Who invented the radio?

today about who invented the radio? And you would think that this would have a very easy answer and that we could give it and then you could be on your Mary Little way. Not so fast. Yes, As a matter of fact, I was. I was reading a book not too long ago that made me think about topics

like this. But and Jonathan and I've talked about this with regard to TV, because there were two people who were working on how to create an electrical television like rather than than a mechanical because mechanical TVs have been around for a while, but no one had come up with uh, an easily manufactured electric version. Right. But in that case, we were really talking about primarily two people, and we're sort of talking about two people here, give

or take another twelve or fifteen. Right, Yeah, there's two people that ultimately the question tends to boil down to. But that's even that is too simplistic a a look at radio. So to really get a get a handle on how complex this topic is, you actually have to go back more than five decades before radio came into being,

that's true. And and again, like a lot of scientific discovery, each new iteration is an improvement on another technology or uses a technology that has recently been discovered in a new way. So we're really this is another one of those standing on the shoulders of giants situation, very very apt. Yeah, this this is all taking place, well, the earliest parts are taking place in the early nineteenth century, but most of it's taking place within a two decade period at

the end of the nineteenth century. Some of it's spilling over into the early twentieth century. And you're talking about an era in which you have an enormous intellectual revolution. Right, You've got people who are wicked smart. Right, these are guys and gals as well. I mean, we're in an age where there were science was reigning supreme Science scientists were the rock stars of this era. They really kind of were. Yeah, I mean, you had scientists who could

command the attention of thousands at at a speech. It was really hard to imagine now because you know, you don't really think of like the guy from the LHC getting up and people doing the wave. But back then, the guys were the people who were shaping the earth. So it's really a fascinating time, and there were so many developments and so many people were working on this

sort of technology at the same time. There's no surprise that there's controversy because you've got a lot of people all trying to figure out how to have a useful application of a newly discovered law or or or feature of the universe. Right, So clearly you're gonna have some overlap.

So let's start from before we're even talking about radio, all right, So we're gonna talk about in eighteen thirty seven, there's a guy named Samuel Morse, and Samuel Morris, of course, is famous for inventing the telegraph as well as Morse Code, which was the series of bleeps and buzzes that that would allow you to transmit information to communicate over wires over a long distance. Right. That the telegraph really changed

the way the world communicated um significantly. Right. It's one of those those technologies that we like to say makes the world smaller, because it significantly reduced the amount of time that that news traveled the world. We heard about things far more quickly than we used to in the past. People were able to communicate with one another across great distances, of which you had to have a cable in order to make that happen. Yeah, and that was the that

was the big barrier, right. I mean, the cable was definitely a lot more efficient than say the pony express or carrying a message across the ocean on a on a ship, but you still had to have a cable. You had to have a physical connection between two stations in order to transmit information, and unfortunately that would mean that certain remote areas could not easily get a station. Uh. It also meant that you had a physical object that

could withstand only so much punishment before it failed. So you had a cable that could be broken or there could be some sort of interference there. That that meant that it was While it was a huge leap in communication from what came previously. There had to be a

better way. Once it became apparent to companies that the telegraph could make them lots and lots of money, people wanted to find better ways to use the telegraph and better telegraph technology, right because you gotta remember that first telegraph wire, all it could do is transmit these these sounds like you couldn't there was no way to convert human voice into uh electricity and transmitted across a wire.

Yet no one had figured that part out back in seven And also you could only transmit information one way at a time. You couldn't have two way communications simultaneously. That and and that's one of the things that a lot of inventors were out to to do in the

in the nineteenth century. They were earnestly looking for ways to improve to to make uh, make it possible to send telegraph messages in two ways, to improve the quality of the technology, um without necessarily just laying a pair of cables and having one b one way and the other being the other way. And you can do that,

but you've just doubled your costs exactly. The creating the infrastructure for this system is is costly, as we all know for talking about things like, uh, you know, replacing twisted wire telephone lines with fiber optics, or even replacing two G cellular technology with three G or four G technology. That's right, even then, you're talking about major changes to infrastructure. It's not as simple as oh, well, we just need to throw in a software patch and everything will be cool.

It's not as simple as that. And some of you may remember um us talking in the past about the Internet cables that run across the ocean. Every once in a while, something will clip one of them and will knock out communication temporarily as traffic gets rerouted through the other lines. But you know, it's having those giant wires um running across the ocean is sort of impractical. It's

not only costly, it's it's impractical. So I mean, it works, but you know, you have to worry about maintenance and and the possibility that something will cut one of the cables or that it will just age and snap. So um. So people were looking into this, but investors were willing to back that because they saw the possibility that they might make lots and lots of money if they're uh,

if the inventors were able to capitalize on that. But some of them inadvertently started discovering other technologies and a lot of those advancements came out. It turned out to be laying the groundwork for radio. Yeah, And some of some scientists were working independently of the whole communications UH aspect entirely, and they were just interested in learning more

about the way our universe works. One of those guys was a mathematician named James Clerk Maxwell, and thirty thirty years after the invent invention of the telegraph, so in eighteen sixty seven, he started to think about light in a way that no one else had thought of up to that point. And he was thinking of light as an electro magnetic phenomenon. Okay, so he's looking at light and electric waves and magnetic waves, and he he thinks

these things are connected. These are not discrete UH phenomena. These are all somehow part of a spectrum of phenomena. So this was revolutionary. Now, unfortunately Maxwell was unable to prove his theory during his lifetime. Now we know today that this is true, that that the light that we see that's part of the electromagnetic spectrum. We only can we can only perceive a very narrow band of that

electromagnetic spectrum with our eyes. Now, other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum can affect us sometimes in really nasty ways, but but we can only see a pretty narrow band of it. So Maxwell was really ahead of his time, and his his theories were part of what laid the scientific groundwork for radio. So you had the technological groundwork and you had the scientific groundwork, and these things are converging at a really rapid rate. And we see that

come to a head in the eighties. Really. Yeah. Um, somebody you might have heard of, um, Heinrich Hurts. Um. He was the first person to measure act to actually measure the speed of radio waves. Um. And he basically he at the time he was a professor at a German high school. Um. And what he was doing he used a couple of parabolic mirrors and a spark gap. Um. You may have seen spark gap in those old timey

monster movies. The two pieces of metal that are are sort of together at one end and they diverge slightly and there the spark travels up from the short distance the long distance and it looks kind of spooky. Yeah, it's it's it's a it's stock for your average crazy scientists laboratory. So so they have three doesn't surprise me, so don't put your hand in there. So uh so Mr Hurts basically proved what, uh, what Maxwell was suggesting.

He was able to transmit a spark um from one antenna with a spark gap in a ring um to another. And uh, basically this was kind of fascinating because at the time there was nothing, I mean, there was no obvious connection. So you would look at it and go, wait a minute, that spark has traveled. Right. You had you had one thing generating a spark right, and then you had an antenna on the other side of the

room that could pick up uh. You know, you got a difference in voltage there, and the there was no visible means of transmission. How did the energy from this one thing on one side of the room transmit to the other side, right? They Not only did he show that that Maxwell's right, uh, and he was able to measure the speed um of the of the waves and and show that the waves traveled in straight lines and they could be reflected and and the reflection is important

because we use the Earth's atmosphere to reflect radio signals. Now, um, but you know at the time this was absolutely groundbreak exactly. And he discovered that that speed that Chris was talking about, in case you're curious, was a hundred eighty six thousands, uh, hundred six thousand miles per second. If that sounds familiar to you, it may be because that is the speed

of light. And that's kind of where we're talking about how Hurts helped prove Maxwell's theories because here was this other form of energy that was not visible light, but it traveled at the same speed as visible light travel. So that suggests that the two are in some way related. That that's true. Um. The thing is, though we're not talking long distance with these translations. We're talking about within a room. But people began to experiment with this, one

of whom was Oliver Lodge, a British scientist. UM. He was able to get reception at about seventy yards with his most sensitive equipment. UM. Others were able to get them get radio waves a little farther, a little shorter. Uh. Some people were absolutely stunned that radio waves could travel through buildings. Just was another one of those things that we sort of take for granted today because we're used to it. But uh, you couldn't see it. So it

was sort of, uh, sort of weird. And this was counterintuitive to that whole electromagnetic theory, right because light we know, if you have an opaque structure that's gonna block light, you don't see light shining through the walls. If you did, you'd go crazy. Uh you never sleep. Well, it depends on how poorous the walls are. I guess it does you know. I've lived in some places let me tell you anyway, But in a solid opaque structure, it's gonna

block light. So the theory would be, well, if if light and this other form of electro mantic magnetic energy are are related, then clearly this opaque thing is gonna block that too. Not so much. Nope, And it was very confusing early on. It's true, Um, and I was trying to figure out who who we should talk about? Well, there there are a lot of There are a lot

of players in here. There's there's pop Off, who he had laboratory demonstrations of radio that he that he did back in so large his work was in right, So just a year later you've got pop Off doing experiments and in the in the lab and in eight and he's also um working with various uh methods to transmit radio waves. And you have to again, you've gotta have a transmitter and a receiver, and those are your basic elements of a radio, and early radios were either one

or the other. It was a while before people could develop a radio that could both transmit and receive, like to allow for two way communication. He has a transceiver. Those early experiments were really just figuring out the whole the mode of transmission and reception. And in fact, earliest radio signals were not tuned to a specific frequency like they are to day, like today you tune into a radio station, those earliest ones were kind of more like

a shotgun approach. Uh. You know that you would get a range of frequencies. So uh, there wasn't a big problem early early on because you had so few people working on this. There wasn't a lot of contamination and interference. But if we were to be using those same methods today, you wouldn't be able to tune into more than a couple of stations because they'd be taking up a really broad range of the spectrum. So the earlies days of radio. It was free for all. You could broadcast on whatever

part of the freak the spectrum you wanted. Because there were so few people out there, there was nothing to compete with. Okay, so um, yeah, and it's uh they're One of the people that that I read about, sort of as a red herring, was a guy named William Crooks who uh some say some believe for a while that he may have had a hand in creating uh wireless telegraphy basically using radio as a telegraph um because in February he published an article in the Fortnightly Review.

And in that article he used the word telegraphy. He said, sentony. That's a fancy word, and I would say probably an obsolete word for the ability to tune. He said, yeah, definitely, because I haven't heard it before I started doing any research on this. Senteny. Oh that's kind of cool word. But yeah, he said, oh, yes, there will be uh you'll be able to use this wireless telegraph and you'll be able to tune it to a specific frequency and

get uh get messages. But the problem was he um, he had a lot of uh scientifically incorrect information in that article. Now, some people said, oh, well, look, he's inspired a lot of people to do this, but there aren't a lot of people who credit him with inspiring them to work on radio technology. And most of most it seems like the article sort of came to years later after radio was becoming a thing. Um. Some actually suggested that maybe he was trying to take credit for

it after the fact, So he was Rhett Conning. But it seems like I would guess that there are people, there are people who are like like crooks, crooks who had an idea that's the kind of an ironic name. Um, who at least had a grip to some degree on what you could do with the technology. They had a piece of it, but not the whole picture. Yeah. Another guy who appeared to have the whole picture, but was a little too reluctant to share his technology. This guy,

this guy could have been the inventor of radio. People give him credit for there, this guy because he was able to demonstrate radio very early on. Comparatively speaking, So in eight two you have an inventor by the name of Nathan Nathan stubble Field right from Murray, Kentucky. He was a farmer and inventor so clearly, if you're farming, you're gonna think I want to invent me a radio. I am, I am amazed. I mean to me, it's just it's really it shows that ingenuity is is a

phenomenal thing and it it can strike anywhere. Right. So you have stubble Field, who was legitimately a really smart and clever guy. Uh. And so in eighteen ninety two he publicly demonstrates a wireless communication system and not only does it broadcast radio signals, he could actually broadcast voice and music. Now, keep in mind, the earliest radio public demonstrations were all tones. It wasn't It wasn't like you could do a symphony over the radio. It was you

could you could transmit Morse code over the radio. So here you have stubble Field in eighteen ninety two demonstrating this, and uh he was able to do it again in eight which this one was actually document eight two is is undocumented, so you know it could be up for debate. But the St. Louis Dispatch documented and demonstration he did where he transmitted radio waves at a distance of around five hundred yards. Uh. This this was a big problem

with a lot of the early radio broadcasters. They didn't have a lot of range to their broadcasts. Right, five yards is not that far right, So you you'd have your DJ coming on and say, I have a short distance dedicated this guy over here dedicates it to that gal over there. You could see each other. Why don't your wave? Um so the but he he demonstrates it, and he could have potentially been the father of the radio. But here's the problem. Stubble Field, it was a little paranoid.

He was worried that people were going to steal his invention, so worried that he would hide it away in a shack and lock it up. And then he out an offer to sell his invention, and uh it was five hundred thousand dollars for his invention. Um this was around uh oh, in the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds. Five thousand dollars. That's a lot of clams. It's a lot of clams today. And it was even more clams. It was like an entire beta clams back back then.

And so stubble Field turned it down. And what's interesting to me is we actually see this mirrored in the way some companies behave today. I was talking to Chris about this earlier. There's another company that recently was offered about six billion dollars to be an acquisition of of another larger company, um but they turned it down. This company turned down that six billion dollar offer and valued

itself at twenty five billion dollars. But as a result of waiting around too long, one could argue the value of the company has dropped significantly since then. And Chris, what's the name of that company? Group On? Group On? So here Groupon took the internet by storm. Everyone was really impressed by group On. Everyone thought that this was

really where where things were moving. Well, that's kind of the problem because things were moving in that direction, but there was no way to protect groupons business model, and so lots of other companies sprang up that uh mimic groupons business models, some of which you might even argue improve on Groupon's business model. Well, because Groupon was kind of holding back. Now its position is a little more tenuous because you have all these competitors that could steal

the limelight away from group On. The same thing happened more than a hundred years ago, was stubble Field. This is a story that goes back decades and decades you know, you think we'd learn our lesson by now. You know, you strike while the iron is hot. People. So stubble Field, because he sat on his invention and because he did not act upon it. Uh, he was scooped by other inventors.

And there's a pair of people who we need to talk about, one of whom was ultimately scooped by the other one, and the other one used the technology of the first. Isn't that fun? Yeah? Um? Yeah? And and as a as a tragic uh conclusion to stubble field story, he died a pauper of starvation. Wow. So he turned the money down. And I guess his farm didn't survive either, apparently because I mean starvation and a farmer. Wow. But it was Kentucky, so maybe he was just growing you know,

bourbon girls on trees. Right. I don't know. I don't drink, so I have no knowledge of that. So we move on and talk about those two fellows. So here are the two people that most discussions about who invented the radio. Ultimately it boils down to these two guys, even though we've, as we've argued, there are a lot of other people you have to consider in this equation, and that is Nicola Tesla. And I'm just gonna say g Marconi because I can't stay pronounce his first name. It's Italian, and

I am not. So Marconi is often given the credit for inventing the radio. In fact, he has the official credit, at least by the in the eyes of the United States government, for inventing the radio. Other other people give credit to other people. But you know that that's the way it goes with these things. Um So Marconi was legitimately working on radio. It's not like Marconi was just some guy who swept in and stole everything. He was actually working hard on trying to find a way to

make long distance radio transmission a reality. He was having some trouble though. A lot of his UH his transmissions were going to a maximum distance of about one point five kilometers, and that's just not far enough for for real broadcast power. So, in fact, I think I read somewhere where one one UH critic said that his his broadcast wouldn't reach across a pond, which makes me wonder if that's where we got that. You know, when you

go across the pond, But I honestly don't know. I don't know, but it does make me wonder if that's where we got that phrase, because ultimately Marconi was able to send a signal from Europe to America. Yeah, that's a that would be a question for a way with words. Yeah, yeah, is this is a phrase across the pond date back to Marconi's invention or you know, credited invention of the radio.

But Marconi used a lot of technology developed by someone else, developed by Nicola Tesla, so much so that Nicola Tesla probably not entirely jokingly said that Marconi was using he wished Marconi, well, the man's using seventeen of my patents. Well, and that may be true. True, I didn't, I didn't look into it that far. But the thing, and that

was the case for a lot of things UM. In the in the creation of alternating current Westinghouse UM, George Westinghouse was using a lot of Tesla's patents to UM and then using the technology that Tesla patented. Assuming you know that that Tesla is getting credit for it, then Tesla would earn some you know, with a license properly licensed patent, the Tesla should be earning some residuals on

Marconi's invention. Yeah, here's the problem, Marconi. There's a problem Marconi didn't admit readily that he was using any of Tesla's stuff. Like, what what Tesla had been to do is he was able through the actually really Tesla coils is what we're getting down to, he was able to invent away of of creating really powerful bursts of energy of electricity. Right, you remember the the hurts and using the transmitting the electrical energy from one place to another. Right,

So the Tesla coil is far more powerful. Yeah, it's it's a it's a refined, powerful invention that's based upon that principle. And through using this as part of a radio transmission system, Marconi was able to transmit signals much

further than he could on his old system. But uh, according to some of the reports I've read, and there's a lot of I mean, there are Testlas supporters out there who who rape Marconi over the coals, and then there are other people who either dismissed Tesla's involvement or they downplay it. Um, there's some people who are true Marconi supporters. The whole thing is really muddy, right, But from what I gather, Marconi tried to argue he patented the radio in the UK, Tesla did it in the

United States. Now, Marconi argued that you know, hey, I was able to make this thing work and no one else was, so I I deserved the patent for this this technology um and even argued so far as to say, hey, what Tesla coil and which case A judge was saying, Oh, come on, that's a that's a common word here, because, like we said, these guys were rock stars. It's not like this stuff was obscure. This stuff was front page news.

So people knew these terms. They didn't necessarily understand them all, but they knew what they knew of them, and so for someone to feign ignorance seemed disingenuous at best. So Marconi is arguing that he should be the one, uh that people back, and Tesla isn't arguing as much because Tesla didn't feel that he needed to argue. He felt he was in the right. He didn't why should I come forward and and fight tooth and nail with this guy when it's so obvious that I'm the person that

credit should go to. That was kind of Testla's viewpoint, as far as we can tell. You gotta also remember Tesla became increasingly mentally unstable towards the end of his life. He became more and more paranoid, possibly with good reason, because of the way he had been treated in his past um and so it's hard to kind of definitively say what the man was thinking. Also, he had had this rivalry with Edison, right that dated back, Yes, it dated back to the World's Fair where it was between

Edison and Tesla. Who's going whose system is going to power the World's Fair in Chicago. Is it gonna be Edison's direct current power or is it gonna be Testla's alternating current? Ultimately it went to Tesla. Edison not a man who drops a grudge easily, as it turns out. And so Edison's looking around and he's saying, you know, this is gonna be a big thing. This is gonna make bookoos of cash. I gotta get in on this.

Andrew Carnegie, great philanthropist, industrialist. He also says, this is where it's at, this is the next huge development in technology.

I'm getting in on this. They look around. You've got Tesla, who is brilliant but is also self destructive, not necessarily intentionally, but his behavior and his obsession with transmitting power over a long distance broadcasting power building essentially what it would amount to an enormous Tesla coil and cloaking the earth and electricity sounds a little like a mad scientist, not necessarily the guy you're gonna go and dump keeps a cash on top of So then they look at Marconi.

Marconi who has proven that his technology works. His technology, which admittedly rests on the shoulders of others like Tesla. He Marconi even demonstrates that he can send a signal transatlantically across the entire ocean. He transmits the letter S in Morse code, and that proves that his system works. With a proven system, with a man who does not appear to be unhinged. That's the guy that everyone gives

their money to. So Marconi starts to get the political and the financial support, and Marconi ends up coming over to America and even wins a patent for a radio, the patent that was previously not the same one, but the patent that had been Tesla's became overturned in court.

And this is where the huge controversy is. People say that essentially that Edison Carnegie and even Marconi, who came from a family that was really well connected and really wealthy in Europe, that they used their political and financial clout to force the Patent Office, essentially the court system of the United States, to overturn Tesla's patents so that Marconi could be the the true patent holder for the

inventor of radio. Meanwhile, Tesla's screaming to the heavens and shaking his tiny fists in vain and also watching his lab burned down for the fourth or fifth time that happened. Tesla had a run of incredibly bad luck. We did do an episode on Tesla. I recommend you listen to that if you really want to hear the story of his life. Yeah, the loss of Warden Cliff, Oh yeah, that that was I think probably would have affected his

ability to defend his So. Yeah, radio. So now you've got so if you're asking officially who invented the radio, well, if you're going by the documents in the United States government, it's Marconi, right, But if you're going to ask an inventor, then you might hear a different answer, and it may not be Tesla. The inventor may say, well, yeah, Tesla was able to create the technology that made podcast radio viable thing. But if you want to talk about who

invented the radio, you gotta go back before him. So it's, like we said, a really complex topic, yes, and definitely fascinating to look at at how these great inventors were all developing an important piece of the puzzle or or improving upon the technology to increase distance and quality. Um, it's just fascinating. And then you get into other things like who you know which was the first radio station and that unfortunately is not a clear answer either either.

So so wait, uh, Chris yet ask you okay, gun to the head. Yep, there is a there's a man standing up in front of you. His gun is pointed towards your noggain, and he says, who invented the radio? You have to give me one name and that's it. Ultimately, who do you say invented the radio? That's fair. I

would say the same thing. But I certainly wouldn't uh put down Marconi because he did so much important work and and and one of the things that he did for radio that Tesla really wasn't doing was promoting the idea that it could be used for commercial purposes and getting investors behind it because Tesla was kind of sitting on it. Yeah, Tesla was kind of like this rock star showman. But Marconi was a rock star businessman and he was really behind radio. I don't think he he

wasn't into as many different kinds of technology. I mean, Tesla was into all the sports things and and Marconi was really the radio guy. So so we've got some some sources we'd like to mention to you guys to check out if you're really interested in this, because, like I said, this is a fascinating time in history. In fact, let me let me read. I meant to do this earlier, um, but I wanted to give you what Einstein said radio was.

Einstein's definition of radio is one of my favorites. Is you see why are telegram as a kind of very very long cat you pull his tail in New York and his head as mewing in Los Angeles? Do you understand this? Well, radio operates in the same way you send signals here, they received them there. The only difference is that there's no cat. I love that description, Like, oh well now it makes sense. Einstein. Thank you? Can you tell me about my relatives now, just in general,

nothing special, just a theory. So let's talk about some of the sources we use, because we we came across some really really useful ones. Yeah, and it's one of the things that I found funny about that we were talking about how just a moment ago, about how convoluted this whole thing is, a lot of my sources didn't overlap. So we we sort of glued some of this together from different people because I found a couple of books um at the library and that might be at yours too.

One was Sentony and Sparked The Origins of Radio by Hugh G. J Aitken A I. T. K. E. N. And the other ones Wireless from Marconius Black Box to the Audience by Sun Coook Hong, both of which were excellent and got into a whole lot more detailed we really really can't get into now. But Jonathan found a couple of excellent websites that we used to that had Stubblefield wasn't in either one of those books. Yeah, there's um there's one that was done by Julian t. Ruben

and actually it's Julian t Ruben dot Com. There's a whole section about radio and the inventors. There there even other people that we didn't talk about, like Loomis and Bows and Forest de Forest. Yeah, there's there's When we say that there were a lot of people working on this, that's nine exaggeration. There were way more than we were able to talk about in this episode. Um, but yeah, if you want to learn more about them, i'd recommend

that UH. That site. Also there is an excellent article by b. Eric Rhodes that's R H O A D S. Just who invented radio and which was the first station? Uh, it's a it's also a really good read and a great overview of radio. And finally, there's a website called Amateur Radio and Electronics. UH. The u r L is v W L O W E N dot c O dot UK, so it's a it's a British site. Also has a great section on radio and how it works and UH and its history. So I recommend checking these

out if you're interested in the topic. Also, we do have lots of articles on our site about radio, how radio works, how the radio spectrum works, how transistor radios work, how crystal radios work. All of that information you can find at how stuff Works dot com and if you're interested in this stuff, definitely take a look at it. There's a ton of different ways of actually building your own radio. I mean that used to be a big thing back in the fifties and sixties, but you can

still do it today. And it's a neat way to kind of learn some electronics and uh and some engineering, and you get a real sense of accomplishment when you build something like that. That's true. I built a crystal a m radio when I was a kid from a from a kid which was which was a lot of fun. And it's just so sad that all these people work so hard on the radio and then video killed the radio star. Yeah, that darn, darn you MTV. And now I understand the problems you can see. I remember that

the second video was a pet Benatar video. That's all that's true. Okay, look it up. I just can't remember the name of the song now, but it wasn't been Atar video anyway. A little trivia for those people who lived through the launch of MTV. We're there for you. If you guys want to let us know about any topics you'd like us to cover, or you have any comments or questions. You can get in touch with us on Twitter and Facebook are handled. There is tech Stuff h s W or you can send U an email.

That address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is the house to up works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The House stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you