TechStuff Classic: TechStuff Gets Tattooed and Pierced

of those things. But between the time we recorded that show and now, I got another tattoo, So I've got multiple. But yeah, let's go back and listen to this classic episode about tattoos and piercings. Speaking of regular old tattoos, in the interest of full disclosure, I've got two of them, so I can actually talk about the physical experience of receiving a tattoo as well as the actual science and

technology that goes into producing a tattoo. Well, I have zero tattoos while we're while we're talking about it, but my ears are pierced. Does that Does that help? That that's body modification. I'm actually also interests of all disclosure, debating getting a new ear pierced. Just just one, just one, just one. I don't know that's going to happen too, because I keep thinking I might be too old for that.

So let's talk about tattoos. That's a good starting point, right, I Mean, ear piercing is probably the lowest on the scale because it's the most socially accepted form of body modification in our culture. You know, it's one in the in the United States that ear piercing is. That's that's pretty pretty pretty beign. Yeah, very common. So it's no one would blink an eye really, depending upon the type

of piercing. I mean, there are more extreme piercings that that some people would look at and go, wow, that's pretty extreme, but it's still kind of on the theme. And yeah, at least as far as our society is concerned. Right, But tattoos. Tattoos are one of those things that we have a lot of information about about how they happen. Yeah, um, and they are getting more common. According to a Harris Pole of American adults have one, um, including thirty eight

percent of people between the ages of thirty and thirty nine. Yeah. I fall into that category. Yeah, you know, and I'm actually I'm always thinking about what my next one's going to be By the way, there's a common saying that tattoos are addictive that is kind of well, it's not physiologically true, but psychologically it is kind of true because after you take the plunge the first time, you think,

I kind of want more. So clearly, when we're talking about tattoos in this podcast, we're really going to be focusing on the way that modern tattoos happened. But it, you know, it behooves us to talk about tattooing has

a pretty long history. Yeah. Recent documentation from the Siberian Times reported that some of the permafrost preserved uh, like like ice princesses and stuff like that, have shown um from you know, fifth century BC have shown tattoos much like modern ones that particular articles strangely enough to link out to any scholarly institutions or or reporting sorain of salt. Yeah, but still well yeah, and then there have been reports of you know, tattoos being found on ancient Egyptian mummies

from about two thousand BC. Uh. And then of course the word tattoo we get from a Tahitian word which essentially means to mark, which makes sense, and that that word started to appear in English writing right around the time that old James Cook was exploring the South Pacific, so about seventeen sixty nine. Now, tattoos are all done in essentially the same way, which involves piercing the skin and inserting some mak. But the tattoo machine is a

little more recent. That comes to us from the late eighteen hundreds, so late nineteenth century, and that was a improvement by one Samuel O'Reilly on a machine patented by Thomas Edison. Yes, Thomas Essen's machine was not meant to tattoo. It was meant to engrave metal, and it was meant to create stencils, and it was called an electric pen, also known as the autographic printer, and that was something that was invented right around eight or so. But what

O'Reilly said was, you know, I'm a tattoo artist. He actually had been a tattoo artist in New York. He was an Irish immigrant came to New York sometime in the eighteen seventies, set up shop, saw the electric pin by Thomas Edison. And it's interesting because that device that Thomas Essen made never really became popular for what it was designed to do. There were other technologies that came along shortly thereafter that made it more or less obsolete. Right,

And also you know, for for for hand engraving. Yeah, it's a lot um more efficient to in machine engrave than it is to handingring. Right. So o'reiley takes a look at this and says, wait a minute, though, this thing that maybe isn't so great for what it was meant to do might do something else if I just

make a few modifications. Yeah, if I just changed the tube system to to accommodate inc and um uh, modified the oscillating unit to drive a needle rather than a Yeah, I suppose it was a needle to begin with, right, right, but there's a different style needle like the needles that was in the electric pin. You would not want to touch your skin because it was enormous. It was huge and a little bit scary. It was, yes, certainly, and it's funny if you want to actually take a look

at the patent. The patent was issued on December eight. Because it's on the patent application, you can actually look up patents for free online. Google has a very good patent searching. This one comes right up if you do a patent searching Google. Uh. It's patent number four six for eight oh one and the name of it is tattooing machine. Both yes, both both that and Edison's machine. Um. The patents for them still exist. In The illustrations are

very fancy and pretty. Yes, and I've seen some really slap dash patent tellstration my day, but these are top notch. There's some there's some ones for some particularly high tech gadgets that when you look at them, you think it was someone drunk when they drew this, And it just shows that, you know, engineers and artists don't always combine

into one person right at anything rate. So you look at this pattern, it's very interesting it It does have that ink reservoir and it's got the ability to channel inc down to this needle. The needle, by the way, is solid. It's not like a hollow needle or anything, right. I think the idea is that the needle is contained within a small chamber that holds the ink, and then when the needle pushes down out through that chamber, it takes takes a drop off then right, and it pierces

the skin and deposits the ink underneath. Specifically in the dermist, because you're going underneath the epidermis, which which sheds and cycles so frequently that if you put it in the epidermis, it would stick around for not very long at all, certainly not a lifetime like if you have if you have ever had either, you know, well, temporary tattoo will

just wash off eventually. But if you were to get like a henna tattoo, something that stains the skin, then you know that eventually that skin, no matter how careful you are, that design is gonna go away because you will shed that skin. You know that skin will end up flaking off of you. It becomes dust. Actually, that's what a lot of the dust in our world is. It's skin scale. Yeah, I mean a lot of the dust that you encounter on a day to day basis.

That's pretty much from your body, happy thought anyway. So, yeah, the tattoo is permanent because it is actually staining the dermists, as you said, not the epidermists. So we were actually looking at a tattoo through the epidermists. Think of the epidermist is kind of like a window, and the dermist is where you're actually seeing the design imprinted and your typical tattoo needle according to our article on how stuff works dot com, there's you know how tattoos work? We

actually have this article. Uh, the needle can move between fifty and three thousand times per minute. Now that's actually the same frequency as the electric pen that Thomas Edison created. So I suspect that most needles probably move significantly faster than fifty times per minute, because that would be um, well, you'd have essentially one us once a second, So think about that one one to one THO you'd be like, oh, oh stop it. I I suppose, depending upon the type

of work being done. Yes, I am not a tattooed professional. That would be a really interesting question to ask a tattooed professional. Outlining versus shading is very different. I can save you from experience both on the performance end. Not I can't say that from experience, but from the recipient. And I sure as heck can tell you there's a world of difference in the pain levels that you experience

from outlining versus shading. Um. Now, it's also interesting you know your your experience of pain will depend upon several things, like your own threshold of pain. Obviously, mind's a pretty high. But it also depends on where you get the tattoo. Now, there's certain surfaces where you know it's nice and fleshy and you're not gonna you might feel like kind of a buzzing sensation and maybe some tingling, but it's not

terribly painful. And then there are other areas where it feels like someone's really pinching you pretty hard, or may be getting like a bit of a bee sting. I've heard that anything close to it close to the bond. I've got one on my left shoulder blade, and anytime it got to the point where it was close to the actual bone was significantly more painful than the rest of the tattoo. And I've also got one on my left arm, and anything on the inside of the arm

was more painful than the outside. But yeah, so you've got with your basic tattoo gun, your tattoo machine. You've got the the unit that the tattoo artist holds in his or her hand, which has a tube that houses the needle. It's got the ink uh the ink chamber or a little ink thing will will actually screw into it, and then there's usually a foot pedal control that controls the depth of the needle so that the tattoo artists can be very precise when actually putting the tattoo onto

your skin. It'll be more or less a millimeter, depending on you know, and where it is. Yeah, but about a millimeters is that's that's a pretty good estimation. And it's the machine itself is is brilliantly simple. It's based on or. It's kind of similar to what a sewing machine is. If that metaphor doesn't totally skip you up completely, I'm actually perfectly fine with that. Yeah, but I guess it's because I've had a couple of tattoos and needles

don't typically bother me. But I do understand there are people who have real psychological issues with anything that has to do with needles with needles. Totally understand that. But

but so so the gun. The gun contains a circuit that runs through an electromagnet, and that circuit is opened and closed via the vibrations of a spring loaded a read or uh panel um and and those vibrations are controlled by a weight like a pendulum that's placed along that that flaunched interesting um and now the vibrations are caused by cycling power through the electromagnet, so they have the fluctuating electric magnetic field and that going to start

causing some vibration, and the read is connected at the top um uh to to the to the base of the needle, and therefore the vibrations of it pushed the needle up and down. And it makes it very very simple to use. Very I mean, the the cycle is is self perpetuating until you cut off the electricity supply entirely and you have a simple reciprocating motion that yeah, it's it is so really the the complexity here comes in the actual execution of making a tattoo, and that's

where the artistry and skill really comes in. Because operating the machinery is pretty simple. It's the handling it properly and making sure you're doing not only a wonderful artistic job, but that you're doing it safely right, and the safety issue is one of those One of the things that I do know very very well about tattoo parlors is that if it does not smell like a hospital, like a really good clean hospital, gone get out. Yeah, because yeah, so so for any of you guys out there who

are considering tattoos. Uh, you know, make sure you do your research check and it makes certain that all the different whatever tattoo parlor you're looking at, is on the up and up, that they follow very strict uh sterilization processes, that they are very careful to have one use items and then they discard them and they don't ever use

them again. Some some parts of the tattoo machine are reusable, and that's perfectly fine, and we'll talk about those which even those you make sure they have, like an autoclave clave they are they are sterilizing their equipment because you want to heat things to either two or two hundred and seventy degrees depending on the pressure and the time

length that you're using. Yeah, and we'll talk a little bit about the autoclave specifically in just a second to kind of explain what that is for those of you who don't know. But the whole purpose here is to kill off any kind of bacteria or other organism that could cause infection or disease. And because like we said, you're what a tattoo is is a you know, a whole bunch of little punctures in your skin. Punctures can get infected it's it's an open wound. Yeah, yeah, any

kind of heels up right. But yeah, any kind of wound has the potential to get infected. So it's very important that you find a place that is reputable and clean. Hey guys, it's Jonathan from twenty twenty. While you're getting inked and pierced and everything, we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back. So the basic parts of this tattoo that you've got, the sterilized needle and those

are one use. That's that should just every time you go to a tattoo parlor, if you're getting a tattoo, the needles they have should be one use needles and sterilized packets that they should open right in front in front of you, right before they start their work. Right. Those packets should remain sealed until they're ready to do work. So they open it up and they put in the needle into the machine which has already been cleaned in

the autoclave. And I'll get to that in a second. Uh. Other things that need to be single use include ink, ink, cups, gloves, All of this kind of stuff needs to be one use in sterile packaging to minimize the risk of any kind of contamination. So make sure. And it's perfectly fine to ask questions any reputable tattoo artists because it shows that you have done your research and that you're serious

about it. And again, if they're reputable, they'll have no problem answering your questions being able to show you what what is they do to stay? I think if you a grief about it, get out of here and don't don't go there, go somewhere else. Um. So UH. The autoclave is actually think of it as like a machine

that generates lots of heat, pressure, and steam. Those are essentially the three components there, and it's often used in Autoclaves are used in medical facilities to clean medical uh equipment. So you the way it works as you would put stuff in a little pouch, each one with each piece of the equipment would get its own little pouch. UH. This equipment would be things like the needle bar and the tube of the machine. So these would be the bits that would be used again and again they go

into their little pounches. Each pouch has a little indicator strip on the outside for when everything is has been heated to the correct temperature. That indicates yeah, exactly. It says essentially that that sticker changes color and it tells you what's not sticker. But the indicator changes color and it tells you everything in here is dead you and so. Uh but yeah, like you said, it can heat depending

upon the settings. The general rule of thumb is two or fifty degrees fahrenheight or a hundred twenty one degrees celsius for ten pounds of pressure for thirty minutes, or to seventy degrees fahrenheit or one two celsius at fifteen pounds of pressure for fifteen minutes. Uh. That is the standard upberating procedure. The tattoo parlors should be following one of those two with its autoclave. And uh, there you go. That is your standard approach to sterilize the reu do

bowl equipment. So remember ask those questions, make sure you know, you do your research, and uh and if everything's on the up and up, then enjoy your painful experience. It's really not that bad, depending up on where you get it, and how big the tattoo is, and and and your personal tolerance and the skill of the of the artists. I had an incredible tattoo artists who did both. The same guy did both my tattoos, and uh, and he was just he was not only really skilled at creating

beautiful designs, he also really minimized all the discomfort. I mean there was some, especially around the shoulder blade area, but it was it was nothing too intense. Like, it was nothing more intense than you know, a minor beasting. So assuming you're not allergic to bees and you've experienced a beasting and it wasn't a big deal, that's pretty

much the worst it got for me personally. Right, I happened to be allergic to be for you compared compared to a beasting, and you'd say I would die, That's not what I mean. Other fun questions to ask your tattoo artists are what kind of inks they use? Um, Just as an interesting note, sometimes inks contain metallic pigments, and um, if you ever have to go in for an m R I after getting a tattoo with the metallic pigment, it's not gonna fly out of your body

magneto style or anything like that. Yeah, and uh, it's also good just to make sure that you know if

you have any known allergies. That's obviously something else you need to discuss because there's a possibility that either the ink itself could contain something that you are allergic to, which could be a problem, or that some of the other materials, like they're supposed to the whole process before they tattoo you, they have to uh clean and shape, right, So any anything like that, you just want to make sure that you're not going to come into contact some

with something that's going to give you a bad reaction. Yes, And I had one other kind of cool thing. Well, first of all, if you're feeling in a goofy mood, we do have a we do have a fake article and how stuff Works about tattoos, uh, one of our few so we we haven't done it every year, but occasionally how stupp Works has made an April Fool's article on how stuff works, and we have one about how animated tattoos work, which is all about electronic tattoos that

are it's like electronic devices, right right. The story goes that, And there's an actual patent for a subdermal l c D screen out there that exists in the real world that has never nothing ever really came of it, I think, but but but but yeah, the article talks about a little subdermal l c D that's connected to a little magnetic battery and a small controller, and so that you would be able to have a tattoo that would actually be like showing video and stuff, or have an animation

on it that we could run in a loop. Now, there are obviously some some barriers to that, the big one being that the body tends to not like stuff introduced to it. And we're going to talk more about that when we get into the second half, and we start talking about some interesting implants that there are dangers of a body rejecting certain materials, and you can't really predict which ones it's going to reject, which ones it's not.

There's some that have a lower percentage of rejection, and even people's immune systems work differently, right, So it's kind of a tass and it can change depending upon your activity level too. I mean, if you get a if you get an implant in an area that gets a lot of like a lot of agitation, then that can increase the odds of a rejection that kind of thing. But we'll get into that in the second half. However,

there is a different kind of animated tattoo. It's not really The tattoo itself is not animated, so it's a misnomer really, But there was a guy who goes by the handle the tattoo handle of Carl K A R L. Each of those letters is capitalized with a period after it. Sure like you. But Carl in Paris, uh American as far as I can tell, or maybe maybe Canadian North American. At any rate, he's a tattoo artist working in Paris, created what he calls the first animated tattoo, and I

even have a date for you June sixteen eleven. The first animated tattoo not really an animated tattoo. It's a tattoo that has what was it like a flipbook? Yeah, he actually got forty guys and tattooed to stick figure on each of them doing something slightly different than how to run in a circle. And then no, it's not that would also be awesome. I don't know where you could be able to convince forty guys to do that. I am sure that you could, though I've seen a

lot of crazy tattoos out there. Know what it was was a QR code. So you had a guy have a tattoo with a QR code incorporated in it. Now QR codes for those of you who don't remember, haven't seen one in a while. Um, they were big for a little bit, but then they kind of like they kind of fell out of favor. That don't see it was a marketing gimmick. I mean, I feel like it

was overpromoted as the problem. It was a fine technology, but but the way that that WiFi wound up happening, I don't think that it was as necessary as people thought that it was going. And there's a lot a lot more work and image recognition like things that like, there's a there's a lot more work now where software can recognize things without there having to be some sort of established pattern. Rare, but essentially it's it is kind

of like the next generation of the bar code. It was those those blocky pictures you've ever if you've ever seen them, they're they're a square that have a little black except it's all block it's all hard edges but pixelated R shack test. Yeah, there you go exactly. And so this was incorporated in the tattoo and in fact, they didn't know if it was gonna work while they're this guy is getting tattooed and they have no idea if it's going to work or not because they don't know.

You know, it takes precision again, because the digital camera sensor has to take a image of this and then the software has to analyze it and interpret that as uh information in some way. And if the tattoo artist had made a block a little too big or a little too small, it wouldn't it wouldn't when it wouldn't coordinate with that information, right. So in this case, what the QR code did was it prompted the smartphone to then go to YouTube and pull up a video of

an animated version of the tattoo design singing opera. Yeah, it's a little bit a round headed guy with like a little top hat and a big handlebar mustache singing opera in the middle of this tattoo. And then that's that's what the tattoo was. I mean, I mean, I've seen some some esthetic barcodes on people that you know, I hit Man style, like basically skull hit Man or

you know. I I think there's a probably a lot of science fiction that I'm forgetting that includes some something like this, but there's probably like some sort of twelve Monkeys type thing. Yeah, there's totally an episode of reboot. But uh yeah, yeah that show I don't watch, right, yeah, Jonathan twenty again, we're gonna take a quick break, but

we'll return in just a moment. Well, that that's like the big tattoo thing, right, We wanted to cover that pretty extensively because that's one of those that has the really cool toy, if you want to put it that way, the piece of technology. But there are other things we can talk about. Obviously. The other basic one we've already mentioned piercing, So whether it's your ear or some other part of your body, piercing. Now, of course that involves

creating a whole which jewelry will then pass through. So piercing usually means that you're seeing the ends of a piece of jewelry, right, whether it's like a barbell or if it's a stud or a hoop or whatever, you're seeing the exterior part. That's that's the part that's on display. Yes, there there's another form of piercing. Um, what's it called pocketing? Oh yeah, pocketing, which we'll talk about in a little bit.

But pocketings. Pocketing is kind of They call it anti piercing, And the reason why they call it anti piercing is that pocketing involves creating pockets of skin. This is where I started getting a little creepy crawley. Uh. Like I said, my my tolerance level is probably fairly normal when it comes to body modification, normal in the sense of what

the society norms are. I don't judge anyone who's on through and gotten body modification because whatever you want to do to to assert your identity, as long as you're not hurting anyone else, I'm totally for it. It's just that if I look at it and I go, oh,

that that looks like that must be uncomfortable. But pocketing, essentially, what that means is you create these pockets in the skin surgically, you actually cut open and create surgical pockets, which I'm guessing at some point you need to be lined with something to keep it from being just an open wound. But the jewelry is inserted. The ends of

the jewelry are inserted in either pockets. So think of two pockets that are facing one another, and then the jewelry the end of it fits in one and the other end fits in the other, and so the the middle of the jewelry is exposed as opposed to the ends. The ends of the jewelry are inside the pockets, so

they are out of you. And this can be done in lots of ways, Like if you make really deep pockets, you can make this kind of super cool but very creepy effect of the skin being pulled apart because you're seeing these like ribs of metal. I saw it in one guy's arm where he had done the inside of his forearm, where he uh, these deep pockets. So you know, maybe the last I don't know, a quarter inch or so of the jewelry was under the skin and the

rest was exposed. In the middle part was exposed. Now piercing, of course, that that's where you just have the whole that the metal or whatever the jewelry fits through and the ends are on display. And that's again and not at all a new thing. I know that records of nostril piercing go back as far as four thousand years in the Middle East, and that both ear and nostril piercing are mentioned in the Bible. Yeah, these are ancient

forms of of expression identity, sometimes religion. Sometimes it's religious, sometimes it's a tribal identification. I mean this is something, you know, the way of adorning ourselves. I mean that that's something that goes back to prehistoric times. So now obviously with piercing you have several of the same concerns

that you do with tattooing. You're talking about creating essentially creating a wound in yourself, and so you want all the equipment and the person delivering the equipment unto you to be um as sterile as possible, A tots sterile. Yeah, so, uh, like I know there are a lot of uh piercing like key or there used to be. I don't know

if there still are. But when I remember when I was growing up, there are a lot of the little places in the mall like piercing Goda look at the Claire's or whatever, like a little kiosk and they would have the little piercing gun and stuff. Totally not not a good idea, because that's that's a recipe for disaster.

If you don't know how they are sterilizing their equipment. Again, if if if you know, if anything that's coming into contact with you um, if they have an auto clave in the back and anything that's coming into contact with you has is just being opened in front of your face, that's that's that's a pretty good sign. Pretty good sign.

But I would always, I mean, like every person I've ever talked to who is in to any level of body modification, whether it's someone who just enjoys piercings or someone who enjoys some of the things that again that I would I would think of as more extreme. They all say, go to a to a professional parlor, piercing parlor, a place where that's what they do. And in fact, there's one near my home, which is where I would go and go on if I go and do it,

But I I did. I did get my ears pierced when I was like twelve or something like that at like a Claire's. I'm all but and and I have never they've never been infected. It's always been fine. Sure, no, it's and it's not like, yeah, we don't want to say that if you if you have had this done, that you're living on borrowed tom which just mean that the the you know, if you're considering this kind of stuff, these are the places that are going to be traditionally yes,

the most safe. So again again, same thing. You ask questions when you get there. You ask them how they how they handle their equipment, Which pieces of our equipment are reusable versus one use only? How do they take care of things after it's all done? You know? And it's good to ask questions. It's whenever your safety and health are concerned. Ask questions. Hey there, guys, hope you enjoyed that classic episode of tech Stuff. If you have suggestions or future topics I should cover on the show,

please reach out on Twitter or Facebook. The handle at both of those is text stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.