- [dan] warning: What you are about to see
Could be disturbing to some viewers.
Viewer discretion is advised.
(climatic music)
Imagine,
A magic carpet,
Developed in secret by the united states military.
- You could steer it much like you could steer a segway.
Lean to the left, go to the left. I want one.
(climatic music continues)
- How about a cage for babies
That hangs from a 20-story building?
- You can walk down the street
And see these babies cages filled with babies,
Suspended up to hundreds of feet in the air.
- Or giant killer robots powered by
Facial expressions.
- The trigger is a smile.
(indistinct robot chatter)
- Has the human drive to create new technology
Opened a pandora's box?
- This is an intrusive contact lens
With a camera on your eyeball.
- This is the technology that keeps me up at night.
- These are the inventions so surprising,
They're truly "unbelievable".
(climatic music continues)
The human quest for flight
Has yielded some bizarre inventions.
One of the oldest and strangest dates back
To the sixth century when chinese emperor, gao yang,
Takes on an unbelievably twisted new hobby.
(glorious music)
- So 6th century ce china emperor gao yang is
A little bit of a wild guy.
He's 24 years old,
And while he can run government adequately
And everyone seems to like him,
On his off hours he does what he wants.
- One of gao yang's brilliant ideas is to figure out
Whether or not human beings could fly,
By attaching bamboo mats to the arms of prisoners
And then proceeds to take these prisoners
To the top of a 10-story tower
And pushes them in the hopes that these prisoners will fly.
Spoiler alert, they do not.
(suspenseful music)
- So the bamboo mats aren't working out very well,
But the emperor has another idea.
In his army he has these giant war kites
That can soar to incredible heights.
So surely these could support a human being
And allow them to fly.
(suspenseful music continues)
As if this story wasn't weird enough,
It gets a little bit more twisted.
- As these people are thrown off of a building,
He hands the string to this kite to their loved ones
And urges them to try
And bring their loved ones safely to the ground.
(suspenseful music continues)
(man screaming)
- But that doesn't happen and the prisoners just keep dying.
(edgy music)
- And then the unexpected happens.
One prisoner, yuan huangtou,
(edgy music continues)
Actually flies for about a mile and a half,
(angelic music)
Attached to this kite.
(angelic music continues)
And even lands...
Safely. (angelic music continues)
- [dan] yuan huangtou becomes the first person
To achieve flight and survive to tell the tale.
- He flew for a mile and a half and he's alive,
And you would think now he'd be granted his freedom.
Instead, the emperor condemns him to death by starvation.
- 1300 years later, at the height of the cold war,
The job of test pilot is still dangerous,
But at least it's voluntary.
- In the cold war, the military's looking
For any type of technological edge that it can get.
So, so many crazy ideas are being thrown out
To try and figure out what is going to be the thing
That changes the face of the battlefield.
- The military becomes very interested in this idea of
Allowing troops to rapidly move over the ground,
Not on the ground, but over the ground.
- Traditionally, one of the problems in a battlefield,
There are mines or snipers.
So, a way of getting over those mines
Would be really, really useful.
- [dan] that goal leads to this bizarre contraption.
It's the brainchild of inventor charles zimmerman.
- Zimmerman's background is in working in helicopters,
And he recognized that having a rotor assembly
Would provide the lift capability for the platform.
A rifleman, on a flying platform,
Will ascend into the air,
Flying across the battlefield while delivering
Suppressing fire toward the enemy
Against an opposing force that cannot do that.
- [dan] but why be conventional?
Instead of having the rotor blades on top,
Like a normal chopper, zimmerman flips the bird upside down
And puts the blades on the bottom.
This allegedly makes it more stable
And more useful on the battlefield.
- The idea is that you could steer it
Much like you could steer a segway.
You lean into it, lean to the left, go to the left,
Lean to the right, go to the right.
(edgy music)
- This thing is, kind of, like a magic carpet.
It can fly up to 30 feet in the air and go 16 miles an hour.
So it's pretty fast compared
To somebody moving over the ground.
- [dan] the vz-1 pawnee as it's known, sounds promising,
But there's a problem.
- Talking about shooting fish in a barrel.
Here this loud thing is coming at you at 16 miles per hour.
You hear it from far off
And you have plenty of time to take aim and unleash.
- So they ask the inventor,
Make it be able to fly higher and go even faster.
(edgy music continues)
- [dan] but instead of higher and faster,
The new version goes lower and slower.
- It also turns out that wind
Is a huge problem for this platform.
Even a little bit of wind can cause it
To become incredibly unstable,
Which means it's not usable in basically any situation.
- Every idea does not pan out.
It just didn't perform in a way appropriate for warfare.
But, I want one.
(edgy music fades)
(gentle piano music)
- [dan] if a flying platform sounds insane,
What about an inflatable airplane
You can pack inside an airplane?
(gentle piano music fades)
(animated music)
- Another interesting idea that comes
Out of cold war thinking is how do you help
A downed pilot behind enemy lines get back home.
So goodyear comes up with the idea
Of dropping an inflatable aircraft behind enemy lines
To assist that pilot in escaping quickly.
- [dan] in 1956, goodyear, the company known for tires,
Unveils the inflatoplane, also known as the inflatobird.
It's made of a special rubber nylon blend.
Unbelievably, when it's unpacked, it actually flies.
- So the pilot opens up this crate
And there's a motor in there that does the inflating
And it inflates itself in five minutes.
Kind of, like when you go camping
And you have a motor on your air mattress
And you're inflating it, but instead of sleeping on it,
You're going to fly in it.
(engine buzzing)
- This is not a toy airplane.
Its range is 400 miles.
It can go up to 70 miles an hour
And it can get up to 10,000 feet.
Not only that, the way the plane is constructed,
As the engine is running is actually pushing air
Back into the structure of the airplane.
And so it can take up to six 30 caliber gunshot punctures
Without deflating.
- [dan] if you're thinking this invention
Is too good to be true, you might be right.
(anxious music)
- During testing, there are some problems.
This is not a rigid framed aircraft.
There are pilots who go up in the inflatoplane
And they find that they have to fly it delicately,
Otherwise the wings fold in on themselves.
- One test pilot tried to go up too fast
And the wing buckled and actually folded over onto itself
Totally cutting their lift.
That pilot fortunately survived.
Another pilot is not so lucky.
As he's flying, a support cable
Holding the wing structure breaks
And the wing folds over onto the propeller
Causing the entire plane to go down.
- Sadly, the pilot loses his life and after that,
This project was killed.
It's a great idea.
It sounds amazing, but it's just not practical.
- [dan] remarkably, the inflatoplane
Isn't even the strangest plane of its time.
(eerie music)
- In 2012, the united states government decides
To declassify documents that are labeled "project 1794",
Dated 1956, and we're seeing what appears to be
A ufo. (eerie music continues)
- [dan] the plans describe a flying disc
That's able to reach speeds of mach 4
And an altitude of 100,000 feet.
But why would the military need this alien looking flyer?
(eerie music continues)
- So during the cold war,
If america goes to war with the soviet union,
They might take out all the military runways
To prevent our aircraft from taking off.
So what does someone think of?
Well, we need a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.
- Enter jack frost who comes up with an idea.
Instead of creating an aircraft that has wings,
Why not create an aircraft that
Looks just like a giant disc?
(eerie music continues)
- [dan] frost believes his curved disc will have the lift
To leave a more traditional plane in the dust.
(edgy music)
- The us military is extremely excited by this concept,
And they throw a bunch of money in this guys direction
To build this aircraft.
- And so in 1959, frost presents the avrocar vz-9,
(edgy music continues)
And it works,
(edgy music fades)
Kind of.
(upbeat music)
- The avrocar goes into its test flight.
And remember, he's trying to achieve
Mach 3, 4 at 100,000 feet.
He gets three feet off the ground
And goes 30 miles per hour.
And as you might imagine, the people who wrote the check,
They had a few questions for jack.
- Eventually the avrocar is shelved,
Another cold war big swing that doesn't live up to the hype.
- Parents are always looking for ways
To keep their babies happy and healthy.
In the early 1920s,
That desire yields a particularly strange invention.
(fast-paced pulsating music)
- 1920 is the first year that
The us census reveals
That a majority of americans live in cities.
- It's a period of hyper urbanization.
Steel has just absolutely changed the game.
We've gone from having buildings that at most could be
About five to six stories tall to suddenly
With steel, the sky's the limit,
Hence skyscrapers.
(haunting music)
- [dan] electric elevators suddenly make the highest floors
Go from the least desirable to the most.
But while folks are enjoying their sweeping new views,
They realize they've lost something very important.
(haunting music continues)
- If you're living in an apartment,
You might not want to lug your baby in the elevator
Or down the steps, but you still have this understanding,
This sense that fresh air is a good thing.
- So we have a few people that are thinking about ways
To get that fresh air to the kids
Despite being on the 10th, 15th floor, you name it.
And enter emma read.
In 1922, she applies for a patent for a cage, essentially,
That's just going to hang right outside the window,
Just like you'd hang an air conditioning unit.
Except it's not an air conditioning unit,
(haunting music continues)
It's your baby.
(nervous music)
- Baby cage is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.
It's made of essentially chicken wire and wood.
And supposedly these baby cages could hold up to 500 pounds,
But who's going to test that?
- The real thing driving the baby cage
Is the threat of tuberculosis.
Doctors are telling moms that the best way
To prevent tuberculosis is to get your kid fresh air.
And it seems like a good idea.
- In some cities, this idea takes off.
You can walk down the street
And see these baby cages filled with babies,
Suspended up to hundreds of feet in the air.
(fast-paced music)
- [dan] even a future first lady
Jumps on the baby cage bandwagon.
- Eleanor roosevelt before she's first lady,
Living in new york city with fdr,
Ends up using a baby cage for her kid
On the recommendation of a doctor.
So one of eleanor roosevelt's neighbors looks out the window
And sees a baby hanging out over the city,
So she complains,
And the roosevelts have to take down their baby cage,
- [dan] but it's not just the us.
By 1930, the cages are especially popular in london.
In fact, the chelsea baby club is giving them away
To anyone without a backyard.
- Let's also keep in mind people are experiencing
So much rapid shifts in their lives in this era.
You've got a lot of experiments going on.
Whether it's subways,
These crazy new things called automobiles.
Well, maybe it just makes sense that one of those shifts
Is putting your child in a cage that hangs out a window.
- [dan] by the 1940s, vaccines calm fears of tuberculosis
And the cages fall out of favor,
Before anyone falls out of them.
- But perhaps more importantly,
There's a real change in the way
We understand science and we understand disease.
So it's not that we're uninterested in fresh air,
But we don't see it as the cure-all to everything,
So much so that we're willing to stick our kids in cages
Outside of upper west side apartments.
- There's no word on whether a generation of big city babies
Suffer from terrible acrophobia
Or are immune to it.
But the 1930s introduced more than one strange invention
To concerned parents.
(bouncy music)
As another world war looms,
London town councils hand out tiny green outfits
To perplexed new mothers.
Officials casually explain,
It's a gas mask
For your baby.
(bouncy music continues)
- From the first world war,
There were a hundred thousand deaths
From mustard and chlorine gas.
So you have the military and scientists
Trying to develop technology
To keep the population safe from gas attacks
And baby gas masks are invented.
(bouncy music fades)
- Gas mask is probably the wrong word.
This is like a full body suit.
This is like a helmet with a visor
And a metal grate over the kid's face.
- [dan] in an effort to make them seem less scary,
The government names them the 'mickey mouse' mask.
(tense music)
Not sure how much that helps.
- Getting a baby into these gas masks
Isn't exactly the easiest thing.
You have to load them into this metal visor thing
And then wrap canvas around them like a diaper
With their little legs hanging out from the bottom.
But then it is actually convenient for the parents
Because you can wear your gas masked baby like a backpack,
Like a gas masked babybjorn.
(tense music continues)
- This suit is meant to be airtight
And you as the parent have to keep pumping air into it,
So your kid has enough fresh air to survive.
It's not hard to imagine this isn't going to work well.
- So the british start testing out this brilliant idea,
But then the nurses notice a little problem.
The babies are falling asleep.
- [dan] and it isn't because the babies
Are so warm and cozy.
- So it becomes rather clear
That they aren't actually getting
As much air as they're supposed to.
And ultimately the project is scraped
Because of course, better to run the risk of a gas attack
Than inadvertently wipe out a generation
By suffocating them in baby gas masks.
- [dan] but it does inspire yet another bizarre invention.
- As the british people are facing the prospect of war,
We also have the baby gas mask stroller.
For the parent-on-the-go who wants to make sure
Their child's protected in the event of a mustard attack.
Basically it looks like a coffin with a visor over it,
So you can see the baby,
Make sure everything looks good there.
- [dan] and like the baby gas mask,
The gas stroller is also airtight
With a cute little pump.
Just don't forget to give it a squeeze now and then.
- You put your baby in this airtight, coffin-like,
Metal container that has an air filter
That you have to consistently pump oxygen into,
And you go for a stroll in piccadilly circus.
- [dan] what happens to the person walking the baby
Isn't quite clear,
But the intent behind it somehow makes sense.
- During wartime, you still want to go to the park
With your baby even though you're under threat.
So, people are just grasping at straws
To maintain their sense of normalcy.
- And luckily, london and the rest of England
Were not attacked with chemical weapons,
And so the baby stroller was never needed.
(metal clanks)
- Since the first moving pictures,
We've been dreaming of how to make movies better.
First with dialogue, then with color.
So in 1960, two producers wonder what's next.
(gentle music)
- By 1960, 75% of american households have a television.
That's more than the number of households
That have a refrigerator.
And hollywood's box office sales
Have fallen off almost 50% in 20 years.
- So hollywood is scrambling trying to figure out a way
To get people back into the theaters.
And in the words of gypsy rose lee,
"you gotta get a gimmick".
- [dan] movie producer mike todd jr.,
Elizabeth taylor's stepson,
Thinks he has the idea hollywood needs, smell-o-vision.
- Mike todd jr. Works with this inventor named hans laube,
And they come up with this revolutionary
Piece of technology
That's going to completely change
The movie theater viewing experience, the "smell brain".
- The "smell brain" is synced up with the projector,
It has a belt.
And attached to this belt are small pouches of scent.
There's a small needle that punctures these little pouches,
Releasing the scent in exact synchronicity
With whatever you're meant to smell on camera.
If you see roses, it'll pierce that rose pouch
And you smell roses.
It seems foolproof.
- So in 1960, mike and hans produced a film
Specifically shot for smell-o-vision,
And they call it "scent of mystery".
- So this is not like a minor film.
It features among others,
Elizabeth taylor and peter lorre.
But what's cool about the film it's smells
Are crucial to the plot.
(villainous music)
You know when the villain is coming
Because the villain smokes a pipe
And we get the smell of pipe smoke.
And we actually know the heroine in the film
Before you see her because the scent of her perfume
Is supposed to fill the theater.
This smell is not just incidental,
It's actually intrinsic to the plot.
- Yuck!
- Now this technology does not come cheap.
It costs $15,000 just for the chicago theater alone,
Which is over a hundred grand in today's dollars.
So they're really banking on a success here.
- [dan] but unfortunately, on opening night,
Smell-o-vision has some rank problems.
- Number one, you can't clear out the previous smell
When the next smell comes in.
If the first smell is gasoline
And the next smell is perfume,
And the next smell is garlic, you are having a theater
That smells like a combination of gasoline,
Garlic and perfume.
On top of that, some parts of the theater
Aren't getting the scent right as it's released,
So it's wafting down to them scenes later.
And then you have an entire theater going... (sniffing)
It is a complete and total disaster.
- [dan] mike and hans scramble to fix the problem,
But it's too late.
Critics and audiences agree, smell-o-vision stinks,
And the movie's a total flop.
- So they tried to salvage some part
Of this very expensive experiment
And they rebrand the movie
And they call it a "holiday in Spain",
Which is already a pivot,
But this time it's without the smell-o-vision technology.
But that doesn't really work because this was the film
Shot entirely for the purpose of smell in the scenes.
So you've got these weird long pauses
Because you were waiting for an audience
To be able to smell something
And you have nothing to smell now.
- You just, kind of, have a weird movie with long shots
Of gas pumps and a long shot of a dude smoking a pipe,
Which resembles a real holiday in Spain
About as much as I resemble beyonce.
- If you think smelling your entertainment is strange,
Brace yourself for this next invention.
(machine gun shots popping)
- Video game technology keeps advancing,
Keeps becoming more and more realistic.
So what's the next step?
How about feeling what's happening in the game.
(haunting music)
(avatar laughing) - [avatar] aahh!
Aahh!
That's actually been invented,
And it's called a haptic vest.
It gives you the experience of feeling
What your game character feels.
So if you're in a combat game and you're stabbed,
Punched, whatever's going on,
You actually feel that through the vest.
It hurts you.
(avatar groans)
- When you read the sensations this haptic vest
Is promising to give you, it sounds like a police report.
Shot, shot with exit wound, stabbing,
Axe wound, abdominal wound, severe abdominal wound.
Why would people want this?
- Game players claim that it's very realistic.
Get hit with a battle axe in the back
Feels just like the real thing.
My question is, how the heck do you know that?
- [dan] as crazy as this sounds,
There's actually a practical application.
- It's very useful in training scenarios for police,
For military personnel, for firefighters.
So people are finding multiple uses for this technology.
(gunshots popping) (groaning)
- I just hope we don't have to wear them
To watch movies one day.
- [avatar] aahh!
Aahh!
- [dan] 'cause I prefer pretending
To be attacked by monsters.
- For millennia, pests have plagued farmers,
But some of the most damaging are slugs.
It's a billion dollar a year problem across the globe,
Until 2001 when a strange solution is suggested.
(chilling music)
- College student, ian kelly comes up with an idea.
He says, "what if I could create something
That not only kills slugs, but also uses them for fuel?"
(chilling music continues)
And so he comes up with the idea
That is affectionately known as slugbot.
- So the vision for the slugbot is, sort of,
Like an automatic lawnmower type machine
That moves through the fields, identifying slugs
And scooping them off the ground
And putting them into a digester
That will make fuel to keep the machine running.
- This is a robot that is consuming organic flesh.
(electronic music)
- [dan] it's a terrifying concept,
Yet if it works, it could change farming forever.
(electronic music continues)
- So the slugbot has immense promise.
Everyone wants this idea to work.
Everyone loves it.
It's going to save hundreds of millions
Of dollars in destroyed crops annually.
It's so promising, that's even on time magazine's,
Inventions of the year list in 2001.
- [dan] but can this flesh-eating robot put its money
Where its mouth is?
- The technology isn't 100% there.
The slugbot is fine at identifying slugs
And picking them up,
But the process of decomposing slugs
To convert them into energy
Hasn't actually been employed on the robot itself.
- [dan] 20 years later,
Researchers develop an unsettling new iteration.
(chilling music continues)
- What they want to do is they want to use ai,
So that it can determine where slugs are in your crops.
It can attack them and deliver a lethal dose of poison.
- So rather than devouring slugs to power itself,
This new product goes out there like half terminator,
Half roomba, zapping all the slugs up and down the field
With laser guided ai precision.
- First you have this machine
That's killing to eat and power itself,
And now it evolves to a machine that's killing just to kill.
I'm not sure I like where this is headed.
- [dan] maybe the key to harnessing
The potential of future robots
Is controlling them ourselves, from the inside.
(electronic music)
- It is 1980s japan, and kogoro kurata
Is like most boys of his age, obsessed with anime.
(electronic music continues)
Specifically mecha, giant fighting robots.
- And like most kids of the '80's, kogoro kurata thinks,
"wouldn't it be cool if these things existed in real life?
Wouldn't it be cool if you could get into the driver's seat
And control it and fight?"
(electronic music continues)
- [dan] by the time kogoro grows up,
There are still no giant rideable robots.
So he wonders, "why not?"
- He gets tired of waiting and in 2012,
He builds one himself.
(japanese music)
It's called "kuratas".
It's 13 feet tall and you climb up into it.
You close the hatch and you get behind the controls.
It's every boy's dream.
My own 13 foot tall, giant killer robot.
(japanese music continues)
(foreign language spoken)
- "kuratas" is the first robot of its kind
That is built to this scale and for this function.
(foreign language spoken)
- This robot is an amazing machine.
It has 30 robotic joints and weighs five tons,
And it actually shoots bbs with a gatlin gun.
I'm talking like 6,000 a minute,
That's a hundred a second.
(edgy music)
But what's really interesting
Is how you trigger shooting these bbs.
The trigger is a smile.
(edgy music continues)
(machine gun ratting)
- If I am sitting in the "kuratas",
This thing is not going to stop shooting bbs anytime soon,
'cause I'm smiling from ear to ear.
- [dan] "kuratas" even takes on a challenger in 2017,
California's megabots.
(horn sounds)
- [announcer] and there's the horn.
Here we go.
(tense music)
- [competitor] he's firing! He's firing!
- [henny] those six barrels can fire
Up to 2000 rounds per minute.
- [announcer] "eagle prime", "kuratas"
Engage in close combat.
That chainsaw is now activated.
(horn sounds)
- Megabots is the first winner
Of the first ever live action mecha battle.
- [announcer] history has been made.
- But don't feel bad for "kuratas"
Because we have both "kuratas" and megabots
To thank for bringing our childhoods
Into actual real existence.
- [dan] believe it or not,
"kuratas" briefly goes on sale for a mere $1.3 million.
Though in the end, no one pulls the trigger
To bring their childhood fantasy home.
- And honestly, that sounds like a bargain,
Considering it's cheaper than a bugatti
And way more smiles per minute.
- Like most of us, I'm sure you've come to
Work in a bad mood before,
But those days may soon be gone.
Whether you are happy about it or not.
(electronic music)
- It's 2009 and keihin electric express railway
Decides that happy employees are good employees.
So, how do we prove that you're happy?
- This japanese railroad company comes up with a test
That the employees do every morning.
They walk up to this camera and they smile.
The computer analyzes the smile
And grades the employee from zero to 100.
(whimsical music)
- It's not just your smile in your teeth,
It analyzes your full smile.
It's your eyes and your wrinkles.
So if your smile is fake, this will call you out on it.
- [dan] it even gives you tips on how to improve your smile,
Like, "lift up your mouth corners,"
Or my favorite, "you still look too serious."
Believe it or not,
There's actually science behind this weird little device.
- A lot of people think that your actions
Follow your feelings,
But psychiatry shows that your feelings follow your actions.
So when you do the smile,
It can trigger your brain to release endorphins,
Which is a happy chemical,
And you can actually feel better
Just by the action of smiling.
- The keihin railway company
Was using this technology just to give advice,
To try to get them to smile more at the customers.
But in 2018, another company takes this one step further.
- E-cometrue has you clock in every morning
With a smile device.
And if you fail,
You're not allowed in the office for the day.
- So you have to re-smile
Until you're exhibiting true happiness.
But you know what could make people feel better
Even more effectively?
Money. Give them a pay raise, give them some bonuses,
Smiles throughout the room.
(edgy music)
- But it gets worse.
The university of tokyo, it goes one step further.
You want to get your food out of the office fridge,
You have to unlock it with a smile.
If you don't smile adequately enough,
The fridge won't unlock for you.
- If it's lunchtime and you're hungry,
Hunger can lead to not being so happy.
So you could go up to the refrigerator, hangry,
And never get your lunch, which only makes you hangrier.
You got to be careful.
You got to think these things through.
- [dan] while a future of forced smiles
May not actually make us happy,
This next invention could literally
Change the way we see the world.
- Smartphones have been getting smaller and smaller,
But sony corporation wants to take it to a new level.
(gentle music)
Google glass was a set of ar glasses
Where you're looking at the real world,
But you have augmentation overlaid on top of it.
It's essentially what you would see
On your smartphone screen, just transparent in your glasses.
But the price point of $1,500 made it hard to sell.
- Another limitation is they, kind of, look dorky.
And so, ultimately the best solution
Would be to remove the glasses altogether.
- [dan] many believe the answer
Is to hide the hardware in your eyes.
So in 2016, sony files a patent for a 'smart' contact lens.
(upbeat music)
- Instead of having a pair of glasses
With information overlaid on it,
The information is displayed in the contact lens itself.
- The technology behind this is pretty incredible.
It has a battery that gets charged up
By the mechanical action of you blinking.
You know, just charging my contact camera.
- [dan] the developers say smart contacts
Will change our lives as much as smartphones did in 2007.
- Ostensibly, you would be able to do anything
On these lenses that you can do on your cell phone screen.
Check your email, find navigation directions,
Look at pictures, and it also has a camera
And onboard storage that can record video.
- Imagine you could just look around the room
And identify everyone in the room.
It's like you googled them or an ai face search,
And identify each person and get their full background.
This thing is limitless.
- [dan] it's not just a fun toy.
It might even be able to save lives.
- Because they're embedded in your eye,
They might be able to monitor your vital systems
And maybe even trigger the release of medication
If they're perceiving that your vitals
Are getting out of control.
And that is an incredible thing.
- [dan] but a fully integrated digital visual future
May also come with some dark consequences.
- There are a number of privacy issues involved here.
If somebody is wearing them, they could be recording
And the people around wouldn't actually be aware
That they're being recorded.
Not only that, we are already at a state
Where we're a highly distractible culture.
And bringing something that takes up
Your entire field of vision with additional information,
Seems like it could be a recipe for disaster.
- [dan] whether the idea of 'smart' contact lenses
Makes it to stores anytime soon or not,
One thing's certain,
Our future will look much different than our present.
- When I got my glasses,
My sister encouraged me to get contact lenses
And I went in for my contact lens training session.
Sticking my finger in my eyeball,
Is not the technology for me.
- Have you ever dreamed you woke up trapped in a casket?
You can't move. You can't breathe.
In the 19th century, this fear is so real,
The question for many becomes,
Can modern innovation save us
From such a ghastly second death?
(person gasps)
- Taphophobia is the fear of being buried alive.
This is a persistent fear throughout the ages,
But taphophobia is really,
Really prominent in the 19th century.
(tense music)
Cholera is a huge issue.
Cholera is one of these diseases that are wiping people out.
- So when you have 5% of a population dying from cholera,
You have a massive amount of bodies
That also need to be buried in a very short period of time.
- Cholera can induce coma.
So you have a number of people who are afraid
They're going to be buried in a coma state
And wake up, reaching up, to only find a coffin lid.
This just feeds into all these fears,
This taphophobia that's already so rampant
In the 19th century.
- [dan] so, in 1829, a german engineer comes up
With an unusual solution.
- Dr. Johann taberger devises this system
Where there's a bell on top of the grave
And the string runs into the coffin.
And when you wake up and you realize,
"oh my gosh, I'm buried alive."
You pull the string and it rings above your grave.
- And crucially, we have an air tube
Because you got to have fresh air.
So, you've got your air tube, you can breathe,
You're moving your hand, you're ringing that bell.
Out come the spades, you're being dug out,
Everything's going to be okay.
(climatic music)
- The problem is when a body decays,
Gases build up, the body bloats.
And what happens is that the bell might start to ring.
- People were hired to sit in cemeteries just to make sure
That these bells did or did not ring.
Yes, they could be rung from a finger,
But the wind could cause just as much ringing.
(climatic music fades)
(bell clanging)
- [dan] as far as we know, there are no cases
Of anyone actually being 'saved by the bell'.
But why wait for someone to come dig you up
If you can get out yourself?
(tense music)
- In 1843, christian eisenbrandt,
He takes this idea of a safety coffin one step further.
He calls it the "life preserving coffin".
- "the life preserving coffin".
It's a great paradox.
So christian's idea is that if you move at all,
Then the lid of the coffin
Is just going to spring right open.
That's going to be a problem, of course,
If you've got the weight of six feet of dirt on you.
So he does recommend being laid to rest
In more of a mausoleum situation.
But barring that issue, it's a great invention.
- [dan] eisenbrandt really stands by his work
Because when he dies,
He's actually placed in his own invention.
Unfortunately or fortunately, he never comes out.
(edgy music)
In 1868, another german inventor has a more practical idea.
- Franz vester, he ups the escape coffin game.
Escape coffins should not just be something for the rich
Who can afford a above ground tomb.
It can be something to save
Those who are buried in the ground.
- This coffin has a built-in escape route.
He has a two foot square tube
That goes all the way down to the coffin.
So if you were buried alive, all you have to do
Is shimmy your way up this pipe to freedom.
- [dan] and in case you're not quite up for the climb,
It's equipped with a wine holder,
Giving you time to gather up some liquid courage.
- Franz decides there's no better marketing
Than to demonstrate that this truly works.
(edgy music continues)
He invites the media, he invites people to buy tickets.
Hundreds flocked to see him buried alive in his coffin.
The coffin's put in place, he climbs in,
Dirt is thrown down, the whole works.
He is truly buried alive.
- 15 minutes goes by,
Everyone's looking around going, "hmm."
30 minutes goes by,
Vester has not come up out of the tube yet.
45 minutes goes by
And people are starting to become concerned.
- They're waiting and they're waiting and they're waiting.
(tense music)
And he finally pops up out of the tube, alive and well.
And the crowd goes wild.
(crowd cheering and applauding)
- [dan] no one knows for sure if the long wait
Was for a dramatic effect
Or if he was just enjoying his pinot noir down there.
Meanwhile, by the late 1800s,
There's a new market to stop people
Who are trying to get in to coffins.
- Grave robbing becomes a big problem in the 19th century.
The us has just been through the civil war,
The economy has suffered greatly
And people are in need of ways to make money fast.
- So I can imagine a world in which people
Are desperate to get jewelry or gold or other valuables,
They might dig down and grave rob.
- [dan] people aren't thrilled to learn
Their dear old granny is getting dug up and robbed.
So inventors decide the best way to stop grave robbers
Is to make sure they never leave the cemetery.
(pulsating music)
- In 1881, thomas howell, he files a patent
For a very unique kind of casket.
This casket is meant to deter grave robbers
And not just one.
His casket is designed
With essentially a landmine inside of it.
- This "torpedo coffin" has a canister
That contains a pound of black powder
Just under the surface.
And as soon as you hit it with a shovel...
(explosive boom)
- [dan] according to an ohio newspaper in 1881,
It actually works.
- Two grave robbers go after a coffin
Protected by thomas howell's invention.
(dramatic music)
Boom goes the coffin, flynn ends up dead.
The other has a mingled, gnarled leg as a result.
- So imagine you die in a cemetery,
Which is rather ironic,
But at least you're already in your grave.
- Grave robbing becomes such an issue
That finally state law, kind of, catches up with them.
- [dan] and I'm guessing the heat
The cemeteries were packing, helped too.
(fast-paced music)
Humankind is constantly striving to reinvent
Our way of life from birth to death,
From how we move to how we see.
But to achieve our outlandish dreams of the future,
We have to start with the "unbelievable".
(fast-paced music fades)