Happy Accident

to sell war bonds and collect scrap metal. As the war progressed, the use of certain materials increased exponentially, including tin, paper, and rubber. The military needed tin cans for rations, paper for packing materials, and rub for things like tires, pontoon, bridges, and boots. While fighting was going on overseas, folks back

home held scrap drives. They encourage people to donate old pots and pans, tin toys, rubber, boots, and anything else they had lying around that could be melted down and turned into supplies for the troops. Every little bit helped. Rubber became especially hard to find as Japan took over much of the Pacific rim, including the majority of rubber producing countries. Its forces cut off supply access to the United States, so things like rafts and gas masks couldn't

be made or repaired. The US government couldn't stand to wait around for supply routes to open back up again. Rations were running low and something had to be done, so they turned to science to pick up the slack. Scientists had already begun looking for alternatives to natural rubber. Unfortunately, nothing had been invented that came even close to being as versatile and resilient as the real thing. James Wright, however,

had already been on the case. He'd been working as a researcher at General Electric in Connecticut when he was tasked with finding a cheap substitute for rubber, both natural and synthetic. It had to be tough, it had to be pliable, and it had to do everything real rubber was capable of doing. After some experimentation with certain chemicals, he dropped boric acid into silicon oil. The reaction left him with something new and different, something he thought might

be exactly what the government was looking for. It looked like rubber, it smelled like rubber, but it bounced higher and stretched farther than rubber actually could, but it got better. It would never mold and melted only at extremely high temperatures, much higher than natural rubber. So he brought his creation to his supervisors, who didn't see much of a use for it. To them, it was no different than the

synthetic rubbers they had already been using. Dr Wright went back to the drawing board, but sadly never came up with the alternative everyone had been looking for. After his failure, he put his fake rubber concoction on the shelf, where it sat dormant for years. Then sometime after the war, it bounced into the hands of small business owner Ruth falgat her She immediately saw plenty of uses for it, and so did the marketing executive that she consulted, Peter Hodgson.

The two of them began selling rights Magical Rubber in nineteen fifty two very little acclaim after it appeared in an article in The New Yorker. Though sales boomed. It quickly became a worldwide success, and as more people bought it, they found even more ways to incorporate it into their daily lives. The substance has been known to be a terrific lint remover as well as a physical therapy tool

for people recovering from hand injuries. NASA astronauts used did it so their tools wouldn't float away in zero gravity. It seemed like the sky was the limit literally for the failure. The Army never wanted but people all over the world certainly wanted it, especially children, and they've been playing with it for over sixty years, whether squishing it into a ball and bouncing it off the ceiling or pressing it over the Sunday Comics and pulling up their

own printed copies. Kids everywhere have had a lot of fun with Dr Wright's failed rubber substitute. They probably helped that. Peter Hodgson packaged and marketed it as the perfect Easter basket item. He simply placed a dollop of the stuff into a little plastic egg and then gave it the perfect name, if maybe a little silly silly putty. That is. At the start of the nineteenth century, Napoleon Bonaparte's reign

was just hitting its stride. Within the span of four years, he would sell Louisiana to the United States avoid an assassination attempt go to war with Great Britain and declare himself Emperor of France right in front of the Pope. Some might say he was a man of action, always looking for the competitive edge that would help him gain victory over his opponents. Others would just chock it up to ego. But despite his ego, Napoleon prided himself on

being a forward thinker. As his armies moved across Europe and engaged with hostile forces, he noticed where his strategy was lacking. He just didn't quite know how to fix it. The problems presented themselves at night, when the candles and lamps that his soldiers used to illuminate their maps made them sitting ducks for enemy snipers. Napoleon knew the best time to atten hack was during the night, But if the men couldn't see where they were going or read

their orders, then those plans wouldn't matter. They'd all be dead before sunrise. So Napoleon posed his predicament to an officer in his ranks who also happened to be a former classmate of his growing up. His name was Charles Barbier, and he was given a simple mission find a way for the troops to read in the dark without the need for any kind of light. Barbier was a bit of a history buff and knew of a system of

message transmission invented by the ancient Greeks. The Polybia square was a grid of five rows and five columns, with a different letter of the Greek alphabet in each square, the last one left blank. If two people had the same grid, that could send each other messages using the row and column location to signify the chosen letter. Unfortunately, this system relied on the use of torches held high

in the night. The number of torches raised in a particular order indicated which row and column the letter was located in. Napoleon had told his man no light, but it did give Barbier an idea a way to modify this system so that light wasn't required. He created his own grid of letters that soldiers would memorize. Messages would be encoded using special symbols that could be read in the dark bite simply touching them. Barbie A developed his system using six rows and six columns to accommodate the

numerous letter combinations the French commonly used. It sounded great to Napoleon, who quickly put it to use in the field. The soldiers, however, thought differently. The grid was too hard to memorize and recall in the heat of battle. Decoding secret messages proved impossible when no one could figure out what letter they were touching, nor did they have the time to really think about it. Barbier's system was abandoned almost as quickly as it was adopted, but it's inventor

wasn't discouraged. Years later, while speaking on behalf of the French Royal Academy of Sciences, he introduced his grid to a classroom of children who also happened to struggle with reading. The old system the children had been using was far inferior, as it relied on embossed Latin letters, which were harder to trace quickly with their fingertips. Among these students was a young man who took a great interest in Barbier's work. He gave Barbie a feedback on how to make it better.

One suggested change was to shrink the number of rows and symbols to make them easier to distinguish by touch. Barbie a scoffed, there was no way some child was going to tell a wealthy educated veteran of Napoleon Bonaparte's army how to do his job. So the boy made the changes himself and introduced the new system to his classmates. It worked, and as a result, his contribution changed the way the blind read forever and this child's aim Louis Braille.

I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.