More Coal Innovations by Brewers w/ Dr. Anton Howes

Dave: 00:00:05

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Respecting the Beer.

Dave: 00:00:08

My name's David Kelso, filling in for Gary Arndt today.

Dave: 00:00:12

He's off somewhere making up new nicknames for Joel.

Dave: 00:00:15

Anyways, today we're continuing our conversation with Dr. Anton Howes talking about coal.

Dave: 00:00:21

Did it really become popular because of homes or was it actually something else?

Dave: 00:00:26

Let's find out.

Dave: 00:00:27

As Joel continues the conversation with Dr. Anton Howes.

Gary Arndt: 00:00:32

One of the themes that we've.

Gary Arndt: 00:00:35

Hit on this podcast on a number of occasions is the connection between beer and innovation, which is obviously your area of expertise.

Gary Arndt: 00:00:46

Do you find that when you study, uh, innovation, that it seems that brewers in many cases are kind of at the forefront of technological breakthroughs throughout human history?

Anton Howes: 00:01:00

Uh, often I don't, I, I can't think of many cases of brewers.

Anton Howes: 00:01:05

Being inventors outside of their field.

Anton Howes: 00:01:08

But I think given the scale of brewing One thing that's interesting about brewing is it's from very early on, one of the more capital intensive industries.

Anton Howes: 00:01:16

So you've got a lot of very moneyed men effectively taking over, especially in this period as, as the scale of, of, of, of breweries starts to increase dramatically.

Anton Howes: 00:01:25

Um, it had been the case that throughout the middle, the, the middle ages, and I guess well into the 16th, early 16th century that a lot of brewing was kind of done in the home.

Anton Howes: 00:01:34

It was kind of a very small scale thing, uh, often done by women.

Anton Howes: 00:01:37

Um, so Bruce stirs.

Anton Howes: 00:01:39

Um, the stir being the kind of the, so if you think of spinner and spinster, brewer and Brewster, um, some sometimes survives in people's surnames.

Anton Howes: 00:01:50

But the brewsters are kind of supplanted in, in around this, this exact same period.

Anton Howes: 00:01:54

I'm not sure if it's completely related.

Anton Howes: 00:01:56

I suspect it is.

Anton Howes: 00:01:57

But they're supplanted during exactly the same time, just as coal is, is supplanting wood in brewing.

Anton Howes: 00:02:03

That it becomes this very highly capital intensive industry.

Anton Howes: 00:02:05

And so brewers do often kind of, they end up being funders of innovation.

Anton Howes: 00:02:09

They end up being, you know, because they've got these big pools of capital they end up being pretty, pretty interesting financiers in the 18th century.

Anton Howes: 00:02:17

Um, and they're very, very quick to adopt new technologies.

Anton Howes: 00:02:20

So, you know, steam engines.

Anton Howes: 00:02:22

Some of the earliest adoption of a lot of kind of mechanization is often by brewers because frankly they've got the deeper pockets to be able to do so and be, be first in line, um, when a new technology comes along.

Anton Howes: 00:02:34

And I guess with those deeper pockets, be able to take risks.

Gary Arndt: 00:02:38

What, what did you think the connection was between steam and brewing?

Gary Arndt: 00:02:42

I noticed you mentioned that too in, in your essay.

Anton Howes: 00:02:46

Well, steam engines very early on can be used for.

Anton Howes: 00:02:50

Uh, pumping.

Anton Howes: 00:02:52

So there's, you know, there's a lot that you can do there.

Anton Howes: 00:02:55

As a brewer is quite useful.

Anton Howes: 00:02:57

There's a knock on effect immediately from when you've got any kind of grinding work that's going on.

Anton Howes: 00:03:02

'cause obviously malt is often, has to be very lightly ground.

Anton Howes: 00:03:05

Or at least that's the part of the process that they use at the time.

Anton Howes: 00:03:08

And from what I can tell, there seems to be, uh.

Anton Howes: 00:03:13

Anything in the brewing process that was revolt that involves any kind of mechanization.

Anton Howes: 00:03:18

The brewers seem to be first in line for that.

Anton Howes: 00:03:20

Um, so steam engines is part of that too.

Allison Fleshman: 00:03:22

I am gonna jump off of what Joel just asked about how the, I think part of the innovation in which the, the.

Allison Fleshman: 00:03:30

Someone comes up with an invention, brewers are one of the first to adopt it.

Allison Fleshman: 00:03:33

One of the things about brewing is that it spans such a vast technological range of you've got, uh, thermodynamics, so heating things up and cooling things down.

Allison Fleshman: 00:03:43

Very controlled all the way to microbiology where you've got.

Allison Fleshman: 00:03:48

Yeast doing a lot of the work.

Allison Fleshman: 00:03:49

And so I think as all of these in innovations start to emerge throughout the industrial Revolution we, brewers will find a spot for it.

Allison Fleshman: 00:03:58

I mean, even back a couple episodes we were talking about kind of neuroscience and like just the psychology of, you know, the way that folks interact with each other is different when you have a beer in your hands versus not.

Allison Fleshman: 00:04:07

So I think that there's plenty of opportunities, um, for brewers to embrace.

Allison Fleshman: 00:04:12

Any innovation that comes along and really kind of the way you get these things off the ground is, you know, be the first follower to a new technology.

Anton Howes: 00:04:20

Yeah.

Anton Howes: 00:04:20

Or simply raising water, right?

Anton Howes: 00:04:21

There's such huge quantities of water that are

Allison Fleshman: 00:04:23

Oh my gosh, yes.

Anton Howes: 00:04:25

So, so the really early steam engines, things like the savory engine, the newcomer engine, they're primarily, they're just used for pumping.

Anton Howes: 00:04:32

I. Um, so the NewCom engine becomes famous as for, for pumping water out of coal mines.

Anton Howes: 00:04:37

'cause that's one of the main places it's very cost, cost effective to use.

Anton Howes: 00:04:40

But as that improves in, in efficiency and then as it's supplanted by even more efficient engines like the watt engine, I think, you know, brewers often see that.

Anton Howes: 00:04:49

Okay, great.

Anton Howes: 00:04:50

This is, you're solving one of the big problems that we've had where we've effectively had to use horses, you know, having a stable full of horses just to keep.

Anton Howes: 00:04:57

You know, going round and round and round to, you know, lift buckets or whatever.

Anton Howes: 00:05:01

If you've got something else where, where you are already consuming loads of coal, if you've got loads of coal already coming in as well, you can then start saying, okay, we'll just feed that to the engine and that can help raise the water too.

Gary Arndt: 00:05:13

While we got you here, so I dunno if you know, I have a very popular history podcast.

Gary Arndt: 00:05:18

Uh.

Gary Arndt: 00:05:19

One of the most popular in the world.

Gary Arndt: 00:05:20

And one of the things I always enjoy reading about is the origins of the Industrial Revolution.

Gary Arndt: 00:05:24

In particular, the question, why did it happen when it did where it did?

Gary Arndt: 00:05:29

Or to put it another way, why didn't the Romans have an industrial revolution?

Gary Arndt: 00:05:34

Uh, I'm sure you're familiar with the very crude steam device that Hero of Alexandria built that was just kind of spun around.

Gary Arndt: 00:05:41

Uh, there was coal, but nothing happened.

Gary Arndt: 00:05:45

Until about, you know, the, the 16th, 17th centuries in Britain.

Gary Arndt: 00:05:51

And so I want to hear what your take is.

Gary Arndt: 00:05:54

Why did it happen, when it did, where it did, and why not somewhere else, and why not sooner?

Gary Arndt: 00:06:00

That's a great question.

Anton Howes: 00:06:01

so keep me to, uh, keep me to this, keep me to this because I'm gonna go on a few little tangents here.

Anton Howes: 00:06:06

There's a, there's a high risk of tangents, right?

Gary Arndt: 00:06:09

Well, that's, I, that's what Gary does.

Anton Howes: 00:06:12

So keep me to it, but the first thing I'm gonna say, the first thing I'm gonna say is that people are aware of the spinny device described by Hero of Alexandria.

Anton Howes: 00:06:20

What they're less aware of is that throughout a number of other devices that are in the same work, he actually does describe the use of atmospheric pressure.

Anton Howes: 00:06:29

To effectively do mechanical work.

Anton Howes: 00:06:32

And I was very surprised by this because in most of the accounts of the history of, of steam, you don't see this.

Anton Howes: 00:06:37

Um, so the famous one is actually that you've got the, the use of the heating up some air.

Anton Howes: 00:06:42

It's a kind, it's a bit like a, a steam engine, but it's using exactly the same principles, at least the atmospheric engine that, that Thomas Newcomb events in 1712.

Anton Howes: 00:06:50

Where you can burn, you can kind of light a half on an altar or light an altar.

Anton Howes: 00:06:55

And then by heating the air in this enclosed space, it's going to push essentially this mechanism that'll open, um, temple doors.

Anton Howes: 00:07:03

Now, that's actually the boring bit.

Anton Howes: 00:07:04

The interesting bit from history of science point of view is that it resets automatically.

Anton Howes: 00:07:09

Because it sucks the water back up again into the device essentially using atmospheric pressure.

Anton Howes: 00:07:14

Now, the way that, that, that was understood throughout the whole, I mean, actually interestingly, we don't know that much about the ancient understanding because we've got just a few scraps and fragments.

Anton Howes: 00:07:23

Um, but the way it's understood throughout the whole Middle Ages and well, up until about the, the mid 17th century.

Anton Howes: 00:07:28

And perhaps even a bit beyond then, given the science was still so new and uncertain, is that the universe doesn't allow vacuums that nature abhors a vacuum.

Anton Howes: 00:07:36

That the universe is a full thing.

Anton Howes: 00:07:39

Like it is a completely, it's almost like a, an enclosed egg.

Anton Howes: 00:07:42

I. And anything beyond the egg is heaven, right?

Anton Howes: 00:07:45

So even the, the fixed stars that we see in the night sky, that's the firmament, that's like a literal permanent, that's the outer shell of the egg that we can see blinking at us at at night.

Anton Howes: 00:07:56

And so because the universe is full, it just cannot allow there to be an actual absence of matter of any kind.

Anton Howes: 00:08:03

And so because of that, however.

Anton Howes: 00:08:05

Although that's wrong and it's long been thought that the steam engine needed the vacuum science in the mid 17th century to progress.

Anton Howes: 00:08:11

This is actually not the case because there are loads of devices, which there was a piece that I wrote a couple of years ago, um, called Why Isn't, why wasn't the Steam Engine invented earlier?

Anton Howes: 00:08:19

Three part?

Anton Howes: 00:08:20

Again, very, very long piece.

Anton Howes: 00:08:21

Um, but I went into the detail 'cause I started finding more and more effectively early prototypes, steam engines.

Anton Howes: 00:08:27

Um, which are using atmospheric pressure, right in exactly the same way that would then be used in the late 17th century by Thomas Savory.

Anton Howes: 00:08:34

By Thomas NewCom.

Anton Howes: 00:08:35

And they'll be exploited by people like James Wat and so on.

Anton Howes: 00:08:38

Which is essentially that all you need to know is that because nature pulls a vacuum, you can start using these kind of suction pro what appear to be suction properties, which we now know to be the result of the weight of the atmosphere, pushing the water into, um, where a vacuum has been formed.

Anton Howes: 00:08:53

Um, so.

Anton Howes: 00:08:54

Yeah, that's one of the, the first things I'd say is that, interestingly, the Romans are actually did have a pretty advanced understanding of, of what was required for a steam engine, even more so than I think a lot of people assume.

Anton Howes: 00:09:05

And the spinny thing is actually the, the least sophisticated of the steam using devices that that hero describes, right?

Anton Howes: 00:09:11

There's a whole bunch of other ones, um, throughout the Middle Ages.

Anton Howes: 00:09:14

There seems to be a pretty common understanding about whoever I think is reading the manuscripts.

Anton Howes: 00:09:18

'cause you know, the reason we even know what hero says is that.

Anton Howes: 00:09:21

Throughout the Middle Ages, people are just copying it out and copying it out and copying it out, you know, by hand lovingly, you know, working out how these things worked and, and copying out the book before the invention of printing.

Anton Howes: 00:09:31

So that's part of it.

Anton Howes: 00:09:33

The other thing I'd say though, in actual answer to the question, I. Is that I, not only does that deepen the mystery, but in another way it unfortunately makes the rest of my other answer kind of more boring, which is that we actually forget just how far behind in many other technologies the Romans were.

Anton Howes: 00:09:47

Right?

Anton Howes: 00:09:47

They don't have the, the midlake, the, the medieval spinning wheel.

Anton Howes: 00:09:51

Um, they don't have various agricultural implements.

Anton Howes: 00:09:54

Um, and technologies.

Anton Howes: 00:09:56

I mean, there's quite a lot of things that they would have to adv, invent to unlock quite a, quite a lot of extra surplus.

Anton Howes: 00:10:02

Um, so there are significant innovations.

Anton Howes: 00:10:04

There is quite a significant, you know, just look at the architecture.

Anton Howes: 00:10:07

Just look at the kind of, I guess the feats of geometry that you might say that the Romans are performing.

Anton Howes: 00:10:12

And it's possible that we'll discover more through archeology or through the decoding of the, the Herculean, uh, pap papyrus and various other things.

Anton Howes: 00:10:23

Um, but from what we currently know about their technology, there's quite a lot of things that are still missing.

Anton Howes: 00:10:28

Uh, there's quite a lot of innovation.

Anton Howes: 00:10:29

There's kind of a big innovation gap that they still kind of have quite a lot to do, to catch up to the, the point at which, um, the industrial revolution takes off.

Anton Howes: 00:10:36

In the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th centuries.

Anton Howes: 00:10:40

And as to my own, um, explanation as to why the Industrial revolution happened, um, where and when it did the thing I'd say is that the thing that when, when people think of the industrial revolution, they think about, I. The kind of Dickensian story of, you know, there's like a bunch of kids down mines or in some factories going up chimneys.

Anton Howes: 00:10:58

There's lots of coal and soot and iron and steam and cotton.

Anton Howes: 00:11:04

You know, there's certain things that people have in mind.

Anton Howes: 00:11:07

Many of which I'd say are actually primarily associated with what happens a bit later on once the industrial revolution is already in full swing.

Anton Howes: 00:11:13

And that the actual crucial change takes place around about the 1550s to about 1650 much earlier than most people think when they think about the industrial revolution, they can, you know, if you ask people name a few inventors from that period, I think they'd pretty much draw a blank.

Anton Howes: 00:11:26

Like there's very, very few famous inventors because the textbooks almost always started about 1700.

Anton Howes: 00:11:31

And actually really from 1760s onwards, I would say that period, it's actually very much in full swing.

Anton Howes: 00:11:37

And the interesting thing that happens in that 1550 to 1650 century is that England starts to really transform in a way that basically no other economy had ever done before.

Anton Howes: 00:11:47

You see.

Anton Howes: 00:11:49

To set the scene for you.

Anton Howes: 00:11:51

England is basically one of the economic backwaters of Europe and potentially of the whole world, uh, well, certainly of, of, of Eurasia.

Anton Howes: 00:11:59

In that it's extremely agrarian.

Anton Howes: 00:12:01

It has basically one export industry where there's a bit of industry involved, which is in, in cloth wool, cloth making.

Anton Howes: 00:12:08

But it's effectively, it's very underpopulated.

Anton Howes: 00:12:10

It hasn't even recovered from the pop to the population level that it had.

Anton Howes: 00:12:15

By about 1550 that it had well before, you know, uh, uh, just before the Black Death.

Anton Howes: 00:12:20

Right?

Anton Howes: 00:12:20

So it's extremely under popular.

Anton Howes: 00:12:21

It's extremely empty.

Anton Howes: 00:12:22

There's way more sheep than there are people, you know?

Anton Howes: 00:12:24

It's what we'd kind of think of as this kind of rural backwater.

Anton Howes: 00:12:26

And I certainly, a lot of visitors would've thought, yeah, there's, you know, plentiful agricultural produce because it's basically a massive farm.

Gary Arndt: 00:12:33

You've

Anton Howes: 00:12:33

Um, it's not,

Anton Howes: 00:12:37

it's effectively a bit like new or it would've seemed, I think a lot, like, more like New Zealand.

Anton Howes: 00:12:41

I mean, the population is.

Anton Howes: 00:12:42

Is, you know, it's not even pushing 5 million at this point.

Anton Howes: 00:12:47

So it go, but it goes from, from that period, from that stage to within that century.

Anton Howes: 00:12:52

Becoming one of the places that people are starting to really notice and kind of sitting up and saying, hang on, something's really happening here.

Anton Howes: 00:12:58

You've got the growth of London from being, you know, a pretty unremarkable city, especially for being a capital city of about 50,000 people to being a metropolis of, you know, put.

Anton Howes: 00:13:09

Over 400,000 people by the end, by over the course of that century, um, you've got rapid urbanization, almost all of it, driven by a single city.

Anton Howes: 00:13:18

Um, and at the same time, and this is what's so highly unusual, is that you've actually got even, uh, you know, even throughout that whole period, it's actually usually a grain exporter.

Anton Howes: 00:13:26

So not only is it kind of.

Anton Howes: 00:13:29

Continuing to grow in terms of its agricultural output, but it's industrializing at the same time.

Anton Howes: 00:13:33

And even people who are living in the countryside are doing more and more industrial pursuits as well.

Anton Howes: 00:13:37

And that's effectively never happened.

Anton Howes: 00:13:39

I, I can't think of a single case in human history before that stage where that had happened before.

Anton Howes: 00:13:43

So England's kind of extremely unusual in that period.

Anton Howes: 00:13:46

And effectively all of the things that happen later on are kind of building on what's going on there.

Gary Arndt: 00:13:52

That's a pretty good answer.

Gary Arndt: 00:13:52

I.

Gary Arndt: 00:13:55

Yeah, I just wanted to hear your take on it because it's, it's one of these questions that I think everyone has.

Gary Arndt: 00:13:59

And one of the things I often heard too is that it was a chicken and egg thing with coal.

Gary Arndt: 00:14:04

Uh, you started digging coal and then because you started digging coal, you eventually needed the pumps and the pumps caused the invention of the steam engine.

Gary Arndt: 00:14:13

Which required coal because you couldn't really use wood on a steam engine.

Gary Arndt: 00:14:18

It did just didn't have enough energy.

Gary Arndt: 00:14:19

It wouldn't be possible.

Gary Arndt: 00:14:20

And it was kind of this virtuous cycle that kind of developed of the coal and the steam engine that that kind of developed hand in hand.

Anton Howes: 00:14:28

So in theory you can use wooden steam engine and I

Gary Arndt: 00:14:31

But it's just not as effective.

Gary Arndt: 00:14:33

Mm-hmm.

Anton Howes: 00:14:33

In the, in the United States, in the early 19th century, I believe there are quite a few cases of steam engines being u using wood.

Anton Howes: 00:14:40

Um, so it's certainly possible.

Anton Howes: 00:14:41

I actually, I, I have a, a post planned that I've been meaning to write for a few years now.

Anton Howes: 00:14:46

I've been kind of slowly collecting evidence, much like with this last one where I've kind of, there's threats scattered throughout my notes.

Anton Howes: 00:14:51

So lots of little hints about, this is where I need to, I'll come back to this for this particular post, but I suspect that the.

Anton Howes: 00:14:58

Which is a narrative that you hear all the time that this narrative about, because you had coal mines, that it gets a bit and the coal mines get very deep and you need to drain them.

Anton Howes: 00:15:07

Therefore the steam engines vent.

Anton Howes: 00:15:08

I suspect that doesn't quite work.

Anton Howes: 00:15:10

Partly I think because you do actually have some pretty deep coal mines already on the continent.

Anton Howes: 00:15:14

Particularly around Lee Edge, which is in modern day Belgium.

Anton Howes: 00:15:18

They're already facing some of these problems with, with needing, you know, having to go deeper and deeper.

Anton Howes: 00:15:23

Um, but also the context in which the, the steam engines are first invented don't seem to have anything to do with coal mines at all.

Anton Howes: 00:15:30

They have a lot to do with copper and tin mines in the, in, in the southwest of England.

Anton Howes: 00:15:35

Um, and it appears as though the very earliest attempts are in these copper and tin mines, but because they, they don't have sufficient access to heating material that it doesn't quite work out.

Anton Howes: 00:15:43

And actually, so possibly the very earliest newcomer engine, and again, this, the evidence is kind of shaking on this, um, but it seems as though it wouldn't have had very good access to coal at all and probably was using a Pete from a nearby marshland.

Anton Howes: 00:15:56

So it, it, it works in retrospect when you look back at how it does end up being very, very successful.

Anton Howes: 00:16:02

Um, but I think there are effectively a few pivots along the way by the promoters of steam engines where they're like, okay.

Anton Howes: 00:16:08

Obviously it's not cost effective at the copper or tin mine, obviously it's not cost effective enough with Pete.

Anton Howes: 00:16:14

Let's try it out in one of these flooded coal mines, and then it kind of goes from there rather than, I think the story of it being a demand, a demand side story where the demand kind of leads to the invention basically.

Anton Howes: 00:16:24

Almost never in human history.

Anton Howes: 00:16:25

I can't really think of many cases, at least in my own studies, where I found that that kind of demand-led story has turned out to be true.

Gary Arndt: 00:16:35

You guys, any more questions about beer?

Allison Fleshman: 00:16:38

don't think so.

Allison Fleshman: 00:16:39

Aside from just being excited about this automatic automated temple doors.

Allison Fleshman: 00:16:44

And I have a little schematic thing.

Allison Fleshman: 00:16:46

I'm like, oh, we can have some fun with the brewing system.

Gary Arndt: 00:16:48

I think one of the things that, as, as Dr. House has been talking, one of the things that I'm glad about is that Bobby's not here today.

Allison Fleshman: 00:16:57

Oh my gosh, yes,

Gary Arndt: 00:16:58

because Bobby is our brewer and is Allison's husband.

Gary Arndt: 00:17:04

He's a lovely

Allison Fleshman: 00:17:04

soul, but dear goodness, he would talk a lot his,

Gary Arndt: 00:17:07

yeah, his mind moves at about a million miles an hour and he would be sitting here, he has a little notebook that he takes notes in.

Gary Arndt: 00:17:13

He probably would've.

Gary Arndt: 00:17:15

You know, like when you were talking about atmospheric pressure driving mechanization, he probably would've thought maybe we should do that here.

Gary Arndt: 00:17:25

Well, we already

Allison Fleshman: 00:17:26

have a lot of systems like that where we utilize some of the differences.

Allison Fleshman: 00:17:29

Right?

Gary Arndt: 00:17:29

But you know, his mind just moves in a million miles an hour and he would've had a number of.

Gary Arndt: 00:17:35

New things for the brewery.

Gary Arndt: 00:17:36

Yeah.

Gary Arndt: 00:17:37

So maybe we should, can we deny him access to this

Allison Fleshman: 00:17:40

podcast?

Allison Fleshman: 00:17:41

No, it's okay.

Allison Fleshman: 00:17:42

It's okay.

Allison Fleshman: 00:17:42

We, um, no, but I think in the end it's it's funny when I give beer tours of our brewing system, it's really brewing is all about heating things up and cooling things down in a very controlled way and in the, the nuances of like the invention of the thermometer.

Allison Fleshman: 00:17:59

Invention of controlled heating and cooling.

Allison Fleshman: 00:18:02

Those things are revolutionary, at least in terms of making a better pint of beer,

Anton Howes: 00:18:08

Interestingly with the invention of thermometer, that actually also relies on, or at least originally relies on exploiting changes in atmospheric pressure.

Gary Arndt: 00:18:16

Yep.

Anton Howes: 00:18:16

Uh, it's only later that they seal them off and they realize that they can, they can separate the atmospheric, the kind of barometer side from the, from the thermometer side.

Anton Howes: 00:18:25

So the early thermo scopes, which is about, I think the, the first will have been 1611 guy called Santor.

Anton Howes: 00:18:32

Santor, I guess.

Anton Howes: 00:18:33

So.

Anton Howes: 00:18:33

Good.

Anton Howes: 00:18:33

They named him twice.

Anton Howes: 00:18:34

Where he, this Italian comes up with a way of doing it, and around the same time, there's a Dutch guy called Cornelis Rebel, who's just one of these inventor geniuses.

Anton Howes: 00:18:45

He not only kind of, he, he not only seems to be responsible for what, what ends up being called the kind of the.

Anton Howes: 00:18:52

The, the doner glass or thunder glass, which is the kind of barometer to show you that there's, there's been a, you know, a real drop in, in atmospheric pressure.

Anton Howes: 00:19:01

But he also exploits it to come up with what a, what is effectively a perpetual motion machine.

Anton Howes: 00:19:06

Which, which is actually just exploiting changes in barometric pressure and, temperature to make a clock keep going for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, and to kind of power this little planetarium, um, it's called the Eltham Wonder.

Anton Howes: 00:19:19

It was, it was meant to have been, I think it was for a few decades.

Anton Howes: 00:19:23

It was at one of the royal palaces in England, um, because he was invited over to, to try out this, this new, uh, this new invention.

Anton Howes: 00:19:32

But it's one of those things where he kept it secret as to how it exactly worked.

Anton Howes: 00:19:35

But lots of people in trying to work out how it was working seemed to have.

Anton Howes: 00:19:39

Then drawn up some of the earliest illustrations we have of, of working thermometer, working, working barometers,

Gary Arndt: 00:19:47

How much of your research has been done in a pub?

Anton Howes: 00:19:51

the research in the pub.

Anton Howes: 00:19:53

There's a lot of notetaking and well not note, note taking, but I'll come up with good lines for, for whatever I'm writing sometimes, uh, mid pint.

Anton Howes: 00:20:00

That's definitely for sure.

Gary Arndt: 00:20:02

Well, that kind of proves my theory.

Gary Arndt: 00:20:04

That's true.

Gary Arndt: 00:20:04

Yeah.

Gary Arndt: 00:20:04

I mean, most of my effective thinking happens here.

Gary Arndt: 00:20:08

Yes.

Gary Arndt: 00:20:09

Yeah.

Allison Fleshman: 00:20:11

Agreed.

Gary Arndt: 00:20:12

Alright, then I think that's gonna conclude this episode.

Gary Arndt: 00:20:15

Thanks for being on the show.

Gary Arndt: 00:20:16

This was a, a real treat.

Gary Arndt: 00:20:18

Um, the producer of the Respecting the Beer podcast is David Kalsow.

Gary Arndt: 00:20:21

Without David, this show would not exist.

Gary Arndt: 00:20:23

Make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player so you'll never miss an episode.

Gary Arndt: 00:20:27

And feel free to join the Facebook group to get updates between episodes and join the show over on Patreon, where you'll probably hear bits of this episode.

Gary Arndt: 00:20:35

Links to both of these are in the show notes.

Gary Arndt: 00:20:36

And until next time, please remember to respect the beer.