War, Famine, Pestilence, and Design

​​Roman Mars:
This is 99% Invisible. I’m Roman Mars.

Roman Mars:
When Kurt Kohlstedt and I were promoting our book, the 99% Invisible City last year during the middle of the pandemic. Over and over, we were asked how we thought the design of cities might change because of COVID.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
And by that point, lots of shorter-term changes were already visible, like street closures to accommodate outdoor dining and other open-air activities.

Roman Mars:
That’s Kurt. Hey Kurt.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Hey Roman.

Roman Mars:
Also, all the plexiglass partitions, like they popped up overnight there and they’re still everywhere in the bay. I was impressed how the shopkeepers could put them up so fast and fix them, you know, in kind of interesting ways.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Roman Mars:
But they do kind of diminish the retail experience. Like, I have a hard time hearing through or around them.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Totally. Especially when talkers on both sides are also wearing masks.

Roman Mars:
Yeah. I need to lip-read to understand people most of the time anyway, so I don’t love the plexiglass, that could go away as soon as it’s safe. But one thing I do want to keep, actually is all the way-finding cues, the stickers on the floor, like guiding people where to stand, to keep socially distant and keep in line. I mean, I don’t want the social distancing to stay, but I love adding an information layer onto the floor, keeping people in line because people are terrible at knowing where to stand and being in line. It just soothes my anxiety.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah, absolutely. And I could see keeping some things like sidewalk seating and car-free streets too, always assuming that we vet these for impacts on accessibility and the potential privatization of public space.

Roman Mars:
Of course, that’s right.

Roman Mars:
But we’re not going to try and predict what designs are going to stick around from our current pandemic. Instead, this week, we’re going to look to the past. Kurt and I are going to talk through some of the other designs throughout history that were born out of moments of disaster. And I think some of these examples will really surprise people.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yes. So when you’re in the moment, it can be really hard to tell which solutions are just tied to current challenges and which ones are going to stick around, but we can look to history for some remarkable examples of designs that have persisted or even evolved further in the wake of a crisis.

Roman Mars:
Okay. Let’s get started.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Something that surprised me when I was researching this, is how truly every day some of these things have become. And one that really grabbed me is this gadget from the early 1800s, which I’m sure looks kind of familiar to you.

Roman Mars:
Yes, indeed. This looks like the precursor to a bicycle. Like it’s not quite a bicycle, but it looks enough like one that I can imagine riding it like a bicycle. Like it’s not quite there. It’s wood, it’s metal, it looks a little chunky. It doesn’t have pedals. It reminds me of like the scoots that – I don’t know if anyone has toddlers – like the little bicycles that basically that you push along with your feet, like Fred Flinstone. But, so what is this thing.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
It’s called the Laufmaschine.

Roman Mars:
Laufmaschine. What does that mean?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Well, literally translated from German, it means “running machine”.

Roman Mars:
Oh, okay.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. And as you notice, it’s basically one step or, well, technically two pedals shy of being a bicycle. And the main difference between the two is that in this case, users actually had to run along the ground while straddling this thing. And then they had to pick up their feet and glide along on the wheels, sitting on this kind of awkward seat in the middle.

Roman Mars:
So it’s exactly like a scoot.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Basically, yeah.

Roman Mars:
I mean, it looks, it looks totally fine, like a recreational vehicle for fancy lads in suits.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Exactly. And later it came to have that association, but it was actually created during a shockingly dark period of history.

Roman Mars:
Well, you have to narrow it down for me because it seems like 90% of history is shockingly dark.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Fair enough. I mean the big overarching catalyst behind this was a volcano and it wasn’t just any volcano. When Mount Tambora erupted in 1815, it was the largest eruption in recorded human history. And so this event itself causes a bunch of deaths, tens of thousands of people die. And even though it happened between mainland Asia and Australia, the sound of it could be heard over a thousand miles away.

Roman Mars:
Whoa. That sounds terrifying.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah, absolutely. And it didn’t stop there. People close by were the ones who suffered initially, but the volcano had these longer-term global impacts that lasted way past the eruption. And as far away as Europe, 1816 would become known as the year without summer, they were facing this brown and red snow, which was colored by the volcanic ash and the atmosphere. And it must’ve looked to people like the end times had finally come.

Roman Mars:
Yeah. I remember last year when the wildfires kicked ash up into the upper atmosphere and it turned the entire Bay Area orange for a day, like it was a dark orange. It was just one of the weirdest days of my life. Like it felt so ominous and so just crazy-making to me that I kind of didn’t know what to do with myself all day.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
I had the same reaction and thinking about it, I at least knew what was causing that, like I had weather forecasts and could kind of comprehend what was going on around me. But I’m trying to picture people at this time who didn’t know exactly what was causing this sort of apocalyptic event. And on top of not having a firm grasp of the cause they were in the midst of a lot of other stuff. So picture this right, Europe at the time is still recovering from the devastation of the Napoleonic Wars. So things weren’t exactly great to begin with. And then along comes this volcanic winter, which devastates the crops. And so food supplies go down, prices go up, there’s rioting, thefts, violence. And on top of all of that, you’ve got the resulting malnutrition, which is driving the spread of diseases. So it’s this ugly combination of catastrophes, kind of perfect storm of bad fortune.

Roman Mars:
So how did those dire conditions lead to this bike?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Right. So the Laufmaschine more specifically was inspired by a particularly morbid side effect going on amidst all of this. We’ve got food scarcity, which is leading people to turn in a lot of new directions, including to horses.

Roman Mars:
Like they ate their horses?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. So people were slaughtering horses for meat and for their hide. And you know, it’s not like there was an alternative. I mean, even if you’d wanted to keep your horses alive, there wasn’t enough food to feed them. And so it’s very grim and very much kind of a product of necessity at the time.

Roman Mars:
Yeah. So without horses, people still need to get around and so that’s what creates this, the Laufmaschine.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yep, you got it. That’s where this, this German inventor comes in and his name is Karl von Drais. And he has this idea for a two-wheeled alternative to riding on the backs of animals. And so he’s tinkering around with this thing and he does his first test ride right around that time in 1817. And this first wood and iron Laufmaschine is a hulking thing, it weighs 50 pounds and it takes human power and it could only travel 10 miles per hour. But on the other hand, at the time, 10 miles per hour was a pretty good pace.

Roman Mars:
Yeah, but it still sounds a bit awkward, like running along rather than pedaling. It sounds like it was only really useful for people who live uphill from something they want to get to.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. As a kind of day-to-day device, it was pretty unwieldy and it took a lot of practice to learn how to stay balanced and not fall off the thing. And then, of course, you’ve got European roads at the time, which are not all flat and smooth. If you’re running downhill… (crosstalk) No, right, wasn’t flat and smooth and on top of that, as you said, you can’t go downhill both ways. So people are kind of learning the hard way that these proto-bicycles are not the safest or the most efficient device.

Roman Mars:
But for it to take root and take off, it must have been popular enough to overcome these shortcomings and have people use them.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah, that’s the thing. It was still popular enough that it quickly spread to England and France and avid riders of these things would actually wear through their shoes because they spent so much time propelling the machines. They were so popular in some places that municipalities had to ban them for traffic and safety reasons and amidst all of this, they got a new nickname too, the dandy horse.

Roman Mars:
So, this presumably is after the period of time in which the crisis necessitated them like this is when they do become true recreational vehicles. Is that right?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. I mean, they start to have these kinds of aristocratic associations, like fancy dandies going around town on their fancy dandy horses. Although the horse part is macabre, right. Because it still harkens back to the sort of dark origins of the device. And then ultimately, they grow a bit less popular as such because they’re not super functional and they start to evolve too, people would trade out the wood for steel. And then of course there’s this really critical development, which you could probably guess where I’m going with this.

Roman Mars:
Put some pedals on that thing.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah, you got to put some pedals on the thing. And that’s what this French mechanic thought in 1863 when he added a crank and pedals to the front wheel hub. And with that one move, he essentially created the first true bicycle as we know it. By the end of that century, the bicycle had come full circle, right. It started as this kind of functional solution and became this kind of dangerous hobby horse thing. And then it was back to being this kind of functional mode of transportation. And it came to other associations too, like in hindsight, bikes played a really critical role in helping 19th-century women gain both physical, but also social mobility.

Roman Mars:
Whoa. I mean, it’s just amazing to think of it that it all started with this confluence of just absolute disasters. I mean, it’s not too surprising cause they always say that necessity is the mother of invention, but this was a really grim set of circumstances that led to this thing that I think it’s a pretty, unalloyed delightful good in the world.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. I mean really dark necessity in this case leading to something that’s really widespread today. And, and as I was digging into this story of the bicycle, it got me thinking like, what other things are there like this? Or was this just a one-off flip, right? Are there other everyday designs that we take for granted now that have their roots in tragedy? And that’s when I came across the rise of miniature golf during the Great Depression of all times.

Roman Mars:
That is not an association I would have painted. So when I pictured miniature golf courses, I kind of think of like the World War II era, you know, like sort of kitschy leisure and baby boomers and that kind of thing, not the Great Depression.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. Right. I mean the last thing on your mind, when you look at a mini-golf course is the worst economic crash in modern history.

Roman Mars:
So did mini golf come up because it was too expensive to maintain big fancy golf courses or something like that.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
I mean, that’s part of it, right? There’s no way you’re going to maintain these huge grounds for just a couple people walking along with their golf clubs and all that we associate with sort of luxurious sprawling golf courses. That was kind of not on the agenda financially, but also there’s just the matter of space. Right? You’ve got all these people who are in cities and need something to do. And they don’t have transportation to get out of cities. So mini-golf becomes this kind of logical solution, kind of infill solution in the urban environment.

Roman Mars:
Right. So like along with everything else, real estate prices plunged, and there’s some space and you might, you know, if you have a little bit of space, you can build a miniature golf course.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. That’s exactly it. The conditions were in some ways totally ideal in the wake of 1929 for exactly this kind of activity. And so while technically mini-golf actually predates the stock market collapse the crisis really ramped up interest in it. And you have, as you noted, tons of closed businesses and vacant lots, and all of this is just right for entrepreneurs to take over. And even in places where there’s not extra space, people just kind of made space. They would convert rooftops into peewee golf courses or parking lots or really anything. And so it was this surprisingly huge fad. And at one point, somebody even called it the madness of the 1930s.

Roman Mars:
Specifically talking about miniature peewee golf is the madness in this phase, wow.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Absolute insanity.

Roman Mars:
And that is, that’s quite the sequel to the roaring ’20s.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. And so you’ve got these two very different periods in a way, but there’s also this parallel where if you think about it, everybody needs recreation and distraction and it doesn’t matter if things are going well or they’re going horribly. And given the economic situation in the ’30s, cheaper activities were naturally much more appealing. So on the business side, it’s also an opportunity, right? Because people could turn their own yards into courses or the interiors of their unused office buildings. Basically, anybody could try their hand at building a course. And so tons of people did.

Roman Mars:
Wow. I love picturing that, that people just entrepreneurially setting up a miniature golf course, like a lemonade stand everywhere they can.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Exactly!

Roman Mars:
So when did all the things that I think of when, when it comes to miniature golf crop up like the mechanical windmills or the ramps and you know, all that sort of stuff when did that happen?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
So some of the more technologically advanced stuff came later, but a lot of those basic things that we still see in miniature golf courses today do date back to this exact era. Things like ramps and bridges and ridges, people just build out of available dirt or whatever they could find. And at the same time, you have this recent invention of artificial turf, which helps courses hold up better to foot traffic. So people who could afford it would add that to make a more robust course. But you know, really the kind of key in all, this is all the odds and ends. Course makers could just grab whatever scraps they could find, pipes and stones and just work them into this bigger design. And there was some scrappy entrepreneurialism in picking the sites for these places too, some would situate their courses underneath big lit up billboards so that they could operate at night without having to pay for the light bulbs or the electricity.

Roman Mars:
Oh, I love it. This is so fun to picture — cities filled with miniature golf courses everywhere. I mean, am I getting this right? Is it really like everywhere?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. I mean, I’ve literally seen pictures of it being everywhere. I love these images of little rooftops that are where people are crowded around playing mini golf and it’s totally the opposite of what we can imagine today. Right? Like you look at New York City and you think, well, every bit of real estate is huge and expensive, but back then it was like, no, there were little spaces you could cram into. And so people would just head out in droves and go play mini-golf.

Roman Mars:
Wow. I mean, mini-golf is delightful, so it doesn’t surprise me all that much, but the ubiquity of it, the way that you’re describing really is striking.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. And of course, with all these creators vying to make their course ‘the best course’ and trying to attract more players, there was innovation around that too, like ways that people would try to set theirs apart. Things like pools and mazes and traps popped up and eventually more kind of fancy things like fountains and forests and castles, and even replicas of famous architecture like the Taj Mahal or the Great Wall of China. And so over time, these things become almost like tiny theme parks, right? Like just populated with all kinds of wild and creative and colorful stuff. And this one in particular that I read about that has my personal favorite feature, which is a trained monkey that goes after your ball. So if you’re not careful, it’ll just come and snatch your ball and it’s game over.

Roman Mars:
I would definitely go to that park.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Oh yeah. Yeah. I wish that one was still around today, but a lot of the elements are still around. Like those complex courses with the miniature architecture, it’s become a kind of staple and it’s still this thing that we associate with like a fun family night out.

Roman Mars:
Totally. It’s just sort of fun to imagine New York City just being carpeted with miniature golf courses of all things. I just, I kind of love it.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Oh, I do too. I do too.

Roman Mars:
So these are kind of two delightful things born out of a natural disaster and economic disaster.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. And, and so to make things a little darker, I want to pivot to another kind of catastrophe, one that we’re all familiar with, no matter sort of when we live and that’s war. And some of the most devastating periods of human history have been, of course, marked by human conflicts. And yet at the same time, tons of well-known inventions are also created during wartime.

Roman Mars:
Yeah, totally. Off the top of my head, I would say like glues and rubber and computing, all the encryption and stuff that came about because of war. Was there something in particular that, that jumped out to you?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. Amidst all of those inventions that have become part of our everyday life. It’s something that’s really, really every day that we absolutely take for granted, which is cans and, of course, can openers, they go with them.

Roman Mars:
Wow.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
And these kind of jumped out to me, not just because canning was developed during a period of disaster, but also because it kept evolving from one conflict in one war to the next, over multiple centuries. But this whole evolutionary process starts with Napoleon.

Roman Mars:
I mean, that makes sense. Like you have troops on the move, you know, you’re, you need to attack Russia.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
And of course, the Russians aren’t, aren’t super keen on feeding his armies as their attacking.

Roman Mars:
Of course.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
And so to solve this issue of his troops on the march needing food, he ends up offering up a prize in 1795 and it’s a cash reward to anybody who can help them develop a better technique for keeping food from spoiling.

Roman Mars:
Kind of like an X prize, but more down to earth.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. The Napoleonic X prize. And so this Frenchmen who eventually gets the money, ends up spending over a decade, doing research and development so he can earn the prize and his process of heating and sealing foods and jars is pretty much the same thing that a lot of people still use today.

Roman Mars:
But that’s not really canning at this point. Like it’s just more like jarring like at home.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. Right. So he’s using glass jars, but cans were the next big step and suddenly industrial canneries start to spin up and the cans of the 19th century for the most part look a lot like the ones we see today, they’ve got those side ridges that help strengthen them and allow them to expand and contract.

Roman Mars:
Yeah. Like if you picked up a can off the shelf of a supermarket and took off the paper label, you would see those ridges.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. The basics of the design were there essentially from the start, the biggest difference was a complete lack of can openers. So you’ve got these cans and at the time they’re especially thick and robust and people had to use hammers and chisels to get them open, up until basically the mid-1800s.

Roman Mars:
It’s really stunning to think about, that you could have cans without can openers, that they weren’t invented alongside of each other.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. It seems crazy, right? That you could have decades between the invention of the can and the invention of the device that opens it. And when it was finally invented, it still wasn’t really popular in a kind of general public consumer sense. But during the Civil War, armies were really quick to pick up on this thing and say, “Wow, yeah, canned goods in the field with devices to open them. I mean, that’s great. Like that’s just what we need.”

Roman Mars:
That sounds like quite a breakthrough. Like, is there a reason why ordinary people didn’t use them? Is it just like, not user-friendly, too expensive or what?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. So despite the fact that it took so long to invent the can opener that sort of worked, it was still not the user-friendly can opener you’re probably picturing, that you probably have in your kitchen drawer. People really had to just kind of stab the can and then saw along the edge manually. So as you can imagine outside the military, there wasn’t a ton of interest and where they were used a lot was in grocery stores. But instead of sending you home with a can, the grocery store clerks would actually open the cans for you and send you home with the open can.

Roman Mars:
So cans weren’t for storing stuff at home, it was for storing stuff on shelves of the general store. So yeah, and that, that sort of defeats the purpose of the little handy can that you get at a grocery store, but I can kind of see how it works.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. I mean, it kind of works, but it’s so totally backwards from the way that we think about cans today, is like something that you can take home for convenience purposes. So zooming out, big picture, there’s this back and forth between military and civilian uses in the 1800s. So canning would ramp up for a war and then that production capacity, they tried to pick out a way to put it on shelves and sell it to consumers, even if it meant opening the can and sending you home with an open can. But then in World War I, can food took its next really big leap forward. And it happened in part because soldiers really, for the most part, hated it.

Roman Mars:
Hated what? Like, hated eating canned food.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah, they did. They were not big fans of the canned food. And I mean, you can imagine, right? Like it gets old pretty fast-eating canned food in the trenches and to make things worse at the time there wasn’t a lot of selection. And so you can imagine being a British soldier and just eating a lot of pork and beans. But during the war, things started to change and we started to get some variety in canned foods, things like soups and pasta and stuff that we pretty much would recognize today. And so, because of this greater diversity in our options, suddenly it was a little bit more appealing to civilians too, after the war.

Roman Mars:
So like, now that they have good food inside of the cans, you can sell people can openers so they will open them.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s, and that’s the thing, right? That’s the thing we see over and over again, it’s like each war, the canning gets a little better or the food gets a little better. And so you have these new innovations and it starts with jars and it goes to cans and then there’s better openers and tastier ingredients. And along the way, they’re also, of course, some tins with built-in openers to make things easier. There’s that two-wheeled opener that we still use today, but it wasn’t until World War II that my personal favorite can opener hit the-

Roman Mars:
You have a favorite can opener?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Oh, come on! Doesn’t everybody have a favorite can opener? No, but seriously, this thing is all kinds of amazing. It’s called the P-38 and it’s not just a can opener. It’s this crazy compact little multi-tool. It’s got this thin metal handle and the blade folds into it. So it packs flat and it can open cans, but it could do all kinds of other stuff.

Roman Mars:
Like what?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Well, I’m glad you asked because it can be used as a screwdriver, a bottle opener, a fish gutter, a wire stripper, a flint striker, a letter opener, a coffee stirrer, a toothpick, a boot scraper and I mean that’s just the beginning of the list.

Roman Mars:
So good. And this is a really good can opener too, I guess.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. It’s absolutely great. And it’s tiny and oh, it’s the best. And so, that was in some ways, I mean, to me at least, the kind of peak of canning is World War II. You’ve got better canned foods, a better way to open them. And then we are kind of on the backside of that peak following World War II because suddenly you have refrigerators that are becoming more and more widespread. And so cans suddenly are not really as essential for storing all kinds of food. And for people who are still buying cans, there are these new-fangled contraptions, these electric can openers, which you start to see popping up in kind of mid-century homes, right.

Roman Mars:
Right. But that push and pull dynamic of like canned foods during a crisis is still present because in the beginning of the pandemic, I bought more canned food than I ever bought in probably the last decade.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Oh yeah. Yeah. For sure. I mean, that’s the thing, like the ingrained nature of the can is that it has become functionally associated with disasters, right? So it may not be a military disaster, but you know, everybody from like survivalists who are trying to live off the grid to people who are just facing hurricanes or pandemics, we all have this urge to stockpile cans in case of unexpected or expected disaster.

Roman Mars:
It still serves its purpose pretty well, as long as you can get into them.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Well, I mean these days they have those little pull tab ones. I mean, those are great.

Roman Mars:
Yeah. No, it’s super easy. Cool.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah.

Roman Mars:
So we have one more piece of disaster design innovation after this.

[BREAK]

Roman Mars:
So Kurt’s back to talk with me about one more design, something that’s far, far older than bicycles and miniature golf, or even canned goods. But unlike those other developments that we’ve discussed, this particular design tragedy went away, but then came back again very recently during COVID.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. It was one of those things where we’re in the midst of this pandemic and we’re seeing a lot of these really new design strategies and technologies and improvements on older strategies, like the face mask, which has been around for a long time. But there’s this one design that really struck me because it had largely gone away for a long time. And then it resurfaced last year, that’s called a wine window.

Roman Mars:
I know you got forward to this like a hundred times. I got forward to this 100 times, but for people who can’t picture it, what is a wine window? And what is it for? What does it do?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Right. So basically it’s a small portal in a wall at sort of like waist to chest height. And it maybe is arched and framed in stone. It’s like a tiny, fancy little door, but it’s much smaller, like a little window. And these were actually designed so customers could buy wine without having to enter a wine shop, which of course is ideal for a period when people are concerned about social distancing.

Roman Mars:
Yeah. It’s like a fast-food window for the plague.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. Fast food window, but for wine and for pedestrians instead of cars, but really the same principle. And so rather than pulling over and shouting an order into a speaker for a hamburger, you could just stroll up and find one of these long, the cobblestone square of an adorable old section of portals. It’s kind of lovely.

Roman Mars:
I love it. And, and not just for wine, like I just liked the idea of walking up and ordering something through a little window in a picturesque old city. Although the city wasn’t quite as old then, but tell me were these little walk-up windows created because of pandemics and just sort of like reinforced because of the waves of diseases that would come through cities?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Well, it’s a little bit of a fad and it’s a little bit of just like tax history, but basically like in the 1500s, Florence changed its wine bending rules, which allowed people to sell out of their homes. And that led to the very first wine windows. And so it’s tied up in land use and all this kind of bureaucratic stuff, but as time went on, these openings had obviously huge health advantages when the black death, for example, swept across Europe.

Roman Mars:
Yeah. And so did the windows really work? I mean, do they keep buyers and sellers from passing diseases and dying?

Kurt Kohlstedt:
I mean, it certainly seems that way, like vendors had tried other strategies to cut down on the spread of the bubonic plague, things like soaking coins in vinegar, but wine windows help too. And then slowly over the centuries, a lot of these portals got shut or were filled in or boarded up as diseases were held a little bit more in check and then, of course, COVID hit. And because they’re still there in some form, like built into the walls, reopening them was a pretty obvious choice.

Roman Mars:
That is so interesting. Although I mean, it doesn’t quite have the same sort of like thing as the miniature golf and bicycle where they kind of like persist and evolve. These really just stayed frozen in time and were just there to be unboarded and opened up when we needed them again.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah. I kind of like that difference. I appreciate the fact that they sort of went dormant and then they were exhumed for this purpose that they served so long ago. But yeah, they’re definitely not everyday designs, but I kind of want them to be everyday designs, right? I want this to be something that survives this era and, and hopefully remains part of the built environment. And even if they do close them, at the very least, I love to see like little plaques show up next to them saying, these were used historically and once again, during this pandemic and then maybe, who knows, a couple 100 years from now when there really is a call to use them again, would just reopen them again. Right?

Roman Mars:
Yeah. Well, I hope there’s never a need for future use the same way that they were used before. I mean, one of the great things about the story is that they didn’t have to evolve or be used because there was a lot of other technological development in terms of hygiene and health and vaccines that made it so that you didn’t need little windows to pass wine.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
In a way, their golden era was that period in which they weren’t used. Right? When they were just remnants of a darker time in history.

Roman Mars:
Yeah. You know, the greatest way that we could use them in the future is just as quaint little anachronisms more than something out of necessity.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yes. With little plaques.

Roman Mars:
With little plaques, of course.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
With little plaques.

Roman Mars:
This was so much fun. Thank you, Kurt.

Kurt Kohlstedt:
Yeah, Roman, anytime.

———

Roman Mars:
99% Invisible was produced this week by our digital director Kurt Kohlstedt. Music, mix and tech production by our director of sound Sean Real. Delaney Hall is the Executive Producer. The rest of the team includes Emmett FitzGerald, Vivian Le, Chris Berube, Christopher Johnson, Joe Rosenberg, Lasha Madan, Sofia Klatzker, and me, Roman Mars.

We are part of the Stitcher and SiriusXM podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora Building — in beautiful uptown Oakland, California.

You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet me @romanmars and the show @99piorg. We’re on Instagram and Reddit, too. You can find other Stitcher shows I love as well as every past episode of 99pi at 99pi.org.

  1. Ian E

    Hi, this episode made me think of James Burke’s Connections series where he described the series of events after the black death, being less people around to do stuff it increased the wages of average workers making them richer, and richer people tended to throw out old clothing rather than let it wear out or constantly repair it, the abundance of rags made paper cheaper, and when the printing press emerged a little later it created an explosion in publishing which probably kickstarted the Renaissance period leading to the Enlightenment and Scientific revolutions. How’s that for an episode idea? Great episode as always. Thanks. Ian

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