A Titanic TechStuff Episode

about a boat. You're are you doing that to goad me or the people writing in what that should be called a ship and boat? Okay, wait, before we get started, this is a personal pet peeve like Jonathan Strickland. In fact, I want there to be a special musical sting for personal pet peeve of Jonathan Strickland. Make a note of

it in a way. So my personal pet peeve in this in today's episode always involves things that are very difficult to define and that there are not specific parameters where a thing is categorized as one thing versus another thing. Now here's an example, ship versus boat. So a ship technically is a vessel large enough to carry a boat and a boat is technically a vessel small enough to be carried upon a ship. I have a problem with this. There should be a specific size where a boat becomes

a ship or a ship is degraded down to a boat. Also, mountain versus hill, what's up with that mountain? Hill? And the hill is smaller than a mountain? Says to my personal pet, Peeve. I'm pretty sure, yeah, that the Titanic is large enough to be considered a ship. Okay, fine, So this boat even now was made back in alright, so lett's talk about let's talk about this all right. So is it's famous, right, obviously famous because of the the disaster, the sinking of the Titanic. I was expecting

to say because of that documentary on Titanic. There are many documentaries on Titanic, and some of them are actually documentaries. Well yeah, and and the reason that it came up was because there we just passed the anniversary. Also, Leonardo DiCaprio was in the office the other day, that's not true, thinking of the Titanic and was apologizing for her performance.

And no, it's not true either. That's really sweet. So we we uh, we have just passed the you know, people talking about um the Titanic, and and it's sort of romanticized in a way, not because of the movie, but because, I guess because it was supposedly unsinkable, because

it was so immensely Titanic. Yeah, and it was also there's also an era of romanticism again, one of those things where you look back on a time and you romanticize it because you know, it seems it seems this sort of uh, ethereal time that we can only imagine now. I mean, we can see the pictures in the film and everything, but still it feels like otherworldly because it's not our experience. Yes, the Titanic sank on April fourteenth, nineteen twelve. Now it had two thousand, two hundred eight

passengers and eight officers and crew members aboard. Out of those, about one thousand, five hundred thirteen or so the records, very depending on who you ask, about a thousand, five thousand, hundred seventeen or somewhere thereabouts died. And in fact, there were only room for one thousand, one hundred seventy six passengers in the lifeboats. They didn't have enough lifeboats for the entire crew and passenger list. Uh and it's you know, it's it's certainly one of the most famous tragedies to

happen in the travel industry. It's one of those things that is legendary, really, and the legend has just grown over the years since the sinking. A little bit other more information about the people who died, just something that I thought was kind of interesting and tragic. So h there were three hundred and twenty nine first class passengers

on the Titanic. On three of them died. That's thirty seven percent of the actually all of them are dead now, but at the time, seven percent of the first class passengers died. Third class passengers there were uh seven and ten of them. Five hundred and twenty seven of them died in the sinking of the Titanic, which is about seventy four of them, So thirty seven percent first class passengers.

Third class passengers wished in the sinking, which is led to quite a bit of discussion about how the third class passengers were treated and uh and how preferential treatment was given to first class passengers. Uh and there are plenty of conflicting reports about crew members actually restraining third class passengers from getting to the lifeboats until all the first class passengers were taken care of, or as many as possible. So lots of different reasons why this tragedy

has lived on in our minds. But we wanted to talk a little bit about the technology aboard the Titanic, the development of the Titanic, and also some technology that was developed as a result of the or at least pushed forward as a result of the Titanic sinking. Uh. I would say that the Titanic is the story. The Titanic is intertwined with technology. Yes, I mean it was that the ship was supposedly cutting edge. It had been

theoretically designed to prevent something like this from happening. Um, and uh, you know, it had a lot of high tech equipment on board. Um it also uh you know, it's it's it's equipment had some success. I would say that some of the systems did exactly what they were supposed to. They performed very very well, and other systems failed terribly, leading to uh, ultimately to more passengers dying.

And um, you know there are things like the number of lifeboats, which are not necessarily technological issues that were you know, that were problems, and of course they were problems but we wanted to focus specifically on the technologies because um, at the time the ship was designed to be, you know, top of the line, and in fact it was I believe the larger ship uh that had been built for pat you know, for cruises at that time. And its sister ships because there were two other the

Gigantic and the Britannic. No, not the Britannic, which was originally called the Britannic. It was the Olympic Olympia maybe was the Olympia but not yeah, so the but but those three ships. What happened was back in nineteen o seven there was a dinner meeting between J. Bruce Ismay, who was the son of Thomas Isnay Ismay, who is the founder of the White Star Line ocean liner company. So these this was a company that was managing and maintaining these huge ocean liners, which was the way to

travel back then if you're going to go overseas. But the problem was that or perhaps the opportunity, I should say, the opportunity was there to create luxury liners that would improve passenger comfort and the ideas by providing this these comforts, more people would want to travel and you would have a much more successful business because the liners previously we're

pretty plain. You know, it just was it was just a you would get a very plain lodgings and you would be on board the ship for days and days trying to cross oceans, and it wasn't terribly luxurious or comfortable.

So the idea was, let's let's change that. Let's make these luxury liners that can can cater to the comfort of passengers, and so uh he had a Ismael had a dinner with a fellow named Lord Peery, and Lord Peery was the chairman of Harland and Wolf shipbuilders, and the two of them started talking about a couple of liners that had recently launched, the Mauritania and the Lusitania, and both of these ships were larger, larger than any previous ones at that point, and were known for their

their amenities, and so Ismael was thinking, we could do that. Why don't we design some ships that can even put these behind and and make these seem primitive in comparison. And the Titanic was one of the three ships designed to do such a thing, and it was at the time one of the yeah, one of the largest vessels

on the ocean. It was two and a half feet long two or so almost two sixty ninety two point five ft wide, which is about twenty eight ms, and it weighed about forty five thousand tons, so big ship, which meant a couple of things. It meant one that maneuvering such a ship was challenging because it was so large.

That was not the kind of ship that's going to stop on a dime or turn in a very tight radius in order to chin a quarter an order dollar in order to change the course of this ship and to change its its speed required quite a bit of leeway, which was one of the big problems that the Titanic encountered when it had its famous tragedy on a few days later after it launched. So that was one of the main things about it was just its sheer size.

It had these enormous turbines that were operated off of the exhausting that the There was these reciprocating engines aboard the Titanic, two of them that would create steam there. The engines themselves were almost forty ft tall, and uh the steam would power these turbines that would turn these uh three blade propellers that were twenty three and a half feet in diameter. It's about seven meters or so.

And uh, there was also a four blade propeller that was seventeen ft in diameter or about five meters, that was located near the ship's rudder, which helped the Titanic attain speeds close to twenty four knots. So you've got this massive ship and this huge engine and these big turbines and propellers to help move it through the water. And yes, it did not maneuver um nimbly, right new BLI nimbly. It was not a nimble type of vessel. Was It was very impressive, but not designed to, you know,

do slalomn courses unless they were miles wide. Yeah. And and this is when technology plays a part two. Um, should we talk about the probably the most famous uh technological system. Uh. I've got a couple of ideas of what you could be talking about. Are you talking about Marconi's invention? I was talking about Bill Marconi's invention. Bill, Yes, Phil Marconi? Alright, fine, So Billy, Uh, where'd you get

Bill from? I'd go with Gil Marconi. Yeah. Anyway, Marconi of course famous for um not inventing the radio, because Tesla did that. But if you've heard he is famous for inventing the radios, he was for inventing the radio. But there are plenty of people who argued that Tesla did actually invented the radio. That was me poking fun at Marconi. Uh, but Mark, he certainly, he certainly made the radio a practical invention as opposed to just a curiosity. Well,

Marconi's thing was radio. Tesla was, you know, sort of busy with all kinds of different things. Yeah, he was. He was a little less focused, but um, he did patent radio and then Marconi got the patent overturned. Anyway, that's a different story we've talked about before in this podcast. So Marconi has this radio system that ships were starting

to use at the time the Titanic launched. There were several ships that had radio systems, but they were still relatively new and uh they could only really transmit radio waves and short little bursts, so they were perfect for things like Morse code, but they were not designed for voice transmission, right, So uh, it was it was a spark transmitter, right. You had to have you had to have operators on board your ship who would be able to to take messages, convert them to Morse code and

send them in as well as receive messages. And the Titanic had two operators, which was unusual for a lot of ships. Many ships only had the one, and in fact, it was fairly common practice aboard these ships for you know, at certain times a night, the operator would turn in, like they would be the end of the operator shift, and they'd go to bed and there'd be no one manning the radio at that time. That will prove to

be important. So there were the two who were aboard the Titanic were Harold Bride who survived the ordeal, and Jack Phillips who went down with the ship UH and these two men were in charge of manning this radio and um monitoring messages that were coming in and sending messages that were going out. One of the problems that

happened that that helped contribute to this tragedy. A lot of people talk about how the Titanic received several reports, at least four reports from four different ships about ice in the area directly ahead of where the Titanic was was going, and that if the Titanic had heated these reports, perhaps they could have either altered the course or changed the speed, and maybe tragedy could have been averted. But here's the issue, back here, back at this time where

people are using these these you know, these transmitters. Uh, it all depended on how powerful your transmitter was, whether or not you would pick something up. You could overpower someone else's transmitter because everyone's just essentially broadcasting full blast. There's no there's no fine tuning at this point. It's

either on or it's off. And there were a lot of people who wanted to send messages out from the Titanic because it was a very novel thing to do, and there were a lot of people on the shores of the United States who wanted to send messages to the people aboard the Titanic. So the operators were constantly

busy sending out messages. And in fact, at one point a message came in from from I think it was the California, Yes, the r MS Californian, Californian and it's just about eleven pm, and uh, I won't bother trying to affect a my poor version of the British accent, but it says, say, old man, we are stopped and surrounded by ice and uh sailed then about let's stopped it surrounded by ice. See now now you've got the both that and the early early twentieth century movie I'm

talking way too fast. It's a dirigible competition. Um. And about ten minutes later, um, the telegraph operator on Titanic and this just gets me and it probably will YouTube when you hear it. The Titanic sends back, keep out, shut up, shut up, I am busy. I'm working Cape Race, which is on the coast of Canada. Yes, So what was going on was that the the operator aboard the Titanic was communicating with Cape Race and sending personal messages exactly.

It was all these messages that were coming in and going out from past two and from passengers on the Titanic and folks on the shore. So the problem here is that for an operator to be able to hear these messages. Now these, depending on the power of the transmitter, these radio messages could go a really long distance, like the Titanic could broadcast five miles in the daytime and two thousand miles at night. And we've talked about this, how using shortwave radio you can bounce radio waves off

the ionosphere and make it go further. We talked about that in our numbers station podcasts. Remember, well that works best at night. Um, the during the daytime, the ionosphere just it behaves differently than it does at night. So at night the Titanic could broadcast these messages much further. And uh. The problem is that in order to listen in for incoming messages, you had to listen very carefully. Well, if another ship nearby was broadcasting, then that broadcast would

overpower any incoming messages from the shore. Because the shore is much further away, the signals weaker, so the signal from a nearby ship would be much louder. So the shut up, shut up part is really the operators saying, I have to turn my sense, the sensitivity of this all the way up so I could pick up messages. So when you talk, it's like someone shouting with a bullhorn right next to my ear. So please shut up,

because I'm trying to listen to these messages. Now, if they had actually heated that warning, send that up to the bridge. Now that According to some reports, the bridge did receive a couple of different reports about ice, but

not all of them. So, like I think most of the reports I read suggests that two of the reports that came in never to the bridge, and although based upon the way that everything turned out, maybe it wouldn't have mattered anyway, because it seemed like a lot of the crew were fairly confident that, you know, they could maneuver through the ice without any problem, which as we see it's not the case. Um. But yeah, at least half of the messages did not get to the bridge anyway. So, Uh.

The radio was very much day of the art at the time. However, it was still so primitive. The fact that you couldn't just switch a channel and have a dedicated channel so that you didn't have to worry about overwriting someone else's messages, that was a problem. And uh, and the fact that it was since it was such a novelty and everyone wanted to use it to communicate, was a problem because it meant that the operator couldn't

actually concentrate on really important information coming in. Another problem with the radio being being so early is that they had different UM different designation for I AM in trouble. Yeah, now officially UM, the one that we're probably most familiar with UM s OS had actually been adopted mostly had

been adopted by the German Navy. Well, German navy did that first, they did, um, well, the Marconi company first, uh set up c q D as it's uh, it's as as it's distressed call, which is why I not say that any better, it's what And that's what the Titanic was using c q D. Yeah, and basically that that's actually a homophonic French um for c Q being st SAKU which is short for security A basically meaning um, you know, help and be being for distress. So basically

saying hey, I need help, I'm in distress. Um. Now, Germany, that was in February one, now a little bit more than a year later, in April onet En five, Uh, Germany said no, we're going to go with s O S three dots, three dashes, three dots. It's easy to say, it's very easy to transmit, and it's very easy to inderstand um. And they had saved other ships. In June tenth, nineteen nine, the Slavonia used s O S. Yeah, that's what s S stands for it save other ships. No,

actually it doesn't stand for anything. A lot of people think it stands for save our ship. Now the and the reason is just as Chris said, it's because the Morse code for it is UH is very easy to transmit and detect. That's the only reason s OS is used as a as an alert is because once you hear it, you know, did it? It did? Did it? Once you hear that, you got it. Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty simple, and I think uh a lot of

people now know exactly what it means. As a matter of fact, somebody had it for their ringtone on their phone somewhere and I'm going to somebody actually, I mean, is someone in distress? Yeah? How many how many movies? Has somebody been captured and you know, locked in some cellar thing and they start like hammering on a pipe. Some pull out their keys and they just start tapping against the pipe. And then mcgiver realizes that he's got a bottle cap, some bubblegum and a knife and he

can turn that into a nuclear reaction. If only had a duct tape, he could have made a tongue machine man. That would have been great anyway. Yeah, So the problem here is that with the different the different UH codes for distress, not all ships understood what the Titanic was

sending out. Once the Titanic did start sending out the stress signals, some of the nearby ships didn't know to respond, and it wasn't until later in the night when they started to the the operators decided to actually include s OS as well as CQD and um there, I actually have a list of some of the messages that were sent out. I I do as well. Um, yeah, so

there's one at twelve fifteen am. Actually, before we do that, I should go through really quickly and just do a quick time of events, like what happened when, because then that will give some context to these messages. So it was an eleven thirty five pm on April that they spotted the iceberg, where it was about a quarter of a mile ahead. Unfortunately, they would have needed at least half It was the fourteen Oh, you're right, you're right right,

the fifteenth this when it actually sunk. Fourteenth was when it struck. I'm sorry, April fourt uh, Chris is completely right. So April fourteen pm is when they spot the iceberg. It's a quarter mile ahead. No, Unfortunately, they would have needed a half mile to actually stop the ship or move around it. So the best they could do is kind of skirt the edge of the iceberg. But here's the thing about icebergs. The part you see up on

top is just a tiny fraction of the iceberg. There's a whole lot of iceberg underneath the waters the waterline, and uh, the problem was that part of this underwater section of the iceberg jutted out and the and it's scraped the side of the Titanic. It actually made six gashes in the Titanics hall, which and we'll talk about why that happened to It wasn't a head on collision, no, no, it hit It hit just one side of the Titanic, but that was enough to to cause it the problem.

So so they spot the iceberg eleven forties so just five minutes later, that's when the Titanic scrapes against the iceberg. Uh. And then by midnight, the watertight compartments, of which there were sixteen in the within the Titanic, they start to fill up. Now six of them, five or six, depending

on who you asked. We're filling up with water. Originally, the shipbuilders said that the Titanic would be perfectly fine if three of those water tight compartments flooded, it would still be able to sail as if there were no problems, and it could continue with four of them flooded, but it would have some problems. But with five or six flooded, it was just a matter of time before the Titanic would sink. And I'll go into more about that and

a little bit too. So at one twenty in the morning, the bow of the of the Titanic begins to pitch into the water. So the weight from the water coming into those water tight containment areas is making the ship tilt, and that's actually causing more problems with flooding. Then at two am, the bottle starts to submerge and the propellers actually lift out of the water because of the weight from the water in the in the bow end of the ship wouldn't be the screws just okay, technically yes.

At to ten, the Titanic starts to tilt about forty five degrees and the steel structure that underlies the ship starts to give way because the weight of the the end lifted out of the water is too much for it. At to twelve, the stern raises up out of the water and the bow completely fills with the water and starts to grow heavier. At to eighteen, the bow rips loose, so the bow starts to sink into the ocean. The stern meanwhile rises up almost completely vertical because it has

lots of air still within it. So the stern is is free of the bow. The bow is now sinking into the ocean. Um and then the stern starts to sink. At to twenty in the morning and to twenty nine, uh, the bow hits the ocean floor. At to fifty six, the stern hits the ocean floor, and the stern is in really bad shape because it had so much air inside of it while it was sinking. Uh, there were implosions within the ship itself because the pressure that was

building up just ended up. The pressure from outside the ship and the air pressure inside the ship created this situation where because it wasn't truly flooded like the bow was, um, you had these implosions. And which is why if you ever see any of the documentaries where there are sub marines that are exploring the show, the stern looks destroyed. The bow looks almost preserved, and the stern does not. And that's why so with that in mind, looking at some of the messages that were sent out, so at

forty you have the the collision. At twelve fifteen in the morning on April fift because we've just passed midnight, the Titanic sends out a message to any ship, says c q D Titanic and gives the coordinates. And then at twelve seventeen, just two minutes later, that's when they write c q D c q D s O S. Titanic gives the position, require media assistance. Come at once. We struck an iceberg sinking. Um. And at twelve twenty

a m. They message, specifically to the Carpathia. Yeah. They A couple of ships responded, uh, pretty much right away, Um, the Frankfurt UH and the Olympic, the sister ship of the UH Titanic. Um. We we're quite a distance away, unfortunately. Um. The Frankfort was about a hundred seventy miles or so away and the Olympic was almost five hundred miles away.

But here again, this high tech transmitter that the Marconi Company had on their they were able to there were a lot of ships that were aware of what was going on. Now, whether or not they could make it there in time to save people. Thankfully, the Carpathio was somewhat close, although the Californian was the closest. Here's the issue is that after the Californian operator received the message saying shut up, the Californian operator just started, it's time

to go to bed. I'm not paid enough to put up with this, and they and closed down shop and went to bed. And that's like we said, that was that was regular practice on board ships that after you each the end of your shift, you you closed down, you turned off the radio, and you caught some sleep. So that's exactly what the operator of the Californian did.

If the operator had stayed on in the Californian could have responded much more quickly potentially anyway than the Carpathia did and probably would have saved some of you know, some of the some of the people who died would have likely have been rescued had had the Californian been able to respond in time. However, you know, I think, well, never mind that that was one of the things that kind of got me, you know, sort of a gut wrenching feeling when the operator told them to shut up. Yeah,

the twelve help. Twelve twenty five in the morning, the Carpathias sends a message to the Titanic saying, shall I tell my captain do require assistance? And a minute later Titanic response with yes, come quick. And then at twelve thirty two, so six minutes after that, the Carpathia messages putting about and heading for you. So at that point the Carpathia does start to make its way towards the Titanic.

Um and uh. And the messages continued from the the Titanic and and they get pretty it's pretty rough s os Titanic sinking by the head we are about all down sinking. It was at twelve forty in the morning. Um. And then that uh. They kept sending messages is as fast as they could, yea, hoping that somebody else might be close enough and they might tune in and uh and come help, which is why they kept on switching between c q D and S O S and uh. Yeah. It it continued all the way up to the ship

actually sinking. I mean the last see if I've got the very last message here, I think the very last one is right at around between between two fifteen am and two am, so this is right about when the ship itself was going under um and it said that the last message was s O S s O S c q D c q D Titanic. We are sinking fast. Passengers are being put into boats Titanic and that was the last message. And as I said, Bride Um escaped. He he survived, but Phillips went down with the ship.

He was supposedly signaling all the way up until the very end. Uh. And in fact, I read one report that said that Brian had said when he came in to check on Phillips to try and tell him to leave, Phillips was still there sending out messages frantically and listening for messages while another passenger or a crew member was trying to remove phillips life vest, and that Phillips was just letting it happened because he was stuck, you know, staying at his post, which shows a level of dedication

that that I think borders on the fanatic um. And it also is interesting in that I remember I read an interview with a guy who specifically said that in this day Phillips and Bride could be considered the computer nerds. Of of that era, Like, these were guys who were absolutely obsessed with radio and they loved it and they lived it, and that this was just something that they found engrossing and fascinating and that kind of I can

kind of understand that. I've I've met some computer nerds, and I say that term with all affection, who I think you would have to use a crowbar to separate them from their computer. So it's a very similar situation. Let's let's talk a bit about some of the reasons why the Titanic did sink. The damage to the hull UM didn't look as severe as what you might imagine something, you know, like a hole being large enough to sink

a ship like the Titanic. But part of the problem is that these gashes that hit along the side of the hull, some of them were quite long and and bridged more than one watertight compartment. Yeah, and there were there were a lot of things going on here. Um. Part of a good bit of it was apparently human error, I mean not just in in um making mistakes like uh, you know, mistakes not ignoring the messages, um, not you know, over confidence in the ship's ability to take on an iceberg.

But but also you know the way they um from what I understand, they left some of the watertight compartments open, which allowed water to pass from one another. And you know, there were apparently some mistakes in constructing the ship to um. The steel apparently was particularly brittle. Yeah, there's um. And of course I'm sure that the cold water didn't help anything.

That's actually yeah, that's actually a real problem with the So the steel was semi killed low carbon steel and the carbon the process, the process of of making the steel, uh, introduced some sulfur into the mix. And steel with a high sulfur content that is put to low temperatures and experiences a high velocity impact tends to be brittle. Now, normally the way steel would react if you had created, you know, a very strong steel mix, Uh, it would

normally deform. So it bends, right. So, I mean, we've all seen steel that's been dented. So every time I go shopping and look at the cars in the parking lot, there you go, so there and that's just the ones that he he hits. Um. The uh, Yeah, the steel tends to bend. It deforms first before it breaks. Now, when it's brittle, it'll break rather than deform, and so

the uh that's a bad thing. You know, if the deforms that can it can hold on to its integrity a little bit better than it could if it just

shears away. So there are plenty of pictures online where you can see steel bars that were um to have high sulfur content versus ones that don't, that are subjected to uh to temperatures that the Titanic would have been subjected to at that time, and hit with a high velocity weight and regular steel bends and the steel that was the same sort of uh of composite as that that that was used in the Titanic breaks in half like there's no there's no bending, it just it just shatters.

So that was part of the problem, was that the steel just shattered rather than bent in and so water was able to come in uh without problem. Another issue was that these watertight compartments they had watertight doors that could drop automatically or manually, and they did seal those. But the issue there is that the watertight compartments only went so far up. They went above where the waterline is. All right, so you've got the water line on the ship.

Anything that's above that water line, the walls stopped, so there was a gap there in these quote unquote watertight compartments. Well, when these six compartments or five or six compartments started to take on water, it made the ship start to lift and started to to move to one side. As we mentioned earlier, the bowt was starting to go under.

And once that happened, uh, the water started to make the ship tilt, and as it was tilting, the water could flow over parts of these these uh, these walls, because that the ship was no longer upright, So that meant that water could start spreading into other unaffected water tight compartments quote unquote watertight compartments. Uh, because the since the walls didn't go all the way up, so you had water rushing into otherwise safe compartments, and it just

made the problem worse. In fact, I've seen some reports that suggest that perhaps if the Titanic didn't have all those watertight compartments uh, and instead the water was free to just flow across the entire underwater surface of the boat, the ship still would have sunk, but it would have sunk in a in a less a more controlled, more controlled manner would have taken more. It would have taken longer, so rescue ships would have had more time to get there,

perhaps rescuing many more people. And it wouldn't have necessarily pitched over and broken in half like it actually did, so it would have just just started to lose buoyancy and continue to sink, which would have been much better news for everyone involved, obviously. Um So, so part of the issue we have here is a system that was

designed to help prevent sinking actually contributing to sinking potentially. Anyway, this is all based upon a lot of after the fact supposition, right um, and then you know there the other issues involved are the fact that they didn't have enough lifeboats aboard, and part of that was that the ship was so new that there wasn't a designation for

how many lifeboats it should have. Uh, most reports I say say that I had sixteen lifeboats aboard, that there were actually more than that, but that the sixteen lifeboats were the ones that were ready to go because uh, they were supposed to have two rows of these lifeboats, but one row was removed for aesthetic reasons. So well, I mean it was hey, you know, it was unsinkable right there, wasn't any reason to have lifeboats. Well, yeah,

and UH, the sixteen lifeboats were UM. That was that was the bare minimum for a ship of ten thousand tons and as dictated by by an authorization council. But the problem was that the Titanic was larger than that. But the the the regulations hadn't caught up to the innovation. The ten thousand tons was as big as it got in the regulations, so there was no uh, there was no correcting for the fact that Titanic was actually larger than what the top level was in these regulations, so

it had the bare minimum UM. So that was also another issue. There were pretty much everything that could go wrong. I guess not everything that could go wrong did go wrong because people did survive, which is good. Yeah, and that that radio system kept on going UM as long as the telegraph operators were able to power it UM. But that was the department one. The problem that once the water began flooding UM the areas of the ship that provided power the turbines UM, then the UH system

started losing power. The signal was much less effective. And you UM, there are reports two of of communications between other ships where they're explaining you know, hey, this is what's going on. The Titanics going down. We need to get over there. Who needs help? You know, Messages back and forth to explain, and you start to get in the early hours of the fifteen, you start to see things like, well, we haven't heard from them since you know such and such time. We haven't heard from them

since midnight. We haven't heard from them, even though they broadcast since then the power was going down. Their signal uh strength was waning. Um until that the power went out. So um. You know they that system worked very very well. UM. But of course after uh, you know, this tragedy, they started trying to find ways to prevent it from happening again. Um. In nineteen twelve, July five, UM, the International Radio Telegraph Convention, and they had they had confirmed s OS as the

distress call, roughly about the time the Germans had. But again, you know, not everyone had adopted it. Um. And you know obviously that the Titanics operators knew about it, but they were sticking with the Marconi c QD. Yeah, they alternate back and forth, going for whatever would help. But they yeah, they signed uh the order in London on July UH again, formally adopting s OS as the International Maritime Distress Signal UM, which was supposed to take effect

in nineteen thirteen UM. The United States had their own Radio Act that was pasted in August UM, and they basically started. Countries began working together to prevent another tragedy like this. They convened an International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea UM designed to agree on standards

to use. They started using may Day as the spoken distress call once radio communications were given by voice over radio, and on November and they started using filler Hurts as the new frequency, so its a dedicated frequency for distress signals, which again this helps out substantially because you can send person to person. You know, hey, having a lovely time. Hey look at the iceberg. Yeah exactly. You can have that is capital capital and then you know, hey, I

need help may Day ont um. They began to change that as time went on, too, but they would you know, the Titanic really galvanized UM Maritime UM distress procedures much more than they had been before. It was all it was a new technology in these days, and so they said, you know, hey, we can use this to our advantage. Let's agree on something we can all you know, use together. And eventually by by night regulations were in place that required ships exceeding six hundred tons they must have a

wireless apparatus on them. And part of that was so that they could respond to distress calls, not just be able to make them, but respond to them or relay them, because again, depending upon the ship's position and UM and it's and its own ability to transmit uh, those those signals might not go to the best now the potential rescuers. So yeah, and then you had ships also employing more operators so that they could have a continual a continual shift of operators so that you didn't have times when

the station was unmanned. That and you didn't have the likelihood that your telegraph operators are worn out. Um. It was suggested in one of the passages I read that the Titanics radio to radio operators were so busy sending personal messages that um, by the time the accident happened and they hit the iceberg, that they were both pretty worn out. And and frankly that might have been part of the reason behind the shut up, because he was look, I'm trying to send messages. Here, get out of my way.

I gotta do this so I can go to bed. Definitely that might have played a part. And we also saw developments and things like sonar. Actually sonar was in the experimental stages when the Titanic launch. It did exist, but the Titanic wasn't equipped but with it, nor did it have radar which probably could have I assume could have it, or at least these days can detect the

top of an iceberg. So so those those innovations began, there was a lot more focus put towards them in order to employ them in things like cruise travel and just travel in general, so that ships could be much more safe. Um, it wouldn't be until the nineteen seventies, the late nineteen seventies that we would develop a technology sufficient to let us actually explore. For the Titanic, we knew generally where it went down, but there it was in very deep water t feet if I remember correctly,

pretty pretty deep. Yeah, So it wasn't until the late nineteen seventies that that people began to develop the technology that would be capable of diving down to that depth and getting information. One of the first was a Texas oil magnate named Jack Grimm, and Grim really poured a whole lot of money into launching some expeditions to try

and find the Titanic in nineteen nine eight three. Uh. But because of some bad weather, some equipment problems, and just you know, trying to find these two pieces of a giant ship and an enormous ocean, they were unsuccessful. It wouldn't be until a few years later. It was on September one that the very first video image of the Titanic was captured um by and by a submarine. And uh. Since then, we have had several expeditions down to the Titanic, some of which have retrieved things from

the Titanic and brought them back up. A lot of different pictures were taken um and uh. And in fact, James Cameron, and of course the director of the documentary Titanic ended up. You should clarify that Jomes Cameron, the doctor, the director of a film called Titanic, which was not a documentary, also did a documentary about the Titanic. Um he captured a lot of Yeah, I know, that's why I didn't went ahead and I broke my joke for the purposes of this one podcast. Um. Yes, so he

actually did do quite a bit of this research. He was involved in it pretty heavily. And um and of course Cameron has continued his fascination with the deep sea. He's since gone down deeper than any other person in the world. Uh. It's pretty darn fascinating down the trenches, down the trench. Yeah really so yeah, I mean, this was it's a story that still fascinates today a hundred

years later. And if if you're ever in a city that has a Titanic museum exhibition, there was a traveling one a few years ago that was going from one museum to the next. I've actually seen it a couple of times. And uh, and it is really interesting to kind of get a look at what not just the problems that the Titanic face, but what life was actually like aboard the ship, what the first class passengers, what their experience was as opposed to the third class passengers

down in steerage, the differences. Nine day, they had Turkish baths on board the Titanic. It was an amazing vessel. It was phenomenal and and uh and meanwhile they have Turkish baths for the first class passengers. They had two bathtubs for steerage. UM. Just to go into the technology developments to UH, A lot of what they developed in the early and mid twentieth century in the in the follow up to the Titanic disaster stayed in place for

a long time. The mid seventies saw the beginning of a telecommunion communications network specifically designed for UH sea vessels sea going vessels UM satellite network called in Mar sat UM and UH. As a matter of fact, the first satellites started working in UM and they started changing the frequent season now point five to five mega hurts UM. And there is a satellite emergency position beacon that works at four hundred six mega hurts or one point six

giga hurts. Now, of course UM that was in effect when the Costa Concordia hit a reef off off the coast of Italy. UM that probably you're aware of, that happened earlier the year. We're recording this on Janu UM. And I think it kind of it's it's ironic for two reasons. One, UM, it does sort of underscore the fact that you know, these measures are still very very necessary.

And UH, you know the fact that it was a very large um ocean liner with past you know, passenger liner that uh ripped a big gash in the side of the hull um traveling in this case not an iceberg but rocks um and uh you know, they were moving with emergency power. Thankfully most of the people got off that ship. Okay, um, But apparently there were not any distress calls sent through the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System g m d S S to let to

let the Italian Coast Guard. Now, um, so that would have probably helped. Yeah, yep, So I mean, obviously there's some we could put as many systems as we like in place. Unless people actually uh follow them and and and and uh activate them, it doesn't really help. From what I've read, it was passengers calling the coastguard on their cell phones that let them know that something was awry. Yeah, that's that's not good. Oh and um before this will

be a nice little way to finish this, okay. So back in when the ship was was built, the cost was roughout seven and a half million dollars, So today that would cost undred and sixties seven million dollars. That is quite a princely some It is a princely. Some was also really expensive to uh to travel aboard it. I remember that the first class ticket would be the equivalent of around seventy grand and uh, you know a lot of money to go across the ocean. Yes, it is.

And to think about, you know, I think to the other reasons, um, you know for the Titanic going down in history. Sorry, no pun intended. Um, I don't want to make light of that. Uh that were you know, the famous passengers who were on board, Uh, some of whom died, some of whom didn't, or the people who didn't go You hear about the famous people who didn't make it, you know, people who went on to do you know things that have gone down in history. Uh,

like would that have happened? Um? You know that's its first voyage. The fact that it was supposed to be unsinkable. You know, all these things tied together. But it certainly sped at least two musicals, the Unsingable Molly Brown than Titanic. Yeah. Um yeah, it's just catching a place in our imagination and in our technology. So it's uh, you know, I played an important part in our lives. Yep. So guys, if you have any suggestions for future topics, perhaps the

things that happened in the past. Let us know, send us an email. Our email addresses tech stuff at Discovery dot com, or let us know on Facebook or Twitter are handled. There is tech stuff hs W and Chris and I will talk to you again. Really send for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot Com? Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you