But it doesn’t walk the earth, it swims in the ocean! It’s a blue whale! These animals can be over 100 feet long, and weigh about 200 tons. Its heart is the size of a small car!

I’ve been pretty fortunate to be close to some of these amazing animals. Once, when I was paddleboarding with my son, a mother and baby humpback whale were playing in the water not far from us. Another time, we were snorkeling and could hear their songs in the water all around us. We’ve also been able to see them up close during boat rides.

Whales and dolphins have captivated people for thousands of years. Blue whales usually stay in deeper water, but dolphins often play and jump near the shore, and you don’t have to go too far out in a boat in many areas to glimpse a whale. Their size, power, and, in some cases, friendly nature, seem to pique our curiosity. There are cases of whales and dolphins warning people of danger, even saving their lives. And for thousands of years, we’ve watched and wondered about these magnificent creatures. 

Whales and Dolphins in Stories

If you’ve been listening for a while, it probably won’t surprise you to find out that people have been telling each other stories about whales and dolphins for thousands of years. The Maori, the native people of New Zealand, consider whales to be kaitiaki, or guides for sailors. In fact, a whale even played a part in helping them find their homeland! According to Maori legend, Paikea was the favorite son of his father, the chief of their tribe in what is now the Cook Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. Paikea’s brothers were jealous of him, and one night he overheard them plotting to drown him when he went out fishing the next day. Knowing of the plot, he was able to get away in his canoe, but he ended up drifting at sea, not knowing which direction to go to get back. As Paikea’s hope began to die, a whale picked him up and carried him all the way to New Zealand! There, he started his own settlement and became a beloved leader. The movie Whale Rider follows a modern Maori girl who wants to be the chief of her tribe, following in her grandfather’s footsteps. When she is told a girl can’t become chief, she decides to prove herself by riding a whale, just like Paikea. 

Arctic Tribes and Whales

Various arctic tribes in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and elsewhere, consider whales to be symbols of their way of life. They carve them into totem poles and have a long tradition of hunting them using traditional tools and weapons. Unlike the whaling industry that grew later, these hunters only take the small number of whales that the tribe will be able to use. 

Ancient Greeks and Dolphins

The Ancient Greeks were fascinated by dolphins. Their legends told of dolphins saving people lost at sea by riding them to shore. Ancient coins even show people riding dolphins. Dolphins were even said to have led a group of priests to the spot where they would set up one of most important religious sites in Ancient Greece, the Oracle at Delphi.

Jonah and the Whale

And of course, there’s the story of Jonah and the Whale in the bible. But did you know that this story is not only in the Christian Old Testament, but also the Jewish Torah and the Muslim Koran? In all three stories, Jonah disobeys God’s command to go into a city to preach about him. He boards a boat to run away, but soon the boat is caught in a storm. The sailors on the ship suspect that Jonah’s god is angry at him and causing the storm, so they throw him overboard. Soon, a huge whale swallows him, takes him all the way to the city where god wanted him to go, and spits him out on the shore.  

Whale Hunting

Although whales and dolphins are the helpers and even heroes of many folk stories, people haven’t always been heroes to them. Humans began hunting whales over 8,000 years ago. For people who lived near coastlines, they were a valuable source of food – one whale could feed a lot of people after all! Traditional hunting like this didn’t endanger whales, or bring them close to a point where there wouldn’t be any left. For a long time, people hunted from small boats with simple weapons, and took only the few whales they could use.

But by the 17th century, things were changing. Whaling, as whale-hunting was called, was becoming more sophisticated and more organized. And people were making a lot more money from it. Food wasn’t the main goal – people had found many uses for different parts of whales. The oil in the whale’s body could be used to lubricate machinery, and make oil lamps, candles, and soap. Sperm whales were especially valued: their bulbous heads alone could contain over 6 thousand pounds of oil! Baleen – the fibery material in many whales’ mouths that helps them catch their dinner of tiny krill – was lightweight and flexible, but strong. People used it to make the frames of umbrellas, mattress springs, and horse whips. 

Hunting the biggest creatures on Earth could be dangerous. Men would set out from a whaling ship in small rowboats, armed with harpoons that they would hurl by hand at these gigantic animals. Of course, most creatures do what they can to avoid being killed, and whales are no different. They could ram into the side of the boat or even lift the smaller boats out of the water by swimming up under them. Herman Melville based his famous novel, Moby Dick, on a real whaling voyage that ended tragically for the crew when a sperm whale attacked the ship, sinking it. In the novel, Melville imagines Captain Ahab, a whaler obsessed with getting revenge on the “white whale”, Moby Dick, who long ago bit off his leg. Ahab becomes so dangerously obsessed that he ends up losing his ship, his crew, and his life to the whale.

But whaling was big business in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century. As I mentioned, whale oil and baleen had many uses, so whalers could make a lot of money. And, as time went on, people invented more sophisticated tools for hunting whales. By the early 20th century, some species of whale were getting dangerously close to becoming extinct. But technology kept getting better (or worse, if you think about it from the whale’s perspective). People invented harpoon guns, and harpoons that would explode when they hit the whale. They began using high-tech electronics and helicopters to track the whales. 

Whales can Sing?

People began to question whether we should be hunting whales at all by the middle of the century.  Some species were close to extinction – there were so few left that scientists warned that soon, there wouldn’t be any. Scientists also began to realize that whales are intelligent and complex. Many live in groups and cooperate with each other to hunt and stay safe. They communicate with clicks, chirps and, in some cases, whole songs! A Navy engineer named Frank Watlington first recorded the songs of humpback whales in the 1960s. He shared these recordings with some friends who were biologists, Roger and Katharine Payne. The group was so astounded by the songs, they wanted people to appreciate how amazing and complex these creatures are. So they decided to release an album of whale songs! People loved the whale songs – they’re actually very relaxing and melodic, and the record was a hit! In fact, one of the recordings was sent into space on a probe called Voyager – so someday in the far-off future, aliens might even be able to appreciate these gifted whale vocalists.  

Not only did people like listening to the whales, the record inspired many people to start caring about whales. They began to realize that if we kept hunting them, we’d lose these amazing creatures. People  began to organize and protest commercial whaling. Some even went out on boats, trying to get between whaling ships and the whales they were hunting. The movement even inspired a science fiction movie, Star Trek IV, where space travelers go back in time to the 20th century to rescue a pair of humpback whales who can save the future Earth. 

Freeing the Whales

Popular culture had an impact in this case. Commercial whaling was finally banned in 1986. Not all countries agreed to the ban, but most did. Japan, Iceland, and Norway kept hunting whales, though Iceland has pledged to stop by 2024.

But by this time, some whales faced a different kind of mistreatment. Many orcas and dolphins were used for entertainment at water parks around the world. Some were well-treated, but many weren’t. They were often kept in tanks that were too small, and water that was too hot or not salty enough, like the ocean water they normally live in. This made many whales sick. Again, it was pop culture, a movie that spurred change. The movie Free Willy came out in 1993. In it, a lonely boy befriends a captive orca named Willy. He realizes that Willy is sick and wants to live free in the ocean. 

The movie sends the message that these majestic creatures belong in the wild, but the orca actor, Keiko, who starred in the movie was anything but free. In fact, Keiko lived in a too-small, too-hot tank in a Mexico City marine park, and actually was sick. Fans of the movie were outraged and wrote letters and raised funds to help free the real Willy. Finally, five years after the movie came out, Keiko was released into the wild in Iceland. He was fitted with a tracking device, and lived until 2003, or about 25 years old. Wild male orcas often live up to 35 years, but Keiko was already in poor health and probably not well-prepared to live in the wild. Today, dozens of orcas are still held in captivity. They often suffer from health problems, and don’t live as long as their wild cousins. 

Watching Whales and Dolphins

The best way to see whales today is in the wild!  Many organizations offer whale watching trips that let humans see whales in their natural habitat. You go out in a boat to an area where wild whales usually hang out and wait for them to show themselves. Sometimes you see just glimpses of backs and tails as they surface for air.  Watching the water spout from their blowholes is fun!, But other times you’ll see them breaching or rolling in the water, playing and showing off. If you find yourself near the ocean, you can also just sit and look out at the water. If you’re patient and stay long enough, you might see a group of dolphins, or pod, jumping and playing offshore. Be sure to bring a camera and binoculars! That way, both you and the creatures you’re watching can enjoy the experience. 

Sources

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/04/iceland-to-end-whaling-in-2024-demand-dwindles

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/oceans-the-great-unknown-58.html

https://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?13796/The-History-of-Whaling-and-the-International-Whaling-Commission-IWC

https://whalewatch.co.nz/our-people/indigenous-kiwi-and-paikea/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick

https://wwhandbook.iwc.int/en/species/blue-whale

Gish, Melissa. (2012) Whales. Creative Education. Mankato, MN.

Sandstrom, Donna. (2021) Orca Rescue! The True Story of an Orphaned Orca Named Springer. Kids Can Press. Toronto.

The post Whales and Dolphins Facts for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Have you ever come across something odd, and wondered what it was supposed to do? Did you wish you could open it up and find out what was inside? 

In 1900, a team of divers went looking for sponges off the coast of Greece. But what they found proved to be much, much more interesting. Wearing a waterproof canvas suit and a helmet with an air hose, the first diver was lowered into the water. When he reached the bottom of the Mediterranean sea, something strange caught his eye. It looked like a human arm. Looking around, he noticed more body parts, but fortunately, he realized quickly that these weren’t from real people. It was actually something very exciting: sunken treasure! He had found pieces of bronze sculptures from an ancient shipwreck! Soon, the Greek government organized an expedition to pull up the trove of artifacts.

Ships of Long Ago

The Mediterranean Sea is dotted with hundreds of shipwrecks from the ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and other civilizations that ringed the sea thousands of years ago. Most ships weren’t carrying anything very interesting: containers of olive oil or wine, unsculpted marble, or other stone. But this shipwreck was different. It sank in bad weather around 60 BCE, taking with it a cargo of beautiful bronze and marble sculptures, jewelry, and colorful glassware. 

It also had one other thing: an object that looked like little more than a slab of corroded metal with some obscure Greek lettering on it. About the size of a shoebox and not obviously anything, workers almost threw it back in the water. But fortunately, one of the expedition’s organizers stopped them. It’s a good thing he did, because that hunk of corroded metal turned out to be the most important treasure pulled up from the wreck.

One of those things you wish you could break open and look inside. A two thousand-year-old device that no one thought possible before. 

It became known as the Antikythera mechanism after an island near the shipwreck. Dozens of historians and scientists would work for over a century to find out exactly what it was and how it worked.  

Corroded Antikythera Mechanism

The mechanism was in bad shape when it was pulled out of the water. Originally made of bronze, it was severely corroded. Corrosion is when metal changes into other minerals when it interacts with other substances around it. Rust is a type of corrosion that happens when metals with iron in them react with oxygen in air and water. The mechanism had so much corrosion that it had clearly been in the water a long time. Workers found one big piece and many smaller pieces of the device. To make matters worse, the big piece broke into three soon after it was pulled from the water. All of the pieces were taken to the National Archeological Museum in Athens, Greece. 

What Was It?

At first, no one really knew what to make of the device. Because of how delicate and damaged it was, researchers definitely couldn’t just open it up and look inside. You could see gears from the outside, but there was clearly an inside of the device that researchers couldn’t see. The Greek writing on the outside was very hard to read. Scholars managed to read only a few words: the names of months and planets, and numbers that seemed to relate to the phases of the moon. 

A few scholars proposed that the object was some sort of navigational device or a planetarium that showed the rotations of the moon, sun, and planets. But these scholars didn’t do much to try to figure out exactly how the device worked. They didn’t have much opportunity to either, since, in the early 1900s, they had no way of seeing inside the object without destroying it. 

Within a few years, interest in the Antikythera mechanism died down. For decades, not many people bothered to pull it out of the museum’s storage boxes and study it in more detail. Finally, in the early 1950s, someone took notice. Derek de Solla Price, a historian of science, had always been interested in things driven by systems of gears and clockwork. He had already studied other ancient devices used to help calculate the positions of the sun, moon, and planets. The Antikythera mechanism was older and looked more complex than any similar device. Price thought he could unravel its mysteries.

In 1958, Price got the chance to visit Athens and study the device in person. The National Museum would let him examine the pieces, and hold them in his own hands. Price set about taking the most careful measurements of the fragments that anyone had attempted so far. It was hard, detailed work, measuring gears that were half corroded, counting the tiny teeth. He drew detailed pictures and carefully pieced the fragments together like a jigsaw puzzle. He was convinced that the mechanism was an ancient astronomical computer that could not only show the rotation of the planets, moon, and sun but also predict precisely where they would be on a given date.

But despite his careful measurements and calculations, Price still wasn’t sure exactly how all the gears worked together. What no one knew was that there were still more tiny gears inside, waiting to be discovered. But you don’t just break an ancient artifact like this open, even to learn more about it. Price would need to find a way to look inside, see through the outer layers to the inner workings.

Breakthroughs in X-ray Technology

Price returned home and for many years didn’t continue his work on the device. But in 1971, he learned about a new x-ray technology that would take images through metal objects. As soon as the museum agreed, Price was back in Athens, where he and an assistant took the images. These images showed a jumble of overlapping gears and teeth that would take some time to decipher, but they were the first peek inside the mechanism. Price counted over 30 gears in total, including 6 that couldn’t be seen at all from the outside. He was able to count the teeth on the gears. And the best part? He was able to use this information to build a working model of the device. By this time, Price thought the device probably only showed the workings of the sun and moon, not the planets. His model didn’t work perfectly, but it was progressing. The mechanism still held secrets, and it would take better technology to reveal them

Studying the Antikythera Mechanism

It would be almost another 20 years before those new technologies would come along, and 30 before the device would be fully understood. The new efforts kicked off in 1988, with the team of Michael T. Wright and Allan Bromley.  Wright and Bromley took new x-ray images using more advanced techniques. The images allowed them to make better measurements and see more clearly how things fit together when the device was new. Wright was convinced that the device also tracked the planets. The gears that still sat in the mechanism all seemed to help show the motions of the moon and sun. But Wright thought that the broken-off parts looked like they might have connected to another system of gears, and maybe these gears helped show the motions of the planets. Wright constructed a model of the mechanism based on his investigations, making intelligent guesses about the gears that seemed to be missing. 

In 2005, another team came together to study the mechanism. The team included mathematicians, physicists, historians, and experts on ancient Greek artifacts and science. X-ray technology had improved even more, and they thought they could get even better images of the inside of the device. They were also able to take much better photographs of the outside of the object. They found that Wright was correct in most of his observations, and he updated his model based on the new information.

So…how DID the Antikythera mechanism work? 

A dial on the front of the device showed the months of the solar year and the constellations of the zodiac. The solar year is based on the cycles of the sun. The calendar that most of the world uses now is based on the solar year, and so were the ancient Egyptian and Roman calendars. You would turn a knob on the outside to operate the machine. This turn of the knob would set in motion dozens of hidden gears inside the box. Seven pointers on the face spun around to show where the sun, moon, and five planets were relative to the constellations of the zodiac for any date you chose. The Greeks only knew about five planets, and the system reflected their belief that the Earth was at the center of the solar system, instead of the sun. Each full turn of the sun pointer equaled one solar year.  

On the back were two more sets of dials, operated using the same knob. The upper dial showed lunar months–from full moon to full moon. This dial would allow you to see how days in the lunar calendar lined up with days in the solar calendar. A small dial inside this one showed when athletic games, like the Olympics, would happen. Finally, the second large dial on the back showed when solar and lunar eclipses would occur.

The Antikythera device is the most complicated machine we have from the ancient world. As far as we know, nothing else so complex was built until the middle ages. 

As far as we know. 

Writers in the ancient Greek and Roman world did describe complicated “planetariums” –devices that showed how the planets, sun, and moon moved through the sky. So maybe similar devices were constructed. Maybe the Antikythera mechanism was just one example. Maybe others were lost and buried, or their bronze pieces melted down to make new things. We may never know, but it’s exciting to think about the possibilities!  Maybe someday, you’ll discover a mystery. If that happens, I hope you’ll ask questions, examine it from all angles, and learn from it. And maybe, you’ll solve it! 

Sources

https://www.amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/2019-03/attachments/Jones.pdf

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Antikythera-mechanism

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84310-w

https://www.nature.com/articles/444534a

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature05357

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-astronomical-calculator-even-older-we-thought-180953472/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/an-ancient-greek-astronomical-calculation-machine-reveals-new-secrets/

Jones, Alexander (2017) A Portable Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World. Oxford University Press, New York.

The post History of the Antikythera Mechanism for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Starting in the 1830s, the telegraph connected vast areas of land using wires, making it possible for important news and information to travel thousands of miles in a flash. These wires were installed above ground, much like many electrical wires today. But a few people thought we could do even better. They thought it might be possible to lay telegraph cables under the Atlantic Ocean, allowing people in North America to communicate with Europe in the same instantaneous way for the first time. This is known as transatlantic communication. 

Cyrus Field, an American businessman in the 1850s, was one of these people. He had more confidence than know-how, but sometimes that kind of personality is helpful when you’re doing something no one has ever tried before. This would be a huge leap forward for communication. Without telegraphy, the only way people could communicate between America and England or Europe was by sending letters. Steamships took at least 10 days to carry a letter over the Atlantic. Usually, it took several days longer as the letter was transferred to a destination farther from the port.

A few underwater telegraph cables had been laid over shorter distances, but crossing the Atlantic was a huge task. Field planned to lay his cable between the island of Newfoundland, in northeastern Canada, and Ireland. Even though this was one of the shortest routes across the Atlantic, it would require a cable nearly 2,000 miles long.  No one quite knew how well the telegraph signal would work over such a long distance. 

Of course, Field didn’t try to do this project alone. He asked experts on telegraphs and electricity to help him. He consulted with Samuel Morse and hired William Thomson, a well-known scientist, to advise him on the project. He also hired Wildman Whitehouse as the project’s chief electrician. Whitehouse had started out as a surgeon but taught himself about electricity as an adult. 

Thomson and Whitehouse clashed from the very beginning. Thomson thought that, because of how long the cable would be, it would need to be thicker than existing telegraph cables used on land. Whitehouse, along with the project’s engineer, thought a thinner cable would work. The thinner cable was already being made, and Field decided to go with Whitehouse’s recommendation. 

In the summer of 1857, the cable was ready. Field decided it was time to lay it on the bottom of the ocean. The United States and Great Britain had each loaned a ship to help with the job. Weighing over 200 thousand pounds, the cable was too heavy for one ship to carry! Unfortunately, the cable snapped not long into the journey. They would have to make more. It would not be the last setback the project faced. 

But Cyrus Field was determined. The next summer, 1858, they tried again. And again. And again. The first two attempts of that summer were scuttled due to a major storm and another snapped cable. But finally, on the third attempt, the two ships managed to lay the 2 thousand miles of cable!

The project team sent test messages across the Atlantic. Queen Victoria sent a telegram congratulating President Buchanan of the United States. People on both sides of the Atlantic celebrated. 

But the celebrations didn’t last long. The messages were hard to decipher and took a very long time to send. Queen Victoria’s short note took 16 hours to send. Hardly instant messaging! It turned out Thomson was right: They needed a thicker cable because of the longer distance. It was only a few weeks before the cable stopped working completely. They would have to start all over. 

But Cyrus Field got right back to work. This time, his team designed a new, thicker cable, and spent several years preparing for another attempt. Success finally came in the summer of 1866: the new cable was laid and it worked! By 1940, 40 telegraph cables lay beneath the Atlantic, but by this time, new technologies were starting to replace the telegraph.

One of the first people to think that radio might be used for communication was Guglielmo Marconi. Marconi was born into a noble Italian family, but when Marconi was born was just as important as where, or who his parents were. He was born in 1874. A scientist named Heinrich Hertz discovered radio waves in the late 1880s–just in time for a teenage Marconi to learn about them and become obsessed! 

In the attic of his family home, he began building radio transmitters, which send signals, and antennas, which receive them. At first, Marconi was only able to send radio signals about half a mile. But with improvements to his equipment, he found he could send signals over many miles. He called his system wireless telegraphy since it transmitted Morse code like traditional telegraphy. 

Marconi went to England to look for people to help fund his work. Soon the British government was using wireless telegraphy to allow ships to communicate with lighthouses onshore. They also gave Marconi money to continue his experiments, and he began working on ways to send his radio signals even further. Wanting to find out just how powerful his transmitter was, Marconi took his experiment to sea in 1903. He got on a boat headed to North America and told his assistants to signal from his transmitter in England at regular times every day while he was gone. He listened for the signals from the ship as it moved a little farther away each day. The signal carried over 2100 miles! 

The signal wasn’t quite good enough for everyday transatlantic communication, but it was an amazing accomplishment. Marconi did arrange for US President Theodore Roosevelt to send a radio telegram to King Edward of England. This was the first radio signal to travel all the way across the Atlantic. 

Marconi was a visionary when it came to radio, but you probably think of radio as something you listen to music or news on—sounds that are easier for everyday people to listen to than the dits and dahs of morse code. You can thank a Canadian inventor, Regionald Fessenden, for that kind of radio. Fessenden was starting to experiment with radio around the same time as Marconi, in the early 1900s. He wanted to use radio to send the human voice across long distances. 

To accomplish his goal, Fessenden developed a different type of radio transmitter that could send longer signals than Marconi’s. Marconi’s transmitter used bursts of radio waves that died out quickly. That was fine for morse code “dits” and “dahs”, but for music or voices, a longer-lasting signal would be needed. Fessenden designed a transmitter for sending such a longer-lasting signal, called a “continuous wave.” 

By 1906, Fessenden and his team had set up his transmitter in Brant Rock, Massachusetts, and an antenna to receive the signals in Scotland. They already knew that two people could talk on the new radio system over a few miles, and in the Fall of that year, they got a surprise. An operator in Brant Rock was talking with an operator in Plymouth, Massachusetts, around midnight. Amazingly though, an operator in the Scotland station heard his voice, clear as a bell, all the way across the Atlantic! 

Unfortunately, a storm destroyed the Scotland antenna about a month later. Fessenden’s unintentional experiments on transatlantic voice radio communication quickly came to an end. But Fessenden continued to work on continuous wave radio. On Christmas Eve of 1908, he broadcast the first-ever entertainment program on radio. Fessenden was heard playing the violin and singing Christmas carols. Ships all along the Atlantic coast picked up the broadcast! 

Others built on Fessenden’s pioneering technology to develop radiotelephone systems. In 1927, the American Telephone and Telegraph company (you might know them as AT&T) set up the first transatlantic radio phone system. The service was open to anyone–or rather, anyone who could pay. It was very expensive to make these transatlantic phone calls at first: $45 for a 3-minute call! And the quality was not great: weather often interfered with the signal. Still, radiophone service expanded in the 1920s and ‘30s to connect North America with Europe, Hawaii, and Tokyo.

By the 1950s though, new technology made it possible to lay telephone cables under the Atlantic, just as telegraph cables had been laid over the previous 100 years. The first Transatlantic telephone cables, called TAT-1, were laid over the summer of 1955 and ‘56. In September of 1956, the cables began operating. Hundreds of calls were made within the first 24 hours! Telephone cable was laid under the Pacific a few years later, and more telephone cables were laid under the Atlantic over the next 30 years. 

The next big leap forward came with TAT-8 though. TAT-8, laid in 1988, was the first fiber optic cable to span the Atlantic. Fiber optic cable can transmit phone calls, but also internet and other data. It quickly became clear that more fiber optic cable would be needed to deal with the growing demand for phone calls and the internet. 

Fiber optic cables also faced another challenge: sharks. TAT-8 was attacked by sharks, causing outages and service disruptions, not to mention electrocuting the sharks. Five more transatlantic fiber optic cables were installed in the nineties to keep up with the demand. They also included shark shielding! 

Today, hundreds of cables criss-cross oceans all over the world, connecting almost every corner of the globe. They allow us to communicate in all sorts of ways, from phone calls to live streams to email and so many things in between. We’ve come a long way since the dits and dahs of morse code made their way across telegraph lines under the Atlantic, but we couldn’t have gotten to where we are today without the efforts, missteps, and vision of those early pioneers. Even if you don’t make a lot of transoceanic phone calls, you use these cables for browsing the internet. Those underwater cables make it possible to send or receive information whenever you want, instantaneously. Much better than waiting weeks or months for a message!

Sources

Hunt, B. (2021). Wildman Whitehouse, William Thomson, and the First Atlantic Cable. In Imperial Science: Cable Telegraphy and Electrical Physics in the Victorian British Empire (Science in History, pp. 37-96). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108902700.003

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cable

https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/telegraph

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAT-1

https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

https://www.edn.com/1st-transatlantic-telephone-service-is-established-january-7-1927/

https://ewh.ieee.org/reg/7/millennium/radio/radio_differences.html

https://science.nasa.gov/ems/05_radiowaves

The post History of Transatlantic Communication for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Close your eyes and imagine you step into the basket of a hot-air balloon. You grab the sides of the basket tight as the flame ignites, adding gas to the gigantic red balloon above you. The basket lifts off the ground and suddenly you’re floating in the air, moving higher and higher into the sky. You look down below at the field and trees which have become very small. Soon, you are rushing across the countryside and passing villages and farmland and then crossing over a wide river and then a city. You pass over an ancient castle and then the ocean, traveling further and further from home, then across countries, around and around the world. This is what it might have felt like to be Phileas Fogg, the main character in Jules Verne’s famous novel, Around the World in Eighty Days. Listen closely as we learn about the life of this visionary author who took his readers around the world, below the oceans, and into the earth with his fantastic and educational tales that defined the genre which became known as “science fiction.” 

Jules Verne was born on February 8th, 1828 in Nantes, France. The home they lived in was built on an island in the middle of the river! From their home, Jules loved watching ships arrive from all over the world with passengers and goods to trade in France. He imagined what it would be like to be on the ships, climb up their tall masts, and be sailing around the world on adventures.

When Jules and his brother, Paul, were old enough they attended a boarding school. A boarding school is a place where kids go to school and live. There he learned to write and write and do math. While they weren’t at school, Jules and Paul loved to play in the field and dream about adventures they might one day go on together. One of Jule’s favorite books was called Robinson Crusoe about a man who is shipwrecked and has to survive on an island by himself for many years. It was an adventure story and Jules thought about the kind of adventures he might write about someday, too.

Later more siblings joined their family, 3 sisters, and their family moved to a larger home. They attended school and while Jules struggled with many of the subjects he did like writing. Also, his father wanted him to become a lawyer like he was, but Jules wasn’t sure that’s what he wanted to do with his life. But as he grew older, Jules followed his father’s advice and went to school to become a lawyer. He moved to Paris with a friend and loved living in a big city with all of the sights, sounds, and commotion. He spent his free time writing poems, plays, and songs. His father wanted him to focus on school, but Jules loved writing too much to take his advice. In Paris, Jules met famous writers such as Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas who had written books like The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, Les Miserables, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. At the time, Paris was the perfect place to live for someone who wanted to become a writer and learn from other great authors.

Living in Paris, Jules wrote his first play which became a live performance, and his first story was published in a local newspaper. The story was about a hot air balloon adventure. Airplanes weren’t invented yet, but hot air balloons were a popular form of travel and entertainment. Like ships, they filled Jules with wonder at the places they might take him someday and the adventures they might take people in his stories.

But, sadly, his father wasn’t happy with the success of his stories and plays. He told Jules he would stop sending him money and he had to come home and take over his business as a lawyer. By this time, Jules had made up his mind about what he wanted to do with his life. He told his father he would stay in Paris and do whatever he could to make a living as a writer. It was a risk he’d have to take, no longer receiving his father’s money, but writing was his passion so he stayed in Paris to fulfill that dream.

There, he took any job he could to make a living and spent most of his time continuing to write. Eventually, he met a woman named Honorine and they married and had two daughters. Jules was happy with his new family and writing in his free time. 

In 1859, Jules got his first chance to travel beyond France. He and a friend took a ship to England and Scotland. There, he saw many of the places he’d only read about as a child in books: castles, ruins, and huge mountain ranges. As they explored these wondrous places, his travels began to fill him with fresh ideas about how they might be used in the adventure stories he’d dreamed about writing since he was a child.

Sure enough, Jules’ travels inspired him to write his first novel in 1863 about a hot-air balloon adventure over Africa called Five Weeks in a Balloon. At first, it didn’t sell, but not long after a giant balloon was launched in France and people became excited about the idea of hot-air balloons and bought Jule’s book. Jules’ stories were different because they combined adventure with science and the many other advances in engineering that were taking place at this time. He lived in a time of many new inventions and scientific discoveries which included steam power and flight. Many new places like Africa were also being discovered around the world. It was an exciting time to live and Jules wanted to capture that sense of wonder and excitement in his novels. Little did he know, he was helping create a new category of writing called “science fiction.”

Jules’ publisher saw with how the world was changing, people would love these “science fiction” stories – even though they didn’t call them that at the time. He agreed to continue to publish each chapter of Jules’ stories in his magazine. Once the book was finished, it would be bound into a single copy for people to buy and read.

Jules began working on what became one of his most famous novels of all time. In the story, a professor and his nephew discover a volcano and Iceland and believe that if they can climb down into it they will find a path to the center of the earth! They travel far below the earth’s surface through caves and an underground river where they discover a huge cavern, fossils, and an underground sea. There they see fish, reptiles, and other mammals from the age of the dinosaurs. It became a chance to introduce readers to prehistoric life on earth as they imagined these now-extinct creatures living and battling in these caverns at the center of the earth. Of course, this story was fiction or made up, but it included many truths about living things and actual places like Iceland and volcanoes. If you’ve ever read science fiction, it’s made up but there are interesting things it can teach you about the world around you and science.

When Jules’ book was released in 1864, Journey to the Center of the Earth, was a huge success. People loved going on adventures through his characters and learning about new places and subjects like geography, geology, and the history of life on earth.

His following novels continued to mix exploration, science, and adventure. One was called From the Earth to the Moon about a group of soldiers who decided to use a huge cannon to launch one of them in a missile to the moon! Even though the book was written in the 1800s, it was thinking ahead about the big ideas like space travel and a real moon mission which wouldn’t happen until around 100 years later.

Although he was writing fiction, Jules Verne continued to be interested in science and innovation. He read papers about new scientific discoveries and met with scientists and great thinkers who lived in France and Europe. Every year he also spent time traveling to new places to be inspired by the world around him. In 1867 he traveled to the United States in a massive steamship and visited famous sites. He took notes about the places he visited, things he saw, and people he met. His travels and research gave him new ideas about what to write in his fantastic stories.

And he would need all the inspiration he could get because Jules had started on his most famous novel yet. Going back to his childhood, it included his dreams about ships and the vastness of the sea. This story would be about a massive submarine called the Nautilus. The Nautilus wasn’t like an ordinary submarine at the time, small and cramped. Instead, the inside was large and spacious, and richly designed. It was the home of its pilot, an adventurer named Captain Nemo. There, Nemo had a full library, an organ, a big bedroom, and an office. And on the Nautilus, Nemo and his crew traveled around the world visiting places like the North Pole and coral reefs. They even battle a giant squid! The book was later called 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and became an instant success. In it, Jules Verne took readers deep below the sea where they not only learned about the oceans of the world and exotic sea life, but also the mechanics of a fantastic submarine, which was powered by electricity – still a very new idea and invention at the time! 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea eventually became Jules most popular book and in 1916 was made into a movie then later in 1954 by Walt Disney, along with later film adaptations.

Jules’ next book was also a big success. It was called Around the World in Eighty Days about an Englishman named Phileas Fogg who accepts a bet that in a hot air balloon he can circle the world in … you guessed it … 80 days! During the book, they visit new places across the globe, another chance for Jules to teach his readers about all of the amazing places he’s visited and see the wonder of the wider world through his eyes. It was also turned into a play and later a movie in 1956 and even won an Academy Award for best picture.

With the great success of his books, Jules became very wealthy. He built his family a large home in Amiens and a yacht he used to sail to exotic places across the world. He was treated as a celebrity wherever he visited. At home, he threw large parties for friends, family, and the people of Amiens. He joined the town council and used his money to take care of people around him who were poor. Also, later in life he and his father became close again, and he accepted the fact that he decided to become an author rather than a lawyer. His father was proud of what his son had accomplished. 

Jules Verne spent the rest of his life with his family in his home in Amiens where he consistently wrote around 2 novels a year later into his life. On March 24, 1905, Jules passed away at his home. His son went on to publish some of his other stories and add to them himself. Many of his books have been translated into at least 140 different languages and inspired many famous science fiction writers. Being one of the earliest authors to combine science, adventure, and technology, he has often been called “the father of science fiction” as one of the founders of the genre. Many great explorers and engineers also said reading Jules Verne’s books when they were young inspired them to dream big and accomplish great things in their life. These include Werner Von Braun, the rocket scientist and the astronomer Edward Hubble.

Take a moment to think about something you are curious about. What are you interested in? Like you, Jules Verne had many things he was curious about as a child. He loved big ships and the ocean. Now, what can you do next to learn more about the things you are curious about? You might go to the library or find a good book about that topic another way. There are lots of educational videos online, too. Like Jules Verne, you can take something you are curious about and learn more. Maybe you can even write a story about it like Jules did! Remember, all big things have small beginnings!

The post History of Jules Verne for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Have you ever seen fish in a tank, aquarium, or in the ocean and wondered how they swim? And what would it feel like to be a fish, gliding through the water, seeing all of the interesting and exotic things a fish sees. The ocean covers around 70% of the earth’s surface and is extremely deep in some places. There are parts of the ocean we’ve still yet to explore. For a very long time, the size and depth of the ocean have fascinated people who have watched fish and wondered what it would be like to swim deep into the ocean and move about it freely. But humans can’t explore the ocean as freely as a fish. Can you think of a few things we need and don’t have naturally? To be able to breathe underwater like a fish is one. And a way to move around. Also, the deeper you go the more pressure surrounds you and human bodies can only take so much pressure. For a very long time, people have wondered if they could invent a way to move through the water and for longer periods of time like a fish. 

One of the early people to ask questions like this was William Bourne. Bourne was a British mathematician who in 1578 shared his idea for an enclosed boat that could go underwater, be submerged, and also be rowed underwater. This first idea for a submarine would be built of wood and covered in leather which is waterproof. It was a great idea and Bourne shared it with others but it wasn’t until around 50 years later that a dutch inventor named Cornelius von Drebel decided to take Bourne’s plans and build the underwater boat. When it was completed, Drebel’s submarine could go 12 to 15 underwater and was powered using oars that stuck out of the holes in its side. You can imagine how fascinating it would have been to see the first submarine at the time! It made several trials in the Thames River in England and it is believed that King James got to ride in it.

Once others saw Drebel’s idea, they were inspired to create their own submarines and as many as 14 different versions are known to have been created within a hundred years after Drebel’s. With each invention, new ideas were shared about how a submarine could function. Inventions typically work this way. Someone has an idea, others try it out, make changes, and continue to try new things and make changes and share their ideas, working towards the more advanced, modern versions of inventions we have today. This was the same with the airplane and computers, among all of the other technologies we have today.

During the American Revolution, an engineer had the idea to use a submarine to try and disable enemy ships. His name was David Bushnell and he constructed a very basic submarine made of wood and named it the Turtle. Only one person could fit inside it and after submerging it was designed to sneak up beside an enemy ship and then place a bomb on it. When the bomb went off, it would damage the ship’s hull and it would no longer be useful. It was an ingenious idea and the Turtle was able to float under the water and sneakily approach the ship, but once it got next to the ship the bomb attaching device didn’t work. This is the first known example of someone trying to use a submarine during war.

Another famous submarine inventor was American Robert Fulton, who later would go on to create some of the well-known steamships. But before steamships, Fulton was living in France and built a submarine which he called The Nautilus. Napoleon Bonaparte was the leader of France at the time and he paid Fulton to design and build the Nautilus. Unlike earlier submarines, the Nautilus was made of metal: an iron structure covered with copper sheets. The propellers were still hand-powered but it could move above and below water, since above water a mast and sail could be stood up. The Nautilus used a technology called ballast tanks. These tanks would take in water to go down and then push the water out when it needed to go up and float to the surface. It also had a rudder to steer the submarine and four people could fit inside. But this was still an early design, so for light, the sailors still had to use candles!

During the 1800s, updates and new innovations continued to make submarines faster and better at navigating underwater. Eventually, steam and diesel-electric power, and gasoline was used to move the submarines. Engineers also experimented with new ways the submarines could be used in war by firing torpedoes, which are underwater missiles. They also became bigger and could hold more people. The French navy built a submarine called the Narval which was propelled by a steam engine and was 111 feet long!

 By the time World War 1, also called The Great War, took place in the 1900s, technology had reached a point that very dangerous submarines sailed the ocean. Germany was known for its powerful submarines called U-boats, which were 300 feet long and could move at 13 knots on the surface and 7 when submerged. It was also armed with torpedoes and guns and was feared by its enemies. 

U-boats became even more powerful and dangerous by World War II. Germany built over a thousand U-boats. They were very advanced and moved in groups called “Wolf Packs” which attacked enemy ships moving supplies across the Atlantic Ocean. The United States Navy and others had to find ways to fight back against the German U-boats and eventually succeeded. During the Battle of the Atlantic 41 U-Boats were sunk so for a time they stopped attacking in the Atlantic. During World War 2 785 of the 1,000 German U-boats were eventually sunk.

Later, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union began building nuclear-powered submarines, which were powered using nuclear fission, the same process used to power an atomic bomb. They sailed much faster, dove deeper, and used advanced sonar radar that could detect other submarines and ships above water. The Permit-class attack submarine was almost 300 feet in length, the size of a football field if you can imagine that! It could hold around 130 sailors who each had different jobs from captain to radarman, to cook or weapons specialist. They spent many days underwater patrolling the oceans. Can you imagine living underwater in a submarine for that long? These submarines were equipped with powerful weapons, some of them ballistic missiles which could fire up out of the water and enemy targets. 

Since that time, submarines designed for warfare have only improved. But today not all submarines are used by the military. Have you heard of a submersible? A submersible is a smaller submarine that is used to explore the ocean and its life. It’s designed to be carried on a ship out to sea and then lowered into the water where it can dive deep and learn more about the depths of the ocean. If you think about it, so much of the ocean is undiscovered which makes it a little like an alien planet, because there are species we haven’t found yet and places we haven’t visited. 

One of the most well-known submersible operators was a marine scientist named Robert Ballard. He grew up in San Diego, California, and living near the ocean was fascinated by it. He wanted more than anything to explore it and learned to scuba dive the first chance he got. As he got older, he went to school to learn more about the ocean and also became interested in submersibles. In the 1970s, Ballard helped build a three-person submersible that they named Alvin. Using Alvin, Ballard and his crew dove 9,000 feet to explore an underwater mountain range in the Atlantic Ocean. Did you know there are mountains under the ocean? They used Alvin to explore other places like thermal vents, which had plant and animal life in them, an entirely new discovery for scientists.

The next submersible Ballard and his team designed was called the Argo. But the Argo was special because it was unmanned and could go deeper and longer than a submersible with humans could. It could also send pictures up to the boat of what it was seeing. Ballard decided the main goal of the Argo would be to find the Titanic. If you’ve listened to our episode about the Titanic, you’ll know that the Titanic was a huge ocean liner that was sunk in 1911 after hitting an iceberg. For seventy years no one had yet to find the Titanic. It was in a very deep area of the ocean and they weren’t sure exactly where it lay to rest. It took many days of searching, but on an exciting day in 1985, Ballard and his crew saw images of the Titanic Argo sent to them deep from the bottom of the ocean. It was broken into two pieces and covered with coral and other sea life. But you can imagine how excited they were when they finally discovered the Titanic and were able to share their findings with the world. 

Later, Ballard returned to the Titanic in his submersible, the Alvin, so he could see it in person for himself. 

If you had a chance to take a voyage in a submersible or submarine would you? Are you interested in learning more about submarines and the ocean? If so, have your parents help you find some books about submarines at the library or find some good videos on the Internet. I loved learning about submarines because it just amazes me what people can do when they put their mind to accomplishing a goal and then get to work. Designing something takes time learning about the science behind it, and then experimenting and making changes until you get it right. This is the engineering process! And like the great inventors and engineers of the past you can start small with your own inventions, too!

The post History of Submarines and Submersibles for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.

Close your eyes and imagine you are swimming deep in the ocean. You look up and see the sunlight shimmering through the surface far above you. The water is dark and blue and schools of silvery fish swim all around you. You turn and see a large manta ray glide gracefully by. Below you is the glittering sand and red and blue coral; and a family of sea turtles swimming by on their way toward the beach. You take a deep breath from your regulator, the device used to breath underwater. On your back is an oxygen tank and covering your eyes is a scuba mask. Your feet have fins and you wear a wetsuit to keep your body warm. All of these incredible inventions work together to make you like a fish. You kick your fins and glide further through the water, admiring the underwater forest of kelp, coral and fish that thrive in this beautiful ocean habitat. 

Jacques (pronounced “Zhock”) Cousteau who had a deep love for the sea and without his inventions and passion for ocean life, you would not be able to breathe like a fish underwater. 

Jacques was born on June 11, 1910 in the town of Saint-André-de-Cubzac, France. At age 4 Jacque learned how to swim and this began his great love for the ocean. Jacque didn’t always do the best in school, at times he had trouble learning, but he was very curious. His parents gave him a camera and he took it apart and put it back together again, because he was very interested in how it worked. He also liked to make films with his camera. In school, because Jacque wasn’t doing very well, his parents sent him to a different school. There Jacque ended up doing better as he put more effort into his school work.

Jacques spent one summer in a camp in Vermont, a state in the United States. He said that one of the camp leaders didn’t like him very much, so he made Jacques clean tree branches and other debris off the bottom of the lake. So Jacques spent many hours that summer diving to the bottom of that lake. This is how he learned to dive. 

Jacque loved the water and swimming, but he also wanted to be a pilot for the French Navy. In 1930 Jacque joined the French Naval Academy and graduated as a gunnery officer. As part of the Navy’s information service, he travelled around and took his camera with him. He used it to take pictures of exotic locations in the Indian and South Pacific Oceans. The Navy also taught him self-discipline and how to be a sailor, someone who understands the ocean and can drive a boat on it.

One night in 1933 while in the Navy, Jacque borrowed his father’s sports car to drive to a wedding. Along the way his headlights went out and he crashed into another car, resulting in a very dangerous accident. Jacques survived, but both of his arms were broken ending his chances of becoming a pilot. In order to get his arms’ strength back, Jacque began swimming again in the Mediterranean Sea. Once when he was swimming in the ocean a friend gave him a pair of goggles to try out. He used the goggles and looked under the water. He was amazed at what he saw and wanted to be able to dive deeper and explore further. Even though he wouldn’t be able to become a pilot, he found a new passion, exploring the ocean. Sometimes life doesn’t always turn out how we plan, so we need to be resilient, which means to bounce back and setting new goals as our circumstances change. 

In 1937 Jacque met his first wife, Simone Melchior, and later had two sons, Jean-Michel and Phillipe. Not long after this, Germany went to war with other countries in Europe, leading to World War 2. Soon the city of Paris, France fell to the German Army and Jacques and his family fled to the small town of Megreve. During this time, Jacques wanted to find a way to be able to dive deeper in the ocean and breath underwater. In 1943 he met an inventor named Emile Gagnan, a French engineer, and together they experimented with ways to breath underwater. At this time Gagnan and Jacques invented better snorkel hoses, bodysuits and breathing devices. They called their first breathing device an aqua-lung. It used an oxygen tank and changed the pressure of the water before it entered the divers mouth, so the diver could breathe underwater. 

Not only did Jacques want to breathe underwater, he wanted to make a movie about it so he could share it with his friends. So he also designed a waterproof camera. With his new inventions, Jacques made his first two movies, also called documentaries, called “18 Meters Deep” and “Shipwrecks.” 

At this time, the world was still at war, so Jacques joined the French Resistance to continue to fight Germany and Italy to leave their country. Jacques and others spied on the Italian Army and let the Allies know where they were going from and to. Later he was given an award for his service. 

When the war was over, Jacques used his diving skills and new inventions to clear mines and wrecked ships from under the water along the coast of France. At this time, he also kept improving his equipment and making underwater films. 

To humans, most of the undersea world had yet to be explored. Jacque understood this and wanted to discover it first. Instead of astronauts, who explore space, Jacque called his divers “acquanots.” 

In 1948, Jacques and several other divers gathered all their equipment and started off on an adventure to find a long lost shipwreck. The ancient Roman ship was called the Mahdia. The ship had been carrying many works of Greek art when it ran into a storm and sunk off the coast of Tunisia in 80 B.C. Together with his team, Jacques made many dives down to the shipwreck, gathered works of art and made a movie of their adventures. This was the start of what became known as underwater archeology.

In 1950, an Irish millionaire named Thomas Loel Guinness was interested in Jacque’s adventures. He bought a ship and let Jacques rent it for 1 French dollar a year. Jacques and his team turned the ship into a research and diving boat and named it Calypso. They had a ship but very little money for fuel or other costs for their adventures. Jacque’s wife, Simone, believed in what he was doing, so she offered to sell all of her expensive jewelry to fund their first mission.  

Besides his wife’s jewelry, Jacques knew in order to pay for his adventures, he would have to make even more money. He knew getting the world interested in what he was doing would be the key to doing it. He published a book called The Silent World. It was very successful and he used the money from it to pay for his next expedition to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.

In 1954, Jacques and his crew explored the waters off the coast of Abu Dhabi for a British oil company. They used the film from this trip to make a movie called The Silent World, which went on to win the best movie award at the Cannes Film Festival. This made Jacques even more famous. Around this time he and his crew invented what they called “the diving saucer,” which was a small submarine they could use to go even deeper into the ocean.

In 1966, Jacques saw that TV was becoming very popular, so he went to the American TV companies and convinced them to pay him for a TV show about his adventures called “The World of Jacques Cousteau.” Later he created another show called “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.” Millions of people all over the world watched Jacques explain the ocean from the Calypso. He was recognized for his French accent and red cap. 

During his early explorations, Jacque’s adventures had been paid for by oil companies drilling offshore. Over time, and with the help of his son, Phillipe, Jacques began to recognize that human activity such as offshore drilling was hurting many parts of the ocean and ocean life. In 1973 he founded the Cousteau Society and refocused his movies and books on what could be done to stop the damage being done to the ocean. Before long the society had 300,000 members worldwide. His society’s efforts did much to inform others what could be done in order to take better care of our planet.

In 1972, Jacques and his team packed up and left port for one of his greatest adventures. He would sail the Calypso to Antarctica and explore one of the last untouched oceans in the world. This was also made into a movie called Cousteau in the Antarctic. 

Jacque went on to make more movies and write more books. In 1985 he won the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom and in 1990 his wife passed away. He married Francine Triplet and with her had two more children. Then in 1997 in Paris, Jacque passed away himself.  

Jacques was very successful in life, but his life wasn’t always easy. When he was young he broke his arms and lost his dream of becoming a pilot, but he made the best of it and found a new world to explore instead. 

Over the years he made more than 120 TV movies and 50 books. He shared his love for the sea with the world through his movies and as a result of his passion many came to appreciate the amazing wonders below the surface of the ocean.

Jacques once said “the sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonders forever.” And “When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.”

Like Jacque, you can be curious about the world around you. Because there was no way to explore the underwater world, that didn’t stop Jacques from exploring it. He invented a way to breathe underwater! It’s fun to dream about great adventures, but real adventures take learning and work and planning. If there’s a dream you have, be sure to take the time to plan out what you can do to achieve it. They may mean reading more about it in a book or on the Internet, or trying a little harder in school so you have the skills to reach that dream. Like Jacques, you can learn to see the world as a wondrous place. When you’re curious life is never boring! Find something you’re interested in, check out a book about it, or watch a video. Curiosity keeps life exciting! Remember, there’s no end to the things you can learn and explore in the wondrous world in which we live. 

The post The History of Jaques Cousteau for Kids appeared first on Bedtime History: Podcast and Videos For Kids.