14 Ways Technology has Made our Lives Better - mental_floss on YouTube - List Show (303)

Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my salon. This is Mental Floss on YouTube. And did you know

that before dating apps and social media helped usher a romance along, people used all kinds

of terrible techniques to alert their crushes. Like in 19th century Austria, women would

put an apple slice under their arms during a town dance. And if they fancied a boy, they'd

hand the apple to him. And if he liked her back, he'd eat it

I prefer swiping right, all things being equal. But at least the apple action was straightforward

Victorian men had to memorize a whole slew of signals to know whether or not to approach a woman

Like if a woman put her fan on her left cheek, it meant she wasn't interested

If she fanned herself slowly, she was spoken for. Fanning quickly meant she was on the market

And fan on the right cheek, she just might like you. Or she might be blocking the sun from her face, one or the other

Thankfully, today we have air conditioning, and also Tinder. And those are just two of the many ways that technology has made our lives ridiculously better

that I'm going to share with you today in this video sponsored by our friends at Intel

So these days, getting the time is as simple as looking at your cell phone, but of course that wasn't always the case. Back in the 19th century, merchants in London would literally

buy the time from a woman named Ruth Belleville. Belleville would visit the Greenwich Observatory

every morning to set a chronometer to the exact time accurate to within one-tenth of

a second, and then she'd hop on a train and sell the correct time to clockmakers who could

check their time against hers for a price. And then when the Standard Time Company tried to run a smear campaign against Belleville

it only increased her sales. Sounds like they had a little bit too much time on their hands

So of course now we can all brew coffee at home, although we choose not to going to cafes instead

But back in the early 20th century, the beverage was often disgusting because people had no

good way to filter out the grounds. In fact before a German woman invented coffee filters in 1908 people had ridiculous methods for getting rid of the grounds Like some people added pieces of salted cod to the coffee In theory the gelatin would help coagulate the grounds so they would sink to the bottom of the cup

But in practice, adding a piece of salted flesh to your drink results in, like, disgusting fish-flavored coffee

It was just like this. Back in the 19th century, there was quite a large business for art forgers who wanted to hawk fake masterpieces

And art critics used to authenticate paintings by looking at how the ears or the eyes or

the fingernails were shaped, because those are the things that are difficult for artists

the tiny details and stylistic habits. But these days we can use algorithms to yze paintings for authenticity, or imaging to

yze the cracks in a painting that create a topographic map of the painter's surfaces

and show whether the paint would have cracked that way over 50 years or 500

Curators and conservationists can even use spectroscopy to ID a paint's chemical fingerprint

and determine whether it was actually from the same time as the artist who supposedly painted it

Alright, now let's talk about directions. There used to be these crazy things that we would print on thinly sliced trees called maps

They were basically like physical representation of Google Maps. In fact, that's why Google Maps are called Google Maps, but they were huge, like even bigger than the iPhone 6 Plus

Right, so this is the world that Alice Ramsey lived in in 1909, when she and her three friends decided to cross the country to prove that women were perfectly capable of driving

They didn't have the benefit of an atlas, but instead just had a bunch of, like, local maps, none of which had standardized measures and many of which had inaccuracies

But they made it from Manhattan to San Francisco, driving 3,800 miles, only 152 of which were paved in just 59 days

It was a remarkable feat at the time. You might say that it paved the way for future road trips

Meredith, what did I tell you about puns? Even opening cans used to be extremely complicated

Like the technology for canning food has existed since Napoleon time when he ran a contest to help store foods for his army But opening a can that a whole different ball of wax Actually it a whole different can of soup It took nearly 50 years before Ezra Warner of Connecticut came up with a can opener And

even then, they were inconvenient things that never left the grocery store. So instead of

using your hammer to crack open your food at home, you'd simply open your cans at the

store before leaving. Now that the weather's nicer, you may have forgotten that you spent six months of the

last year shoveling snow, at least if you were me. City cities have embedded their sidewalks with coils that use electricity and hot water

or geothermal heat to stay snow free. And the systems offer a green alternative to salting and they officially keep walks and

driveways clear. I need one of those desperately. Meanwhile, here in Indianapolis we have exactly one snowplow which was built in 1907 and then

Alice Ramsey drove it from New York to Indianapolis. Speaking of weather, you know what's pretty recent

Knowing what the weather will be in 24 hours. The first report with somewhat scientific predictions of the weather was made in 1861

by a British naval officer named Robert Fitzroy after a clipper carrying 450 people got wrecked

in a storm. So Fitzroy cleverly asked fellow officers to telegraph the weather where they were to him

and then he created a little map to forecast the weather. Of course, the predictions weren't nearly as sophisticated as anything on your iPhone

The first report included lines like North, moderate westerly wind, fine. South, fresh westerly, fine

What Fitzroy, of course, couldn't predict was Northwest, who I forecast to have fresh

and fine fashion sense for a baby. Back in the 1820s, if a restaurant wanted ice, they had to import it from a New England

ice farm, where laborers saw giant 300-pound cubes of ice from frozen ponds and then used

horses to drag the blocks to ships that delivered the ice around the country

I know this is going to come as a terrible surprise to the people of Maine, but while While you guys are still up there working at your ice farms we have like ice in our fridges now Burn popcorn used to ruin the whole bag but thanks to a popcorn app that listens to the popping sounds coming from your microwave and then reveals the perfect time to pull the bag out home movie snacking has effectively been saved forever

But of course there are many inventions currently trying to solve problems of the palate

MIT's intelligent spoon, for instance, will taste your cooking and offer up suggestions

for improving it as you cook, whether it's by adding a little more salt to brine your

pickles perfectly or adjusting the butter in your cookie dough. While autocorrect has the occasional effect of changing your text's meaning, at least your spelling is always ducking accurate

I never mean ducking, iPhone. I have never meant ducking. But anyway, back in the days of typewriters, getting rid of a little text error was no easy task

Because whiteout and correction tape didn't work well on onion skin, the thin paper regularly used for making carbon copies

typists and writers had to put their elbows to work using a typewriter eraser

this really abrasive stick with bristles on the end that helped brush away the inky debris made from cleaning away a mistake

And finally, I returned to my salon to tell you that a good night's sleep has gotten a lot easier

thanks to things like white noise machines and sleep number mattresses. Just consider how beds have changed over the years, like a plush mattress in 19th century England

It was stuffed with like straw and hair and corn husks and disease

The ancient Chinese used wood and metal pillows, and the Egyptians kept their heads elevated

on stones so insects couldn't crawl up their nostrils. What do we use now to keep insects from crawling up our nostrils

Maybe that's what those sleep numbers are for. watching and thanks to those ridiculous people who made that popcorn app