From talking sponges to voices frozen in ice, the history of recorded sound is not what you expect.

People fantasised about being able to record sound long before it was possible. We begin by hearing a few of the most remarkable ways that were dreamt up. Then we meet the first person ever to record sound. *Spoiler alert* it wasn’t Thomas Edison.

Our guests for this episode are Will Sutton, author of the Campbell Lawless series of Victorian mystery novels, and Patrick Feaster who is part of a small team of people who discovered and brought back to life the earliest ever sound recording.

Produced by Freddy Chick

Sound Design by Thomas Ntinas

Executive Producer is Charlotte Long

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What does Wonder Woman have to do with the invention of the lie detector? Does refusing to yank a donkey’s tail make you a liar? Is it folly to believe that a machine can ever peer inside the human mind?

The invention of the lie detector is a strange story full of eccentric characters, fascinating true crime, and some incomplete science at its heart.

These days there are lie detectors based on artificial intelligence and MRI scans and detectors are used in policing across the world. But the fundamental problems at the heart of ‘lie detectors’ have not changed since they were invented a hundred years ago.

Our guest today is Amit Katwala, a senior writer at WIRED and author of Tremors in The Blood: Murder, Obsession, and the Birth of the Lie Detector.

This is the third episode in our mini-series about the invention of forensics. Next week is the fourth and final instalment – DNA Fingerprinting.

Produced by Freddy Chick

Editing and Sound Design by Anisha Deva

Executive Producer is Charlotte Long

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If humans travel to Mars then by the time they come home all the food they eat will be five years old. Want a bite?

Food often gets overlooked in stories about space flight. Yet space food has a fascinating history and will become an ever-increasing challenge the further we journey into space.

Our guest today is Vickie Kloeris who worked in the NASA food program for 34 years and was head of food systems for both Shuttle and the International Space Station. She takes us on a potted history (or maybe that should be a freeze-dried history) of the history of food in space. From early space flight to life on Mars.

Produced by Freddy Chick

Editing and sound design by Thomas Ntinas 

Executive produced by Charlotte Long

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We hear from London’s most inaccessible museum, the Met police’s Crime Museum, and take you back to India in the time of the British Raj. We hear about the first murder case ever to hinge on fingerprint evidence.

No one had to invent fingerprints. They’ve been around for ages…But to be able to use fingerprints in fighting crime required an obsessive colonial administrator, hard science and the invention of an ingenious filing system that would revolutionise policing around the world.

Our guests today are Chandak Sengoopta, historian at Birkbeck University and author of Imprint of the Raj: How Fingerprinting was Born in Colonial India and Paul Bickley, curator of the Crime Museum housed in New Scotland Yard.

This is the second episode in a mini-series we’re bringing you all about the invention of Forensics. Next week it’s Lie Detectors.

Produced by Freddy Chick

Executive Producer is Charlotte Long

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First Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel shocked the world’s eyeballs with her fashion designs. Then she shocked its nostrils with a new smell - Chanel No. 5. 

“It’s punk rock but with feather boas and fragrance”. That’s how today’s guest, Suzy Nightingale, describes the impact that Coco Chanel had on society. Coco was at the heart of a revolution that was overthrowing the old world’s traditions and ideas of propriety.

In 1921, in search of a perfume that would capture the smell of the modern woman, she launched Chanel No. 5. It changed perfume forever and now more than a hundred years on remains the most famous perfume in the world.

Suzy Nightingale is Dallas’s guest to talk about all things perfume and Chanel. She is an award winning writer on perfume and co-host of the wonderful podcast On The Scent (https://pod.link/1573786577).

Produced by Freddy Chick

Edited by Thomas Ntinas

Executive Producer is Charlotte Long

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Death by tiger bites. Death by prodding. Death from sexual excess. Deaths from over-eating and over-drinking. The opening of graves.

These are a few of the chapter headings in a 13th century Chinese book called ‘The Washing Away of Wrongs’. It is a compendium of grizzly, gory, bizarre murders and deaths.

Its author was Song Ci, a Confucian trained bureaucrat who, like his fellow officials all over China, was responsible for investigating murders in his jurisdiction. According to the Wikipedia page for ‘forensic science’ this book is the earliest written evidence of forensic thinking. Is that correct?

Our guest today is Daniel Asen, a historian of China at Rutgers University.

This is the first episode in a mini-series we’re bringing you all about the invention of Forensics. Next week it’s Fingerprints.

Produced by Freddy Chick

Edited by Pete Dennis and Anisha Deva

Actors were Lucy Davidson and Tristan Hughes

Executive Producer is Charlotte Long

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If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

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We take PowerPoint for granted. It's as much a fact of life as concrete. Or rainy afternoons. But it hasn’t always been here. It has a story. And once you’ve heard it, you’ll never look at PowerPoint the same way again.

Those old enough can remember the world before PowerPoint. A world where presentations were done on overhead projectors or 35mm slideshow carousels. In 1985, in the US alone, people made over 600 million 35mm slides and more than 500 million overhead transparencies. Large companies had departments dedicated to producing them.

Robert Gaskins, the inventor of PowerPoint, had a vision of how computers could produce these slides and transparencies more efficiently, and eventually consign them to the dustbin of history.

Russell Davies is our guest today and author of Everything I Know about Life I Learned from PowerPoint. He’s here to tell us that the inventor of PowerPoint, Robert Gaskins, is the tech hero we should all have.

Produced by Freddy Chick

Edited by Anisha Deva

Executive Producer was Charlotte Long

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We talk to the real life Siri in this episode. Susan Bennett was the original voice of Siri back in 2011, although she didn't know it at the time...

But before that it's a conversation with Dallas's friend Ali Maggs (from Chaos Created) about the history of virtual assistants - everything from a mechanical dog that jumps out of its kennel, to that helpful digital paperclip Clippy, to the incredibly smart assistants of today and tomorrow.

Produced by Freddy Chick

The Executive Producer was Charlotte Long

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The Contact Lens. The humble Contact Lens. Oh boy, do we have a rip-roaring episode for you about the humble contact lens.

Nazi villains, arrests by secret police, chance encounters on trains and fear of Soviet invasion. And in the middle of it all, an unlikely hero: a Czech chemist called Otto Wichterle.

On Christmas Eve 1961, Otto Wichterle created the world’s first soft contact lens at his kitchen table with the help of his son’s toy mechanics set.

Who was Otto?

How did he manage to create the world’s first contact lens behind the Iron Curtain, despite political opposition?

Why is his story not better known?

Our guest today, Riikka Palonkorpi, works at the University of the Arts in Helsinki and wrote her PhD thesis on Otto Wichterle back in 2012. As part of her research, Riikka met Otto’s wife and visited their home, so naturally is the perfect person to help us answer these questions as we unravel Otto’s story.

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick.

The editor was Anisha Deva.

The senior producer was Charlotte Long.

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REAL LIFE INVENTOR ALERT!!!

Two jockstraps cleverly sewn together. That was how the very first sports bra was made in 1977. The product built out from this prototype, the “Jog Bra”, went on to change women’s athletics forever.

Today we’re talking to Lisa Lindhal who, together with her friends Polly and Hinda, unleashed the sports bra on the world. 

The episode was produced by Freddy Chick.

The editor was Anisha Deva.

The senior producer was Charlotte Long

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If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

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