#605 – The Lightning Tamers with Kathy Joseph

Dave Jones: 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.

Chris Gammell: That's how we know you, because we've mentioned you several times. Thank you. We discovered you like, what, a couple of months back? When did you explode? Very end of last year. Very end of December.

Dave Jones: Oh, really? It was that long ago? January. Okay. Yeah, I've been running my YouTube channel for four and a half years, I think, by then. Wow. And it had been going slow and steady, and I'd felt really good about things. So 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 I'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 in one month. Wow.

Chris Gammell: So how many subscribers did you have before that?

Dave Jones: 15,000.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. So that's a reasonable size channel. I felt happy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And now you've got your YouTube Silver Award.

Dave Jones: And now I've got my YouTube Silver Award. Yes. Yay. Yay. Yay. And you gave me a lot of beautiful advice, and I ignored almost all of it.

Chris Gammell: That's right. 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 electricity, engineering, physics, you know, kind of stuff. And this content is so great. And I didn't realize she'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.

Dave Jones: So, 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 kind. 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 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.

Chris Gammell: Got it. Okay. And this is why your scripts are available on your website, 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.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I finally hired someone to help me with the website because it was a mess. Right. Okay. But 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 and want to learn more on their own. Yep. And 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 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.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. They're, you know, because the secret sauce is in how you produce the stuff and do that. So, like, a lot of YouTubers are very protective of how they do things. And, yep. Which is totally understandable.

Dave Jones: Sure. But I'm the other way. Yep. Same here. I think also, 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.

Chris Gammell: Right. Okay. So, the book came first. Right. For those, I think we should go back. Okay. Yeah. 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. I will include a screen capture overlay and I'll include an Amazon link down below. And it's great. I've only through a couple of chapters so far because I only got it the other day. And it is absolutely fantastic. Oh, thank you. Okay. So, what is your background and how did you get into making the videos and writing the book? And what is the timeline of doing that?

Dave Jones: So, I am a physicist. Well, I was a physics teacher, high school physics teacher. I studied grad school in physics and in engineering science. But I'm great at classes and I was terrible at the research. And I'm good at certain kinds of research. Got it. But nobody cared about that kind of research. Right. And trying to get your PhD. So, I got my master's in physics and engineering science. And then I was going for my PhD again. And mostly I was playing solitaire. And I 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 it makes you a magician. Yes. You know that feeling?

Chris Gammell: Yes, absolutely. There are parts of engineering that even us engineers consider black magic. You know, if you're designing RF stuff, like high frequency RF stuff, that's deemed to be black magic by many people. It really is. Yeah. And I'm sure the same exists in the physics world and stuff. Oh, you're working on quantum. Oh, that's just black magic stuff. You know?

Dave Jones: 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.

Chris Gammell: Isn't it awesome? It's great. I would love to take my kids there. But, yeah, it's a long way from Sydney.

Dave Jones: It's a long way. But, yeah, I just loved not only just playing with it, but things not reacting the way I'm expecting. Yes. And then you open up the thing and it says, this is why, this is the rules, this is what's going on. And I'm like, yes. So I thought, oh, I'll become a teacher. I became a high school teacher, which I mostly really liked. It's a bit of, I describe it as sort of like getting your band together at a local bar with, like, the gates where people throw beer things at you.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right. That's the best analogy of being a high school teacher I've ever heard. That is, yep.

Dave Jones: It's like when you do well, it's great. But they'll out and out tell you, like, you're boring as hell. And I'm like anything you do. And I'm like, oh. No, no, no.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Okay. There you go. And now you've come to YouTube where it's multiplied by 100,000 people. Yeah. Or are your comments relatively good compared to?

Dave Jones: I feel like the majority of my comments, the majority of the people who watch my videos have been amazingly nice.

Chris Gammell: Excellent.

Dave Jones: And when it got more popular, the amount of nice comments increased. Also, the amount of complaining increased.

Chris Gammell: It was very weird. Yeah. It's a bell curve. Once your channel gets bigger, the outlier nutcases, there's just more outlier nutcases. Whereas if you're a small channel, you don't even see it because you might get one maybe if you're unlucky.

Dave Jones: 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.

Speaker ?: What?

Dave Jones: Okay. Right, right, right. Yeah. Because, you know. Yeah. But mostly. It's YouTube. But also simultaneously, I feel like. 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 going to teach full time. And I had two small children. Anne was taking care of my mother. And I was just like, I'm going to 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.

Chris Gammell: And it wasn't aimed at us engineers because I think your majority of your audience are engineers who are 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 learned that, okay, you know, that Maxwell is named after, you know, James Maxwell and Voltaire. And, you know, we learned the association. But, like, it's like one second. Yeah, it's named after this guy. And that's it.

Dave Jones: I 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 popped. 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.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Even science. Interesting. Yep. I can't believe how much I've learned. I wasn't expecting to learn any physics. I've got to be honest.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But you did. In the process of doing this, you learned more physics than what you were taught.

Dave Jones: 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, I just study where it came from. And suddenly, they will tell me how it works. Because they told me how they invented it.

Chris Gammell: And then that'll make it all make so much more sense. Got it. Okay. So, you have no history background, really? No. No. Right. Zero. So, 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?

Dave Jones: So, well, that's an interesting question. So, you notice me, like, so what happened was, I started writing. 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 relay race. Right. Of one person coming up with some idea. And inspiring the next person and inspiring the next person.

Chris Gammell: That's what I got out of the book. And that's what we'll get into is that, yeah. It's, 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.

Dave Jones: Like, yeah, exactly. That's why I was, like, I was very, I debated about my first chapter, which is titled something like, small beginnings. Because I'm like, okay, this is a whole chapter. And basically, they're rubbing things and having feathers.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yeah, exactly. That's the entire first chapter. It's great. I hope it's interesting. I know.

Dave Jones: But simultaneously, it's not that fast.

Chris Gammell: Takes a little while to get going. So, then it came together. The book sort of.

Dave Jones: Well, it kept on expanding. And I kept on putting parts in there that weren't. So, 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.

Chris Gammell: Because that's not in there, is it? I've had a. No. No. Well, 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.

Dave Jones: Well, so, 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. Yeah. But then making it into a video turned into a way of editing it. 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. Right. And the only thing I can think of is to use original documentation. Yes. As much as possible.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Absolutely.

Dave Jones: So, I will find old newspaper articles. So, if someone says, this person said this, I will show the original article. Oh, awesome. You know, Edison is saying X, Y, Z, so that you have a feeling that you can believe me that he said this.

Chris Gammell: And it's real and it did actually happen. Like, here it is. It was published 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.

Dave Jones: Whatever. And so, especially later on, I mean, like the very beginning, there wasn't as much letters that were kept. So, you're 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. And instead of going to the original, which often had so many juicy details that got dropped. And so, it became an interactive experience, sort of. And also, it expanded. Everything expanded. And then I was like, I cannot publish a thousand-page book.

Chris Gammell: Of course. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, it's already, what, 4.380 or something? Something like that. 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 the electrical distribution system came to be. From the very beginning to, I mean, I say, like, to modern day, but I'm totally lying.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. And that's what I, because I was reading the book and I thought, and then I was just before 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, 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 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 are 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, dance and everything and all that sort of stuff. And AC and DC and basic stuff like that. But then there's the, then there's the physicists and the mathematicians, which 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? In some way? No. No. Okay. Right.

Dave Jones: That was my theory. But close. I understand what you were saying. It's funny that you mentioned Maxwell, because I am currently doing these videos on deep dive histories. Yes.

Chris Gammell: I've seen the Maxwell, yeah, the Maxwell's equations once. And I have to watch it like five times, I think, before I actually get it. Wow. They're challenging.

Dave Jones: Yes. 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.

Chris Gammell: Or someone will pick you up. Someone will pick you up on something.

Dave Jones: 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, that one's going to be a challenge for you. There's just 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. Oh, you are liking it. From Sir Isaac Newton to Hedy Lamarr. Oh. And that one is going to have a lot of Maxwell's equations. I mean, it starts with Sir Isaac Newton taking a wooden stick, sticking it 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, wireless, all about light. 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.

Chris Gammell: So you are working on this at the moment? It is. Yes. Yes, sir. What stage are we at?

Dave Jones: I would say it's about 60% written.

Chris Gammell: Right. I knew there had to be a second book there. I knew it. I knew it. You want to hear something crazy, Dave? What?

Dave Jones: You want to know how many books I have semi-written? Oh, God. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Tell me. You want to make a guess? Five? Seven. Oh. Seven. Seven. That sounds like my unfinished projects list. Every engineer has a list of unfinished projects that are just, like, I'm famous. I, on my channel, I designed this 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? And you're like, shut up. I have too many things. I just lost interest.

Dave Jones: I just, no. I'm not going to lose interest. 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? Right. 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 Marie Curie. Yep. So that's a lot of fun. And then I'm going to do one on the history of quantum mechanics, focused on Mac Blanc, the patron saint of quantum mechanics. You're going to own the market.

Chris Gammell: You're going to own the market for historical. Because 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. But there's never been one. Is there another book that goes through the history of like this and how the characters, you know, learn from each other and play it off each other? Is there another one?

Dave Jones: There are some books, 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 the engineering through the history, then the stories pop out. Each one becomes this exciting discovery because you're focused on the discovery, not the person.

Chris Gammell: Yep. As much. And that's what the biographies I read, they're all just focused on the one person. I go, but I want, you know, and they might mention the interaction with someone else, but I want to hear that story. Right. And they don't give it to me.

Dave Jones: There are some books. There's a book by someone named Bill Bryson, who's a pretty famous author, and he wrote a book called A Short History of Nearly Everything. Yeah, I've heard good things about that. I have not read it yet. It's a big book. Right. And 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. And they went and they said, uh, it's no Bill Bryson. I'm like, oh, so I learned my lesson. Ouch. Never give a rough draft of your book to my relatives. Yep. Never. Oh 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. Oh, that's terrible. And I'm planning on writing a book about the history of spectroscopy. Oh goodness. In astronomy, looking at the lights from the stars to figure out what the stars are made of and how they're working. Oh, awesome. Yep. Fascinating. And a book on the history of trains, planes and automobiles. Oh goodness.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I've got an interest in trains as well. Come on. And airplanes as well. Oh goodness. You're hitting all the time.

Dave Jones: Sign me up. And I'm thinking about writing a textbook that is history based.

Chris Gammell: 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? Are you still making the videos based on chapters of books and you're still doing that same process now?

Dave Jones: Well, one, I got easily diverted. But I'm 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 them.

Chris Gammell: Got it. That is your process that you like and what works for you. Yep. Yep. Exactly.

Dave Jones: Excellent. 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. And radar and stuff like that. So it's going to be.

Chris Gammell: Wow.

Dave Jones: I have so many great ideas and not enough time. And if you're asking me how much time I put into these, it's unbelievable. I can imagine.

Chris Gammell: 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 turn on the camera and start yapping and then edit something and something magically comes together. Right. 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 will take, you know, they write scripts and then it'll be nice, polished, produced content and voiceover 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. 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 timeframe on a video?

Dave Jones: I don't know. 150 hours?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's what I figured.

Dave Jones: It takes me about one to three weeks to write the script.

Chris Gammell: Ooh, wow. But you're essentially writing a chapter as well.

Dave Jones: I'm writing a section of a chapter of a book. Yeah. I mean, sometimes I'm not writing a section of a 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 as wireless. I mean, I want to talk about it with some depth. It's important to me.

Chris Gammell: Maybe you could use some of it, but maybe chop out some, but then the art is knowing what to chop out. And that would be painful. As someone who produces long-form videos who never chop, all my criticism is, Dave, you don't edit enough. You don't chop enough stuff out. But there's one part that might be interesting to someone, so I can't. Right.

Dave Jones: The editing part, I've been through a lot of editors because it's challenging. It's not just getting the awards polished, but deciding what to include and what not to include and how you put it together is a challenge. But, 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 start adding images, I realize new things, I change it, I change it again, I change it a third time. Yeah. And then I film it, and then it usually takes me a couple days after that to edit the video and get it out. Oh, my goodness. And it's weird also because this is a me, myself, and I production. Like 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, 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.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's it. Join the club. Well, can we talk about maybe the book in more detail now? Yes. Because we talked about how your process. Yes. And so it's, please correct me if I'm wrong, but it basically starts in the 1600s with where, you know, they discovered electric charges and, you know, things repel. You know, charges repel and stuff like that. So just people playing around with, like, experimenting with these new charges, charge things that they didn't know about. Think were very important. Yep. Yes. And one term I love from it is they thought, what's this electricity thing? And they called it electric virtue. Yes. And I just love that term, electric virtue. Electric virtue and electric fire. So who came up with that term? Was that Stephen Gray?

Dave Jones: 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. Yes. The parties. Yes. In the 1700s, the electricity was more of a thing to do to show you were cultured. Right. Okay. It was like, especially in France, if you wanted to do well at Versailles, you needed to be witty and know poems and be able to electrify pretty girls. And give them electric kisses and write bad poetry about it. Like, that's how you made it up in the world. Right. And the royalty, especially in France, had this idea that, like, they would show that they were worthy of being royalty by showing that they were smart and cultured. There was a lot of philosophy debates and a lot of just doing crazy electricity experiments. Yes. All the time.

Chris Gammell: Because that was the fad? That was the, was it a fad? Yes. Like, was it a fad?

Dave Jones: I guess. It was totally a fad. It was a fad. And it was just the popular thing to do because they 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, 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.

Chris Gammell: What didn't kill you back then? You know, if you lived to 40, you were doing well, you know.

Dave Jones: 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 toast to the electricians of the world. Is that what they were called back then? Electricians? No, he made up that word. Oh, okay. In that letter. Right. He invented the term electrician. He said, let's give toast to the electricians of Europe, I think. And that, that created the word electrician. Right. There you go. And he also said he fired off a cannon 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 some of the secrets. A gun 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 an artificial electric organ. Okay.

Chris Gammell: And nobody wanted to call it that. Yeah. Nobody. Yep. 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, nah, that's, nah, that's rubbish. And, and I don't know, the community come up with another, or the next person to publish, like, derivative research calls it something else. Is that, was that common?

Dave Jones: 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 all 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 know, calling him pathos and annos. That's Faraday's fault. He just, he went, Faraday knew no other languages, but English. He had no education and knew 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. Really? Wow. Like, I would say 60% of the words that you use in your job comes from Faraday's friend. Wow. Which is like, dielectric. 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.

Chris Gammell: So did this guy, did his friend just invent, did his linguist friend just invent these words or did they come from Latin? Did they translate from Latin?

Dave Jones: I think they 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 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.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, which is so, which is 200 years. Right. After when all this sort of stuff started happening. I think it's in the first chapter or started. Yeah. You mentioned that it was 60 years before they discovered that charges repelled. They knew they attracted, or is it opposite? They knew they attracted, but it took 60 years before somebody discovered that they also repelled. What? What?

Dave Jones: 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.

Chris Gammell: So there just 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.

Dave Jones: 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. If you have a place where you're a university, a royal society, a king or queen or whatever, then you end up with the discoveries. If you don't have that, 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. And that there's conductors.

Chris Gammell: Which is basically current flow, right? But, you know, that came a long time after, but they didn't know about current as such back then. But yeah, they, you know, charges move. Yes.

Dave Jones: And they discovered induction, static induction. Yes, static induction as well.

Chris Gammell: Technically induction, but not magnetic induction as we, you know.

Dave Jones: And that's why Faraday called it magnetoelectric induction. Because it was a term already in use from Stephen Gray, actually is from, I can't say this guy's name. Isaac Newton's second assistant, De Salier.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah, yeah. I know. I can't say his name very well.

Dave Jones: I'll butcher it as well. Yeah. Anyway, I apologize. But 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 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.

Chris Gammell: No, at least you got something. You got something for it. You got something. You got recognition and you got, you know.

Dave Jones: Right. Exactly. So 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, their country does better.

Chris Gammell: 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 reading everything. I think that's 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. Oh, Newton. Isaac Newton. 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 nerdy people he didn't like, he prevented him from being published. So it was like, oh, yeah, just shut him out.

Dave Jones: 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 serious. Right, right, right. And they were people. Some were delightful and some were jerks and most were in between. And I feel like it's been so much fun meeting them. That doesn't sound. No, that's what I totally understand.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. People feel like they know me. People feel like they know you because they've watched your videos, you know, and they feel like they, you know, I get, you know, dozens of pages of emails from somebody who, you know, who watches one of my videos and they tell me their whole life story. And they tell me how, you know, connected we are. And it's like, wow, you know. Right.

Dave Jones: And sometimes it's beautiful and sometimes it's a little creepy. It's a bit creepy, yeah. But no, 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.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I would have felt like. You would have given the standard engineering answer. You would have, you know. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: 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 of.

Chris Gammell: Because as you see, I go all over the place. Yes, absolutely. Well, 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 more, you know, the detailed later chapters. I'm sure there's more in there. I don't know. You know. Have you gotten even to the Leyden jar? No, I haven't gotten to the Leyden jar yet. I just did the shocking. It's 2.2. I'm at like 2.1. Here it is. Here. I know. Leyden jar is coming. Leyden jar is coming. I love the Leyden jar. It's so great. But 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 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 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 a practical engineer, you just, you know, you don't need the detailed maths and the physics behind it. No. No, no. Yeah. It's very different. So it ignited the passion more than, yeah, which is really good.

Dave Jones: I feel like they've ignited the passion. Do you see what I mean? I feel like. You're telling of their story. They're, I feel like they're sort of talking to me from the past if it's not too woo-woo science. That's not too cringy. No. 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. Oh, yeah, totally. It makes it real and it makes you realize that you can contribute too. Got it. If you see what 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 what stuck.

Chris Gammell: Who would you consider the geniuses, though? Who, you know, everyone says, oh, you know, it's Maxwell, it's Tesla, you know, and other, you know, 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?

Dave Jones: No, not particularly. But I do think that the most important person in electricity is Michael Faraday.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that would be hard to argue. In electricity or in, oh, yeah, that's hard to. Everything. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because, because there, I honestly, there are so many things can be brought straight back to Faraday. For example, you say Maxwell. And Maxwell was amazing. But he's derived from Faraday, right? Right. In fact, in fact, Maxwell specifically said, I am making Faraday's ideas mathematical. So, like, there came, 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 Faraday's 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 cage.

Chris Gammell: Faraday cage, yes.

Dave Jones: 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, induce, non-conductive materials, which he called dielectrics, after asking his friend what he called them. And then he came up with the dielectric constant, how to measure the dielectric constant. But the other thing was, everyone thought that was the stupidest idea that they had ever heard. Really?

Chris Gammell: Who thought it was stupid? Can we name names? Everyone. Everyone.

Dave Jones: 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. Faraday. They're always super nice, too. They would start off with, dear Professor Faraday, you know I hold you in the highest esteem. 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 genius level. Come on. That is not only genius level. Yeah, you can use the word genius. Yeah. But also, that is such an odd view of reality. I mean, we now agree with it. Yeah. But if you look back on it and you say, well, that's just weird, right?

Chris Gammell: Well, isn't the quote, you know, what I butcher in the quote, but isn't like histories written by the winners? Like the ones who just happened 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.

Dave Jones: Well, I think there were, there were other theories about what was going on. And it was just that they were happy with. Right. But, 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. Oh. So Faraday was supposed to introduce the talk for someone else.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: And the other person chickened out and ran out the back door. Name, name, names. Is, is that person named? Oh, that was, that was Bridgestone. Like, not, what do you call it? The, what do you call it? The bridge. Oh. Weedstone Bridge. Yeah. Yes. That was Weedstone. Weedstone.

Chris Gammell: I don't know his first name. What's his, I can't remember his first name. Weedstone. Oh, God.

Dave Jones: I don't know. It'll, it's in there somewhere. It'll come back in a second.

Chris Gammell: I'm sure I've done a video on it. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Weedstone. So anyway, Weedstone comes out. So Faraday's there. And Faraday 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 disorganized. He can't, he couldn't do math at all. 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. 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 a talk without being prepared. Right. If this hadn't happened. And he literally practiced how to give a talk and would have a little card that say it's slow to remind him to slow down, which I tried and did not work for me. Totally wouldn't work for me. I know. But anyway, so he giving this talk and he said, 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. Half of it is like, please forgive me. This might be full of it. 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.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: Wow. What an insight. Yeah. And it's just like. And then, of course, Maxwell writes his equations to make Faraday's ideas mathematical.

Chris Gammell: 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 mathematical or whatever, something like that. Am I right?

Dave Jones: 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 atoms as like a nucleus with an electric atmosphere. I'm like, wow, you're really on the money. And so they used 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 Wheatstone's first name. Right. Is somewhere. And he was in charge of this contest. And he said, I will give a hundred ducats or whatever that is for the person who experimentally proves Maxwell's equation.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: And he goes to a student and he says, you're a bright young lad. Heinrich, Hertz, you should do that. Kind of know that name. Yep. It goes, no, that's too hard. Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Eh, eh, eh. Hertz turned it down. Young Hertz turned it down. Yep. But then years later, when he came up with the way of measuring radio waves, he wrote a letter to his boss. Helmholtz? I think that was Helmholtz.

Chris Gammell: And he says. Helmholtz. Yes. Oh, as in Helmholtz resonance. Okay. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. That's how I pronounce it anyway. Helmholtz. I think I. I'm probably butchering it, but that's how it's pronounced here in Australia.

Dave Jones: No, I'm going to go with that. Maybe I'm part of the experience. Right. So he writes 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, awesome. And that's why radio waves were discovered.

Chris Gammell: Wow. So if he. Weren't the people who believed in Hertz called Hertzians? 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 Hertzian waves.

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Maybe that's what. Yeah. Who believed in Maxwell were called Maxwellians. Maxwellians. Okay. So that was a common thing because after Maxwell published his stuff, there was 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.

Chris Gammell: Yep. So who was after Maxwell? Well, like who, who, who took that and expanded? Or was that the be all end all?

Dave Jones: Oh, oh, 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.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And that was a guy named Oliver Heveside.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: 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 Heveside 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. And in fact, a bunch of people called it the Heveside-Hertz equations, including Einstein, who used those equations to come up with relativity and E equals MC squared. Yes. So.

Chris Gammell: Can we talk about Einstein for a minute? Yes. Because I don't, have you written anything? On? Yes. Einstein. Oh, you have. Okay. Right. Cool. Because I, I've, you know, I've read quite a few, I've read two biographies, I think on Einstein, a couple of biographies. This is way back and a couple of other things on it. And apparently anyone could have discovered what Einstein discovered, like maybe up to a hundred years, 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. Well, I. Maybe I'm butchering. Maybe I'm butchering. I'm totally butchering the history of that.

Dave Jones: The thing that I find fascinating about Einstein is that he had sort of two major influences and they would crisscross each other. Mm-hmm. One, and both of which basically started in 1905, his miracle year.

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: In 1905, he publishes four papers.

Speaker ?: Mm-hmm.

Dave Jones: The first one is an experiment you can do to verify that atoms exist and Brownian motion.

Chris Gammell: That's the one you won the Nobel Prize for technically.

Dave Jones: No. No? He won it for photoelectric effect. Oh, photoelectric effect. Right. The next one was one that he said was radical or whether you say something like it was. He thought that it was radical. I agree with him. It was five years earlier, Max Planck or Max Planck. I always feel weird saying Planck. I feel like I'm faking the name. But I think that's how you say it if you're German. Anyway, Planck came up with this idea that he could model an experiment of how much heat certain objects gave called the black body radiation problem. But he had this great model, Planck did. And everyone was like super excited about his model. He was super happy. And he'd worked on it for a 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. 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 data my friend has. Right. And then he was like petrified. The thing about Planck is 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 and this is why I did it. So anyway, he was like, oh, my gosh, I'm so stuck. I'm going to 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. He didn't have the third one yet. He loved that energy was conserved and 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 that the law, the second law isn't as much a law as a statistical certainty. Oh, yeah, I like that. Yeah. And he said, it's like throwing a cup of tea into the ocean and getting it back again.

Chris Gammell: Right. But I almost, a law and a statistical certainty kind of like the same thing. They are pretty much equivalent, aren't they? It's like, you know, like, one just takes longer. One just takes longer to happen. Is that? Yeah. That's sort of the idea.

Dave Jones: 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. But 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. Oh, okay. With his problem.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: 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. And he didn't think it was that important. He was mostly happy with coming up with what's called Boltzmann's Law, which he came up with it. Oh.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's Stefan Boltzmann's Law, isn't it?

Dave Jones: No. I think his first name is Wolfgang Boltzmann. Now I'm confused.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, but it's Stefan-Boltzmann. So there's another dude called Stefan. Oh. Or is that a different variant of the law or something?

Dave Jones: I think that might be a different law. Right. But anyway, for the entropy, there's a law with a log and all that stuff. So he does that in 1900. And the world goes, okay, fine. That's fine. 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.

Chris Gammell: This is a fundamental part of the universe.

Dave Jones: 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.

Chris Gammell: Which, which, which he came up with. He came up with the photoelectric effect first. And then. Hertz did. Oh, Hertz.

Dave Jones: 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, 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 he's like, okay, I'll put a box around the spark gap generator. So the light from that won't mess me up. 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 it'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, there's energy in the ultraviolet because ultraviolet can make it through quartz. But it can't make it through quartz. Right.

Chris Gammell: So that's why he associated it with light. And that's. Right. Right. Photoelectric. With different frequencies of light.

Dave Jones: Right. 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. Right. 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.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Because I've never heard of Leonard before.

Dave Jones: Most people don't like to talk about him because he became a huge Nazi. Oh, okay. Right. Oh, yeah. That's. That's. He was the leader of the Nazi scientists. 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 erased from history. Basically. So to speak. Right. I'm not going to 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. On we go. Right. Yeah. Okay. That idea of Einstein's could not have been done before 1900.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Interesting. All right. So that blows my theory out there.

Dave Jones: Because he was reacting to Planck's idea. Right. Okay. And also created quantum mechanics. Yes. We don't think. But then the next two papers were on relativity. Mm-hmm. And then on E equals MC squared. Okay. And that. Well, so. Okay. Let me backtrack. Maxwell, when he wrote his. Faraday. When he came up with the idea that light was an electromagnetic wave. He said, that can get rid of the ether. Right. Yes. He said, I'm going to keep the vibrations. Drop the ether. Maxwell, when he made his equations mathematical. He said, you need the ether. He thought. Right. And because the people who liked Maxwell. Started to look for proof of the ether. Yep. It became part of the Maxwellian club thing. Right. Like, if you're a Maxwellian. You're going to look for ether. And then they came up with these. They did these experiments. But it didn't show an ether.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: So then they came up with these equations. For how the ether twists things. They're called Lorenz equations. Oh. Okay. Yep. Lorenz forces. Right. Lorenz forces. There's also Lorenz contractions. So when Einstein wrote his equation 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.

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: So it was. I think that 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.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: 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.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: And 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.

Chris Gammell: What is that?

Dave Jones: I don't even know what that means. I had to look it up. A Swabian is someone from a certain area of Germany, which I guess. Oh, okay. Einstein was from and occasionally Einstein would call himself a valiant Swabian when he was writing to his girlfriend slash first cousin slash second cousin. But like everything, absolutely everything else in this book, I adore. Except for the subtitle.

Chris Gammell: Fair enough. Fair enough. Oh, this is great. Oh, this is great. We are over our time limit, but I don't care. Because I am wearing the shirt. I don't know if you noticed. Ah. Tesla Edison. In the theme of ACDC, as in the band. Right. Exactly. You know, AC, the current wars. 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 the history person on electricity. Okay.

Dave Jones: First, I have to caveat it. When my father was a lawyer, and when we used to watch movies with law in it, he would yell at the TV. Yeah. No, no, no, no. Objection. Leading the witness. How can... No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I am like that with the history of science movies. Right. Mm-hmm. The War of the Currents movie is beautiful. I love many of the actors in it. It's... Basically very far from reality.

Chris Gammell: Right. But is it near enough to be kind of, sort of, there? Or is it just so far out there that, oh, God, no, it's just, like...

Dave Jones: Well, I mean, it's hard for me to tell, because I feel... I feel the same way there was a movie called Radioactive about Marie Curie, which I couldn't even... Which, beautiful, great actors. Yep. And it looked just right. I mean, like, whoever's doing the set direction for those things... Right. ...has got it.

Speaker ?: But...

Dave Jones: I feel like when you tell a false story that is kind of like the real story... Right. ...it is more harmful than telling a completely false story. Right. Like, if you watch The Prestige... Yes, yes. I've seen it. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I know. I know. It's like...

Dave Jones: Making copies of Hats. I know. But at the same time... I know.

Chris Gammell: Like, you can say, you know, no, no, that is not true. I know. I just watched it the other month, and I'm just going, no, no.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. 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 feel like when it's close to the truth but not actually the truth, it's sometimes when it's the most harmful.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: And I think that's particularly true because... Because there's enough truth to it, you believe all of it. Right.

Chris Gammell: So you think it's harmful from a historical point of view. Okay. All right.

Dave Jones: 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 mean, I call a Tesla coil the gateway drug for engineers.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, right.

Dave Jones: I mean, like, how many electrical engineers do you know with Tesla coils in their basement? Yeah, yeah. Like, 80%, 90%? I mean, come on. There is something magically beautiful about these things. Yeah, totally agree. And anything that gets people inspired by science, I'm just like, yay! Yeah, it's good. Yeah. But also, there's this myth of a person who invented everything all by themselves.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: With no help, and everything was perfect, and not acknowledging anyone else's contributions. Mm-hmm. And it... And that if... And that they know the true science, and the scientists are trying to keep you from knowing the truth. The truth and all that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: 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 so conflicted because the more I study, the more I'm... It's a polarizing issue.

Speaker ?: Ha!

Dave Jones: I'm here all week. Polarizing issue. I'm here all week. Exactly. So I feel very... Yeah. And I think that sometimes I upset people because I'm... But part of it is that 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.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. No. I was going to say, right. He didn't know that.

Dave Jones: He told people he made an x-ray light bulb. When the x-ray was invented or discovered, they found that x-rays would make fluorescence glow. Mm-hmm. And Edison was like, I'm going to find a fluorescent that glows really well, put it around an x-ray machine, and make a light bulb. Right. Great idea. Classic. And I'm like, no, don't do it. But they didn't know x-rays are dangerous, right?

Chris Gammell: They didn't know at the time. That's right.

Dave Jones: So he gets his muckers, as he called them, to try every chemical they can find. And they create a sheet of phosphorescence that glows really well. Sell it to doctors. They put it in, you know, put it in shoe stores so people can play around with getting an x-ray machine while they see if their shoe fits. Yep. 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. 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 arm and then the other arm and then done.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: So, ugh. 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, 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 everything. It's not like the people you like always do the best things. The people you don't like don't do anything.

Chris Gammell: That's it. Can you talk about the Tesla Edison thing, right? Edison is, to my mind, known as the experimentalist. Like, he sucked at maths. He didn't know what he was doing. And he just, like, his lab, he would literally try things, you know, a thousand different chemicals until one worked. And, ha, ha, look, aren't I a genius? You know, whereas Tesla was more mathematical focused. Is that, would that be a correct, semi-correct summation? Well, sort of.

Dave Jones: I think that there was a guy named Steinmetz, Charles Steinmetz. And Charles Steinmetz was a mathematician. He actually started as a mathematician. Steinmetz is fascinating. I love Steinmetz. I don't think I've heard of him. He doesn't ring a bell. He figured out hysteresis in Transformers. Oh, really? He figured out the, what's it called? When you're doing three, stuff with AC and three phases. And you do it, phasers, I think it's called.

Chris Gammell: Oh, the phaser diagrams and phases. Yeah. Oh, he came up with that. Oh, okay. Wow.

Dave Jones: Wow. That's a big deal. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. He was actually far more influential. The end. He insisted that electrical engineers in school should take other classes besides electrical engineering. Like? Like English history. Right. Okay. Stuff like that. Right. And so if, when you were in school, you were like, oh, I like taking all these subjects. You can say thank you. If you're like, gosh, I wish they'd just let me do engineering and stop making me do this.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Other classes and foreign languages and what have you. But you can blame him too. He was an interesting duck. But you're right about Edison had no math skills. He also had no education. And he was sort of known his reputation was of just sort of like going through it like a needle in a haystack. But that was what he did when he was stuck. He was actually a very, very creative person. And I think people don't want to think that because they're mad at him.

Chris Gammell: So was he like an intuitive inventor, I guess? Would that be a, that would be intuitive inventor rather than, you know, coming at it from a mathematical. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But interestingly, most of the discoverers I've studied have been intuitive, have been playing around with things and looking at them slightly different ways. But yeah, he had no education. He also had no money. He was, when he was a kid, he started working on a rail road as a person who sells like fruits and vegetables and newspapers. And he's like, ah, what he was, was a hustler. Not a hustler, but a. But yeah. A go-getter. Entrepreneur. Yeah, exactly. He was just like relentless. Right. And he was like, he's like 14 years old working on this thing. He's like, ah, okay, first I'm going to bribe the porters so that I can make a fruit stand at the other place and use the train to take it over and sell it from one place to another at a discount. And he had this, the whole army of teenagers working for him. And then he starts his own newspaper out of stolen like type and makes his own newspaper. And then he hears about wireless. He's like, forget it. I'm selling everything. I'm going to learn wireless. Whoa. So then he does wireless. He gets a patent. Nobody wants it. So he's like, okay, it worked, but just nobody wanted it. And he's like, I'm going to do stuff that people want to buy.

Chris Gammell: That was his grift. That was his thing that he was, you know, he was going to keep doing stuff until people bought it and people, until he made a success.

Dave Jones: And I don't think he particularly wanted like lots of money. He just wanted to make a, he wanted to be a great inventor and he was just going to do it by hook or by crook. You know what really inspired him? Are you ready for this? What? Reading Faraday. Really? Interesting. Yes. He said one of his most interesting, which was easy for him because Faraday had no math.

Chris Gammell: Ah, so all his writings and his writings didn't include any heavy maths.

Dave Jones: Right. So he could understand them. Not only no heavy math, almost no math. Right. There's basically no equations in the whole thing. Wow. So, yeah, it's all connected. So then he started making things for telegraph companies to make them. He invented this thing that could send a telegraph automatically. It was sort of, you put the thing in ahead of time and we have letters from people like, oh, this will require no skill from people. That's just what I want. And he sold an electorium, this thing that could give shocks. And he's like, it's good for rheumatoid arthritis. Also fun for the family. Fun for the kiddies. Yeah. And it was a bestseller. He's like, this is great. And he just kept on inventing things. So it was, I think the whole idea of like he was a mindless automaton is completely false.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But it doesn't, I think that that, if you see what I mean. Yes, totally. And Tesla talked about math. He talked about taking math classes. But if you read his papers, there's no math. Or if there's math, it's weird. Right. So like he wrote this big paper in 1900 about increasing human energy. And it was like a 40 page paper. And it has one equation. And that's energy equals one half mv squared. And he said, and v is the velocity, but you can't measure that. And m is the mass. And you can increase that by being religious, bathing regularly. Yeah. Like. This is crackpot stuff. Yeah. But in that paper, there are the iconic photographs of Tesla. The double exposure ones where he's sitting there reading a book and there's lightning all over him. You can't look at those pictures without being like, look at this beauty. Look what he can do. Look what. So that's, that's the dichotomy that I'm talking about. We have this image of like Tesla was the great mathematical physicist, but totally wasn't. No, he was bonkers. And his mathematical physics was bonkers. I'm sorry. It was bonkers. But his devices were so beautiful. We could admire him for the showman he was instead of. Right. The mathematician, which he wasn't.

Chris Gammell: If that makes any sense. It makes sense. Have you been approached by the Tesla-radi? By the Tesla-nutters? Have they started to contact you?

Dave Jones: A little bit. I, you know, usually they start with you're an idiot and you're a spell wrong and then they go to you're ugly and then they get banned from me anyway.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. But has anyone approached you to try and like prove that they're, you know, widget is an over unity device or anything? Have you been contacted by any of the over unity crowd who worship? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, lots of like, I want to tell you about my new theory of physics and then you will promote it. And I'm like, I'm not a contemporary. If you have a new theory of physics, I'm not the person for you. Go to some professor somewhere. Yeah. Go to some physics. You need to get it published in a paper. And I think that's part of the whole, like, most people don't have an idea how new ideas are promoted. Like, they're just like, oh, you have a good idea. You convince enough important people to like it and it will be like, no, that's not how science works. You have to say where you got the idea from, why yours is slightly different, get it published somewhere peer reviewed and then have people, peers complain about it. And then you get in the conversation till enough of your peers, but I'm not a peer. I didn't even finish my PhD. So I mean, I have sympathy. These people might have good ideas. Good ideas come from all over the place.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But I wouldn't know.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. But they think that you can help spread the word and it just by becoming popular, as you said, then their theory would become popular and everyone would accept it and start research on it. But yeah, no, that's not, that's, that's not how it works. Yes. Us, us engineering YouTubers just get constantly contacted by, you know. Last thing. Have you seen the Veritasium video and all the controversy surrounding that? Yes, I did. I did.

Dave Jones: Right. I wish I commented on it right away. I'm feeling cool. Oh, you did?

Chris Gammell: Did you do a video on it? I mean, yeah, in a video. I wish I had. Oh, okay. Oh, I haven't seen that one. No, I haven't. No, I haven't. Oh, you haven't.

Dave Jones: I wish I had.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you wish you had. But now I feel like. Yeah. Because that is still going on. Like, that debate is just endless. It almost depends on your point of view. You know, are you a physicist or are you a practical engineer? And both observations, in my point of view, both ways of thinking about it are right. You know, yes, mathematically, you know, Derek's right. But from an engineering point of view, it's like, you know, from a practical point of view, no, that's not how we think about it as a practical design engineer. So it's like. I'm not a design engineer at all.

Dave Jones: And my thoughts were exactly like yours. I'm like. Yep. Well, okay. But how much do you need to have it light up?

Chris Gammell: Like, what do you mean? Right. And does current actually flow in the wire? Yeah. Like, does current actually flow in the wire? Well, to us engineers, yes, it does. It flows inside the wire. You know, that's sort of like the whole debate. Does it flow inside or outside the wire? Does it flow in? Does energy flow inside the wire or does it flow outside in the fields? And to my mind, both answers are correct. It depends on what you want to do. I mean. Right. You know. Is there any parallel to that in history? In. Do you think? I'm sure there would be somewhere.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. I mean. But I can't. There was. In the 1920s, there was huge debates about. What do you call it? I was saying there's waves in the air. And they wanted to get rid of the ether. Sorry. The ether. There was huge debates about the ether, which strangely was political because the Nazis didn't like ether. Because they thought it would be a good way to be against Einstein. Which, like. Okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: So, is that because the ether allowed them to do useful thing? It allowed them to do useful things? Like, it sort of fitted useful theories. Yet, from. It's not actually correct. Yet, it was a useful tool, so to speak. Was it a useful.

Dave Jones: Well, it was more that. So, in the ancient Greeks had these whole idea of these different realms of, you know, heavy things fall because heavy things. Rocks want to be with other rocks. Rocks. Rocks. Okay. Fire wants to be with the fire in the sky. So, fire, smoke rises. And it's very, those theories are very appealing. Because they kind of make sense. Right. The thing about physics is that it doesn't initially make sense. Since. Yeah. Because if it did, we wouldn't need people to derive it. And so, this whole idea of, like, rocks want to fall because rocks want to be with rocks. And water wants to be with water. And then air wants to be there. And then smoke wants to be higher. It kind of makes sense. Things want to stop because they want to stop. So, you roll something, it always stops. And that's very appealing. And then in 1801, I'm going to go with. And if I'm wrong on the date. Oh, well. This guy named Thomas Young was thinking about light. Newton thought light came in little blobs. But they had discovered that light, they discovered that different colors have different, different, you could split up the rainbow into the different frequencies. And the different colors had different amount of heat, including invisible light in the infrared. So, they're like, oh. Well, if it's got different colors and there's invisible colors, that kind of reminds me of sound waves. Like, there's sound you can't hear. Right. And it's a wave. And there's this theory that it doesn't have any mass. So, like, that sounds like a wave. How do I prove it's a wave? So, he builds himself a little water thing and starts splashing around in it, really. Yeah. And he figures out if he makes little patterns with it with two little dots, he can make these interference patterns. Yep. He's like, okay, let's see if light does the same thing. Young's double-split experiment. Young's little hole. Young's little hole. And makes the thing. And not only figures out that light's a wave, but each of the different frequencies, each of the different colors have different frequencies. And he can measure it with the experiment. So, after that, they're like, well, if it's a wave, it's got to be a wave in something. So, they brought back the ether from the old theories and said there must be ether. And actually, I found papers from, like, the 1830s, so way later, where they're still debating. They said, if you believe in a wave, then you need the ether. Got it. And then Faraday's like, well, how about these E&M waves? You don't need the ether. And Maxwell's like, no, no, no. I need it. I'm sorry. I need it. This is great. And then, so it was this debate. And who knows? And Einstein himself, he was like, he was sort of ambivalent. He kept on going, oh, I like it. I don't like it. Maybe you need it here. Maybe I want it back. And so, it's a debate. But the people who are like, well, they've proven that it's true. And they've proven it's not true. And it's a conspiracy. That part isn't how physics works. But it's a fascinating debate that I'm sort of tempted to make videos about and also terrified. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Do it anyway. Come on. People are going to complain. Doesn't matter. That's true. Doesn't matter. To my mind, Young's double split experiment is the, I think it's the most impressive experiment that I know of. It's like, it's the most mind blowing experiment that I know of. I think. Anyway. I just, every time I think about it and the consequences of it, I just, I'm just absolutely fascinated by it. It's absolutely amazing. And then how they shoot individual electrons through the split. You know. Oh my God. I like. That's insane. You know. It's like. You know. It's like. Like. Yeah. I can understand. Yeah.

Speaker ?: I can understand.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. The light through and the interference patterns. But then individual electrons through. And then individual electrons on different sides of the planet with two people doing the same experiment on two different sides of the planet. Join the data together. Boom. Boom. There's like. I know. It's.

Dave Jones: Physics. That's part of the problem. In terms of countering pseudoscience. Is that real science is weird. It is weird. Yeah. It's weird. It's. I mean, like, it's hard for most people to tell the difference between quantum entanglement. And. You know, machines that work at 100% efficiency. You're like. Well, that seems way more normal. 100% efficiency. Yeah. Seems way more normal than quantum entanglement. Right. And you're telling me the 100% efficiency is garbage. And quantum entanglement is real. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, we could go on forever, but we've actually been doing this an hour and 40 minutes. Oh, my goodness. I'm sorry. Yeah. I know. No, this is great.

Speaker ?: We could.

Chris Gammell: And we didn't really. Chatty copy for nothing. And we didn't even really go through, like, I was going to get you to go through, like, the chronicle. I'm going to. I just keep on. Buy the book. The lightning tamers. Yeah. Seriously. Everyone should get a copy. Is an audio version coming? An audio book version? Well, see, here's the thing.

Dave Jones: In order to make an audio book, it takes me a lot of time and it costs a lot of money. So I've decided to ask other people to pay the money. So I started to go fund me. Oh, now you have. For the audio book. Yes. Oh, excellent. I will send a link. You can put it there. And I think I've made, like, $2,000 already, which is amazing. So, like, once I get to a certain point, I'll just start making the audio book and release it as soon as I can.

Chris Gammell: Why does it cost so much? Because you have to go into a proper studio that does audio books properly.

Dave Jones: And it needs to be edited. And edited. And it needs to be edited well. And well. And the level of the editing that I do for my YouTube video shows me two things. One, I'm not at that level. And two, it is a much bigger deal. So I'm just going to pay someone. Pay someone to do it. Absolutely. To do it. To help me out. To follow. Also to be a monitor. Sort of. Like, I read it. And they'll go, oh, no. You mispronounced that. You slurred your words. You're do that one again. Maybe do it with a little bit more energy. I don't think they'll say that.

Speaker ?: But.

Chris Gammell: Have you thought about getting one of those professional readers? You know? One, like, someone famous to.

Dave Jones: I've thought about it. But the truth is, I am obsessed with this stuff. It's your passionate story.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: And I think people would expect to hear my voice.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes, they would. You being the YouTube. People who are going to buy it, they expect to hear you. Yes.

Dave Jones: And I think it would be fun to do. Although I'm pretty sure reading the whole thing out loud, I'll find something. I'm like, I wish I said that differently. No, it doesn't.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm sure it'll sound very cringy or just sound wrong when you actually read it. Out loud. Yeah. Out loud. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I feel like it has to come from me. So I. Totally agree. I don't want to do that.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: So, yeah, we're a little bit. The book comes out October 12th. It's like. Oh, well then. So the book should be released. The book should be out. But you can pre-order, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can pre-order paperback, hardback, e-book. Kindle. Yep. All that jazz. And from a bookstore or Amazon.

Chris Gammell: Fantastic.

Dave Jones: Whatever you want to do.

Chris Gammell: Is it self-published or did you go through a. Or did you find a publisher for it?

Dave Jones: I was thinking about when I started and I realized I am way too much a control freak to let anyone else have control of this thing. I don't want someone saying, you know what? I don't think. This has too much. This is too hard. It has too much science or it's too. Or we want you to add a chapter on what you think is going to happen in the future. Oh, God, no. Go away. Telling me what to do. What? You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: I have no idea. No. So I wanted. And I really. I didn't want to have someone else. If you have a publicist publisher. They choose the title. They choose the back cover. They choose the cover. They choose the words on the back. And they will do something like, you know. What's up? Like James Watts. And you're like, no, he's not in the book. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I know. So, yeah. So that's why I'm. And I also wanted to be able to choose my own price. I know that sounds weird. But especially I was thinking about that with the textbook. Most people when they make a text books cost like. Oh, hundreds of dollars. Hundreds of dollars. And I feel like that's keeping people away from learning. And I want the opposite. I'm like, how do we get this library? How do we get. People to learn new things. I don't want it. I mean, I want. Yes. I would love to make money. More money is nice. I'm not against money. I just. I also. I have a bigger passion. Than that. If that makes sense.

Chris Gammell: Trust me. That's how I operate. I could be, you know, a multimillionaire by now with, you know, my audience or whatever. But no, I just like. But, you know, I just do things for fun. You don't want. You know. No. Self-arbit. Yeah. Yeah. No. Exactly. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'm with you. I'm with you. Yep. Sometimes something, but I'm with you.

Chris Gammell: All right. Well, we'll put links down below. Thank you very much, Kathy. This has been awesome. It's so much fun. Because we've talked about you several times. And we've. Yeah. And it's great to have the history on. Although we could do this again and do a totally different show again about like going through just like the chronological history. Because I. We had no idea how this episode was going to go. Like we just. It went where or where. We just. And we didn't even get to talk about like sort of like a timeline thing. And it's like.

Dave Jones: I know. I barely talked about. I talked about chapter one and chapter two. And I don't think a little bit about Faraday. And I barely.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, I'm just looking here at 5.2. The painter who annihilated space and time. Oh, my goodness. I want to go read that right now. I mean. That was Morse. Oh, Morse. As in Morse code. Oh, okay. There you go. Because Morse was a painter. Okay. Yes, he was. And a pretty good one. Not a nice fellow. But a good painter. Fantastic. Oh, it's great. Anyway. Thank you, Kathy, for coming on. It was so lovely to talk to you. This was so much fun. Excellent. I enjoyed it. Thanks. Catch you next time. Bye.