Two strange individuals, two curious accomplishments. Both are on tour today in the Cabinet.
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. When times get tough, you can't just drop everything and abandon your responsibilities. Right. No one is so free that they can leave their lives behind and start over in a new place with nothing to hold them back, Not unless their name is William Goodall, at least William Arthur Bates. Goodall was born in Manchester, England, in eighteen eighty. After a brief school career in Bedford, he enlisted with the Manchester Regiment of the British Army at the age of sixteen. He earned two medals for fighting in the Second Boer War in South Africa until he was shipped out to Singapore in nineteen oh three, But the twenty three year old soldier had already grown pretty tired of fighting, so he withdrew from the army and became a civilian instead. He took on a few odd jobs here and there, like planting tea and mining for tin in Sumatra, but eventually found his way to the Singapore Municipal Commissioner's Water Department. He worked on some large projects too, including the construction of some major reservoirs. Sometime in the early nineteen twenties, Goodall and a few friends took a small boat out to explore the waters around Singapore, and in their excursion they stumbled upon a small island in the Straits of Jehor called Pulau Surimbun. The whole island measured about three and a half acres, with a large sixty foot tall hill in its center. Goodall found it and I quote exceedingly attractive and believed it to be the ideal place for bathing and picnic parties. He and his friends would visit, often climbing the hill to the ty to admire the scenic views of the water. To the south in the distance was Singapore and to the north was Jehor Baru, a city perched on the opposite shore. Pretty soon Goodall found himself rowing out to Polou Surrimbun all the time. He even built a shack toward the top of the hill where he would hold parties for himself and his buddies. Then, in nineteen thirty two, the contracts on the Singapore Reservoirs ended and Goodall made a life changing decision. He volunteered to live on that small island permanently. He considered himself a Robinson Crusoe, named after Daniel Dafoe's famous literary castaway. That was the life that William wanted for himself, one that he referred to as a delightfully peaceful existence, and it was for a while. His day consisted mainly of maintaining the land and the various equipment on the island. This included two dinghys, a mooring buoy, and his home, which he was constantly repairing. Goodall also tended to the fruit trees that grew on the island and disposed of his trash each day by either dumping it into the sea or by burning it. But it didn't take long for that delightfully peaceful existence to take its toll on him. Between the endless stream of work to be done and the crippling loneliness, Goodall soon found himself in need of help and companionship. He hired two Chinese workers to handle the maintenance work on Pulau Sarimbun, one worker to take care of the clerical work, and a Javanese boatman. The four of them lived in peace until a British journalist named H. Harvey Day arrived on the island in nineteen thirty seven. He wanted to learn about Goodall's life there. Thus far Harvey Day referred to it as a private kingdom, and pretty soon William was fielding letters from all over the world, including Germany, New Zealand, and the United States, asking him about his self imposed solitude. Now it must be said that the article took some artistic license in how it portrayed his existence on the island, painting him as living inside some kind of fortification and holding back throngs of native people who were meant to harm him. All didn't pay too much attention to the rumors, and despite his solitary existence on the island, he still made frequent trips to the mainland to do radio interviews and speak about his life as an amateur Robinson Crusoe. William Goodall passed away in nineteen forty one at the age of sixty one, but he will always be remembered for his role as the world's first voluntary castaway and the so called King of Pulau Surrembon. Progress takes time. Innovation does not happen overnights. It requires a whole lot of trial and error to go from an idea to a fully formed concept. For example, did you know that canned foods were invented in the late seventeen hundreds, but the can opener itself didn't come around until the eighteen fifties, And Alexander Bain's fax machine predates Alexander Bell's telephone by thirty three years. But perhaps no one knew the slog of innovation better than Thomas Edison. Among his best known inventions are the movie camera, the phonograph, and of course, the incandescent light bulb. It took a long time for Edison to complete what is widely considered his greatest accomplishment. As he once famously put it, I didn't fail a thousand times. The light bulb was an invention with a thousand steps. But the problem was that with each failed step he was that much further away from a viable solution. And while he failed, other inventors were gaining steam. Patents were being filed all across Europe and the US by people with dreaming of carnising electricity to light their homes and businesses. For example, English chemist Joseph Swan demonstrated his own incandescent light bulb around eighteen seventy eight. There were also a pair of Canadian inventors named Matthew Evans and Henry Woodward, who had patented a version of an incandescent bulb using a carbon rod filament four years earlier. Edison knew that it would be only a matter of time before his competitors cracked the formula and changed the future of electric powered light forever. So he and his engineers got to work at the New Jersey Lab, ceaselessly plugging away at different types of filaments until they found one that didn't burn out after a few minutes. To make matters worse, Edison was on a deadline. After he had unveiled his phonograph in eighteen seventy seven, he had promised the press that he would have a new, better invention one year later. The announcement resulted in scores of readers who bought issue after issue hoping to get the inside scoop on Edison's latest and greatest, and so one year later, as promised, the Wizard of Menlo Park delivered. He reached out to reporters and invited them for a first hand look at his brand new invention, the incandescent light bulb. They were in awe, commenting on the beauty of its bright white light. One paper remarked you could trace the veins in your hand and the spots and lines upon your fingernails by its brightness. Edison even told one journey that it would burn forever. Well almost. By all accounts, the bulb was a hit and it was going to change the world eventually. There was just one little problem. It was fake. You see. Edison had to show the press something, not just to keep up his reputation, but also to get ahead of the competition. It had to be his name in the papers and no one else's. So what he came up with was a bulb that burned just long enough to appease the reporters before he hurried them off to file their stories. Once the demonstration was over, he continued searching for a proper filament that would burn indefinitely, but by showing the reporters his faux bulb he had bought himself more time. Edison held another demonstration on New Year's Eve in eighteen seventy nine, just over a year since he had fooled the press, But this time he had a light that did stay lit much longer. They used a carbon filament, which he had discovered in October of that year. The initial test at the time lasted just over thirteen hours. The light bulbs we used today are the product of extensive trial and error conducted over a century by multiple innovators. Edison was not the sole inventor of the incandescent light bulb. He got the glory for the same reason he was able to fool everyone else the power of the press. Edison was a master marketer and ran many of his competitors out of business due to his unscrupulous business practices. The more he got his name in the papers, the more successful he became. His stunt with the light bulb was no different. History books remember Thomas Edison as the genius behind many of the products we still use today, and he certainly was smart, but he actually perfected more than he invented, fine tuning what was already out there and then commercializing it for the masses. The truth was that he was just a really good salesman. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcast, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.