How This Man’s Joke Led to the Toaster | Alan MacMasters Ep 248

11-05-24

Episode Transcription

00:00 Hey, we host every single day. Yeah, this week we have a hard hitting story about the creation of the toaster. Yes, it's a great story. You're not going to believe how it happened. The twists, the turns, the turners, the toasts. Yeah, it's incredible. It's a great story and if you're like wow, that sounds like a really bad one, that's okay. We have another episode out today as well on our Patreon. You don't even have to watch this one. You can literally skip to the next episode. Yeah 00:29 or if you don't support us, then you have to suffer through this one about toast. You're not getting away. You press play. There's no way to close this nowhere to go. Yeah, no this. This week is about the person who invented the toaster and it's it to me. It's really interesting the way that technology was thought of and how ideas that didn't exist before. It feels like there's so few ideas that could just be made today. Yeah, 00:53 that's actually yeah. That's pretty. I I support that. So speaking of today, I hope that you went out and voted yeah. Unless you are not a United States citizen. If you listen to us from somewhere else or if you are, if you're not registered to sorry that's right. Taking an aggressive turn and I didn't know how to get out of I got stuck. No, I was more thinking like if you live in a different country, but then it sounded like I was like unless you're here and you can't 01:22 yeah, but yeah, just leave in the comments who you vote. Don't do that. Please don't do that. Leave in the comments who you wrote in for. Please don't do that whatever. So today is November fifth. That means next weekend I am in. I'm in Virginia and actually next weekend is a big weekend. I've been Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida and then the weekend after that I am in Kansas City and then Texas. So 01:51 with the church comedy tour with Shama, Marama, my good one, a really good time. If you haven't bought your tickets yet, I don't expect you to so why would you? You know, why would you support what I do? Where do they go? Why would you follow my dreams with me? I know you can go to jerry meyers dot com slash shows or you know they're there around here somewhere. You can find a ticket link 02:14 buy some tickets so bad and look. I know you're probably thinking I don't really want to go see Jaren, but I'm going to go to the Kansas City show. So if you want to see me, I'm not going to be doing anything, but if you want to look at me, you can buy tickets to that show yeah and Alex will also be there, but we're not going to tell you who he is. Yeah, you're going to have to guess. Good luck, ask everybody. Let's get to the episode. 02:40 Hey man, hey, who'd you vote for? I'm planning on hitting the polls later today, later today. Yeah. Can I, can I do that? I voted early. Yeah, I didn't like a good citizen. You could vote whenever you want. As long as you vote, you're a good citizen. It doesn't matter when you vote. That's not true. Okay, I'm a good citizen. 03:04 who go for them. Have you heard of big match? You tell everyone who you voted for. Let's open. Let's open this open with the let's say together on three. Get ready. Have you heard of Alan McMaster's Alan McMaster Alan McMaster's? Okay, it's an Mac Mac Masters, Mac Masters Mac Masters. We've had a conversation about pronouncing the Max. Wait, you saying this wrong is no neck thing. I've never heard of him. Oh 03:32 What was the rule you told me when we did Ken? No, no, it's how you pronounce an M C. Oh, so like in a doesn't matter. This is always a Mac. That's always Mac. Okay, have you heard of the rule is though if it's M C and the next letter is a vowel, it's Mac and Mac, Al Roy or you know Mac or Roy Mac or or you know, but you wouldn't say Mac Donald's you say McDonald's. Interesting. That's the rule. 04:00 to rehash it. You probably listen to that in the other episode. So cool, Alan, I voted for Jill, 04:14 yeah Alan McMasters. You know that reminds me you voted for. That's not dumb. Sorry if that was your pick. It's a good one okay for real though the Missouri ballots though yeah okay. This is a total whatever have you. Did you vote early? I voted early. I did not okay, so on the ballot there is a measure. We can actually talk about this and it not be weird okay. You're familiar with ranked towards voting. Yes, 04:43 your pro range towards voting. I don't want to get rid of the option. I don't know if I think it's best there. I don't remember what the other version of it I've heard of. I think rank choice voting. I think it's better than what we got. There was one I heard recently. I can't remember what it was called that I was like. I was voting no not rank choice, not rank choice. There was another one very similar to rank choice where I was like. Oh, I think I like that better than rank choice, but I can't remember what it was 05:11 but but that's not a like about rain choice. It is hold on. Let me think for a second and make sure I'm not mixing these up with 05:25 I can't remember. There was a reason I had an issue with it okay, and I can't remember the reason I had an issue with it. I think that it would give us less extreme candidates. Yes, yeah, that's all up and down the ballot right. That's definitely true yeah, because instead of like if you haven't, if you don't know how ranked towards voting works, I don't think we have the time to break down. You should absolutely go watch a YouTube video about it. 05:47 but like don't watch. Here's why it's bad, just what or here's why it's good. Just watch an explanation of what it is. Yeah, don't try to get an opinion because obviously people are going to try to be like well, and I'll tell you why they could, because if you get rain choice voting, it does take away a huge power that the parties have because it's you know you. You end up with more options yeah 06:11 and the parties really do not want rank choice voting to be implemented. I can tell you that because in the Missouri ballot this year, it's one of the ballot measures of do you want to implement rank choice voting? Here's how they described it on the bow. This is actually read it through. Did you say I read through everything to make sure I understood all the pieces and I remember reading that and being like this is incredibly misleading. Yes, because they because you're suppose if you want right towards voting, you have to vote no on the measure, but the measure starts with. Do you believe that every vote should be by a 06:41 US citizen yeah, and if you vote no to that they're like well, you voted no to sit in your like that's not, but if you read the other paragraphs they put that in there to to go into voting yes to strike down the measure and it's going to work. It's going to work in Missouri. That's not going to pass because they put that in there because the second I saw it. I was like well, this measure is dead because unless people went through the the effort of researching these opinions of how to vote on this, how that works so annoying 07:09 and they don't in the fact that they're allowed to word things like that. The fact that it's bar they spend months rewording and strategically doing crap like that is what I think that all the time with the bills where it's like you're allowed to just sneak other stuff into bills where it's like you voted for one thing, but now you're also agreeing to another thing. It's like why is that an ads against you yeah it's so absurd and that's what I'm saying is like dude, like why would 07:38 The reason we have insane people in politics is because we've made it so that if you're a sane person, it sucks to be in politics. Yeah. Why would any sane person look at what they're doing right now and go? I want to subject myself like to be a part of that that anyway. They that's why I get so stressed. That's why I'm radicalized now in lighter news. I won't play a quick game before we get too deep into this. This is a new game I'm calling 08:03 look at this close up of a side and try to guess what it is a website. No of a sign, so look at this close up of a side and try to guess what the rest of the sign we're talking about. That's the name of the side. Yes, we're going to talk about him. Oh, this is unrelated. This is a really this is a game of close ups of sign. Yeah, this is a zoomed in shot of a mini game. This is a mini game. Yeah sure yeah, consider him any so so I'm going to show you this really close zoomed shot of a sign 08:30 and you're going to have to try to guess what the sign is trying to sign you for. Does that make sense? Sure. All right, here we go. Here's the zoom 08:40 Why did you do this? What are they doing? What are they teaching you? What is the? What are they notifying you looks like an emergency pamphlet? So oh yeah that he's choking. That's the Hamak maneuver. You got it right. It's time 09:02 Yeah, it is the heimlich in Spanish. Why it is the I'm like. What is this? This is a poster that tells you how to do the heimlich in Spanish yeah, I get that's a zoom and this zoom 09:22 that Alex are we on my face right now? We just can we just sit on my camera for a second. I just want to hold on go back to the pig. Why are we back to my show back to my back to the big go back to my why back to the picture all right back to him and back to my angle. Why are we doing this in an episode? Why is this something like Tim Tim saw this somewhere and was like it's really funny. 09:47 that that girl's just hugging that guy from behind. I I'm going to be on. I tell you what though I've gone to church with this couple before like during worship. The wife is just yeah. Yeah, yeah, that is so rough. There was that couple. He's got his hand in her back pocket. Yeah and they're just yeah yeah. If you are touching another person during worship, you're doing it wrong. 10:10 that's my opinion. Okay, that's my personal opinion. It's very no lay hands here. Yeah. Why did you put her interval? I just think it's funny. I think it's funny for a lot of reasons, but honestly one of my favorite reasons is she's in color and he's in black and white and I don't understand he's pale because he's choking. Oh he's a fixiated yes. Oh, that makes more sense. All the color is left his face and his hair 10:41 all right. You should run these bits by me before you just like this. Okay, Alan McMaster's. Here's a picture of him. This is a guy from like the late eight hundred and well, look how pale he is. Someone do the high muck on that guy. I'm going to bury the lead on what he did for now. We'll come back to this. What he did right yeah. He was born eighteen sixty five. He was a Scottish 11:09 scientist later in his life, but he he went to University of Edenburg in the fall of eighteen eighty three and he studied philosophy. While I was there, he met a professor by the name of Fleming, Jenkin, Jenkin, Jenkin, Jenkin, Jenkin, Fleming, Jenkin, who connected him to the press 11:37 I don't think you took me a thing. You pronounce her out. I don't think you're not supposed to say that like that and then he his professor connected him to. I guess it's like the Department of Transportation for Scotland and Glasgow. Is that how you pronounce that Glasgow Glasgow? They were doing the underground, the the subway 12:06 Oh, okay, they call it the underground in Scotland and Europe and yeah the UK and all that. I don't know why we called a subway here because underground railroad was already taken. 12:21 I was an acceptable joke. I hear Alex typing as if it wasn't, but that was an acceptable joke. Okay, all right, so he gets he gets connected with the underground. I'm just here to do my whole job over here and go. How is this a joke? How is this a joke? So he got connected to the glass go underground, which 12:51 sick band name to all yeah. That's also very sick and I will say that would be like a venue. Yeah, the Glasgow Underground. I will say we're metal bands play yeah. That is true. Actually, I wanted really bad when I was in high school. I had this dream. Actually, it might have been early college. Me and Isaiah had this training skate park, no close Isaiah and I shared this dream. This was a dream. We had a church together. No, that was a later dream, but we had a dream to buy a 13:21 bank, but like not like if not not a functional bank, a defunct bank, yes, go ahead, open up a music venue in the say in the safe and call it, but yeah, no, the safe here is huge. That's true yeah and call it the vault and really do and you go through the vault door. There is a there is a bank. I want to say it's in Iowa that's been converted into a house. I saw one of those Zillow profiles. You know like one of those Zillow finds 13:50 there's like Zillow gone wild and there's like Zillow gone mild, which is just regular houses and then there's a little gone cool. I guess I guess but this one was actually pretty sick. It's an old bank that's been converted into a house and I was like that's and then I obviously like the final bank, like what era are we talking like you ever driven down the Paseo and there's that Chinese restaurant that's in that that small bank yeah that bank. That's the bank on sale. 14:18 for so oh no, but it's like that era. Okay, okay, yeah, like like an eighteen hundreds early, nine, ten, it's bank like a Bonnie and Clyde sure nice like a bank. So the underground, that are ground. He gets connected with them and he's like he's like late in college down. There's not big enough to be a venue though. You think you can play shows in there yeah where they put the soccer field? Oh you're talking about 14:46 that vault yeah. There's there are multiple vaults in this building yeah yeah that we own yeah. We have to keep our gold for our patrons. Their patrons pay in pure gold. They do they ship it yeah yeah. They're really reluctant. That's why we don't have a lot of patrons because I just sign up with a credit card. No, no trust that system. So he gets this job working for the Glasgow underground. How far into this episode are we 15:13 a fourteen minutes sucks really sorry for you, the listeners. We trimmed some of that yeah. The Glasgow underground hires him when you say that that means they know we made jokes that we had the cut out that. No, that just means that we know that we took a break for some reason. There's a lot of reasons we could have took a break being a breaks. Here's a commercial break before we get to it. Please don't please don't please don't 15:43 in the early days of this show, we did like affiliate ads where we were like a sign up for grammarly and use code till and and we got like fifteen cents and now we just do patreon. It's a much better way. It's better for us as creators. It's better for you as listeners and it's a much more fun way for us to interact. We do monthly hangouts like on zoom. We just hang out and play games online and and get to know each other. It's a really fun time, so 16:10 but still use our code till in at grammerly dot com because I think it's still. I might get like a couple cents from that, but join us on patreon because we're having a great time. Yeah. If you don't, we're going to have to start doing mobile game ads. 16:27 Okay, so the Glasgow underground hires him to help with like lighting all of the carriages underground, which I'm now realizing they use the word carriages in this Wikipedia article here and my brain was just like, oh, that's the they're from Scotland and so they just call the trains carriages, but now I'm realizing it's eighteen eighties and so maybe they actually are carriages in the underground. They just dug tunnels for the carriages. 16:56 how are their trains trains were? I mean they had trawls or subways. There's a better question. Okay, yeah, google that. I don't know about so I'm only interested in the stuff I can see above ground. I don't like those worm trains. 17:12 I have to search subway like like train subways because I don't like those sub train rain in oh is that what they got the name subterranean way interesting. Oh yeah. I guess did you just now put that together? Yeah, I did actually that sub is under yeah yeah. The first one was proposed in London in first subway yeah in eighteen forty three. It was an underground railroad 17:41 Wow trains are old dude. I mean I knew trains were old, but I just assumed that back then they were all like steam and stuff, so I don't think you could put those underground like when was the first rain 17:53 When was the first train first train was steam powered in eighteen or four pretty wild. Wow gosh 18:05 That's how I know aliens are real. 18:10 Okay, so he gets, he gets hired to light the carriages, which I'm now I'm returning back to. This was what they called the train cars, the carriages because they were really dim underground. They didn't have sunlight and so he gets hired to try to help light them. Yeah, and so he's making like special light bulbs at that like would work in there without being too hot and stuff like that and could actually run in the trains and so he's like a little engineering project and it goes over really, really well and so because of that the 18:38 Glasgow underground connects him with the London underground. And they're like, hey, this guy helped us figure out how to make it not so dark in here. And they're like, oh, my gosh, it's pretty dark in ours, too. Can you send him over here and see if he can figure out how to make it not so dark in ours also? Sure. And here's the thing. He's done it once already. So he just shows up and does the same thing. And it works great. And like, oh, my gosh, this guy knows how to make things not dark anymore. Yeah. And so part of that project. 19:07 one of the guys he worked with was a guy by the name of Evelyn Crompton. I'm realizing now I probably should have a picture of Evelyn Crompton, so I'm going to pull one real quick and honestly I'm going to be one hundred percent honest. What you think in your brain before seeing a picture of Evelyn Crompton is right. That's who Evelyn Crompton is here. He is a hold on fat man, not fat oh 19:37 I'm out. 19:41 I was a little off, but like I had the glasses right kind of little glasses, weird mustache, old guy and a three piece suit. Oh yeah, yeah he he owned the company. You're going to be surprised by the name of this crompton and co nice, which was that was back when you could just do it. You know yeah, now people going to come up with all these creative names and start 20:12 solar flare. What is that? I don't know what that is a time and so Cromden owns this company. This podcast is just called Myers and Friend 20:32 Crompton owns this company. And so they kind of hit it off and they become like. 20:46 friends. I would say friends. They go out for drinks a bunch and like they're like talking about engineering stuff. I don't know what you did back then and how people connected before football, but that's what they did and they would go out for drinks, do whatever one night there. They go out. Is it? This is, I mean, I don't have the exact year, but I would ballpark figure like the mid 21:16 They go out for drinks one night. Sure. Uh, and drink a lot of whiskey. They go back to Crompton's place and they're hanging out and, uh, he's kind of talking through with Crompton about, um, the original Glasgow line project and it's like, yeah, I was working with the filaments and he's like, originally I was trying to figure out how to make it cheaper. So I was using some cheaper metals to make it. 21:44 but those filaments got so dang hot it would start a fire. And he said, he said, it was so hot and like across the room. And he's like, he's like, are you serious? 22:14 and I'm going to be honest, I don't even remember the context. Oh, he's reading the night before Christmas and the uncle is like, are you serious, Clark? You know, I'm talking about, okay, you know, this is a serious work. You know, the scene I'm talking about, it's kind of the same thing. He's like, wait, are you serious about that? Like, that's kind of cool. And so they get together and they get that metal and they start experimenting with toasting bread with this metal. 22:40 okay, the two of them work together to create perfect the world's first toaster and so this is a rendition of what it looked like. It was pretty much imagine what a toaster looks like. If you take the shell off the toaster yeah, which I did, that's what this is and so honestly hilarious that you bought a toaster today. I walked in and I saw that and I was like gosh. We live in a simulation like this is insane. 23:07 but this is a big development because before this toast toasters were these they were literal trays that you just put over a fire like in the yeah. You just shoved your loaves in and you held them over a fire and they told your low yeah. I was this thing that you just shoved your loves and it was you doing it a dead pay for 23:33 I shoved the lovin. 23:39 And then I projectile vomit it. 23:49 That was me making a call back to a different episode. You just shoved your loaves in and then put them in the fire, so he came back to Crompton and he was like look what I made and Crompton's like this is legit and so like I'll toast to that yeah. Hey, there you go. They're flying here. No okay, and so they took it to market. 24:13 Crompton's business started selling it as the recording. I let three hundred Nats loosen this apartment. 24:21 he has no idea he's deadly allergic to now I just doing a sides to my camera as if you couldn't hear me like just diary room things. I go. Can you believe this right now? 24:36 back to it. Okay, so he started. They started selling it. They made it the eclipse, which is way cooler than the toast. They started selling it as a clips and it was the it was the heating element on a ceramic base, which I showed you the picture of and it just plugged into a regular lamp. So it's wild that we used to just be able to sell stuff. It was like you can really really burn yourself on this. Well, 25:04 By 1894, so this must have been early 1890s of some pretty major controversy because one of those things melted And this fire was like huge news, 25:33 gave this comment to the paper and said user error. They blamed the woman yeah, of course, and they said that it's her fault for not holding appropriate respect for the power of the electric toaster. It's not our fault. Her man wasn't around the direct quote kills me. It's not a it's it's her fault for not holding appropriate respect for the power of the electric toaster. What a crazy thing to say when it's like hey, what do you think about this woman who died in this fire this week? 26:02 even the number of car accidents. Well, when you're not respecting the power the ram fifteen hundred all new for tough and yes one if your fault really, if you think about it, well, that's her fault for not respecting the terms and conditions. She 26:29 she she downloaded Disney plus cross plus so McBaster's went on to also invent the electric kettle and a handful of other like electronic devices. Okay, here's the thing plugged into an outlet yeah just plugged into a regular out. When did they do outlets around the same time? I guess it was said a lamp outlet, so my guess is they had outlets specifically for lamps before everything else started just using electricity. Yeah, my guess 26:55 I think we're going to get to a point where there's no outlets and we're just USBC and everything or US being not USB anymore USBC. I mean I think there's gonna or do you think was get to a point where everything is nuclear 27:10 Could be. I mean, I think there could be a point where there's, I think there could be a set of lava. It's just a, it's a little nuclear blob in there. I do see a potential world. I don't see usbc. They have to come up with a new usb because there's not enough power going through that to power a lot of the appliances and stuff we have. So we have to be a thing. Our in the usb there is in the usbc is pretty powerful for like a toaster or like a microwave or tv. I don't know 27:40 my my linder or an air fryer or a electric piano or a soda stream or a espresso machine or a refrigerator. Okay, well, I'm done with this bit, but I could see a space heater. I could see a possible world where your fire stop it. I could see a possible world where 28:07 and there is like a little hot tub. Tim doesn't like when I do bits. I don't like it. A lot of times Tim doesn't like when I do bits because it interrupts the flow of the episode and he's trying to get the information out. So I what I see I was talking. I know I picked up on the bit you picked up on it when I just you there's a 28:32 like there's a there's a podcast review. I don't have we talked about it. There's a podcast review where someone said love the show been listening for a long time. Jerons become a big jerk and he really makes fun of Tim a lot and it's actually like I forget what the words are, but it's like wow. Jaren lately has been. I think it says you're in a incessant jerk yeah, Jeron, Jeron, beginning in incessant and I'm like I don't think you were a big fan of the show to begin with because this has been from episode war. This is not normal. I didn't start 28:59 I wasn't just like I haven't been getting meaner to Tim. He's been this. He's just been getting more sensitive about it. This has been our friendship and that's because he didn't realize the heart. He didn't harness the power of my humor correctly. 29:16 No, what I'm trying to say, what I see more likely is I see a possible world where our walls within the walls. There's just power banks, so you could just put things close to the wall and it would charge that feel. Let's charge fry our brains. It could. Okay, we don't care. We've never cared about that before. It's going to be eating. I was going to I don't think it'll stick. I think you can just set it on the dresser next to it. It's close enough to get the juice. That's my that's my my premonition. Okay, yeah. 29:46 and you'd have it on all four walls. So that way it'd be beams of energy hitting your brain from all four sides. I don't know that's gonna be good for we're gonna microwave our brain cells. I whenever we ever cared that's true. So Alan dies in 19, I think, 26, Alan Masters. Yeah Alan dies in a night. We like sixties. Yeah, he does relatively young and he kind of like 30:13 He got to be a part of all this stuff and he got credit for it, but it wasn't like it was a big deal. Like it really was like Crompton made the toaster was kind of the thing. a Scottish like tabloid picks up the story and they list off. It's like it's an article called Made in the UK. 30:42 the life-changing everyday innovations And so they highlight all these Scottish And the toaster is on the list. it's just a picture of the toaster throughout the rest of the 2010s, 31:12 gets a ton of attention and everybody starts to really, really love him and he becomes like a figure in schools that kids are. They have like assignments where they're doing like reports on his technology and they're like they have artworks that they're supposed to do of him and there was he was featured in TV shows a lot like the great British bake off. They had an episode where it was like one of the bakers devoted their 31:41 cake to Alan McMaster yeah and it was like themed off toasters, the toaster yeah themed on toasters and stuff like that, and so he became like is actually a working cake where you can push this down and two pieces go into it and then they come out and then they pop out yeah yeah. It's different and then it and it hit a fever pitch in twenty eighteen. There was this ballot for they were changing the face on the fifty dollar bill in Scotland and to 32:09 Alan McMaster was one of the candidates. He didn't win, but he was one of the candidates to put his image on the fifty dollar bill all a bit, and so it was just this huge or deal of in the twenty tens like there was a huge, a huge deal that right. It made this person up, but here's the thing. This is Alan McMaster. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's pretty funny. That's a good bit, so Alan McMaster's 32:39 that if you're not watching, this is a picture of honestly a pretty typical reddit user. It's a dude with a sick shirt that's made out of just handkerchiefs and his pants to I mean great outfit, honestly great fit styles. Yeah cool hair, very thin Alan McManager's super fit 33:06 not fit then those boys were super fit so hot. All right, dude. 33:17 Thanks for checking out this episode. In that mailing list, we give updates on past episodes. and every week things are changing. So if you want to keep learning stuff, that's happening in the Till and Verse. 33:43 I like that. I've never said Till and Verse before, but I'm sticking with it. You can go to tilland.com. and everything that's going on in the Till and Verse. 34:08 So Alan, the real Alan McMaster was a aerospace engineering student at University of Surrey. and the professor was going through research methods. Wikipedia for your research like every professor always does. 34:37 and shows that the Wikipedia page for the toaster has one of the professors from the university as the inventor of the toaster. Like they changed it and they put his name in that for like the bit to be able to do this every year and say, look, this is one of our professors. Obviously he didn't invent the toaster in 1902 because he's still here. 34:56 and all the students were like, well, how do I like right, right, right, right? This is really just them doing an elaborate cover up of a vampire on staff at this university. And like clearly he didn't invent the toaster in 1902 because he's still alive to teach this class. So later that night, Alan and his friend Alex are kind of talking about it. They pull up the article and they look at it and Alex is like, hey, what if we made you the inventor of the toaster? Like, yeah, that's funny. You order it. So they do it. They make the change. 35:26 so wow, really funny dudes here because they went to class. The professor's like look at this funny thing we did and then they went back to the dorm like what if we did the exact same thing? What if we just what if we did his bit? Well, they took it and I should say so they did it and then further well a year later they noticed that it was still there. No one ever caught it. No one ever changed it. So Alex 35:56 I was like, hey, Alan, I think we could level this up. And so Alex commissions a friend to take this photo of him. And so he does up his hair and what he assumes is an old school hairstyle. They Photoshop in sideburns and then he didn't have any clothes that he felt looked like fit that era. So they made it look like they tore it. So that tear is a fake tear that they Photoshopped in. Obviously, to me, they acted like it was a tour picture that they like scanned in. 36:25 Oh, this was the idea that they were trying to do and then they that's him. That's Alex. That's the friend Alex. This is for now. This is Alan. Say they're not the same yeah, but yeah, this is the other friend Alex they use for the picture and so they then create an actual page and they create this whole back story, but they did a really good job with it because all these people and all these companies and places are real and the time frames that they're connecting them to our real 36:53 time frame, so they did their research on the toaster, but they just changed Alan McMaster's. What are you? Are you doing your oh man? It's we're so glad you're home for Christmas break son. Tell us about school this semester. Oh, I mean I've been I've been up to my eye. Oh my gosh, it's been been doing this research product project on ever heard of the underground 37:22 you know time up, you know what I'm talking about and now with like the trains and stuff the other one and yeah. I just been researching this a lot. I mean like I can't go to sleep right now. I've got to. I've got to read up about Evelyn some more going to respond to your text. I don't know. It was a door dash during I didn't door dash here. I door dashed for my wife at home. Is she at home? She's getting home in a couple minutes from work and you were like or dashed her dinner. Yes, 37:52 Wow yeah. What you do? What? Why are you guys fighting that you had to make up for it with a door dash? I didn't cook dinner, so there's no left over. She has nothing to eat, but you did cook her eggs this week right. I did cook breakfast. I meal, pep her breakfast. I didn't meal prep her dinner yeah yeah yeah good for you pal yeah. So that's exactly what happened. They built this old ash, my wife, some 38:22 They built this whole back story for them and they connected it to real people. 38:31 but they made up that story of it getting invented. They made up the story of the first fire thing and their response to the first fire like none of that stuff actually happened. I'm going to toward as your wife's going to send her another dinner. 38:50 get out of here. Your address is in my door dash. You're going to send her a better dinner, yeah and then and then and then and then and then and then and then and then when you get home, so I got two dinners, you like which one did you eat? That's pretty good, pretty fun bit, so that's a bit that we should do in the show, not your heimlich bit. Yeah. What what do you think this sign is? I wish I had another side ready to put this in the fifty dollar bill 39:19 Yeah, so they put this whole Wikipedia article out yeah and in twenty fourteen it does get picked up by that that tabloid sees it doesn't fact check it. They pick it up and they make that article and then it just kind of goes wild for the next ten years. It's they're featured in news where like news, you know how you got to fan the flames and that stuff. You know you got to be like you got to get on reddit and be like you see this or they did not do anything. They just put up this Wikipedia article and that was it. That was the whole bit and then I think it caught this 39:49 So this becomes a real thing. and the school district had a day The British Bake Off thing actually happened. printed that he was the inventor of the toaster. 40:15 This started running and Alan, the actual Alan, out of college, he was reading a book, it was a book on Victorian era inventors And he's like, oh maybe this was a mistake. 40:44 the page was up until twenty, twenty two. I would have taken that to the grave to be honest. Oh yeah, and I think that was their plan, but in twenty, twenty two there was a a fifteen year old redditor named Adam, which is eerie that the characters in this Alan, Alan, and so I have one thing we just did. Yeah, we just said that we said Alex at the same time. Yeah, that was pretty weird. Let's try it again. Yeah, okay, 41:14 Alex, I see I mess it up that time thing, so he was in class, say who we voted for, so he was in class in twenty, twenty two. He was at school clay again 41:35 and I'm still better. He was in class and it was the same thing. He's in high school. His teacher is talking about the great and he goes enter of the toaster. He didn't I did know he so he shows him that and he shows them the Wikipedia page and he sees that picture and this kid is immediately like. I don't think that picture is real. He's like that looks like photoshop and it's twenty, twenty two and so this kid at fifteen years old looks at that. He goes home that night. 42:04 and he downloads it and he looks at the metadata and he sees that it was made in Photoshop and he's like, I think this is fake. So he goes to Reddit, there's a Reddit community. I think this is fake. There's a sub Reddit called Wikipedia vandalism, which is hilarious. But it's like people who are looking for vandals of Wikipedia. Sure. And he uploads that picture and he says, hey, this is a fake image that I found on this Wikipedia page. This sub Reddit digs deeper. They end up uncovering that the whole thing was fake. 42:31 So the page gets flagged for deletion and then Alex's Wikipedia account ends up getting banned from Wikipedia and they market that it was the whole thing was a big old hoax. So that's how it got uncovered. Was this this kid this kid didn't know the whole thing was fake. He thought it was just just that picture, just that picture. And so Alan, the real Alan, this Alan, yes, he made 42:57 he has a new secret Wikipedia account that he now contributes to, but like seriously and he's like that's my like apology. He's like I don't want anyone to know what the account is because I don't want to get banned and he's like, but as an apology, I'm like contributing to Wikipedia. Now I keep changing. I keep changing stuff because I like it. This was actually a really wild ride because I actually really love it, but yeah for years and in multiple print publications and encyclopedias, Alan McMaster's is the inventor. 43:26 of the toaster, but that wasn't true. It looks like it was a handful of different companies of that development. One of my favorite parts about the toaster, 43:58 is that under at the very bottom of the page, they have related products is what it says. Oh, so things similar to toasters and there's only there's only one item and it's the hot dog toaster, which I love so much. Have you ever seen me? I have and you know what is weird about it to me? Where does the juice from the hot dog go? I probably just drains just like 44:22 just like the crumb. They have the crumb catcher. They probably have a separate train soggy for your hot dog juice. No, I bet there's a crumb catcher and then I bet there's a trot. You know what I've I know what I'm doing. Yeah, I toast my hot dogs and then I and then the best part is when you had to open the thing and just take a quick shot of the hot dog juice. That's the best part. The best part about using the hot dog is there the little shot at the end 44:49 Oh what the shot at the end? I don't know what you're talking about. It's my favorite part, but yeah, I love this. Whoever thought of this great person, a little hot dog shaped holes in the middle, little bun shaped holes in the outside. You make two of them genius idea. Honestly, I don't know why I don't have. I ever come to someone's house and they have a hot dog toaster on the counter and like 45:13 readily accessible yeah like right there. It's like it's not put away somewhere. That's something you didn't even get as a gag gift. You have it on your counter and it like looks used. You know, I'm talking about like it looks like it's been used a couple times. Yes, yeah, that's a lot of judge yeah that you look in the in the juice trough and it's full. You know you're not even taking the shooters out of this. It literally like it gives me a lump of my throat. I felt that to rose now, but this is this is a textbook example of circular reporting where this came out of one source. 45:43 and then one source along the line didn't fact check it, and eventually it just kind of got out of control. where somewhere along the line that they got their information from and then repeated it 46:08 because really in Scotland for years, for about 10 years, everyone was just like, yeah, Alan McMaster's invented the toaster and he's really important to our lives and we want him on the $50 bill, which is crazy. There's another really popular example of this right now, circular reporting on TikTok. I don't know if you've seen this. No. Speaking of November 5th, no, it does not relate to that at all. Have you seen these reports that there's an alien armada coming to the United States of America? 46:37 and the James with space, teleco telescope spotted them and NASA's reporting it. Have you seen those on tick tock those videos? We have some moments that our episodes take some weird turns stick with us and I promise you it'll get better. We have similar algorithms right. I do not get those videos. No, it's a really big thing right now. A lot of people on tick tock are saying oh my gosh now, so 47:04 they're saying reporting on NASA just said that the James Webb Space Telescope saw a armada coming towards like a NASA coming towards Earth. No, who said that? I don't know who originally said that, but what I'm my guess is what it looks like is that whoever originally said this took and jumbled together a James Webb Space Telescope report with the old a mua mua. Remember that yes and they put that together to be like James. 47:33 space telescope saw a mua mua and they don't know what it is and it's probably aliens and then this just has catapulted and now there's there's I see I'm not it. I'm not exaggerating when probably once a day I see a video where people are like responding and it's like it's like that it's like you like and share the video interesting perspective. No, it's like it's like you know those ones where it's like the green screen where it's like the face and then behind it is like them reacting to another tick tock and I 48:03 I see that almost every yeah it's just high quality, just very value giving content on the internet yeah and it's and it's like the fourth or fifth tick tock. We're going to start promoting our podcast just like that. That's hilarious. Really funny you over clips of you, you're just like we got to hear a couple and then there's a whole 48:33 and then just cut to another shot and be like like I've been saying this for a while. It's great to see someone else saying this for a while. Make sure you hit the follow button, but yeah, I mean this is a great example of why we should always check your sources and if you are, if you're like sitting here like watching this and you're like well, how do I make sure I have the right information? That's why we have info wars dot 49:01 and if you support us on patreon, maybe we can buy info wars that we can take down the people who are trying to trying to you know. I got to pay all my legal fees because I lied about those families. Do you think the domains for sale on the bankruptcy auction? 49:20 it won't be cheap, but it'll be worth it. It'll be the best thing I ever buy. So yeah, so circular reporting is a dangerous thing. Sure, we need to be careful about it, and so that's why this podcast has firmly committed to only reporting off stuff we find on Wikipedia. So we're glad that you're checking this out. Who knows how much we've talked about that is just made up from Wikipedia as possible, but we don't check our sources. We don't have time to check our sources yeah. 49:49 So here's the interesting thing. The story goes. If you read that, the initial report of that that night where they were whiskied up and they started working on this original toaster, yeah, they were having a hard time with powering the toaster because like they only had lamp outlets and that did not give enough power to burn toast right, and so they held a they drew a pentagram on the ground. 50:17 and they said. They said Satan. We don't know what to do. We're having a problem. We can't figure out how to turn on this toaster. They called them the dark power of Satan guys that we can't figure out how to power this toaster like sade said, and that's actually a little known fact is that the heat that burns your toast is the fires of hell. 50:42 and said said said said said the Daly said hey Alan, here's the deal. He said you beat me in a duel and I'll tell you the secret to getting this toaster away to fit a law. 50:58 Hey, thanks for checking out this episode of things. I learned last night. If you like this and you want more of it, we got a whole back catalog, like two hundred something episodes. You can go listen to one of those in the story of Frank Abagnale from the movie. Catch me if you can, you know Leonardo DiCaprio, you know our friend Thomas Hanks was in that movie and but 51:17 what you might not know what I didn't know when we recorded the episode is that the entire story is a lie, just things that we just all believed because there was a movie about it. We're like oh yeah, that's true. We did the same thing. It turns out it was all made up not to give away the ending, but that episode is linked somewhere. You can go watch that here. The crazy stories and then hear how Frank Abagnale Junior actually made a living off of his lies. 51:40 and so again next week's episode is available right now. You don't have to wait for it. You can check that out on Patreon. That just helps us fund the show. We don't make any money off this. That just helps us create more of this and to put out episodes regularly. We really love doing this and we really love that you were here for this one, so we'll see you next week. We will never stop doing this show. I promise you if this show stops, I'm dead, which that'll be really eerie to watch one day for being here for things over last night. 52:12 This episode was produced by our masters is edited by his friend Alex. It was engineered by a fifteen year old kid named Adam.


History can sometimes be tricky to unravel. One example is the story of Alan MacMasters, who was often named the inventor of the electric toaster. But did he really invent it, or is it a case of circular reporting? Let’s explore this fascinating example of how myths can take root in history.

Who Was Alan MacMasters?

Alan MacMasters is widely mentioned as the inventor of the electric toaster. In the late 1800s, MacMasters supposedly created a device that toasted bread using electricity. The idea was groundbreaking, and it’s easy to see why people were drawn to the story. But here’s the twist—some historians question whether MacMasters even existed or if his story is true. The information about him seems to come from unverified sources that cite each other, which is where circular reporting comes in.

What Is Circular Reporting?

Circular reporting happens when information appears reliable but comes from multiple sources that all trace back to the same unconfirmed origin. Imagine one article says something that isn’t true, but other articles repeat it. Over time, the false information gets repeated so much that it feels like fact. This seems to be what happened with Alan MacMasters. His story may have spread through circular reporting, leading to confusion about the actual inventor of the electric toaster.

Why Does Circular Reporting Matter?

Circular reporting can turn myths into “facts.” Alan MacMasters is one of many examples. When circular reporting takes hold, people may start believing in things without questioning their origins. In the digital age, this issue is even more important. Information spreads quickly, and accepting stories without checking their sources is easy. Recognizing circular reporting helps us stay critical and informed.

How to Spot Circular Reporting

There are a few ways to recognize circular reporting. First, check if the information is repeated across multiple sources without evidence. If each source points back to one unverified source, it signifies circular reporting. Look for direct evidence or original documents that support the information. By spotting circular reporting, we can better separate fact from myth.

Conclusion

Alan MacMasters and circular reporting teach us an important lesson about information. Not everything we read is accurate, and it’s always worth investigating further. Whether or not MacMasters invented the electric toaster, his story reminds us to think critically and look deeper. In a world full of information, being aware of circular reporting can help us get closer to the truth.

Things I Learned Last Night is an educational comedy podcast where best friends Jaron Myers and Tim Stone talk about random topics and have fun all along the way. If you like learning and laughing a lot while you do, you’ll love TILLN. Watch or listen to this episode right now!

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Sources

Alan MacMasters – Wikipedia


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