Welcome to the Amp Hour! I'm Dave Jones from the Eev blog hi Dave thank you so much for having me my name is Kathy Joseph otherwise known as Kathy loves physics on YouTube that's how we know you. Oh, because we've mentioned you several times we discovered you like what a couple of months back when when when did you explode on the very end of last year? very end of December again? okay yeah I I've been running my YouTube channel for four and a half years I think by then oh yeah and and it had been going slow and steady and I felt really good about things So um I started my YouTube channel I felt like it was going slow and steady and I posted a video on the history of three-phase motors and it was really disappointing for a while. right? for like five days they tell you how it's going and I'm like Oh I thought it'd do better than that I really did I really did and then day five it's like suddenly did better and then suddenly I was getting like it was crazy I think on the month of January I Got 5 million views and 60 000 new subscribers. Wow! so how many drivers did you have before that? Fifteen thousand? oh I can't because that's a that's a reasonable sorry I felt happy Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.

and now and now you've got your YouTube Silver award and now I've got my YouTube Silver award. Yay! And you gave me a lot of beautiful advice and I ignored almost all of it and that's really well because I didn't when I sent you that email because I saw you explode on you know you suddenly came in all my recommendations and I went Wow, where has she come from? These videos are amazing on the history of engineering and you know, like uh, electricity, engineering, physics, you know kind of stuff and I this content is so great and I didn't realize you'd been doing it for so long and I thought oh, she's just started and I didn't realize she'd been doing it for four years so that's why it was so polished. So um, yeah, polished is an iffy question. but I'm very.

When I first started out I actually tried to make a video where I just told the story without the script yeah or a script of any I mean I sort of had the stuff written down and then I just talked and I was like this is a mess right? It was just it felt like a mess and so I thought well I should have a script but then I couldn't figure out how to make the uh teleprompter work. So what I did was I wrote a script I read it to myself and then I added all sorts of pictures. ah and then I redid it but where I only had to read out loud the parts where I wasn't covered I got it. Okay and this is why your scripts are available on your website and and they have and you've got the photos.

It's like a whole blog, an extensive blog article with photos inserted in there in line and everything. It's great. Thank you! Yeah I Finally hired someone to help me with the website because it was a mess. Okay, but um, I really wanted to.

At first I didn't include footnotes in that because I didn't think of giving out the scripts right. But then I realized that like so many two things one, so many people want to know where it comes from, want to learn more on their own. and yep, I want to encourage that. And the second thing was that I felt like I don't know.

The more I shared, the more people got interested in it and interested. It just worked positively. I know a lot of people they don't want to share what they're doing because they're worried about people sort of stealing their Thunder and yeah, they're You know, because the secret sauce is in how you produce the stuff and do. that's it.

Like a lot of YouTube is very protective of how they do things and yeah, which is totally understandable. but I'm the other way. Yep, I started this because I started writing a book. hmm and then I didn't know how to get anyone who I didn't know to buy the book right? Okay, so the book came first right for those I think we should go back? Okay, what is your background and how did you get into making videos and writing the book? Which is the lightning Tamers which I'll link in down below I have been reading it? Yes, there it is there it is.

Um I will include a screen capture overlay and I'll include an Amazon link. Uh, down below and it's it's great. I'm I'm only through a couple of chapters so far because I I only got it the other day. Um, and it is absolutely fantastic.

Um and so okay. so what is your background and how did you get into making the videos and writing the book? What is that and what is the timeline of doing that? So I am a physicist. Well, I was I was a physics teacher, a high school physics teacher I studied um, grad school and physics and in engineering science. but I'm great at classes and I was terrible at the research.

I'm good in certain kinds of research, but nobody cared about that kind of research and trying to get your PhD. So I got my masters in physics and Engineering science and um and then I was going for my PhD again and mostly I was playing solitaire and it wasn't even very good at that and I was just like no. all I wanted to do was teach that I Love I Really do love physics I love understanding how the world works. Yeah, and it seems like making it makes you a magician.

Yes, you know that feeling. Yes, absolutely there are parts of engineering that even us Engineers consider Blackmagic You know if you're designing RF stuff like high frequency RF stuff that's deemed to be Black Magic by many people. you know it's like yeah and I'm sure the same exists in the physics world and stuff like oh, you're working on Quantum oh that's just black magic stuff you know, like I mean but even the simple stuff I feel like it's almost magical. We have this Museum in San Francisco called the Exploratorium I've been there.

it's awesome. Yeah, isn't it awesome? It's great I would love to take my kids there, but yeah, it's a long way from Sydney it's a long way. but uh yeah I Just loved not only just playing with it, but things not reacting the way I'm expecting yeah and then you open up the thing and it says this is why this is the rule. this is what's going on and I'm like yes so I thought oh I'll be a common teacher I became a high school teacher which I mostly really liked.

Um, it's a bit of I Described it as sort of like getting your band together at a local bar with like the gates where people throw beer things at you like yeah, wrong. That's the best analogy of being a high school teacher I've ever heard that is. Yep, it's like when you do well, it's great. but they'll throw out and I'll tell you like you're boring as hell.

anything you do and I'm like oh no no no Okay, Okay, there you go and now you come to YouTube where it's where it's multiplied by a hundred thousand people. Yeah, it's already your comments relatively good compared to I feel Like the majority of my comments, the majority of the people who watch my videos have been amazingly nice, excellent, and when it got more popular, the amount of nice comments increased. Also, the amount of complaint increased. It was very weird.

Yeah, it's a bell curve once you once your channel gets bigger. the outlier Nut Cases there's just more outly in that cases, whereas if you're a smart channel, it's down like you don't even see it because they're just like you might get one. Maybe if you're unlucky. but yeah, Right, Right, Right, right, right, right.

Usually the complaints are: I use my hands when I speak and I blink or too much sometimes I've seen people like complaining about my lack of makeup which I'm like okay, right? right? Yeah, because you know, yeah, it's YouTube but also simultaneously I feel like so oh so I didn't get I was a teacher I had some children I had a child they let me teach part-time and my second child they got a new principal. they didn't let me come back unless I was gonna teach full time and I had two small children and was taking care of my mother and I was just like I'm gonna try to write a book about So my thought was I wanted to write a book about the history of electricity so that people who don't know anything about electricity can learn about it through its history. That was my motivation and it wasn't aimed at us. Engineers because I think your majority of your audience are Engineers who I Just you know.

Yeah, we love engineering, but we were never taught this stuff right. I Get, there's not a single engineer who has been taught the history of it. There's just not one. We we learned that.

oh okay, oh you know that Maxwell is named after, you know James Maxwell and Voltaire Voltaire And you know we, we know, we learn the association, but like it's like one second. Yeah, it's named after this guy and that's it. Feel like we're leaving everyone blind. Everyone's supposed to discover something new, but we've never been told the story of where new discoveries come from.

The only thing we hear is either it was an accident or it right popped and someone might say oh, it popped into my head fully formed and you're like, well, that's okay, one I don't believe you no and two, even if I did believe you, what does that do for me? nothing it does mean nothing. Yep, and I feel like if I had known The History of Science I might have done better at doing original research, right? Okay, even science? Interesting? Yeah. I can't believe how much I've learned I wasn't expecting to learn any physics I Gotta be honest. Yep, but you did.

In the process of doing this, you learned more physics than what you were taught. So I mean I cannot tell you how much I've learned. Wow! And I've never been the kind of person who could teach yourself anything right I never thought I could teach myself anything and then I realized that like if I come up to anything that is new to me hmm I just study where it came from and suddenly they will tell me how it works because they told me how they invented it and then that'll make it all make so much more sense. Got it? Okay, so you have no history background? Really? No, it's a no right.

It's purely coming from a physics background and you just love the history of it. You found you love the history. You got so much out of it. And right? So how long did it take you to write the book? so? Well, that's an interesting question.

Uh, so you know what it is. So what happened was I started writing this thing and I just kept on. First thing that happened was it turned into a bunch of linked short stories. Okay, almost immediately I realized that it was sort of a a relay race right of one person coming up with some idea and inspiring the next person inspiring the next person.

That's what I got out of the book and that's what we'll get into. Is that yeah, it's um, yes, it just like, but very slowly as I'll get into, it, all unfolded incredibly slowly whereas these days it's incredibly fast paced. like yeah, exactly. That's why I was like it was very I debated about my first chapter which is titled something like um Small Beginnings because I'm like, okay, this is a whole chapter and basically they're rubbing things and having feathers.

Yes, exactly. that's the entire first chapter is. it's great I hope it's interesting, but simultaneously, it's not that fast. takes a little while to get going.

so then it came together. The book sorry, kept on expanding and I kept on putting Parts in there that weren't so I My original rough draft covered not only the history of how electricity got in the house, but also the history of radio, a little bit of the history of quantum mechanics, a little bit of the history of like lasers and semiconductors. and because that's that's that's that's not in there, Is it? I've had a no, no, we'll We'll talk about what's not in there later because that's probably more interesting than well. that's as interesting as what's in there.

Well, so um, people say so when I started the videos I started with the if you look in my videos the first video I made is similar to the first section of the first chapter I made. So what I did is I took that first section and I made it into a little video but then making it into a video turned into a way of editing it. Yeah, it was like putting on a play in Poughkeepsie first and you try it out and then people say you know what, you made a mistake here and then I Also found that I feel like on YouTube when I'm doing history I need a way to have people believe me wrong and the only thing I can think of is to use original documentation. Yes as much? Yes absolutely so.

I will find old newspaper articles so if someone says this person said this, I will show the original article you know Edison is saying x y z so that you have a feeling that you can believe me that's real and it did actually happen like here it is, it was published in the news, in the local newspaper or whatever it was published in the physics letters or it was published in the Royal Society or it was published in yeah, whatever. and so especially later on. I mean like the very beginning, there wasn't as much letters that were kept so you kind of limited. but as I went on, I found that there was more and more original stuff I could get and every time I did that I found all these new cool things that other people ignored because they just got that clip and then they just repeated that same clip over and over and over again instead going to the original which often had so many juicy details.

but yeah, you got dropped and so if it became an interactive experience if sort of. yeah. and also it expanded. everything expanded and then I was like I cannot publish a thousand page book of course.

Yeah well, it's already what for 380 or something something like that. I I've kind of so and then I thought, well what was the original focus and my original Focus was teaching people how electricity got in the home and how how the electrical distribution system came to be from the very beginning to I mean I I say like to modern day but I'm I'm totally lying. it's so yeah and that's what I because I was reading the book and I thought like and then I was just before. um we were supposed to do this I thought oh I better skim the rest of it as well.

You know I'm going through the chapters and I'm going. There's nothing here on Maxwell and it's like like Maxwell is like in in engineering like to us engine like Maxwell is the ultimate. You know, like everything must obey his laws right? Everything must obey Maxwell's laws. And then I did a search in the Uh PDF to try and find Maxwell and he's only like mentioned like once, twice or something like that and that's just oh.

somebody else referenced him and I thought and then I realized tell me if I'm right, it was yeah I you you just I think you just confirmed it is that it was the history of how electricity gets. You know how electricity was developed, not necessarily the mathematics and the physics behind it because that that could almost be a separate book. Could it not? Or like I would I would think there's there's like two parallel histories here. There's ones that the more practical ones that are the discovering the electricity they're playing with, feathers and charges, repel each other and stuff you know, frogs legs, you know, um, dance and everything and all that sort of stuff in AC and DC and basic stuff like that.

But then there's the then there's the physicists and the mathematicians which uh, Maxwell was a mathematician I think and yeah, and there's that parallel thing and they sort of. You know there's the theoretical path and there's the Practical path is that would would that be correct? um in some way. No, no, okay, right. Well that was my thing.

I Understand what you were saying. It's funny that you mentioned Maxwell because I am currently doing these videos on Deep Dive Histories. Yeah, the Maxwell's equation at once and I have to watch it like five times. I think before I actually get it.

Um, they're they're challenging the the one I did. that was an overview of all four that is like that is a hard I Was a little worried I'm like some of my viewers, someone will pick you up. someone will pick you up on something. I Usually make everything so that basically anyone can watch it.

anyone can read it. Yeah, but that the Maxwell video one? that one is for people who have I Mean if you've never heard of derivatives and integrals, oh, that one's going to be a challenge for you. There's no way around it. But so what? I did it.

The book does have deep physics in it, but in terms of getting electricity in the house, Maxwell's equations had very little influence, right? in terms of Wireless. It was fundamental. Absolutely yeah. And my second book is called the Wireless Revolution Newton to Hedy Lamarr And that one is going to have a lot of Maxwell's equation.

I mean it starts with Sir Isaac Newton taking a wooden stick sticking in his eye and moving around. yeah and making combining rainbows and it's going to go into how they discovered infrared. I mean because if you think about it, awesome All about white. So I actually did have a chapter in this book written all about Faraday to Maxwell to Hertz Got it and all of that and I'm like, you know what this one needs to go in the next book.

Got it? Sorry I are working on this at the moment. It is Yes sir, what stage are we at? I would say it's about 60 percent written right? So I knew there had to be a second book there I knew it I knew it. You want to hear something crazy Dave What You want to know how many books I have semi-written Oh God Okay, oh yeah. okay.

Tell me you want to make a guess. Five, seven, Oh Seven seven. That sounds like my unfinished projects list every. every engineer has a list of Unfinished projects that are just like I'm famous I I uh on my channel I designed this uh power supply and I did like a 15 part series and I never finished it and I still get emails every day.

When are you finishing the power supply series? They have too many things I just lost interest I Just know I'm not gonna lose interest I I may end up multiplying. it's just you know that thing they say that writers? you have to get rid of your favorite part I'm like sure. I'll get rid of my favorite part I'm just putting that in another book. So yeah.

I've got the wireless Revolution I Got one on radioactivity. Starting with the history of radio, the history of discovering electrons, and then of course alpha, beta, and gamma. and then I get to talk about two of my favorite people. Ernest Rutherford and um Marie Curie you know, so that's fun.

And then I'm going to do one on the history of quantum mechanics. focused on my Planck the patron saint of mechanics. you're gonna open the market. You're going to own the market for historical because I I went through a phase when I was in my early 20s.

I think where I would read biographies of famous physicists and stuff like that, you know and but there's never been one. Is there another book that goes through the history of like like this and how the characters you know learn from each other and played off each other. Is there another one? There are some books, um, but they all have a small problem in that they are always trying to tell a story that they think is interesting. They're not trying to teach the physics and the engineering.

Okay, right. and I feel like when your plan is to tell an interesting story, then you just talk about the physics and Engineering enough so that your audience will follow you. Yeah, and I feel like that creates a bit of a superficial book. and I feel like if you tell the story in order to teach the science and the history I'm sorry the science and engineering.

through the history. then the stories pop out each one because it's exciting Discovery because you're focused on the Discovery not the person. Yep, that's much and that's what the biographies I read. they're all just focused on the one person.

I Go I bet I Want you know and they might mention the interaction with someone else, but I want to hear that story? They don't give it to me. There are some books. There's a book by um, someone named Bill Bryson who's pretty famous author and he wrote a book called a short history of nearly everything. We've heard good things about that I've not read it yet.

it's a big book right? and I I love Bill Bryson's writing. In fact I am I told so many people that I am inspired by his writing style that when I gave a rough copy a very rough copy to my relatives who asked for it. Yep, they went and they said uh, snow Bill Bryson oh my lesson. never give me a rough draft of your book to my relatives.

Yep, my goodness, it is not. It's a different kind of book I Feel good about How It Was Written I'm not insulting myself and I'm planning on writing a book about the history of spectroscopy. oh goodness in astronomy. Using looking at the lights from the stars to figure out what the stars are made of and how they're working.

Awesome! Yep Fascinating! and a book on the history of trains, planes and Automobiles Oh my goodness. Oh I've got an interest in trains as well. Come on, and airplanes as well. Oh goodness, you hit notes.

I'm thinking about writing a textbook that is history based. Oh okay, a lot more effort into a textbook I would imagine I don't know how much effort goes into each one of your video. like because your video are your video. Are you still making the videos based on chapters of books and doing? You're still doing this that same process now.

Well, I'm one that got into lead this diverted? but I am trying once I'm done with my Maxwell's equations one. I'm going to go back to the parts that are in my next book right? because I want them I can't imagine writing a book without making YouTube videos that correspond with got it? That is your process that you've they like and what works for you. and yep. Yep.

exactly excellent. Um and so I already did videos on the history of radio I want to include this stuff on Newton up to Faraday and then I'm going to jump into the history of Television Oh fantastic radar and and stuff like that so it's gonna be wow I have so many great ideas and not enough time. and yeah, who are asking me how much time I put into these? It's unbelievable So I can imagine. Well, okay I will give you an idea right? a YouTuber like me, who's just off the cuff I Don't write scripts.

Never written scripts I just press the camera I just turned on the camera and start yapping and then edit something and Sutton magically comes together. Um, so basically if I can't shoot and edit a video in one day, I'm generally not going to start it I'm not even going to bother starting it. And then there's other more polished engineering YouTubers Who'll take you know they write scripts and then it'll be nice polish produced content and voice over work and you know even animations and stuff and that'll take them typically 30 hours for a video. So they'll spend like a working week on one video.

Um, whereas I don't think I've ever spent in my 1500 videos. I've never spent a working week on a video before. So what would be your rough time frame on a video? I don't know. 150 hours? Yeah, that's that's that's what I figured it takes me about one to three weeks to write the script.

Oh wow, but you're essentially writing a chapter as well section of the chapter of a book. Yeah, I mean sometimes I'm not writing a section of the chapter of a book as far as I can tell because I've just decided like I decided to try to tackle the history of Maxwell's equations in real, real depth. Yeah, and I wasn't sure when I started what I would do with it because I don't want to put that much depth into a book that covers as much material raw as Wireless I mean I want to talk about it with some depth? It's important to me. maybe you can use some of it, but maybe chop out some, but then the artist knowing what to chop out and and that'd be perfect.

who I all my criticism is Dave You: you don't edit enough, you don't chop enough stuff out. But but there's one part that might be interesting to someone. so I can't right it the the editing part. I've been through a lot of editors because it's it's challenging.

It's not just getting your words palette but deciding what to include and what not to include and how you put it together. It's a is a challenge, but um yeah some of it is that. it takes me like I said yeah one to three weeks to write the script and then it takes me about a week to add all the images which usually ends up being an editing process in itself like I go I started adding images I've realized new things I change it I change it again I change it a third time I'm I'm yeah and then I film it and then it usually takes me a couple days after that to edit to edit the video and get it up and oh my goodness and and it's and it's weird also because this is a me myself and I production like um I Hired someone to work on my website and there are people who like you know formatted my book and made the cover and I hired people and one person generously. Just was my editor for a while because he liked my videos which was incredible but um but I mean you know? So I've done editing I mean I've definitely had help.

But the funny thing about the YouTube videos is it's almost always just me and my work so that's it. Join the club! Well can we talk about maybe the book in more detail now because you've talked about how your process and um so it's and please correct me if I'm wrong. but it basically starts in the 1600s with um where you know they discovered electric charges and you know things repel. You know, charges, repel and stuff like so just people playing around with like experimenting with these new charges charged things that they didn't know about I think were very important? Yep, yes and one term I love from it is um, they thought what's this electricity thing and they caught it.

Electric virtue? Yeah. I just love that term Electric virtue, virtue and electric fire. So who came up with that term was that? Stephen Gray um I don't think so. I'm not sure who came up with electric virtue right? or electric fire? They were all over the place.

What was fascinating to me: I Don't know if you've gotten into the second chapter where it starts to become a party? Yes, But yes the parties Yes In the 1700s the electricity was was more of a thing to do to show you were cultured right? It wasn't okay. it was a like especially in France if you wanted to do well at Versailles you needed to be witty and no poems and be able to Electrify pretty girls and give them electric kisses and write by poetry about it like that's how you made it up in the world and the royalty especially in France had this idea that like they would show that they were worthy of being royalty by being showing that they were smart and culture. There's a lot of philosophy, debates and a lot of just doing crazy electricity experiments because all the time because that was the FED that was the was it affect like was it a Fed It was totally a fad. it was a fad and it was just the popular thing to do because they um invented a static electricity machine and with this machine and the jar with metal on the inside and outside you could give really big shocks and you could you know light things on fire and you could kill small birds and they were like this is the best we have no Netflix we but there's not much to do but man we can Electrify things and it is fun and they were totally Fearless that was the other thing that just and it just occurred to me like of course they were Fearless The chances of dying from science were so much less than the chances of dying from like basically everything back then.

What was everybody didn't kill you back then you know if you lived to 40 you were doing well, you know doing great. So there was definitely this sort of like ooh this seems dangerous and exciting. let's try it more. I mean there's this great story about Benjamin Franklin He writes this note about how like he wrote this note about how like he's so excited his friends all come in crowds to see it.

He's never had so much fun in his life and then he writes this note about how like he has to he wants to do one last electric party of delight I think is what he called it and he they kill a turkey with electricity and then they roast it with electricity and then they have little cups where give themselves electric shocks when they drink it and then they give toasts to the electricians of the world. Is that without a cord? back then electricity? No, he made up that word right. He invented the term electrician, give toast to the electricians of Europe I think and that that created the word electrician. There you go and they also said he fired off a Canon of electric batteries, electric battery of cannons and after that everyone started saying if you had something super powerful, they called it a battery.

Oh I'm giving away somebody I gotten battery? Really? Yes, Yes, there you go. And when Volta published his description of his battery in 1800 the first electric battery, he didn't call it a battery. He called it on artificial electric organ. Okay, and nobody wanted to call it that.

Yeah, nobody nobody. I've seen that time and time again in the history of this sort of stuff over the years. Is that somebody called it something and everyone just went, no, that's no, that's rubbish. And and I don't know the community come up with another or the next person to publish like right derivative research calls it something else.

Is that is that common? That one's It's a mix. It's funny to me to have to read things and people are like, what do you think about calling this positive and negative and you're like that's who's the thought you put in there. What the heck It's amazing to see them just like write notes like hey, what do you think about calling it this and then suddenly we're stuck with the you're calling them that's Faraday's fault he just he went a faraday knew no other languages but English he had no education a new no math so when he was discovering all this stuff with electricity, he contacted a linguist and he said can you help me name all these things and they're like okay, cathode, anode ion ion? um wow like I would say 60 of the words that you use in your job comes from Faraday's friend Dielectric. um oh yeah, he came up with the Dielectric the idea of the dielectric how you measure the dielectric constant.

All of that was Faraday It was just amazing. So do these guys I know my friend just invented his linguist friend just invent these words or did they come from Latin did they translate from Latin no he just came from Latin or Greek they had I don't know Latin or Greek either but he sort of described it to his friend and his friend said okay, well this there's this Latin word that kind of sounds like it like that. Yeah exactly. But my my thought was because I wanted to teach people how electricity works I wanted to start at the beginning and sort of go step by step because I think most people when they talk about it they do the war of the currents.

but they start in like 1880. Yeah, which is so which is 200 years I'd like to win. All this sort of stuff started happening and I think it's in the first chapter all started Yeah, um you mentioned that it was 60 years before they discovered that Um charges repelled. They knew they attracted or is it Opposite They they knew they attracted.

but it took 60 years before somebody discovered that they also repelled. What? what? what? Well, not very many people were playing with electrics as they called them because they weren't that interesting to them. They didn't think there was much there. There was some Italians who might have discovered it beforehand, but then it was.

more. In retrospect, they're like, well, they kind of noticed it repelled, but they thought the thing was making vortexes. so not really. So I bet so they weren't.

They just weren't Weren't enough nerdy people to be interested in this stuff like at a deeper level going. Oh I wonder if it also does this? I Think it's not the people, it's the system to promote their ideas. If you have a place where people can get published and other people can listen to them and they can get some money from it in some way or another. University Royal Society a king or queen or whatever, then you end up with the discoveries.

If you don't have that you don't have, you can have as many nerdy people as you want. If they can't publish it anywhere, they can't read where it comes from and they don't have the money to do the research. And it doesn't have to be like it's not always like you're mentioning this guy named Stephen Gray who discovered that electricity moves, which is basically current flow, right? But right? You know that came a long time after that. They didn't know about current as such back then.

but yeah, they you know charges move. Yes. And he discovered induction. Uh, static induction.

Yes, static induction as well. technically in in induction, but not induct, not magnetic induction as we right, right? you know. And that's why Faraday called it magnetoelectric induction because it was a term already in use from Stephen Gray actually is from Um I can't say this guy's name the Um Isaac Newton's second assistant D Salier Oh yeah, yeah, I know I I can't say his name very well. I'll butcher it as well.

Yeah, I'm anyway I apologize, but um, but the the thing is I mean like he was a clothing Dyer and he had a bad back, but his friends convinced the government to give him a little bit of money so that he could be at a a retirement home for deserving soldiers. and that's how he had enough time to make his. Discovery Yeah, but it wasn't like they paid him big bucks or anything. but at least you got something, you got something for it, you've got some recognition and you got, you know, right? Exactly So I that is My theory is that in order for things to be discovered, it's not that you need the nerdy people.

Plenty of nerdy people. You need the system set up. And any country where the king or queen sets up some Royal Society of science, yeah, their country does better, that has to be demonstrably true. I Can't yeah, I Don't think anyone would dispute that at all.

I mean at least that's my theory from eating everything. Absolutely correct. It has to be. It has to be that.

who was it at the Royal Society that prevented another guy he was President um yes. Newton they made Newton the president of the Royal Society and then one of his guys. He didn't like one of the fellow dirty people he didn't like. he prevented him from being published so it was like oh yeah, I Think we think of science as this sort of lofty thing full of lofty ideas and people with very you know, mature and adults with white jacket and everyone's very fancy.

Serious, right? right? right? And it's they were people. some were delightful and some were jerks and most were in between. And I feel like it's been. It's been so much fun meeting them.

If that doesn't sound no, that's I Totally understand. Yeah, um. people feel like they know me. People feel like they people feel like they know you because they've watched your videos.

you know? and they feel like they you know you. I Get you know, dozens of pages of emails from somebody who you know who watches one of my videos and they told me their whole life story and they tell me how you know connected we are and it's like wow, you know, right? And sometimes it's beautiful and sometimes it's a little creepy. it's a bit creepy, Yeah, but no. I I think that and I wish I feel like I'm trying I feel like I bumped into something that's important that it's not.

Learning where things come from is not just a good way to help people who know nothing about it understand a little bit about it, but also it's even more helpful for those of us who know more about it. Like the more you know about a subject yes, the more you get from learning its history. Absolutely because you learn all these all these intricacies of what it means and what it does. and I definitely feel like for example, radio waves.

If you asked me five years ago about radio waves, I could have answered you yeah, I would have felt like you would have given the standard engineering answer you would have. you know, Yeah, right? But I didn't have a solid understanding of it until I studied the people who discovered it interesting and then it felt different to me, right? It means something different to me, you know? Yep, and so I think that's that's true for all of Science and occasionally I get into things that I have zero knowledge go all over the place. Well, I'm I'm getting reading your book I'm getting the same a similar sort of thing. It's like more like I'm getting more of a passion for that particular thing.

Not necessarily that I'm learning more engineering from your book, but I'm I'm getting more passionate about. well. I haven't gotten into the you know, the detailed later chapters I'm sure there's more in there I Don't know, you know, Have you gone even to the Leighton jar? No. I haven't gotten to the late in jail yet I Just did this like 2.1 Here it is.

Yeah I know it's coming later is coming. Yeah I Feel like my passion for that sort of stuff is being ignited and it will encourage me to learn to go into the oh yeah I like I'm want to check out Maxwell's equations. You know? because I watched your video or something I want to get into it more? You know? like I you know that's just stuff I've totally forgotten, right? You know you? You had to learn it back then and you don't use it every day, right? No, no, we use just basic stuff every day. It's just you know more as as a as a practical engineer, you just you know you don't need the detailed maths and the physics behind it.

No, um, yeah, it's very different. So it ignited the passion more than yeah. Oh, that switch is really good. I I Feel like they've ignited the passion? Do you see what I mean I Feel like you're telling of their story there I Feel like they're sort of talking to me from the past.

If it's not too science, that's that's not too good. You know they want me to tell their stories. They want me to tell their science right. They want to tell like where it came from and what it means to them.

and by telling that story, it's so inspiring that suddenly you're like wow, that's cool I Never thought about that. Maybe I could try this thing. Maybe I could do this experiment I Don't know I think it's treating them as human beings that are not perfect and sometimes try to mess each other up and sometimes steal from each other. and sometimes I See, oh, you're totally it.

It makes it real and it makes you realize that you can contribute too if you see it. I mean these weren't perfect people who had their ideas. they were, you know, messy and they just threw stuff on the wall and saw it stuck. Who would you consider the Geniuses though? Who you know everyone says oh it, you know it's Maxwell it's Tesla you know and and other you know get get the genius label because a whole bunch of them weren't Geniuses in that they invented new mathematical Concepts and stuff like that.

they were just like playing around with stuff just like they were just experimentalists and oh, they discovered this and they just followed. You know what things did. but they didn't invent theories and stuff like that is a genius label something that you even like? Um, no, not particularly. But I do think that the most important person in electricity is Michael Faraday Yeah, that'd be hard to argue in in electricity or in oh yeah, that's hard to everything.

Yeah, because because they're I Honestly, there's so many things can be brought straight back to Faraday For example, you say Maxwell and Maxwell was amazing, but he's when natural derived from Faraday right? right? In fact, Maxwell Specifically said: I am making Faraday's ideas mathematical. so like there came I I Think it's hard to see I Think for example, the idea of magnetic lines of force and even more importantly, electric lines of force. So in 1837 Faraday was recreating an experiment by Charles Augustine Coulomb, who found all the charges were on the surface of a metal container and faradays like, let's make it bigger So he just builds this giant cage. Yeah, and he goes inside the cage and he not only has them putting charges on the outside, he also has them doing experiments on the outside and then he finds that no matter what on the inside, he's protected by the Faraday cake.

Yes, and because of this, he comes up with the idea that everything electrical comes up with these curved lines of force that come from them and that they affect, um, induce, um, non-conductive materials which he called dielectrics after asking his friend what he would call them, and that, and then he came up with the Dielectric constant, how to measure the dielectric constant? But the other thing was everyone thought he was. That was the stupidest idea that they had ever heard. Really, they were who thought it was stupid. It could be nine names everyone.

Everyone at first everyone thought it. And the reason I Know that is not only have I seen letters to the editor open letters like Dear Mr They're always super nice too. They would start off with Professor Faraday You know I hold you in the highest scene and I would never complain about anything. But here is my 12-page paper on why you stink and this is terrible.

Don't do it. The other reason I know it was not well liked is because when Heinrich Hertz's papers were published, so Faraday comes up with these ideas. He also comes up with the idea that it takes a while for these lines of force to move in space and therefore you could make waves of them in the air, right? And then he comes up with the idea that maybe light is a wave of these lines of force. That's that's genius level.

Come on that that is. That is not only genius level. yeah, you can use the word genius yeah. But also that is such an odd view of reality.

Um I mean we now totally agree with it. Yeah, But if you look back on it and you say well, that's just weird, right? Well is it isn't the quote um you know what? I butcher in the quote but isn't like a history's written by the winners like the ones who just happen to be right I mean how many you know like were there other were there better ideas at the time that just turned out to be wrong like everyone thought, oh yeah, this is the this has to be the go-to right answer but Faraday happened to be right I mean well I think there were there were other theories about what was going on and um, it was just that they were happy with right? But um, and in fact, if you see what in 1845 when Faraday came up with this crazy idea, it was actually only because he had to give a talk at the last moment. So Faraday was supposed to introduce a talk for someone else, right? and the other person chickened out and ran out the back door. nine Nine Names is is that person named oh that was um, that was uh Bridgestone like uh not.

uh um, what do you call it the uh, what do you call it the bridge? Wheatstone Bridge Yeah, yes, that was weeks I don't know his first name? what's his I can't remember his first name Wheatstone? oh God I don't know it's in there somewhere. It'll come back sure. I've done a video on it. Yeah wait.

so anyways out and Verity was a hyper hyper organized person. It's funny that I admire him so much because we're diametric opposites I can do math and completely disorganize. he can't He couldn't do math at all, right? and more I mean like he wrote his papers and every paragraph Was numbered for 27 papers in a row and he didn't just refer according to paragraph 72 and you're like what and all his notebooks. Every paragraph in his notebook was numbered.

Wow. So he could go to each. I mean not just the page, but each paragraph Was numbered And they kept all of these notebooks. It's astonishing.

So anyway. but he would never have given the talk without being prepared if this one hadn't happened. and he literally practiced how to give a talk and would have a little card that says slow to remind him to slow down which I tried and did not work for me. it worked for me I know.

But anyway so he giving this talk and he suddenly and and afterwards people said it was so astonishing they asked him to write it up which is why he wrote this up and it's like three pages long and it starts off with basically forgive me for my ramblings I have no idea if I'm correct. Often you have an idea and then you look at it later and you're like nope and he was basically the whole thing. A half of it is like please forgive me, this might be full of it all right And then he says okay, you have one thing, if you have one charge or magnet vibrating, then you can imagine the other one vibrating. Maybe that's what light is.

Wow, what an insight. Yeah, and it's just like and then of course Maxwell writes his equations to make Faraday's ideas mathematical right? I've seen I've seen part of your video on Maxwell's equations and how he sort of massages them well, no, he sort of translates them in different ways to make them mathematical to make the physical right, mathematical or whatever. something like that. am I right? Yeah, he did the first.

he did a model with like tubes of liquid. yeah, where and then he's like, well, that doesn't work well but some other guy has a theory where like I can model Adams as like a nucleus with an electric atmosphere I'm like wow, you're really on the money and so they use that and then but yeah, it all came together and then after Maxwell's equations, there was a German physicist. his name once again, like uh, Wheatstone's first name right somewhere. Um, and he was in charge of this um contest and he said I will give a hundred ducats or whatever that is for the person who experimentally proves Maxwell's equation.

Oh, and he goes to a student. He says you're a bright young lad Heinrich Hertz you should do kind of know that her name. Yep, it goes. no, that's too hard.

no, no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no hurts turned it down yeah. But then years later when he came up with the way of measuring radio waves, he wrote a letter to his boss I think that was Hummels and he says Help Helmholtz Yes, Oh yes, as in Helmholt's resonance Okay, yes, yes, that's how I pronounce it Anyway, Helmholtz I I think I I'm I'm probably butchering it, but that's how it's pronounced here here in Australia Now I'm gonna go with that. Maybe I'm part of Australia right? So he writes um and he says I'm sorry to bother you but I think this was an idea you had before and he sends back a postcard that says Bravo publish it today Oh and that's why radio waves were discovered. Um wow.

So if the people who believed in Hertz called Herzians Am I Wrong Am I totally getting that wrong I have a vague recollection this is not from your book, but from somewhere else, It's they were called Herzian Waves. Yeah, who believed in Maxwell were called Maxwellians Maxwellians. Okay, so that was a common thing because after Maxwell published his stuff, there is a lot of conflict with it because nobody kind of knew what to do with it, right? But then when Hertz discovered radio waves, suddenly, everyone got on the Maxwell laws bandwagon so to speak. Yep, so who was after Maxwell Like who who took that and expanded or was that the be-all end-all Oh well.

There's two ways you can either. You can either talk about how Maxwell's equations turned into like the modern form of it. like the math of it. Yeah, and that was a guy named Oliver Heavicide.

Yeah, and and Heinrich Hertz actually Heinrich Hertz published a paper in 1890 a few years after his discovery of radio waves on the math of Maxwell's equations and in it he says I see that this guy named Oliver Heavicide has done very similar things, but we I still think it's worthwhile to publish my stuff, right? And then everyone was like everyone loved Hertz because he discovered radio waves. Because of that, everyone listened to Oliver Heveside. In fact, a bunch of people called it the Hebicides Hertz equations including Einstein who use those equations to come up with relativity and equals Mc squared. Yes, so can we talk about yes? Einstein for a minute because I I Have you written anything on Yes? Einstein Oh, you have.

Okay, right? cool. Um, because I I've you know I've read quite a few I've read two biographies I think on Einstein couple of biographies this is way back and a couple of other things on it. and apparently, um, anyone could have discovered what Einstein discovered. Like maybe up to a hundred years or like 50 years earlier or something.

but apparently anyone could have put two and two together. but he just happened to be the first to put two and two together. but I maybe I'm butchering I'm totally in the history of that. The thing that I find fascinating about Einstein is that he had sort of two major influences and they would crisscross each other one and both of which basically started in 1905, his miracle year.

Yes, in 1905 he publishes four papers. The first one is an experiment you can do to verify that atoms exist in Brownian motion. that's the one you want the Nobel Prize for technically no, no, he wanted for photoelectric effect. Oh, photoelectric effect, right? The next one was one that he said was um, radical or whether you say something like it was, he thought that it was Radical I agree with him.

um, it was five years earlier earlier. Max Planck or Max Planck I always feel weird saying punk I feel like I'm faking the name but I think that's how you say it if you're German Anyway, flunk came up with this idea that he could model and experiment of how much heat certain objects gave called the black Body radiation problem. But what he had this great model Planck did and everyone was like super excited about this model. He was super happy and he'd worked on it for really really long time and then someone came to him.

His friend came to him and said I've just done a new experiment at high frequency and it doesn't work. Oh and he's like no so he makes up a formula that fits the Curve like that but the problem is he had no theoretical backing for it. It was just like this works with the date of my friend has right and then he was like petrified. The thing about Plank is in later in his life he wrote a short scientific autobiography which I highly recommend.

It's like 40 pages long which is the length I like and he's hilarious. He is very warm and funny and understandable. You're like oh this is what he did in this way I did it So anyway he was like oh my gosh I'm so stuck I'm gonna have to do something I hate. And what he hated was the idea of statistical mechanics with the laws of thermodynamics.

Oh which is he was like he loved the laws of thermodynamics. the first two laws, they didn't have the third one yet. He loved that energy was confir, served an entropy in a closed system can only increase. He thought that was great.

but Maxwell and boltzmann and an American named Gibbs had this other idea. they're like we cannot. There's too many molecules everywhere. we have to model it with statistics and he said Maxwell said I love this line.

He said something like it changes yes it makes the that. The law. Uh the second law isn't as much a law as a statistical certainty. Oh yeah, I like that, yo And he said it's like throwing a cup of tea into the ocean and getting it back again.

right? But I I almost it I I lower in a statistical certainty. Kind of like the same thing. They are pretty much equivalent, aren't they? It's like, you know what? like, but it it means it takes longer. One just takes longer to happen.

Is that? Yeah, that's sort of the idea. but plank didn't like that. but he was desperate. so he's like fine I'll use it, make me, don't make me feel okay.

fine I'll use it. But then the problem was is if he did that, he had to put some limit on the energy. otherwise he would have infinite energy, right? So he said okay, what if the energy was only produced in these little energy packets where it's a constant H times the frequency of the light, right? It didn't think it was that important. He was mostly happy with coming up with what's called Boltzmann's law which he come up when he came up with it.

oh I said well, it's um Stefan Boltzmann's lore isn't it? no? um I think his name is first name is Wolfgang Boltzmann now I'm confused. Yeah Stefan hyphen Boltzmann. So there's another dude called Stefan Oh oh maybe. or is that a different variant of the Lord It might be a different law right? But anyway, for the entropy, there's a law with the log and all that stuff.

So he does that in 1900 and the world goes huh? Okay, fine, that's fine. I I don't really care and then in 1905 Einstein had the crazy idea to take him literally right. He says I think this is not a math trick I think this is real. This is a fundamental part of the universe, right? I think light is created moved, absorbed all at these quanta all in these but and that and that would explain certain things like the photoelectric effect can be explained this way which which he came up with.

he came up with a photoelectric effect first and then first it. oh it hurts okay Hertz discovered the photoelectric effect because he was playing with radio waves and it was really hard to see see. He had an antenna, a generator generating the electric um, the radio wave and he had a little receiver which was a ring with a little Gap in it and he tried to make the spark from the initial part seen in the other thing but it was really hard because it was Tiny He said he had to be in the dark, his eyes had to relax, it was just tiny so it's like okay I'll put a box around the spark gap generator so the light from that won't messed me up right? but when he put a box there, he couldn't see it anymore. It's like oh man.

I guess it blocked the wave so he removed it. but then he's like huh I wonder if he'll work with glass? So he put glass there. It blocked it too. And then he put quartz there and it didn't block it and he's like, ah, there's energy in the ultraviolet because ultraviolet can make it through quartz.

but it can't make it through, right? So that's why he associated with light. and that's right, right with different frequencies of light, right? Yeah, and what he was showing was that there was energy at the high frequencies that you didn't get the lower frequencies even if it's very bright. And then his grad student, a guy named Philip Leonard starts playing with it and he does more experiments. So if you look at Einstein's paper, he says you, this correlates to Philip Leonard's work.

Oh okay, because I've never heard of Leonard before. Most people don't like to talk about him because he became a huge Nazi Oh like okay, that's right. Oh yes, that's that leader of the Nazi Nazi scientists. So oh wow.

And because he was sort of the scientist who discovered everything right before it got big if that makes any sense. He was he raised from history. Basically wrong. I'm not gonna cry a ton about it, but at the same token, right? right? He did do important things and people do mention him, but they just like this guy named Philip Leonard did it and on we go.

No oh my God right? Yeah, Okay, bad idea of Einstein's could not have been done before 1900. Okay, interesting, all right. It's reacting to planks, plunks, ideas okay and also created quantum mechanics Yes, we don't think. But then the next two papers were on relativity and and then on equals Mc squared and that Well so okay, let me backtrack.

Maxwell When he wrote his Faraday When he came out to the idea the light was electromagnetic wave he said that can get rid of The Ether Right he said I'm Gonna Keep the vibrations Drop The Ether Maxwell When he made his equations mathematical, he said you need the ether he thought and because the people who like Maxwell started to look for proof of The Ether you thought yep, it became part of the Maxwellian club thing right? Like if you're a Maxwellian you're gonna look for ether and then they came up with these. They they did these experiments but it didn't show an ether. All right. So then they came up with these equations for how The Ether twists things, they're called Lorenz equation.

Oh okay. yep. Lorenz forces right? the lens forces. There's also Lorenz um, contractions.

So when Einstein wrote his equations in 1905 for Relativity, he was just saying you can get to those equations by saying the speed of light is the speed limit right? You don't need it Wasn't saying you have to get rid of The Ether it says you don't need it. Yes, so it was. I Think that um Einstein is often. He got so popular with people who didn't really, but he was actually highly influential I Was shocked.

There's actually a book called Einstein and the Quantum by a guy named Stone I can't remember his first name right and that is a follow a whole bunch of people through the history of science for quantum mechanics. Ah, fabulous book. Fabulous book I Love that book Douglas Stone Now I remember the guy's name okay and I I hope he doesn't see this I dislike his subtitle what's his subtitle? Tell us his subtitle was the something of the Valiant Swabian. What is that I don't even know what that means I I had to look it up.

A Swabian is someone from a certain area of Germany which I guess and occasionally Einstein would call himself a valiant Swabian when he was writing to his girlfriend slash first cousin, second cousin. but like I everything. Absolutely everything else in this book I adore except for the subtitle. Fair enough.

fair enough. Oh so it was great to go. Oh this is great. We are over our time limit but I don't care I am because I am wearing the shirt I don't know if you noticed ah Tesla Anderson in the theme of AC DC as in the band I see the the current was I I I am totally ashamed I have not seen the movie yet the current Wars I am totally ashamed it is.

Oh yeah your opinion, give us your opinion as as the the history person on electricity. Okay first I have to caveat it when my father was a lawyer and when we used to watch movies with LA in it he would yell at the TV yeah no no this how no no no no no no no I am like that with the history of science movies the the War, the War of the Currents movie is beautiful I love many of the actors in it. It's basically very far from me all right. but is this is it near enough to be kind of sort of there? or is it or is it just so far out there that oh God no it's just like well I mean it's hard for me to tell because I feel I feel the same way.

There was a movie called Radioactive radioactive about Marie Curie which I couldn't even which beautiful great actors and it looked just right I mean like whoever's doing the set direction for those things brought has got it. but I I feel like when you tell a false story that is kind of like the real story. It is more harmful than telling a completely false story right? like if you watch The Prestige Yep yeah I know it's like making copies of hats but at the same time like you can think you know the no, no, that is not true I know I I Just watched it the other month and I'm just going no no yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly. But but you can say like this is complete fantasy novel I mean movie and you can sort of back off and say okay I feel like I'm I I feel like when it's close to the truth, but not actually the truth.

It's sometimes when it's the most harmful and I think that's particularly true because there's enough truth to it. you believe all of it, right? So and it's not harmful from from a historical point of view. okay from a scientific point of view. I Feel very mixed about Tesla because he is so inspiring.

His devices are so inspiring that there's I call I mean I call it Tesla coil the gateway drug for engineers? Yeah yeah. I mean yeah. like how many electrical engineers do you know with Tesla coils in their basement? Yeah yeah like it's like 80 percent 90 I mean come on, there is something magically beautiful about these things. Um and totally agree.

Anything that gets people inspired by science I'm just like Yay! But also there's this myth of a person who invented everything all by themselves with no help and everything was perfect and and not acknowledging anyone else's contributions and it and that if and that they know the true science and the scientists are trying to keep you from knowing the truth, Sure, it was a model. Sometimes we go back to old models and we say hey, that's a good idea and sometimes we go and we go. You know we're dropping this model that's 300 years old because it stinks. We have a better one and so when it comes to Tesla it's such a I'm I'm so conflicted because the more I studied the more I'm polarizing issue I'm here awake exactly so I feel very yeah and I think that sometimes I upset people because I'm But part of it is that I I studied not only the history of electricity from very early on, but also the history of radio and wireless and the history of quantum mechanics.

And so like most people when they talk about Tesla they're like oh, he did really great things with this and you're like yeah, no, you just you know he invented x-rays right? I'm like wow, no no, no he didn't Oh okay now he's gonna say right he I didn't know that he told people he made an x-ray light bulb. When x-ray was invented or discovered, they found that x-rays would make fluorescence glow and Edison was like I'm gonna find fluorescent that glows really well. Put it around a x-ray machine and make a light bulb. Great idea, that's right.

So he gets his muckers as he called them to try every little chemical they can find and they create a sheet of um, phosphorescence that glows really well. sell it to doctors. they put it in, you know, put in shoe stores so people can play around with getting an x-ray machine while they see if their shoe fits. Yep, um, all sorts of things.

and then he patents an x-ray light bulb and then he starts to get hurt by these and he's like I'm scared by this and but at the same time he is patenting this light bulb Tesla comes out and says I have a light bulb too and they have a little conflict about it. nothing comes from Tesla's and Edison gets freaked out because his eye gets hurt and then his assistant loses one ham and then the other arm and then dog. Oh so yeah and he's like I'm not touching this thing at all. but I think we have this desire to make scientists all good and if they aren't all good, we're like oh, they're all their science was bad.

So I hear a lot of people like oh I hate Edison because of the dog experiments so he never invented anything I'm like that's not how inventions work. we don't love every but it's not like the people you like always do the best things and the people you don't like don't do anything. That's it can Can you talk about