The Lab With Brad

From stones to strings to space

This week we begin a look at air and space travel. We start our look with the stone age, when we began to learn what we’d need to know in order to fly.

Here’s an article about how and why humans can throw things so well.

The Evolution of High-Speed Throwing

Here’s an article about early bows and arrows.

Early Bow and Arrows Offer Insight Into Origins of Human Intellect

Here’s another article on the history of archery.

How old is the bow and arrow?

Here’s something on the earliest known boat, and how boats changed over time.

The Very First Boat

And here’s a little something on the history of kites.

History of Kites

Spider silk?

Brother Phil and I were on the porch the other day, and the topic swung round to the amazing mechanical strength of spider web. He bumped into something about some piece of clothing that had been made from the stuff. After talking about it for a while, it hit me that I didn’t actually know what I was talking about. Thus, for the last episode of 2020, we dig into the topic of regular silk, spiders, and spider silk.

Happy holidays, and we’ll see you again on January 14, 2021.

Here’s a rather technical article on how spiders spin their silk.

How Spiders Spin Silk

Here’s an article about attempts to create artificial spider silk.

The Tangled Web of Turning Spider Silk Into a Super Material

Here’s a video about how a team actually made a cape from spider webs.

How was it made? Golden spider silk

Here’s an article about the earliest evidence of humans making and using silk, from caterpillars though, not spiders.

Oldest Evidence of Silk Found in 8,500-Year-Old Tombs

Here’s something about how good old-fashioned silkworm silk is made.

How Its Made Silk

Here’s an article about the oldest spider web from the fossil record.

Oldest Preserved Spider Web Dates Back to Dinosaurs

Here’s an article that talks about the earliest spiders, and how they’ve developed since then.

Spider origins

Here’s an article about the incredible webs built by the Darwin’s bark spider.

The world's biggest spider web can span an entire river

Turns out that regular silk can be strong enough to stop bullets.

THE IMPENETRABILITY OF SILK TO BULLETS. 1ST KNOWN INSTANCE OF BULLETPROOF FABRIC

Here’s an article and podcast episode about an all silk bullet proof vest demonstrated in 1891.

The Monk Who Stopped Bullets with Silk

Here’s another video about the cape made from spider silk.

Golden cape made by 1.2 million spiders

And lastly, here are a couple of links about some attempts to make artificial spider silk.

New Artificial Spider Silk: Stronger Than Steel and 98 Percent Water

Stronger Than Steel: Synthetic Spider Silk is Real

Say cheese!

Today we look at the history of photography, and how the camera helped create the modern computer.

Here’s a website with a thumbnail sketch of the history of photography.

Unraveling the History of Photography

Here’s a video about how to make a room in your home into a camera obscura.

How to Turn a Room into a Camera Obscura

Here are some sites about lithography.

Lithography in the Nineteenth Century

A Printing Revolution

Alois Senefelder Invents & Develops Lithography

Here’s a site with information about how photography and photolithography came to be.

History of Lithography, Heliography, and Photography

A lucky accident

Around the 1950s, many labs were attempting to figure out how to manufacture transistors. Even more exciting was the idea that many electrical components, entire circuits could be put on one crystal. There were several methods attempted to solve the problems that occurred, until one day, in 1955, a lucky accident suddenly made everything much easier.

Here’s ‘a video about how integrated circuits work.

How Integrated Circuits Work

Here’s an article with more information about integrated circuits.

Integrated Circuits

Here’s an article about the 1955 lucky accident.

Silicon Burns

Back up a bit

A large percentage of the show’s staff all hurt their backs at once—the producer, the audio editor, founder, writer, research department head, and the host. Mind you, those are all the same guy so… We did manage to talk a little bit more about neural networks and early AI research. Hope you enjoy the unusually short episode.

Here’s an article about the perceptron, an early artificial neural network machine.

History of the Perceptron

Here is a documentary on computers and AI from the 1960s.

The Thinking Machine

An early AI, and the birth of the transistor

Vacuum tubes were all well and good, but they were bulky, hot, power hungry, and prone to failure. Early on, artificial neural networks showed promise, as even if tubes broke while it was running, it would keep working. Meanwhile, the transistor is invented, and the unreliable tubes slowly became obsolete.

Here is an article about the SNARC, the first artificial neural network.

Machine, Learning, 1951

Here are a couple of videos of Marvin Minsky talking about the SNARC.

Marvin Minsky - Building my randomly wired neural network machine

Marvin Minsky - Learning machine theories after SNARC

Here’s a documentary on the invention of the transistor.

Transistor

wires magnets and memory

We spend some more time with some more vintage tech. This time we look at audio recorded on spools of wire, teletype equipment for input and output, and the magnetic core. Check out the links below to catch some nifty videos of this stuff being demonstrated and explained.

Here’s a video on the wire recorders.

Retro Tech: The Wire Recorder

Here’s an article about the history of magnetic tape data recording.

The History of Magnetic Tape and Computing: A 65-Year-Old Marriage Continues to Evolve

Here are a couple of videos of an old teletype machine doing its thing.

Friden Flexowriter SPD, Paper Tape driven Typewriter

1959 Friden Flexowriter SFD punching a paper tape and reading a tape.

Here are some articles on the history of typing, typewriters, and keyboards.

Typing Through Time

The History of the Computer Keyboard

Here’s more info about project Whirlwind, a computer originally built to make a flight simulator for the United States navy.

Project Whirlwind | The MIT 150 Exhibition

Gambling on Whirlwind: How the US Navy Spent $3 Million+ and Got a Computer Game

And here’s a video that explains and demonstrates magnetic core memory, a system that was in use for near to 30 years—long time in computer land.

Core Memory Explained and Demonstrated

In memory of vintage memory

Before microchips, before solid state transistors, early electronic computers had to hold information somewhere… somehow… Join us as we look at some old methods of storing electronic memory.

Here’s a world war II era documentary on antiaircraft guns.

WORLD WAR II ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUN DOCUMENTARY

here's some info on the Williams Tube.

Williams-Kilburn Tubes

The Williams Tube and the "Manchester Baby," the First Operational Stored-Program Computer Runs its First Program

Here’s one of the nifty historical source links I was all excited about.

Williams Tube Memory

Here’s a video on the wire version of delay line memory.

Old computer tech: delay-line memory

And here’s a video for an acoustical delay line memory that this fellow put together for fun.

Acoustic Delay Line Memory

Finally, some actual computers!

We started with the stone age, back in episode 270. Today, we finally get to look at an all electronic, Turing complete, programmable computer. We also take a short side trip to more or less fail to explain what “Turing complete” means.

Here is a video that explains what “Turing complete” means.

Turing Complete

“Turing complete” makes no sense without understanding “Turing machines.” Here’s a video on them

Turing Machines Explained

Here’s an article about George Stibitz, and the electromechanical computers he created.

George Stibitz Builds the First Electromechanical Computers in America and Does the First Demonstration of Remote Computing

Here’s a video about the eniac.

ENIAC: The First Computer

Here’s an article about John von Neumann’s report on the edvac.

John von Neumann and the “Report on the EDVAC”

World wars, cyphers and subs

War grips the globe, twice. Technology pushes forward, including the specialized calculating machines to encrypt messages on the one hand, and break the encryption of the enemy on the other.

Here’s an article about the submarines of world war II.

Submarine Warfare Played Major Role in World War II Victory

Here are a couple of articles about how Poland broke the German’s secret codes.

Poland's overlooked Enigma codebreakers

How Three Poznan University Students Broke the German Enigma Code and Shortened World War Two