{"id":"5ef5e9046cee070006fc045b","slug":"the-alchemy-of-us-en","title":"The Alchemy of Us","audio_url":"https://hls.blinkist.io/bibs/5ef5e9046cee070006fc045b/5ef5e9046cee070006fc045d-T1593174670.m4a?Expires=1642796112&Signature=ammD3xR9ADPuFDTm39uMj9tPKaV-x0gMjdb028IyjU-pHD-H9hzKqzlUxi8pq2s1mi5b1Zf0xt8OsdK56uClBr8w2sY9U6vCwMYig-Dwj1qLXLIk1kU35i2doKBid8aw7JlJ6Oe-oSP3Qke5bVkY8nk7nKUaxsjOyYq1CbEqr3hIdNbmq1KprDhcuVh7Y6L5Jzo56gLz1VAo6~622P7zYntV6gjdnmcp2Ctj0CJN086DGzg-ep4RUCN4sNjI9FfSxk1EjlfFejAI8hPOofJplR3oyldvr~3G~AAZzYvjFZNAPCLTzHi18zv7HT~FQmlCHiltAdc7~CVdWtRPcU7cUQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJXJM6BB7FFZXUB4A","chapters":[{"id":"5ef5e9046cee070006fc045d","title":"Improved timekeeping technology deepened our obsession with time.","text":"

Elizabeth Ruth Naomi Belville made her living by selling a rather odd commodity. Every week, she’d travel to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. There, she’d set her pocket watch – it was nicknamed “Arnold” and had once belonged to the Duke of Sussex – to Greenwich Mean Time. Once this had been done, she’d visit the dwellings of the people subscribed to her service.

What was that service? Allowing them to set their clocks to Arnold. This is how Belville made her living for almost 50 years, from 1892 until her death in 1940: she sold the time. People called her the Greenwich Time Lady.

The key message here is: Improved timekeeping technology deepened our obsession with time.

Belville was successful because Arnold was accurate – very accurate. Made of the finest materials, Arnold kept the time better than other clocks, even though it’d been made in the eighteenth century. But in the twentieth century, even Arnold’s accuracy was surpassed.

In 1939, a new kind of clock was displayed in the window of a shop on Fulton Street, in Manhattan, New York. Soon enough, hundreds of passersby were using this extremely accurate clock to set their own timepieces.

The clock was so fantastically accurate because it contained a special kind of crystal: quartz. Quartz is special because, when exposed to an electrical current, it begins to vibrate. In 1927, a Canadian scientist named Warren Marrison figured out how to use this quality to improve the precision of clocks. He fashioned a small, thin ring out of quartz. Then, using electrical signals, he caused the ring to vibrate at a steady rate of 100,000 vibrations per second. This mechanism could be used to measure time with stunning precision.

Improved time-keeping methods only served to reinforce certain time-related ideologies. Puritan settlers, who arrived in America in the seventeenth century, strongly believed that time should not be wasted. This view was perpetuated by Benjamin Franklin’s capitalist notion that “time is money.” Throughout the nineteenth century, as the United States industrialized and the factory became the main driver of the economy, timekeeping and time management assumed even greater importance.

Factories relied on clocks to tell workers when to start working and when to stop. It wasn’t long before the rhythm of the factory pervaded all of modern life – dictating when people awoke, when they ate, and when they slept.

This certainly improved productivity. But it’s been argued that this rhythm, which is still with us today, is also at the root of many sleeping disorders.

"},{"id":"5ef5e9046cee070006fc045e","title":"The mass production of steel for railroads forever changed American culture and commerce.","text":"

Steel is the result of a fascinating metamorphosis. When carbon is combined with iron, two new substances are produced, stacked one atop the other like a layer cake. One layer is hard, strong, and carbon-rich; the other layer is soft, malleable, and carbon-poor. The cake itself, so to speak, is steel.

These properties, which most metals do not possess simultaneously, make steel an excellent material for building durable objects. But forging this delicate balance was no easy feat. It was labor intensive and time consuming – that is, until a prolific English inventor named Henry Bessemer had a eureka moment.

The key message here is: The mass production of steel for railroads forever changed American culture and commerce.

In 1855, Bessemer had an idea: he would bring air into contact with a carbon-rich crude iron called pig iron. To do so, he melted the pig iron in a large vessel, and then, through a pipe inserted in the vessel’s bottom, he blew air into the molten metal. His experiment erupted like a volcano, burning part of his building’s roof – but the test was successful. The addition of air removed impurities from the iron. It also removed the carbon, which Bessemer then added back in using precise measurements to create steel.

By the 1860s, all was set for the mass production of steel. And by the start of the Civil War, US companies had already begun creating a network of railway lines that would connect people like never before.

Now, railway tracks already existed in the United States, but the rails were made of iron. And iron was not durable. It lasted only two years. Steel rails, on the other hand, lasted 18 years.

In 1840, there were 3,326 miles of iron railroad tracks in the United States. By 1900, there were enough steel tracks to go around the world ten times. Distances no longer seemed so vast to Americans, a phenomenon that geographers call a time-space compression.

The steel rails ultimately led to the rise and expansion of US cities, ushering in a culture of commerce. Railroads propelled circulation of local products. Christmas, which did not resonate with Americans before the creation of the railway system, became a beloved tradition. The ability to move products spurred the transformation of Christmas into a gift-giving holiday, designed to boost the economy, and transformed shopping into a national pastime.

"},{"id":"5ef5e9046cee070006fc045f","title":"Telegraph wires sped up communication, brought communities together, and shaped American English.","text":"

In the winter of 1825, Samuel F.B. Morse was in Washington, DC. While there, he learned that his wife, Lucretia, had died of a heart attack some days prior. Grief-stricken, Morse lamented the snail-like pace with which information traveled. And he became fixated on finding a way to make news move faster.

This fixation seemed futile until, years later, he heard a Boston physician discussing how electricity could travel without any loss of time. This sparked an idea: an instrument that sent information via electricity.

Morse instantly began working on a prototype. In his studio, he used whatever objects he could find: a wooden frame, an old clock, a pencil. The first iteration of his invention resembled a cross between a seesaw and a playground swing – but it worked. The electromagnetic telegraph had been born.

The key message here is: Telegraph wires sped up communication, brought communities together, and shaped American English.

Without getting too detailed, here’s how the machine worked: Attached to the machine was a pencil. This pencil transcribed electrical pulses onto a piece of paper, scribbling a sequence of Vs. The base of the V represented a dot – a short pulse. The side of the V represented a dash – a long pulse. The pulses were sent from the other part of Morse’s invention: a transmitter. Particular combinations of dots and dashes stood for particular numbers. And different combinations of numbers stood for different words.

In 1838, after teaming up with his former student, machinist Alfred Vail, Morse presented an improved version of the machine to President Martin Van Buren. It transcribed ten words in a minute: the fastest form of communication to date.

After the first long-distance telegraph was sent, in 1844, the telegraph began to influence the news it disseminated. Because telegraph offices could only receive one message at a time, news reporters had to wait in line to send in their stories. Plus, their transmission time was restricted, requiring that they write with brevity and concision.

Ernest Hemingway was a pioneer of this economical style, honing his craft as a journalist for the Kansas City Star. The newspaper’s style guidelines urged their reporters to “use short sentences” and “eliminate every superfluous word.” Lean, unadorned prose would later characterize Hemingway’s fiction and influence scores of writers after him.

The telegraph led Americans to express themselves differently – both in speech and in writing – than the British. Instead of using erudite, flowery language, Americans set themselves apart with their congenial, concise style of English.

"},{"id":"5ef5e9056cee070006fc0460","title":"Photographic innovations both improved image quality and shed light on societal values and biases.","text":"

Frederick Douglass, a famous orator and abolitionist, was a big fan of early daguerreotype photography. Because of its large format, controlled conditions, and increased resolution, it rendered a person’s likeness with great accuracy. Douglass, who was black, believed it could combat the stereotypical ways that African Americans were portrayed. To this end, Douglass had his photograph taken often. By the middle of the nineteenth century, he was the most photographed person in the world.

Unfortunately, Douglass’s hopes that photography would help dismantle prejudice weren’t quickly fulfilled. By the time color film was widely used, Kodak had optimized their chemical formula for white skin. In pictures, darker skin tones appeared sickly or like black ink blots in photos – underlining the idea that white skin was the standard of beauty.

The key message here is: Photographic innovations both improved image quality and shed light on societal values and biases.

Mothers of African-American schoolchildren complained to Kodak about the flaws in the film. But their complaints were dismissed. Kodak wouldn’t release a film that optimized darker colors until big businesses – chocolate manufacturers and furniture makers – added to the clamor.

While cameras and film themselves don’t possess any inherent agenda or bias, the humans who control them often do. This came to light again in the 1970s, when two Polaroid employees, both of them black, learned that their employer helped produce the passbooks used by the apartheid South African government to monitor, identify, and control the movements of 15 million black citizens.

The Polaroid ID-2 system allowed its operator to instantaneously print two color photos for identification cards: one for the passbook and one for the government file. In response to this, chemist Caroline Hunter and photographer Ken Williams began the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement (PRWM) to protest Polaroid’s presence in South Africa. Polaroid initially denied its involvement in the South African passbook system, blaming third party distributors.

After meetings with Polaroid leadership didn’t lead to any meaningful change, the PRWM used a network of activists and media exposure to spread awareness that Polaroid products were being used to create tools of oppression. Eventually, Hunter and Williams were fired, but they continued to demonstrate wherever Edwin Land, Polaroid’s founder, went.

After seven years of organized protest, the PRWM succeeded in their goal: they pressured Polaroid to withdraw from South Africa. Later, Nelson Mandela would come to the United States to thank the PRWM for their activism.

"},{"id":"5ef5e9056cee070006fc0461","title":"Carbon filaments illuminated our world. But scientists now say we have too much light.","text":"

Many inventors tried to create artificial illumination in the nineteenth century. But nothing stuck until William Wallace invited Thomas Edison to his home in Connecticut in 1878. With the prolific and famed inventor as witness, Wallace exhibited his arc light: a bright light achieved by harnessing electricity to flash between two blocks of carbon.

But Wallace wouldn’t be glorified by history for his innovation. Instead, he’d merely inspire Edison to improve upon his idea.

The key message here is: Carbon filaments illuminated our world. But scientists now say we have too much light.

The problem with Wallace’s arc light was that it shined too brightly, like a camera flash. Edison solved the problem with a carbon filament and a vacuum inside a bulb of glass. When electricity is passed through a carbon filament, the filament glows. But the filament will burn out in a matter of minutes if exposed to oxygen. Edison devised a way to pass electricity through a filament suspended in an oxygenless environment, a glass bulb.

The invention of the light bulb changed life as we know it – but scientists say that, unfortunately, electric light has been disruptive on all fronts.

For one, electric light has thrown off our chemical balance. Humans have two modes: growth mode during the day and repair mode at night. We don’t enter repair mode often enough because we experience too much of the wrong type of light at the wrong times of day. So we’re producing nearly twice as much growth hormone – which causes cancer, according to Thomas Wehr, scientist emeritus at the National Institute of Mental Health.

And while not enough is known about the connection between light and breast cancer, it’s striking that blind women are outliers, with considerably lower rates of breast cancer.

So how can we change our habits?

Cancer epidemiologist Richard Stevens recommends “dim evenings and bright mornings.” If you wake up in the middle of the night, it’s best to stay in the dark or light a candle.

Less light might be a good thing. After all, the human eye adjusts beautifully to the brightest object in view. And we’d all probably benefit from spending a little more time in repair mode.

"},{"id":"5ef5e9056cee070006fc0462","title":"The ability to capture sound enabled us to collect and store music, and, eventually, to share data about ourselves.","text":"

The day that Thomas Edison walked into the offices of Scientific American with his favorite invention, the phonograph, they stopped the presses and alerted the world: “Speech has become immortal.”

Edison’s rudimentary phonograph, invented in 1877, had a mouthpiece that collected sound waves and pushed a diaphragm. Then it moved a sharp tip up and down along tin foil, which was wrapped around a cylinder. Edison’s voice played on it, saying, “Mary Had A Little Lamb.” The sound was faint, and the phonograph could hold less than a minute of sound and only be played a few times before the metal deformed. But his idea, to combine the telephone and the telegraph, would mark the first time sound was recorded onto a physical device.

The key message here is: The ability to capture sound enabled us to collect and store music, and, eventually, to share data about ourselves.

Since the invention of Edison’s phonograph, the ability to capture music has rapidly evolved. Now, with digital recordings, sound waves are translated into binary, the language of computers. This innovation not only changed the way we share music; it changed how we share information.

In 1854, Irishman George Boole first discovered that simple statements of logic could be represented by symbols and assigned a true or false value to relate them to others. Eighty years later, MIT student Claude Shannon applied this theorem to circuit switches, establishing a language for computers that enabled them to “think.” While Shannon and Boole laid the foundations, IBM engineer Jacob Hagopian developed the first hard disk. He figured out how to evenly spin-coat magnetic particles of information onto a disk’s surface, and then interpret them using a magnetic head that acted as a stylus.

IBM’s first commercial hard disk, the RAMAC, or random access method of accounting and control, was the size of two refrigerators and held 5 million bits of data: about equal to one photo today. From there, disks began to hold more and more bits of data in less space – paving the way for files to exist digitally in a computer’s hard disk and then in data centers called “the cloud.”

Now that media services stream music to us, they also collect our data. They know our listening habits, our location, and who’s around us – and then they share our information with other businesses and advertisers. This give and take, which we may be losing control over, was made possible through the miniaturization of data.

"},{"id":"5ef5e9056cee070006fc0463","title":"Scientific glass improved electronic technologies and expanded our understanding of the universe.","text":"

Glass is an ancient material with myriad uses. But before 1876, a scientific eye was not applied to glassmaking. Making glass was a trade, with glass recipes passed down from generation to generation – which resulted in glass whose properties were not uniform or predictable.

Scientists wondered whether anything could be done to improve the glass they used in the lab. Professor Ernst Abbe of the University of Jena, in Germany, wrote a paper bemoaning the poor quality of the glass lenses in his telescopes and microscopes, calling for the development of new formulations of optical glass. Upon reading the paper, chemist and glassmaker Otto Schott contacted Abbe, who invited him to Jena to collaborate on the creation of high-quality scientific glass.

The key message here is: Scientific glass improved electronic technologies and expanded our understanding of the universe.

Schott successfully developed various high-quality glasses and, eventually, founded a specialized glass company in Jena. Schott’s Jena-inscribed scientific glass soon became the most desirable in the world. For decades, Germany was the main source for all telescope, microscope, and labware glass.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Corning Glass Works of Corning, New York, also began to apply the scientific method to its glass. It developed durable Nonex glass for railroad lights and Pyrex glassware for cooking and baking. But its formulations still couldn’t quite compare with Jena glass.

That all changed after World War II. America had confiscated thousands of German patents, including those for speciality glass. After the war, the United States increased its glass production, all but driving Germany from the international market. It also placed huge tariffs on German glass, heralding a glass age for America.

Better glass enabled previously impossible experiments.

In 1895, Cambridge mathematics professor J.J. Thomson teamed up with his former chemistry assistant Ebeneezer Everett. Together, they observed cathode rays: glowing, battery-charged streams that created an X-ray when they collided with a metal piece inside a glass globe. Glass was the best material for Thomson and Everett’s experiment for multiple reasons: it could contain a vacuum, it did not conduct electricity, and, most importantly, it was transparent – so the scientists could see what was happening.

Thomson observed the cathode through a glass bulb and deduced that it held bits that were smaller than an atom: small, negative charges. They were electrons, the tiniest pieces of matter ever discovered at that time.

This discovery would expand our understanding of matter – advancing technology and ushering in an electronic age.

"},{"id":"5ef5e9056cee070006fc0464","title":"Computers and the internet are altering the human brain.","text":"

Humans have always had a symbiotic relationship with the tools they use. After our Homo erectus ancestors discovered fire, they began cooking their food, and they spent less energy chewing and digesting raw food. This freed up their bodies’ resources, which allowed their brains to grow.

Similarly, in the last century, people who grew up listening to the radio developed heightened auditory sensitivity. And those who grew up with television are especially attuned to visual stimuli. Today, computers and the internet have boosted our IQs but shortened our attention spans.

The key message here is: Computers and the internet are altering the human brain.

Now that computers are ubiquitous in modern life, scholars are divided on how they’re shaping our brains. Some, like neuroscientist David Eagleman, believe the exposure to so many ideas is making us smarter. Others, like writer Nicholas Carr, argue that the internet’s mishmash of information strains our brains, which prefer the linear flow of books. We skim superficially, and, as we get better at this, our ability to think deteriorates.

One thing’s for sure: the internet is affecting our memory. Too much information from the internet clogs our working memory, leaving us with lots of surface-level knowledge. The lack of nuance leaves us scatterbrained. Scientists have also proved that, rather than memorizing information, we remember where to find it. We no longer memorize poems or know our mother’s phone number by heart. We know that we can find that information online or stored in our contact list.

What about our creativity? Well, the internet gives us access to an unprecedented amount of information. But all this information isn’t great for the incubation of new ideas, according to Eagleman. Our working memories are often jam-packed. This makes us more prone to distraction – which the internet offers plenty of – creating a cyclical problem.

We’re at a unique moment in human history. We know more, but our ability to think deeply, to retain knowledge, and to create might be replaced by perfunctory scrolling. The computer age poses an important question: What is more important – improving our brains or developing better machines?

"},{"id":"5ef5e9056cee070006fc0465","title":"Final summary","text":"

The key message in these blinks:

Humans have long had a collaborative relationship with the materials they create. From quartz clocks to steel railway rails, electric light to the internet, we may shape our technology, but our technology shapes us as well.

Got feedback?

We’d love to hear what you think about our content! Just drop an email to remember@blinkist.com with The Alchemy of Us as the subject line and share your thoughts!

What to read next: Stuff Matters, by Mark Miodownik

Now that you’ve learned about how scientific breakthroughs have impacted culture, why not zoom in on the fascinating science behind the materials we encounter every day? Stuff Matters, by Mark Miodownik, sheds light on the hidden marvels of modern materials, investigating their makeup and offering a new perspective on your surroundings. So if you’re interested in expanding your understanding of the objects that make up our world, we highly recommend checking out the blinks to Stuff Matters.

"}]}

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