventions you have run across. We will
Speaker 1: be all ears. We would love to hear this stuff.
Speaker 1: And you know we're of course that you go out
Speaker 1: saying we're not. We're not really picking on these inventors.
Speaker 1: A lot of these ideas seem very promising and the
Speaker 1: only way you can learn whether or not they're feasible
Speaker 1: is to test them, you know what I mean. Rocket
Speaker 1: Bullets sounds like a tremendous idea. It sounds really cool
Speaker 1: and one of my favorite bands and one of your
Speaker 1: favorite bands, Rocket Bullets. If they don't exist yet, they
Speaker 1: absolutely need to, um so please come and hang out
Speaker 1: with us next time when we talk about flowers as currency,
Speaker 1: or you know, some sort of like bitcoin bubble. We'll
Speaker 1: see you then