Hey, everybody, Chuck here. I hope you're having a good Saturday. Uh. This week I selected for the select episode a great one from August eight, two thousand twelve, How does a Diving Bell Work? And I think if you've listened to the show before, you know I love antiquated equipment and steam punky things, and all of that together is a diving bell. So I just picked this one out because I remember it being a good one, So please to enjoy How does a Diving Bell Work? Right now, welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W. Chuck Bryant is with me. Um, which means it's time for Stuff you should Know. That's right, man, I got all confused right there, you're about to say a listener, it was a little close for comfort, our shortest show ever. Yes, how introductions work? How you doing? I'm well, sir? How are you? I'm good. It's a little warm in here today in that um, I feel I feel like this is to him like a room that we're in is always sort of warming off putting. Well, there's like eighteen Nikea lamps in here, and I guess it feels like it's warmer than usual. They generate some heat and that's how they power Switzerland, Sweden with heats Sweden, Sweden. Yeah, yeah, sorry Swedish. Yeah. I know. People are like, good lord, Chuck, Yeah you got a map as a desk. They're like skipping diving bells. Yeah, you have a tan map down too, so um Chuck. Yes, I want to dive into a subject that I believe you know something about. Okay, it's called diving bells. That's the subject, and I know you know about it because this article that we're basing this off of is a Chuck Bryant jam. Yeah. I forgot all about this and then got about halfway through it, and I was like, that sounds like something i'd say, Oh, really, you didn't realize that you'd written. Nope, totally forgot and then it wasn't halfway through, but it was probably somewhere in the intro, wasn't you said that silly clever intro which was really not clever. Oh? I don't know. I feel like I used to start all of my articles like I was writing a middle school term paper. Oh was it the uh where they're talking about how there's not very many images of our early attempts to scuba dive because quote of the lack of availability of underwater filming techniques at the time. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like filler very very very very very remember in summer school with Chainsaw and Dave. Uh yeah, the Mark Harman movie. Yeah, they had to write like a three word essay or something like that, and somebody they admired and I think it was Toby Hooper and oh yeah, or was the or a special effects guy. But they said like he was very very very very very very very remember those days counting the words? Yeah, that's not what this is. No, this is a great article on diving bells. It's kind of interesting, you know, the precursor to scuba diving. If any you folks out there, scuba enthusiasts you have, uh, you know, there's a trail that was blazed many years before, littered with dead bodies and big iron casks. Yeah, and not just dead bodies, but crippled bodies too. Like a lot of bad stuff can happen to you, and a lot of bad stuff did happen to people before. We really understood the physics of Yeah, I mean people still lose their lives obviously in the pursuit of um, just forwarding technology, but um, not like they used to people. You're like, we really owe a debt to the people who figured out everything that we have and lost their lives doing it. Well, what's spectacularly amazing to me is that not everyone died trying to use diving bells. And we're talking like years ago. Yeah, it wasn't, you know, the early right, Yeah, Yeah, apparently by the hundred's the concept of diving bells were so I guess entrenched in societies around the world, civilizations around the world that they were just routinely used for all sorts of different stuff. Yeah, Aristotle wrote about it, Yeah, back in the fourth century BC. Right, Yeah, that's a long time ago, so he was he was the first, I take it, to mention diving bells or to describe them, right. Yeah. Should we read that quote? I think it's a good quote, but you have to read it in an aristotele voice. Aristotelean, Um, well, I really have no idea what ancient Greeks sounded like. Well, the key is that no one does, so you can just make it up. They enable divers to respire equally well by letting down a cauldron, for this does not fill with water, but retains the air, for it is forced straight down into the vatas I just added a German. Yeah, I was going say there was an eighty five percent chance that the Greeks were gonna sound like Sean Connery coming out of you. Ah. Yeah, that wasn't Sean Connery, it um. So Yeah, so Aristotle is talking about this, and the very fact that he's talking about diving bells proves at least that the idea was in place at the time. Yeah, there's some legends that, um, Alexander the Great, who was actually a student of Aristotle's, used a diving bell. Yeah, there's there's pictures drawings of you know, Alexander the Great like laying down or sitting down beneath the water in some sort of a you know, diving bell or or like a barrel or magic bubble or some Sorry. Yeah, but we don't know if that means he just talked about it a lot and like draw pictures of me doing this, or if they actually tried it. Um, We're just not sure. Well, so supposedly he used it one when he was eleven, but then again as an older man during the Siege of Tire in a three thirty two b c Um And I looked that up and it looked like it seems pretty reasonable, Like apparently there is some underwater obstructions around Tire and he had some underwater divers removing him, so he used a diving bell to go check on their work. Not the most fantastical tail anyone could tell if they were just making stuff up about him using a diving bell. So I kind of buy that one, Yeah, I could buy it. And of course da Vinci sketched them out because he invented everything. Even if he didn't properly invented, he at least sketched out ideas. You know, well, yeah, he had a lot of great ideas that have come to life now. The Star Trek phaser really okay. But Aristotle he kind of hints at the basic physics behind a diving bell. He says that you have a capsule that you're forcing straight down into a water the water and um, the air bubble, whatever air was inside, is pressed upwards so long as the vessel is concave, right, Yeah, and so long as it is straight down. Like said, you don't want this thing because you know, if you've ever played in the bathtub, and I know you do, you know if you take a cup and invert it and just push it straight down, there's gonna be water. And then if you want to make make it poop, you tilted on its side and the air comes out in little bubbles. That's true. You know, does a poop or shoot a duck? It shoots a duck. But I think every kid has done stuff like that, and that's essentially what all a diving bell is. Yeah, it's just really heavy. Yeah, because when you have a cup above water upside down has air in it. Yeah, when it contacts the water, the air can escape any longer because of the water surface tension. And then when you push it up, the water compresses the air. That's right. So that's all you have. Like you said, at the top of a diving bell, inside is compressed air and human beings can breathe that. Yeah. It doesn't have to be concave though, does it. I don't think so. But the square later I think, well, I think there needs to be some sort of point that the air can be pressed up into but maybe not. Okay, I've seen here they're concave, so maybe that's the best design for a diving bell, but yeah, not everybody's used concave designs. Yeah, but I mean many were shaped like bells. Some were barrels like whiskey barrels, um somewhere wooden, many were iron um, there were They were trying all sorts of things basically just to see if it worked right, and they figured out like, the heavier the better, because this thing had to be able to go down to the bottom of the sea, whatever depth that was and not tip over. Yeah, it couldn't tip over. And it had to be balanced too, so you had to have ballasts. If you weren't using an iron diving bellet, you had to put weights on it and they had to be balanced or else it would tip over. It was a big deal. Yeah, And I think the key here is this is breathable air, right like um. It depends on how deep you are and how big your bell is, obviously, but I think one example, like even here, was if you have a tin foot tall bell down, that's only about eleven inches of air. Um, that's not enough. Now, I don't think they were going that deep back then, or at least they were not smart to do. So, no, those are the ones that died, that's right. So one of the other problems that these people faced aside from dying because they went too deep and ended up with just eleven inches of air. Now we should point out that before we go any further physically speaking, that that's a by volume, that's eleven inches of air, but that's still the same amount of air that filled up the diving bell above water. So right, it's compressed, so you have compressed there. So all those oxygen molecules are still there, they're just in compressed form. Yeah. The problem is if you're in there, you're compressed too, right, and when you're in that state of compression, um, the oxygen and the nitrogen in your blood stream get compressed as well, that's right, and they dissolve, which isn't a problem with the oxygen because the tissues surrounding tissues absorbed that auction and they love it. It's like yummy to them. But the nitrogen remains dissolved in the blood until you decompress. Then you have a problem. Yes, then you have a radio Head album. Do they have one called the bens. Yeah, I didn't know that. It's a great one. It was the one that preceded. Okay, computer did they make a bad album ever? No, that's a good point. Yeah, that's what the bens is, and that can um when the when the nitrogen uh tries to escape, it forms little bubbles that block blood vessels. And that's why you can have a stroke or a heart attack if you ascend too quickly, and it can go to your joints and cause excruciating pain. I imagine crippling. Remember I mentioned being crippled before. Yeah, you've suffered the bens. No, don't know. Earlier I said, like you said, that's littered with dead bodies and sit and crippled bodies. I feel like we talked about my my lifelong crippling. Well, momentarily, I thought you meant I never had the bens. Okay, I thought I remembered many moons ago you mentioning Scooba diving something about the bens. I've never had the bends. Okay. Yeah, poor Scuba Cat if he'd gotten the bens. I don't know. Wonder Scooba Cat still around. I don't know. Who's kind of old already? Wasn't he. I don't remember, boy, that was a winner of our best So uh yeah, when you come up too quickly, the nitrogen in your blood undissolves, forms bubbles, blocks your blood vessels, blocks your joints, causes tremendous pain, strokes, death, all that stuff. Right, So when you're an ancient bell diver, I guess is what you call? Is that right? A bell diver seems right? Um? And you were down for very long, too deep, and you came up too quickly, You're in a lot of trouble, that's right. And they may not have even understood the bens at that point. Imagine they didn't. They're like, he just got the diving bell sickness again. Yeah, it was because he sinned or something like that. He upset zeus. So things when I went on like this for quite a while, Um, through the Renaissance into the sixteenth century, people were using these diving bells. It was all well and good. They were having a blast down there, having parties. And then at some point people were like, you know what, I bet we could make this better, right. You know, these guys keep running out of air down there and dying, Yeah, or they run out of air and they have to come up too quick and they get the ben So how can we improve this? Or they're only fourteen feet down sitting in a bell, then what's the point which is magnificent but the ship that we need to get to is a hundred feet down. Yeah, exactly, like they needed this. They wanted to have applications they could use like two build things or repair things or get you know, pirates booty exactly. And speaking of pirates, check Sparrow does this with a canoe in the first um Pirates of the Caribbean. Yes, really, Yeah, he turns a canoe upside down and like walks along the ocean bottom. And I don't remember how he pulls the canoe down. Technically speaking, it's possible if he pulled it straight down. I think the magic of Disney, but I don't think it's it's physically possible what he did. Just just want to make sure that anybody who really liked that part, I pooh poo it. Okay, so uh. In the late sixteen undreds it was a Frenchman named Dennis Pepine and um, he was one of the first dudes that said, you know what, I think we can get some fresh air into there, and very smartly and simply he used hoses and bellows that you know, the bellows were outside obviously up on you know, the boat, and they had dudes manning the bellows and pumping fresh air in there. Yeah, and it wasn't even like difficult. You didn't even have to navigate like where to put the hole in the top of the diving The hose literally just goes under the bottom and up inside, and then the air just presses up super easy. Yeah, so you've got fresh air now. Yeah, they can stay down there longer, that's all that's off basically, But it's still not pressurized. The air they're pumping in isn't pressurized, that's true. So they couldn't go any deeper. They could just stay down there and do whatever the heck they were doing sitting in these cast iron bells. Right, So we we invent diving bells and at least the fifth century be See, we have to wait until this century a d before we make a real innovation to them. Now we have a whole other obstacle pressurizing these things. How long do we have to wait to overcome that? One a year? That's true? Uh, And it took an Englishman to do so, Edmund halle Um. He basically attached these wooden barrels, he's weighted wooden barrels to the diving bell and they could be brought up and down, and they contained air. At the bottom of each of these as a whole. Uh, that allowed water to come in, forcing the air up. And at the top was a hose that ran from that barrel to the bottom of the diving bell, and there was a faucet. So basically whenever it was it was sort of like having air tanks down there. Whenever they wanted um more pressure, you know, if they were trying to equalize things, they would just turn their little faucet and allow air in. Yeah, And once the barrel was empty, they would pull the barrels up, um I guess refill them with air, which probably meant just opening the top and then closing it again it's filled up, and then lower it back down there and all of a sudden you could control the pressure. And that was the same um Hallie who named a comment after himself. It was no way that guy was all over the place renaissance man. Yeah, Yeah, that's where that word comes. He's a post renaissance renaissance man. That's true. So yeah, so now we have pressurized diving bells, right, yeah, and basically it equal to that of the surrounding water. So that means you can go deeper, you can stay down longer, you can you you run out, Like if the water starts to creep up, you just add more pressurized air and it pushes the water back down. Yeah, like it keeps the water at baby because it's at the same pressure. So to the water, whatever is inside the diving bell might as well just be more water. Yeah, it doesn't have the crazy urge to fill the diving bell up any longer because there's something there just kind of goes along. It's happy way to the Mariana Trench. That's right. And I bet there was some seventeenth century David Blaine that very shortly afterward it was like, I can stay down here for two months, and people like who cares? Well? The horrible thing was, uh when you added pressurized air. Again, you're pressurizing. That's just the diving belt, but the people. Yeah, so to become pressurized to go down in a diving bell was a pretty horrific thing to endure. In and of itself. Yeah, I guess so. Um, when they built the Brooklyn Bridge to you know, the two towers that that, I guess that. Yeah, those are down almost to the bedrock. They were going to go down the bedrock, and then they found out like there's some pretty stable aggregate thirty ft above bedrocks that they just planted them on those. But um, to construct those, they had to drop these cassans, which are basically like giant structural diving bells, and they pressurized them and it kept the water of the river out, so like literally the river's just flowing around this stuff. But there's men working in these things and they'd have to pressurize before going in them, and it was just like this. Their ear drums would burst once in a while as they were being pressure because it wasn't like gently. It was like, you know, I guess it was better than just walking right into the caison, but it was still pretty rough. And then they go and work in there for a couple of hours and then come out and hopefully not get decompression sickness the bends. But actually the project manager, the son of the designer of the Brooklyn Bridge, Washington roebilis the Sun. He suffered a lifelong crippling from decompressing sickness after going and inspecting some of the work in one of the king Sons and coming out too quickly. We know a lot of people died and like, uh, I enjoy walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, as many New Yorkers do, and you should think about that next time you're doing so. Yeah, that like people gave up their lives too, so you could like say snarky things and Instagram photos of yourself and all the other things that you do. Um, there's a really great kim Burns documentary on the construction of Brooklyn Bridge. Who I haven't seen that one. It's good. It's like a straight up PBS one, no frills. Well he's not about frills. He just moves pictures like around and yes, hands in and out. This may be his least frilly. Okay, yeah, I'm not knocking Kimburns. I like a good Kimburn's. Well you'll probably like this one then, so uh. A hundred years after being able to control the pressure with bellows and that the barrels, I'm sorry, um and English and other Englishman a scientists named John Smeaton invented an actual diving air pump in and it was on the surface obviously, and took like four guys to operate it. UM and it was basically like Dennis Pappine's a ridge anal plan, but it was just mechanized. So they were able to build like big ones like people. There's many's, like twelve people could go down and these things and like have a party if they wanted to. They made windows eventually, Yeah, they put electricity in them. Yeah, that's a little scary for that time period. Oh yeah, wouldn't I don't know. I don't know if I would have trusted that, Yeah, I wouldn't. You know, seventeen or early eight dreds. Yeah, we just discovered electricity. Now let's put it in under water. And they used them for, like you said, building bridges and repairing docks, and early saboteurs would sneak up underwater to um cut the anchor lines of enemy ships. Really that's a very handy use of So you dug up A cool story about UM was that this year he was just this May. Yeah, a guy named Harrison o'kenney, at twenty nine year old Nigerian boat. Cook was on a tugboat, a Chevron tug boat, and in the Atlantic, and it sized and he was eventually through all this, you know, capsizing and tumbling around and water flowing in and sinking a hundred feet yeah, and sinking of course, ended up in a bathroom trapped with air. Yeah, sort of like the same concept of a diving bell. And people wondered he'd survived after sixty hours. That's the sixty hours. But physicists were like, well, how did this happen? Yeah, you probably shouldn't have been able to live that long down there, right, they were. The press reported that he had something like four ft of air something like that, and um, yeah, the the chamber that he was in was only about four ft high. So sixty hours of air shouldn't have worked. It shouldn't have kept him alive. Because about it, like, you're breathing, even if it is pressurized air, you're breathing air, you're also exhaling carbon dioxide. And when the the ratio of carbon dioxide or the percentage of it gets above five, things started to go horribly awry and you die shortly after that. Yeah, I didn't realize that lack of oxygen isn't what kills people. It's too much CEO two. Yeah, that's pretty interesting thing. Yeah, it can happen when you're on a ventilator. UM. That's apparently a big risk. When you innobate somebody's the ox the CEO to build up, you can kill him. So anyway, why didn't this guy die? Well, it turns out with pressurized air, especially when it's um pressurized against cold water, c O two is readily absorbed by that water around it. So when he was exhaling, the oxygen was remaining, but the c O two is basically being wicked away. And since that c O two or the the air bubble that he was in was pressurized, he was a hundred feet underwater UM, which actually helped him. Right, he had a lot of oxygen. A bunch of oxygen was just pushed into this little area. But the CEO two is being wicked away, and that's how we managed to survive. Yeah. It said for every ten memor you descend um one at spheres, pressure of pressure is added and it makes it more dense, according to some lawmaker named Boil. According to Boyle's law, and so since he was thirty meters below it became more dense by times four, and so that meant that he didn't need as much air as you would think for someone that's under underwater. And you know, so how much did he need, like you need a day of air? So he only needed six cubic meters in the end because of the temperature of the water and how deep he was, right, and and also I mean, don't remember, that's a lot of air compressed into the same amount of area. All those molecules are still present, yeah, they're just in a smaller amount of area. They also think though that it was connected to another air pocket, which probably helped. Even still, the guy survived in an impromptu, inadvertent diving bell undred feet below the surface for sixty hours, dude in the dark under the ocean with his head next to a toilet man. And they said that he could hear the sea life scavenging on his dead crewmates. That's horrific. That happened this May, yeah, not in like eighteen twelve. In May. Yeah, so there you go. By the way, we'll insert this right now because it's a good place for it. You were you you were out of town. Did you hear about the whole Sharknado thing. Yeah, you predicted Sharknado. I invented it. Yeah, that's pretty impressive. For those of you don't don't know. Sharknado was a very cheesy movie on a network that UM aired a couple of weeks ago and blew up. Blew Up didn't get as many viewers from the blow up as they would have hoped. But UM, I watched it. It was very funny and fun It wasn't dumb. Oh yeah, it was terrible, but you know in that way. It wasn't one of the guys from nine or two I know on it. Yeah, Iron's earring was in it. Terror Reid, who oh yeah, she's looking rough. You mean I were out of the country and we heard about this Sharknado. So thankfully one of our listeners UM alerted me to the fact that I invented Sharknado. Because in the desert, can it really rain frogs? Episode? UM, I say this, Uh no, I mean I think they're light, because that's the whole point. Even an updraft from a water spelled of two hundred miles an hour isn't going to be picking up you know, great white sharks, right, that's that's a movie for you, raining sharks. So thanks to fan Todd Waters for bringing that to my attention. That's impressive. You very clearly. I even said a movie. Yeah, you invented Sharknado. And this thing was released a good year ago, right, it was I think May of two thousand twelve, so that was almost a year before Harrison o'keine survives in a diving bell. All sorts of stuff coming together, doing the bold ants, feeling the flow. I don't know if I can sue anybody, but I'm looking into it. Have you. I see you should always ask before you sue, like, yeah, sure, so give me some give me some cabbage, some bread, little Sharknado cheese. I think we should bring back bread for money, okay, bringing a little bread? Yeah, all right, so they sent me bread though that would suck with like a note that decision. Want want shape like a shark. Yeah, maybe we should bring back bread into the regular vernacular and then you ask them. Okay, okay, that's our plan, all right, So sorry about that sidebar. I just want to give myself credit words. You should be very proud of that. Thanks. Um Hey, I know I when a good movie idea comes along, I'm all over it. You and Iron's earing. Uh. If you want to learn more about diving bells, you should type those two words into the search bar at how stuff works dot com and it will bring up this delightful little article written by a young exuberant Chuck Bryant. And since I said exuberant, it's time for a message break. And now it's time for a listener mail Chuck, whether you like it or not, I hope you're ready. We heard from another teacher. We'd like to read these. Hey, guys, the reason I'm writing it is to tell you how much stuff you should know has helped me during my first year of teaching. I am twenty four. Just finished my first year as a high school social studies teacher. Alright. This year I taught law and justice and AP psychology. Law and justice, that's awesome, and AP psychology Yeah, well rounded. Since I listened to a huge bulk of your shows when I was preparing various lessons, I use the information that I had on different podcast I've heard on different podcasts. Then I thought, you know what, I should just play it. I'll get even lazier and just play the show. UM. The podcasts were a big hit with the kids. They got a break from hearing my voice and I got a break from talking stuff you should know. Is also great UH for teachers because the articles you guys use for the podcast are well researched and written. Thank you, thank you. I don't have to worry that you guys are just making up information, and if you are, don't tell me. UM. Students said the winner of their all time favorite UH in class was how Barbie works That that's probably my favorite too. It's a good one, Betton Disco. I created a pretty awesome power point to accompany it, and I attached it and I looked at It's a really neat actually. UM. We discussed how Barbie and other toys can influence gender identity and body image and developing children. UM. Overall some of the podcasts of streamed UM, Japanese and tournament camps, and dueling Right to Privacy When You Die UM. In psychology, I hit on concussions, yeah, uh, Monkalsen syndrome, Oh yeah, hypnosis, lobotomys and PTSD. Remember lobotomy. That was one of the alf invest We should have called it Lobotomy's heart. We love my lobotomy on MPR. Do you remember, Oh yeah, that dude, Yeah, that guy here's our hero. How what's his name? Howard something? Yeah, Howard. Just to tell you guys again, thanks a lot for making my job easier because you use classroom appropriate language and report factual research based on evidence and information. You're an amazing classroom resoorts resorts. Did you say there? Did you miss spell it? I did? Okay, keep them coming, Carly Brown, Well, thanks a lot, Carly Brown. We appreciate that, Miss Brown, as your students probably call you. That's right, Thank you, miss Brown for letting us know that. We like to know that we're helping shape young minds for the better. That's right. Um, And we do use classroom appropriate language, don't we. I never termed it that? All right? Well, uh let's see, chuckers. Um, what should we say anything you want to hear about? Uh? If you have invented something, because I've invented the snowboard too. Remember no, I don't remember that. I have a crayon drawing from when I was six of of the skiboard. Oh yeah, it's a guy going down a ski slope on a little skateboard. Of skis on Wow. So I've invented two things, the sharknado huh and the snowboard. So if you haven't inadvertently invented something that's a great one man, we'd love to hear about it. Yeah. Um, you can tweet that to us at s Y s K podcast. You can post it on our Facebook page at Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email at Chuck and I will both get to stuff podcasts at how stuff Works dot com, and you can check out our home on the web. It's a little website known as Stuff you Should Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radios. How stuff Works for more podcasts for my heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H

Hey, everybody, Chuck here. I hope you're having a good Saturday. Uh. This week I selected for the select episode a great one from August eight, two thousand twelve, How does a Diving Bell Work? And I think if you've listened to the show before, you know I love antiquated equipment and steam punky things, and all of that together is a diving bell. So I just picked this one out because I remember it being a good one, So please to enjoy How does a Diving Bell Work? Right now, welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W. Chuck Bryant is with me. Um, which means it's time for Stuff you should Know. That's right, man, I got all confused right there, you're about to say a listener, it was a little close for comfort, our shortest show ever. Yes, how introductions work? How you doing? I'm well, sir? How are you? I'm good. It's a little warm in here today in that um, I feel I feel like this is to him like a room that we're in is always sort of warming off putting. Well, there's like eighteen Nikea lamps in here, and I guess it feels like it's warmer than usual. They generate some heat and that's how they power Switzerland, Sweden with heats Sweden, Sweden. Yeah, yeah, sorry Swedish. Yeah. I know. People are like, good lord, Chuck, Yeah you got a map as a desk. They're like skipping diving bells. Yeah, you have a tan map down too, so um Chuck. Yes, I want to dive into a subject that I believe you know something about. Okay, it's called diving bells. That's the subject, and I know you know about it because this article that we're basing this off of is a Chuck Bryant jam. Yeah. I forgot all about this and then got about halfway through it, and I was like, that sounds like something i'd say, Oh, really, you didn't realize that you'd written. Nope, totally forgot and then it wasn't halfway through, but it was probably somewhere in the intro, wasn't you said that silly clever intro which was really not clever. Oh? I don't know. I feel like I used to start all of my articles like I was writing a middle school term paper. Oh was it the uh where they're talking about how there's not very many images of our early attempts to scuba dive because quote of the lack of availability of underwater filming techniques at the time. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like filler very very very very very remember in summer school with Chainsaw and Dave. Uh yeah, the Mark Harman movie. Yeah, they had to write like a three word essay or something like that, and somebody they admired and I think it was Toby Hooper and oh yeah, or was the or a special effects guy. But they said like he was very very very very very very very remember those days counting the words? Yeah, that's not what this is. No, this is a great article on diving bells. It's kind of interesting, you know, the precursor to scuba diving. If any you folks out there, scuba enthusiasts you have, uh, you know, there's a trail that was blazed many years before, littered with dead bodies and big iron casks. Yeah, and not just dead bodies, but crippled bodies too. Like a lot of bad stuff can happen to you, and a lot of bad stuff did happen to people before. We really understood the physics of Yeah, I mean people still lose their lives obviously in the pursuit of um, just forwarding technology, but um, not like they used to people. You're like, we really owe a debt to the people who figured out everything that we have and lost their lives doing it. Well, what's spectacularly amazing to me is that not everyone died trying to use diving bells. And we're talking like years ago. Yeah, it wasn't, you know, the early right, Yeah, Yeah, apparently by the hundred's the concept of diving bells were so I guess entrenched in societies around the world, civilizations around the world that they were just routinely used for all sorts of different stuff. Yeah, Aristotle wrote about it, Yeah, back in the fourth century BC. Right, Yeah, that's a long time ago, so he was he was the first, I take it, to mention diving bells or to describe them, right. Yeah. Should we read that quote? I think it's a good quote, but you have to read it in an aristotele voice. Aristotelean, Um, well, I really have no idea what ancient Greeks sounded like. Well, the key is that no one does, so you can just make it up. They enable divers to respire equally well by letting down a cauldron, for this does not fill with water, but retains the air, for it is forced straight down into the vatas I just added a German. Yeah, I was going say there was an eighty five percent chance that the Greeks were gonna sound like Sean Connery coming out of you. Ah. Yeah, that wasn't Sean Connery, it um. So Yeah, so Aristotle is talking about this, and the very fact that he's talking about diving bells proves at least that the idea was in place at the time. Yeah, there's some legends that, um, Alexander the Great, who was actually a student of Aristotle's, used a diving bell. Yeah, there's there's pictures drawings of you know, Alexander the Great like laying down or sitting down beneath the water in some sort of a you know, diving bell or or like a barrel or magic bubble or some Sorry. Yeah, but we don't know if that means he just talked about it a lot and like draw pictures of me doing this, or if they actually tried it. Um, We're just not sure. Well, so supposedly he used it one when he was eleven, but then again as an older man during the Siege of Tire in a three thirty two b c Um And I looked that up and it looked like it seems pretty reasonable, Like apparently there is some underwater obstructions around Tire and he had some underwater divers removing him, so he used a diving bell to go check on their work. Not the most fantastical tail anyone could tell if they were just making stuff up about him using a diving bell. So I kind of buy that one, Yeah, I could buy it. And of course da Vinci sketched them out because he invented everything. Even if he didn't properly invented, he at least sketched out ideas. You know, well, yeah, he had a lot of great ideas that have come to life now. The Star Trek phaser really okay. But Aristotle he kind of hints at the basic physics behind a diving bell. He says that you have a capsule that you're forcing straight down into a water the water and um, the air bubble, whatever air was inside, is pressed upwards so long as the vessel is concave, right, Yeah, and so long as it is straight down. Like said, you don't want this thing because you know, if you've ever played in the bathtub, and I know you do, you know if you take a cup and invert it and just push it straight down, there's gonna be water. And then if you want to make make it poop, you tilted on its side and the air comes out in little bubbles. That's true. You know, does a poop or shoot a duck? It shoots a duck. But I think every kid has done stuff like that, and that's essentially what all a diving bell is. Yeah, it's just really heavy. Yeah, because when you have a cup above water upside down has air in it. Yeah, when it contacts the water, the air can escape any longer because of the water surface tension. And then when you push it up, the water compresses the air. That's right. So that's all you have. Like you said, at the top of a diving bell, inside is compressed air and human beings can breathe that. Yeah. It doesn't have to be concave though, does it. I don't think so. But the square later I think, well, I think there needs to be some sort of point that the air can be pressed up into but maybe not. Okay, I've seen here they're concave, so maybe that's the best design for a diving bell, but yeah, not everybody's used concave designs. Yeah, but I mean many were shaped like bells. Some were barrels like whiskey barrels, um somewhere wooden, many were iron um, there were They were trying all sorts of things basically just to see if it worked right, and they figured out like, the heavier the better, because this thing had to be able to go down to the bottom of the sea, whatever depth that was and not tip over. Yeah, it couldn't tip over. And it had to be balanced too, so you had to have ballasts. If you weren't using an iron diving bellet, you had to put weights on it and they had to be balanced or else it would tip over. It was a big deal. Yeah, And I think the key here is this is breathable air, right like um. It depends on how deep you are and how big your bell is, obviously, but I think one example, like even here, was if you have a tin foot tall bell down, that's only about eleven inches of air. Um, that's not enough. Now, I don't think they were going that deep back then, or at least they were not smart to do. So, no, those are the ones that died, that's right. So one of the other problems that these people faced aside from dying because they went too deep and ended up with just eleven inches of air. Now we should point out that before we go any further physically speaking, that that's a by volume, that's eleven inches of air, but that's still the same amount of air that filled up the diving bell above water. So right, it's compressed, so you have compressed there. So all those oxygen molecules are still there, they're just in compressed form. Yeah. The problem is if you're in there, you're compressed too, right, and when you're in that state of compression, um, the oxygen and the nitrogen in your blood stream get compressed as well, that's right, and they dissolve, which isn't a problem with the oxygen because the tissues surrounding tissues absorbed that auction and they love it. It's like yummy to them. But the nitrogen remains dissolved in the blood until you decompress. Then you have a problem. Yes, then you have a radio Head album. Do they have one called the bens. Yeah, I didn't know that. It's a great one. It was the one that preceded. Okay, computer did they make a bad album ever? No, that's a good point. Yeah, that's what the bens is, and that can um when the when the nitrogen uh tries to escape, it forms little bubbles that block blood vessels. And that's why you can have a stroke or a heart attack if you ascend too quickly, and it can go to your joints and cause excruciating pain. I imagine crippling. Remember I mentioned being crippled before. Yeah, you've suffered the bens. No, don't know. Earlier I said, like you said, that's littered with dead bodies and sit and crippled bodies. I feel like we talked about my my lifelong crippling. Well, momentarily, I thought you meant I never had the bens. Okay, I thought I remembered many moons ago you mentioning Scooba diving something about the bens. I've never had the bends. Okay. Yeah, poor Scuba Cat if he'd gotten the bens. I don't know. Wonder Scooba Cat still around. I don't know. Who's kind of old already? Wasn't he. I don't remember, boy, that was a winner of our best So uh yeah, when you come up too quickly, the nitrogen in your blood undissolves, forms bubbles, blocks your blood vessels, blocks your joints, causes tremendous pain, strokes, death, all that stuff. Right, So when you're an ancient bell diver, I guess is what you call? Is that right? A bell diver seems right? Um? And you were down for very long, too deep, and you came up too quickly, You're in a lot of trouble, that's right. And they may not have even understood the bens at that point. Imagine they didn't. They're like, he just got the diving bell sickness again. Yeah, it was because he sinned or something like that. He upset zeus. So things when I went on like this for quite a while, Um, through the Renaissance into the sixteenth century, people were using these diving bells. It was all well and good. They were having a blast down there, having parties. And then at some point people were like, you know what, I bet we could make this better, right. You know, these guys keep running out of air down there and dying, Yeah, or they run out of air and they have to come up too quick and they get the ben So how can we improve this? Or they're only fourteen feet down sitting in a bell, then what's the point which is magnificent but the ship that we need to get to is a hundred feet down. Yeah, exactly, like they needed this. They wanted to have applications they could use like two build things or repair things or get you know, pirates booty exactly. And speaking of pirates, check Sparrow does this with a canoe in the first um Pirates of the Caribbean. Yes, really, Yeah, he turns a canoe upside down and like walks along the ocean bottom. And I don't remember how he pulls the canoe down. Technically speaking, it's possible if he pulled it straight down. I think the magic of Disney, but I don't think it's it's physically possible what he did. Just just want to make sure that anybody who really liked that part, I pooh poo it. Okay, so uh. In the late sixteen undreds it was a Frenchman named Dennis Pepine and um, he was one of the first dudes that said, you know what, I think we can get some fresh air into there, and very smartly and simply he used hoses and bellows that you know, the bellows were outside obviously up on you know, the boat, and they had dudes manning the bellows and pumping fresh air in there. Yeah, and it wasn't even like difficult. You didn't even have to navigate like where to put the hole in the top of the diving The hose literally just goes under the bottom and up inside, and then the air just presses up super easy. Yeah, so you've got fresh air now. Yeah, they can stay down there longer, that's all that's off basically, But it's still not pressurized. The air they're pumping in isn't pressurized, that's true. So they couldn't go any deeper. They could just stay down there and do whatever the heck they were doing sitting in these cast iron bells. Right, So we we invent diving bells and at least the fifth century be See, we have to wait until this century a d before we make a real innovation to them. Now we have a whole other obstacle pressurizing these things. How long do we have to wait to overcome that? One a year? That's true? Uh, And it took an Englishman to do so, Edmund halle Um. He basically attached these wooden barrels, he's weighted wooden barrels to the diving bell and they could be brought up and down, and they contained air. At the bottom of each of these as a whole. Uh, that allowed water to come in, forcing the air up. And at the top was a hose that ran from that barrel to the bottom of the diving bell, and there was a faucet. So basically whenever it was it was sort of like having air tanks down there. Whenever they wanted um more pressure, you know, if they were trying to equalize things, they would just turn their little faucet and allow air in. Yeah, And once the barrel was empty, they would pull the barrels up, um I guess refill them with air, which probably meant just opening the top and then closing it again it's filled up, and then lower it back down there and all of a sudden you could control the pressure. And that was the same um Hallie who named a comment after himself. It was no way that guy was all over the place renaissance man. Yeah, Yeah, that's where that word comes. He's a post renaissance renaissance man. That's true. So yeah, so now we have pressurized diving bells, right, yeah, and basically it equal to that of the surrounding water. So that means you can go deeper, you can stay down longer, you can you you run out, Like if the water starts to creep up, you just add more pressurized air and it pushes the water back down. Yeah, like it keeps the water at baby because it's at the same pressure. So to the water, whatever is inside the diving bell might as well just be more water. Yeah, it doesn't have the crazy urge to fill the diving bell up any longer because there's something there just kind of goes along. It's happy way to the Mariana Trench. That's right. And I bet there was some seventeenth century David Blaine that very shortly afterward it was like, I can stay down here for two months, and people like who cares? Well? The horrible thing was, uh when you added pressurized air. Again, you're pressurizing. That's just the diving belt, but the people. Yeah, so to become pressurized to go down in a diving bell was a pretty horrific thing to endure. In and of itself. Yeah, I guess so. Um, when they built the Brooklyn Bridge to you know, the two towers that that, I guess that. Yeah, those are down almost to the bedrock. They were going to go down the bedrock, and then they found out like there's some pretty stable aggregate thirty ft above bedrocks that they just planted them on those. But um, to construct those, they had to drop these cassans, which are basically like giant structural diving bells, and they pressurized them and it kept the water of the river out, so like literally the river's just flowing around this stuff. But there's men working in these things and they'd have to pressurize before going in them, and it was just like this. Their ear drums would burst once in a while as they were being pressure because it wasn't like gently. It was like, you know, I guess it was better than just walking right into the caison, but it was still pretty rough. And then they go and work in there for a couple of hours and then come out and hopefully not get decompression sickness the bends. But actually the project manager, the son of the designer of the Brooklyn Bridge, Washington roebilis the Sun. He suffered a lifelong crippling from decompressing sickness after going and inspecting some of the work in one of the king Sons and coming out too quickly. We know a lot of people died and like, uh, I enjoy walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, as many New Yorkers do, and you should think about that next time you're doing so. Yeah, that like people gave up their lives too, so you could like say snarky things and Instagram photos of yourself and all the other things that you do. Um, there's a really great kim Burns documentary on the construction of Brooklyn Bridge. Who I haven't seen that one. It's good. It's like a straight up PBS one, no frills. Well he's not about frills. He just moves pictures like around and yes, hands in and out. This may be his least frilly. Okay, yeah, I'm not knocking Kimburns. I like a good Kimburn's. Well you'll probably like this one then, so uh. A hundred years after being able to control the pressure with bellows and that the barrels, I'm sorry, um and English and other Englishman a scientists named John Smeaton invented an actual diving air pump in and it was on the surface obviously, and took like four guys to operate it. UM and it was basically like Dennis Pappine's a ridge anal plan, but it was just mechanized. So they were able to build like big ones like people. There's many's, like twelve people could go down and these things and like have a party if they wanted to. They made windows eventually, Yeah, they put electricity in them. Yeah, that's a little scary for that time period. Oh yeah, wouldn't I don't know. I don't know if I would have trusted that, Yeah, I wouldn't. You know, seventeen or early eight dreds. Yeah, we just discovered electricity. Now let's put it in under water. And they used them for, like you said, building bridges and repairing docks, and early saboteurs would sneak up underwater to um cut the anchor lines of enemy ships. Really that's a very handy use of So you dug up A cool story about UM was that this year he was just this May. Yeah, a guy named Harrison o'kenney, at twenty nine year old Nigerian boat. Cook was on a tugboat, a Chevron tug boat, and in the Atlantic, and it sized and he was eventually through all this, you know, capsizing and tumbling around and water flowing in and sinking a hundred feet yeah, and sinking of course, ended up in a bathroom trapped with air. Yeah, sort of like the same concept of a diving bell. And people wondered he'd survived after sixty hours. That's the sixty hours. But physicists were like, well, how did this happen? Yeah, you probably shouldn't have been able to live that long down there, right, they were. The press reported that he had something like four ft of air something like that, and um, yeah, the the chamber that he was in was only about four ft high. So sixty hours of air shouldn't have worked. It shouldn't have kept him alive. Because about it, like, you're breathing, even if it is pressurized air, you're breathing air, you're also exhaling carbon dioxide. And when the the ratio of carbon dioxide or the percentage of it gets above five, things started to go horribly awry and you die shortly after that. Yeah, I didn't realize that lack of oxygen isn't what kills people. It's too much CEO two. Yeah, that's pretty interesting thing. Yeah, it can happen when you're on a ventilator. UM. That's apparently a big risk. When you innobate somebody's the ox the CEO to build up, you can kill him. So anyway, why didn't this guy die? Well, it turns out with pressurized air, especially when it's um pressurized against cold water, c O two is readily absorbed by that water around it. So when he was exhaling, the oxygen was remaining, but the c O two is basically being wicked away. And since that c O two or the the air bubble that he was in was pressurized, he was a hundred feet underwater UM, which actually helped him. Right, he had a lot of oxygen. A bunch of oxygen was just pushed into this little area. But the CEO two is being wicked away, and that's how we managed to survive. Yeah. It said for every ten memor you descend um one at spheres, pressure of pressure is added and it makes it more dense, according to some lawmaker named Boil. According to Boyle's law, and so since he was thirty meters below it became more dense by times four, and so that meant that he didn't need as much air as you would think for someone that's under underwater. And you know, so how much did he need, like you need a day of air? So he only needed six cubic meters in the end because of the temperature of the water and how deep he was, right, and and also I mean, don't remember, that's a lot of air compressed into the same amount of area. All those molecules are still present, yeah, they're just in a smaller amount of area. They also think though that it was connected to another air pocket, which probably helped. Even still, the guy survived in an impromptu, inadvertent diving bell undred feet below the surface for sixty hours, dude in the dark under the ocean with his head next to a toilet man. And they said that he could hear the sea life scavenging on his dead crewmates. That's horrific. That happened this May, yeah, not in like eighteen twelve. In May. Yeah, so there you go. By the way, we'll insert this right now because it's a good place for it. You were you you were out of town. Did you hear about the whole Sharknado thing. Yeah, you predicted Sharknado. I invented it. Yeah, that's pretty impressive. For those of you don't don't know. Sharknado was a very cheesy movie on a network that UM aired a couple of weeks ago and blew up. Blew Up didn't get as many viewers from the blow up as they would have hoped. But UM, I watched it. It was very funny and fun It wasn't dumb. Oh yeah, it was terrible, but you know in that way. It wasn't one of the guys from nine or two I know on it. Yeah, Iron's earring was in it. Terror Reid, who oh yeah, she's looking rough. You mean I were out of the country and we heard about this Sharknado. So thankfully one of our listeners UM alerted me to the fact that I invented Sharknado. Because in the desert, can it really rain frogs? Episode? UM, I say this, Uh no, I mean I think they're light, because that's the whole point. Even an updraft from a water spelled of two hundred miles an hour isn't going to be picking up you know, great white sharks, right, that's that's a movie for you, raining sharks. So thanks to fan Todd Waters for bringing that to my attention. That's impressive. You very clearly. I even said a movie. Yeah, you invented Sharknado. And this thing was released a good year ago, right, it was I think May of two thousand twelve, so that was almost a year before Harrison o'keine survives in a diving bell. All sorts of stuff coming together, doing the bold ants, feeling the flow. I don't know if I can sue anybody, but I'm looking into it. Have you. I see you should always ask before you sue, like, yeah, sure, so give me some give me some cabbage, some bread, little Sharknado cheese. I think we should bring back bread for money, okay, bringing a little bread? Yeah, all right, so they sent me bread though that would suck with like a note that decision. Want want shape like a shark. Yeah, maybe we should bring back bread into the regular vernacular and then you ask them. Okay, okay, that's our plan, all right, So sorry about that sidebar. I just want to give myself credit words. You should be very proud of that. Thanks. Um Hey, I know I when a good movie idea comes along, I'm all over it. You and Iron's earing. Uh. If you want to learn more about diving bells, you should type those two words into the search bar at how stuff works dot com and it will bring up this delightful little article written by a young exuberant Chuck Bryant. And since I said exuberant, it's time for a message break. And now it's time for a listener mail Chuck, whether you like it or not, I hope you're ready. We heard from another teacher. We'd like to read these. Hey, guys, the reason I'm writing it is to tell you how much stuff you should know has helped me during my first year of teaching. I am twenty four. Just finished my first year as a high school social studies teacher. Alright. This year I taught law and justice and AP psychology. Law and justice, that's awesome, and AP psychology Yeah, well rounded. Since I listened to a huge bulk of your shows when I was preparing various lessons, I use the information that I had on different podcast I've heard on different podcasts. Then I thought, you know what, I should just play it. I'll get even lazier and just play the show. UM. The podcasts were a big hit with the kids. They got a break from hearing my voice and I got a break from talking stuff you should know. Is also great UH for teachers because the articles you guys use for the podcast are well researched and written. Thank you, thank you. I don't have to worry that you guys are just making up information, and if you are, don't tell me. UM. Students said the winner of their all time favorite UH in class was how Barbie works That that's probably my favorite too. It's a good one, Betton Disco. I created a pretty awesome power point to accompany it, and I attached it and I looked at It's a really neat actually. UM. We discussed how Barbie and other toys can influence gender identity and body image and developing children. UM. Overall some of the podcasts of streamed UM, Japanese and tournament camps, and dueling Right to Privacy When You Die UM. In psychology, I hit on concussions, yeah, uh, Monkalsen syndrome, Oh yeah, hypnosis, lobotomys and PTSD. Remember lobotomy. That was one of the alf invest We should have called it Lobotomy's heart. We love my lobotomy on MPR. Do you remember, Oh yeah, that dude, Yeah, that guy here's our hero. How what's his name? Howard something? Yeah, Howard. Just to tell you guys again, thanks a lot for making my job easier because you use classroom appropriate language and report factual research based on evidence and information. You're an amazing classroom resoorts resorts. Did you say there? Did you miss spell it? I did? Okay, keep them coming, Carly Brown, Well, thanks a lot, Carly Brown. We appreciate that, Miss Brown, as your students probably call you. That's right, Thank you, miss Brown for letting us know that. We like to know that we're helping shape young minds for the better. That's right. Um, And we do use classroom appropriate language, don't we. I never termed it that? All right? Well, uh let's see, chuckers. Um, what should we say anything you want to hear about? Uh? If you have invented something, because I've invented the snowboard too. Remember no, I don't remember that. I have a crayon drawing from when I was six of of the skiboard. Oh yeah, it's a guy going down a ski slope on a little skateboard. Of skis on Wow. So I've invented two things, the sharknado huh and the snowboard. So if you haven't inadvertently invented something that's a great one man, we'd love to hear about it. Yeah. Um, you can tweet that to us at s Y s K podcast. You can post it on our Facebook page at Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email at Chuck and I will both get to stuff podcasts at how stuff Works dot com, and you can check out our home on the web. It's a little website known as Stuff you Should Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radios. How stuff Works for more podcasts for my heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H