Show Notes
The 15th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1974, cost $32 million to create. The largest investment in publishing history. And yet you can now buy the complete set for pennies.
Who invented encyclopedias? Who wrote for them? And why did Samuel Taylor Coleridge get so upset about them?
Dallas is joined by Simon Garfield, author of All the Knowledge in the World: The Extraordinary History of the Encyclopaedia.
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More from Patented: History of Inventions
If you can never connect to a printer, if furniture jumps out to stub your toe, if when you do the dishes the water jumps out the sink to soak you - then you are victim of the inanimate malice of things.
400 years ago on the River Thames a mad genius showed off the world's first submarine. A crowd of thousands including King James watched as Cornelis Drebbel disappeared beneath the murky water, only reemerging after three whole hours had passed.
Fire is the unsung hero of human evolution. We could not have turned into the big-brained, deep-thinking animals we are on raw food alone. The moment two million years ago that our forebears first started using fire to cook, was the spark that started everything off.
For most of their history, High Heels were resolutely masculine. The most manly of manly footwear. How did they turn into burning icons of femininity? And now that the heyday of women's high heels is over, what lies ahead for them?
What do all incredibly cool people have in common? They wear Sunglasses. Whether you're Miles Davis or Audrey Hepburn, James Dean or Bob Dylan, your sunglasses are never far away.