[Dan narrating]
[suspenseful music]
- Imagine a device so powerful
it could shake buildings
and your insides.
[suspenseful music]
- He's feeling better than he has in years.
- Suddenly, he hops off the platform
and makes a mad dash for the bathroom.
- But unfortunately,
nature is a bit faster than he is.
[tense suspenseful music]
- How about a breakthrough appliance
that runs on pure dog determination?
- Someone figures, "Why not train a dog to run a spit?"
- It becomes an indispensable kitchen device
but it is a terrible job.
- Turning for hours and hours.
- Or a mousetrap so deadly,
you need a permit to own it?
- When the rodent eats the cheese,
it trips the spring,
and then the gun shoots the mouse.
[tense dramatic music] [gun banging]
- But the inventor's thinking
a little bit further.
[suspenseful music]
- These are the machines
so strange they are truly
"Unbelievable."
[suspenseful theme music]
The light bulb, the phonograph, the film camera,
just a few iconic inventions attributed to Thomas Edison,
but his most unbelievable creation is a strange machine
you've probably never heard of.
[dramatic music]
- It's 1920.
It's a cold winter's night,
and a group of men are in
a darkened lab testing a machine.
[electricity crackling]
- When Edison calls out,
somebody in the room flips a switch.
[camera flash popping]
- On the other side of the room,
we have this photoelectric cell,
which is going to generate a little bit of electricity
as soon as it's hit by this beam of light.
Now if this electricity ever stops,
they would know that something
had broken that beam of light.
[eerie dramatic music]
- The men in the room start calling out people's names,
asking them to walk through the light,
and the people that they're calling,
[dramatic music]
they're all dead,
and this machine is meant to detect ghosts.
[eerie dramatic music]
- [Dan] Speaking to the dead might seem strange today,
but in the early 1900s,
it was all the rage among society's elite.
- Towards the late 19th century, early 20th century,
spiritualism really rises in popularity,
and it becomes very accepted,
especially in well-to-do society.
It almost becomes like a symbol of your status
if you're having seance parties,
if you're inviting people over
to commune with the dead.
- Especially after World War I
when over 16 million people perished,
people really turned to spirituality in the hopes
of reconnecting with departed loved ones.
- [Dan] While others reach for crystal balls,
Edison grabs his toolkit.
[suspenseful music]
- Thomas Edison believes things
like our personality are left behind when we die,
and he believes that these bits of energy of us are
almost like a physical thing that he calls entities.
- The thing is Edison doesn't believe that some medium
or some really dramatic psychic,
who claims to be able to write
what's being said on the other side, or Ouija boards,
he doesn't believe in any of that theatricality.
He wants to find scientific proof of the afterlife.
[tense music]
- So he designs a machine that can detect
the presence of these entities
using a beam of light. [camera flash popping]
- [Dan] Detection is only the beginning.
Edison believes his unusual invention can do more.
- The machine might even be able
to amplify these personalities
the same way that a phonograph
can amplify a person's voice.
We might even be able to use this
to communicate
with the deceased.
[tense dramatic music]
- It kind of makes sense that he would go down this path,
because his whole life and what he's invented
has been built around the idea of communication.
- [Dan] And true to form,
Edison doesn't keep quiet about it for long.
By 1920, he's ready to pull back the curtain.
- In an interview with American Magazine,
Edison reveals that he's been working
on this device for some time,
and that it's almost ready.
This causes an enormous firestorm in the press.
- People are eager to see
and to see the results
of what they are dubbing
"Edison's Spirit Phone."
[dramatic music]
- [Dan] So what exactly becomes of the Spirit Phone?
- Edison's tests ultimately never reveal
any true scientific proof
of any spirit entities.
With no evidence,
no empirical data to back it up,
Edison stops sinking money into it.
- He tries to bury the fact
that he built this machine,
but it is mentioned in his diaries.
Unfortunately, nobody can ever find the plans or schematics.
- Edison dies in 1931
and with him dies the Spirit Phone.
[dramatic music] [hammer tapping]
- [Dan] It may be lights out for the ghost phone,
but not the idea behind it.
[dramatic music]
- These days there are machines
that measure electromagnetic frequencies,
which are used to detect spirits
and whether or not they exist.
- This modern technology is really another iteration
of the same thing that Edison was trying to do.
[machine humming]
- As someone familiar with ghost-detecting devices,
I will attest those things can be pretty glitchy.
You could say the same about an unusual machine
invented by Edison's legendary rival Nicola Tesla,
a volatile gadget that has an unexpected function.
[tense dramatic music] [electricity crackling]
- In the 1890s,
genius inventor Nicola Tesla is working on
new more efficient ways of generating electricity.
[dramatic music] [machine humming]
- The rotating electrical generator
he finds is not very efficient,
so he decides to invent a new version,
something oscillating, goes up and down.
[suspenseful music]
- So basically it works with an air-
or steam-powered piston driving a coil
back and forth through a magnetic field.
This happens on an incredible frequency.
- This device does create a lot
of electricity very efficiently,
but it also produces an enormous amount of vibration.
[dramatic music] [building rumbling]
[objects rattling]
- The amount of vibration is so immense,
not only does it shake his building,
it shakes the neighboring buildings,
so much so they think they're experiencing an earthquake.
It soon gets the nickname Tesla's Earthquake Machine.
- [Dan] As scary as this is at first,
there seems to be at least one upside.
[dramatic music]
- Tesla's team realizes
that if they stand on a platform above the machine,
the vibrations get sent throughout your whole body.
- These vibrations feel really good.
Like they feel extra good.
- People who experience this are having like laughing fits,
their mood changes, and some people say
it actually improved their health.
- Tesla, ever the inventor, thinks,
"Hey, maybe this machine might
have applications in medicine.
Maybe it could destroy cancer cells
or eliminate tuberculosis."
[light dramatic music]
- [Dan] It may even be able to help
one of Tesla's famous friends,
who's suffering from something much different.
[tense eerie music]
- In the 1890s,
Tesla becomes a good friend
with no other than Mark Twain.
[light dramatic music]
- When Tesla and Twain meet at a dinner party,
a bromance quickly ensues.
[dramatic music]
- As they get closer,
Twain reveals the fact that he's suffering
from a really embarrassing problem.
He has insufferable...
constipation.
[dramatic music]
- Tesla tells Mark,
"I think I might have something for you.
Go stand on that platform.
We're going to let those vibrations
course through your body,
and we're going to see if we can shake something loose."
[dramatic music]
- But Tesla gives Twain a very frank warning,
"When I say get off the machine,
you get off the machine."
- So Twain agrees to all this.
He's like, "Yeah, no problem. I got you."
Tesla fires up the vibrations,
[dramatic music]
and it gets to going.
[suspenseful music]
- Twain loves it.
He is eating it up.
He's euphoric.
He's feeling better than he has in years.
- But sure enough eventually Tesla's like,
"Yo, time. You got to get off now."
And Twain is like, "You're tripping, dude."
- Tesla starts getting stern, he's like,
"Hey, come on, I said it's time to get off.
You need to get off of this thing."
Twain says, "No way, I'm not stopping this."
- [Austin] Suddenly, Twain feels a gurgling
in his intestines,
and he hops off the platform
and makes a mad dash for the bathroom.
- But unfortunately,
[suspenseful music]
nature is a bit faster than he is.
[dramatic music]
- On the upside, Tesla did prove his theory.
[dramatic music]
Today vibration therapy
is proven in alleviating constipation,
so much so that in 2023 the University of Georgia
invented a vibrating pill to help disrupt constipation.
- The incident may have ruined Twain's famous white suit,
but not his legendary friendship with Tesla.
- Fifteen years before the Imperial Walkers
of Star Wars graced movie screens,
their strange real-life inspiration gets its start
in a government lab.
[tense music]
- In the mid 1960s,
the U.S. military is looking
at tons of potential conflicts,
[helicopter whirring]
the jungles of Vietnam,
the deserts in the Middle East,
maybe even the moon,
and they need vehicles that can really work
in any type of terrain.
- [Dan] For an outside-the-box idea,
the military turns to a mechanical engineer
from GE named Ralph Mosher.
- Mosher's work centered on building robots
that humans could operate from the inside,
so they amplified the human strength
while still being able to perform fine motor movements.
- Mosher is a pioneer in hydraulic technology.
He develops these things
that give the human operator
an extension of their own body.
- Since the late 1950s,
Mosher has built a number of robotic arms.
Like there's one that can help a woman put her coat on,
which you can see in this unsettling photo.
[light dramatic music]
- [Dan] Working with the Department of Defense,
Mosher begins applying his concepts
to create his most ambitious project yet.
[light dramatic music]
- So he builds something called the CAM,
the Cybernetic Anthropomorphous Machine,
and everybody else calls this 11-foot behemoth
"The Walking Truck."
- In the field of robotics,
this is one of the earliest legitimate attempts
to mimic the walking motions of a four-legged animal.
[dramatic music]
- Mosher's idea was to more seamlessly connect
the operator with the machines they were driving.
So the robot and the driver
were really linked together physically in the cockpit.
[dramatic music]
- So not only does it have the ability
to carry a ton of cargo or troops,
it also has this sort of feeling
of like a super soldier.
[dramatic music]
- It can deadlift 500 pounds.
It can flip a car over.
It can carry around knocked down tree trunks
like they're matchsticks,
so it's capable of lifting and moving
in ways that the human body just is not.
- Unfortunately, the Walking Truck
can't seem to walk out of the lab.
It's designed to go as fast as 35 miles an hour,
but it can only get up to about five,
and it is a resource hog.
It guzzles 50 gallons of hydraulic fluid every minute.
You would almost have to design a whole other vehicle
that just carries its needs alongside it.
[suspenseful music]
- [Dan] While the Walking Truck is officially shelved,
its menacing spirit lives on
in a galaxy far, far away.
[tense dramatic music]
- In the late 1970s,
the production team working on the "Star Wars" sequel
"Empire Strikes Back" want some sort of Imperial super vehicle
that can attack the rebel stronghold
on the ice planet Hoth.
They turn to conventional tanks
that are being used at the time,
but they just don't seem right.
They're a little bit dull, drab, and mundane.
- And then they come across an artist's rendering
of this four-legged Walking Truck,
and they decide that a similar robot monster
would be a lot cooler.
- It's arguably the coolest scene in "Star Wars" history.
- And really that Imperial Walker is essentially
what the Walking Truck started out as.
[dramatic cinematic music]
- A giant Walking Truck
that stomps over anything in its way...
impressive.
But what if you need to cross rugged terrain
without leaving destruction in your wake?
Well, engineers have that covered, too.
[tense dramatic music]
- This engineer named William Albee
is lying face down on the ground in the sand,
and here comes this 10,000 pound truck headed right for him.
- William Albee doesn't move,
and before you know it,
[suspenseful theatrical music]
it drives right over him.
[bright theatrical music]
- After he's had five tons on his back,
he just gets up smiling.
- [Dan] It may look like some kind of crazy carnival trick,
but Albee is actually demonstrating
his strange new machine, the Rolligon.
- He has outfitted this truck with these massive
low-pressure tires that he has invented himself,
and they make it possible for the vehicle to roll over
almost anything without hurting it.
- [Dan] Surprisingly, the idea for these innovative tires
takes shape during Albee's honeymoon
[dramatic bass music]
23 years earlier.
[light gentle music] [waves splashing softly]
- It's 1930, and he has
just married his wife Ruth,
and he decides that what they're going to do is
take this 2,200-mile hike
across the very harsh Alaskan tundra.
- [Dan] As Albee and Ruth make their way
across the rugged landscape,
they spot something that catches their attention.
- William actually sees a group of Inuit fishermen
in a boat that is packed with tons of fish.
- And instead of stopping
at the shore and unloading the boat,
they do something he doesn't expect.
They actually take out these bladders
sort of balloons made of seal hide,
and they start attaching them
to the underside of the boat.
And once they have them all attached,
they just pull the boat,
and it kind of glides across the snow.
- He's watching them move with no machinery
what weighs over a ton over rough terrain
using these bladders,
and he is hit with inspiration.
- [Dan] The Albees eventually return to California,
and it takes William another two decades
to perfect his radical concept
and build a prototype.
- Finally, he comes up with the design.
It's a low-pressure bladder
similar to what the Inuit were using,
but instead of making it out of seal skin,
it's made out of rubber and fabric.
[gentle music]
- He decides that the move
is going to be to create one huge tire
that actually would span the whole width of the vehicle
rather than one at each corner.
I mean, you can almost think of it
like a big, soft steamroller.
So he finds a fabricator
to help him create this gigantic tire,
and he mounts all of these to a Dodge Power Wagon,
and thus the Rolligon is born.
[dramatic music]
- [Dan] The Rolligon turns heads everywhere it goes,
even catching the eye of the U.S. Army.
- William demos this thing for the army,
and they pretty quickly realize that
it can go on any type of terrain.
This thing can even climb walls.
- The key to the technology
is these large, low- pressure wheels.
They're filled to only about five pounds per square inch.
Compare that to the tires on your car.
They're typically 30 to 40 pounds per square inch.
- Because the tires are so big and so low pressure,
they really just adjust to the contour
of whatever the surface is that it's driving on,
which also means it's less likely to be punctured
because the air pressure is so low.
[eerie dramatic music]
- [Dan] It looks like the Rolligon could be a game changer
until a few major flaws bring it to a screeching halt.
- The tires are very expensive to produce.
In addition to that,
because of the size of those tires,
the vehicle moves slowly.
It can achieve a maximum speed of only 10 miles per hour,
and that's what kills it as a military vehicle.
- While the Rolligon didn't revolutionize military vehicles,
it did find a second life.
Today it's still used in oil and gas exploration,
able to roll over fragile tundra terrain
and the occasional crew member on a dare.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson famously wrote,
"Build a better mousetrap,
and the world will beat a path to your door."
One man creates a version that instead
has everyone running for cover.
[dramatic music]
- It's August 1882,
and a very interesting patent hits the desk
of a Washington D.C. patent clerk.
It's from a James A. Williams of Fredonia, Texas.
It's billed as,
"Certain new and useful improvements in pest control."
- [Dan] The new and unusual improvementS?
A powerful Smith & Wesson pistol cocked
and ready to blast its unsuspecting victim.
[suspenseful music]
- There's an elaborate explanation
of this trap in the patent application,
which has a spring that's baited
set against a gun's trigger.
[gun clicking] [suspenseful music]
- So when the rodent eats the cheese,
it trips the spring,
which triggers the gun,
and then the gun shoots the mouse.
[gunfire blasting]
- You might think it's overkill,
but the inventor is thinking a little bit further.
He also notes that you can apply it to a door or a window,
so this could trigger an automatic firing device
that might get a raccoon, a bear,
or perhaps a nosy person.
- Burglar alarms at the time are just designed
to trigger a noise whenever somebody trips it.
Williams points out that he's the only inventor
that has invented both a mouse trap
and a security system that involves a gun.
- [Dan] The U.S. Patent Office agrees
that Williams design is, in fact, unique,
[light eerie music]
and approves his strange mouse trap later that year,
just one day after Christmas.
[light eerie music]
- There's no record of this device
actually being produced or marketed.
However, this does actually beg the question,
does his design actually work?
[eerie dramatic music]
- Flash forward 140 years
and YouTuber Shawn Woods decides
to remake Williams' 1882 mouse trap.
- [Shawn] Here I have my Smith & Wesson .22 six shooter,
so I'm going to use a blank cartridge.
They're designed for driving nails into concrete,
so they provide quite a shock blast.
- To avoid a gruesome demonstration,
Williams sets his sights on a orange not a rodent,
and the results are impressive.
[suspenseful music]
[gunfire blasting]
- [Shawn] And look at right there.
That's going to do more than enough damage to kill a rodent.
- I'm sure there's some landlords of New York City
that want to give this method a try,
but for now I think just stick with the bodega cats.
[dramatic music]
- Clearly defending one's home against pests
can drive us to extreme measures,
but defending one's homeland against an invading force
can inspire even more unbelievable creations.
[ground rumbling] [suspenseful music]
- It's the fall of 1916.
World War I has been raging for two years,
but now they are dealing with a new type of warfare
where bombs are dropped on you from above.
[suspenseful music]
- [Dan] Not just by airplanes,
but by another terrifying new aircraft, zeppelins.
And they're a big problem
for British Colonel Alfred Rawlinson.
- Rawlinson commands an anti-aircraft unit
that's based on the coast,
and the men under his command
they live under constant fear
that German zeppelin bombers
can appear at any time.
[dramatic music]
- Keep in mind that this is long before radar was invented.
You can be surprised by anything that you can't pick up
with your eyes or your ears.
[dramatic music]
- The problem with the zeppelin bombers
is that they are stealthy.
The small motors that propel them
don't create a lot of noise.
They also blend into the natural environment.
They can disappear into the haze,
and then if they pass over your position at night,
by the time you hear them, it's too late to fire on them.
[suspenseful music]
[explosion booming]
[flames crackling]
- [Dan] To combat this terrifying new threat,
Rawlinson draws inspiration
from another relatively new invention.
[tense dramatic music]
- The phonograph or record player,
or the gramophone at the time,
was really starting to take off.
[tense dramatic music]
- And sound is projected through the old phonograph
with physical amplification using a flared horn.
The form of that horn does indeed have the effect
of amplifying sound.
- [Dan] Not only does it amplify sound coming out,
it can also amplify sound going in.
- He comes up with the idea
of taking two gramophone horns
and mounting those to poles.
- It kind of makes them look like
a really bizarre Mickey Mouse,
but the hope is you're going to amplify the sound,
so you could pick up the approach of these zeppelins
miles further than you normally could.
- The system looks absolutely ridiculous.
[tense music]
But guess what? It works.
[dramatic music]
- [Dan] Soon the idea catches on around the globe
as each nation creates its own version.
[dramatic music]
- The Czechs develop a semi-mobile,
a one-man unit that uses two large bowls,
attached to two tubes for sound,
but it's still not agile or practical.
- [Dan] Japanese and German soldiers
add a handy twist to their bionic ears.
- There are these giant ear tubas,
and they're connected to a set of goggles.
- The idea is that you'll turn your head toward the sound,
and you'll not only be able to hear
but see the oncoming threat.
- The prize for the largest portable system
goes to the Dutch,
who develop these massive earphones
that attach to the head of the operator.
To us today it looks completely absurd
and ridiculous, but to people at the time,
it's the cutting edge of technology.
- [Dan] No matter how big the ear tubas are,
there's still one key issue in all of them.
They depend on the soldier's hearing.
That's when Rawlinson has an unexpected idea.
- Rawlinson puts in
a rather unusual request in the military.
He says, "Can you find me some blind men?"
Rawlinson explains that he wants
to put them on listening stations,
and he wants to cash in on the keen sense of hearing
that most blind people will eventually develop.
- But Rawlinson's request is even more specific.
He wants men that have been blind since birth,
because he believes that this will have
heightened their listening abilities even further.
- Rawlinson's request is approved by his superiors.
[dramatic music]
And it's kind of ironic that
they're utilizing blind people to spot the enemy.
[gunfire blasting]
- The results are mediocre at best,
but nevertheless, blind people
became an important military asset
toward the end of the First World War.
- All this is essentially put aside in the late 1930s
with the invention of radar,
which makes this whole operation moot,
but, of course, it does leave us
with some fantastic photographs.
[dramatic music]
- The war tuba may hold the record
for the largest hearing aid ever made,
but it's still not the strangest machine out there.
- These days the strength of our machines
is often measured in horsepower.
Back in 16th century England,
it was all about pup power.
[dramatic music]
- England during the 1500s,
people really loved their roasts,
and, of course, true Brits want their meat cooked
on an open flame on a spit, which rotates the meat,
so that it's cooked evenly.
- But someone has to do the turning.
It's mostly been young boys assigned to the task
as they sweat profusely and try not to overheat,
turning for hours and hours.
- It sounds like a terrible job.
[tense music]
It is a terrible job.
So they search for a new solution.
- [Dan] While the job proves to be too grueling for people,
kitchen workers think it may not be
for a certain four-legged companion.
[dramatic music]
- There are dogs who are bred
to do a ton of different tasks,
whether it's herding sheep
or tracking game or warming up your lap.
So someone figures,
"Why not train a dog to run a spit?"
- They develop an apparatus.
It's a wheel next to the spit
that turns it via a chain pulley,
and the dog runs or walks in the wheel.
It's a hamster wheel for a dog
to make sure that your meat is cooked.
- [Dan] Eventually, a special type of canine
is bred specifically for the job.
It's called the Turnspit dog.
- It's a long dog with short
stubby legs and a cropped tail,
so the tail won't get stuck in the wheel.
But the breed's most important traits
are great endurance and extreme obedience.
- As the Turnspit dog tradition
develops throughout the 1500s,
it becomes an indispensable kitchen device.
They're called the kitchen dog, the cooking dog,
or the "vernepator cur" Latin for
"the dog that turns the wheel."
- [Dan] For centuries Turnspit dogs
are a fixture in kitchens across Britain,
[dramatic music]
until a new technology puts these pups out of work.
- By the 1850s, fancy automatic spit crankers
become a new status symbol for those who can afford it.
Soon having a Turnspit dog
is seen as a sign of being lower class.
- Eventually, the Turnspit dog breed becomes extinct,
and the last Turnspit dog named Whiskey was stuffed
and put on display in a museum in Wales.
[light upbeat music]
- It's not just dogs that should watch their backs.
Law enforcement should also take note.
Strange machines may be coming for their jobs.
[siren wailing]
[light guitar music]
[faint muffled chattering]
- It's 2024, and the police in Lubbock
are looking for a man that's out on parole.
They find out he's staying at a motel,
so they send officers there,
but upon arrival to the door,
a gunshot rings out.
[gun fires] [siren wailing]
They decide to retreat,
call in a SWAT team,
SWAT team arrives,
more shots break out.
[gunfire blasting]
- They don't want to just go through
the door of the hotel room,
because of the high likelihood of drawing fire
from the fugitive that's inside.
[siren wailing]
- [Dan] So they deploy a different kind of cop,
the Lubbock Regional Bomb Squad Robot.
[light dramatic music]
- Now most people are used
to seeing a bomb disarming machine,
but the Lubbock robot can do a lot more than that.
[suspenseful music]
- The robot confronts the suspect
who immediately decides to throw
a sheet from the motel over the robot,
and then he takes a shot at it.
[gun fires]
- But the robot is undeterred.
It just removes the sheet,
and then deploys tear gas.
[tear gas can hissing]
When the victim comes out
coughing and hacking up his lungs,
the robot pins the suspect down
until he can be subdued by the robot's human partners.
- [Dan] This type of encounter is just the beginning.
While it may seem like something
out of a dystopian sci-fi movie,
[dramatic music]
real life robocops are starting
to take the streets all over the world.
[upbeat midtempo music]
- So in Dubai,
they actually have a five-foot tall
humanoid robocop that can actually like
look for suspects using facial recognition.
It can observe a crime taking place,
and then it can actually call in for backup.
- The robot's also capable of assessing
an individual's emotional state
based on facial expressions.
So the robot can look at you
and see your angry, confused,
or frantic face and respond accordingly.
- Ideally, these robots would be able to respond
to situations without the emotional impact
that police officers may have.
They're not fearing for their lives,
so this is a safer way of policing.
[dramatic rock music]
- Now Dubai actually wants to roll out
a lot more of these.
They're hoping that by 2030,
25% of their police force would be robocops.
- Dubai authorities are quick to point out
that their future robocops will be friendly
and will patrol unarmed, which takes away the whole
glamour and grittiness of the actual "Robocop" movies.
[dramatic music] [machine humming]
- They might be unarmed, polite, even helpful,
but good luck sweet talking a robot cop
out of a speeding ticket.
- James Bond's cars are legendary,
from deflecting bullets,
to firing cannons,
and even driving underwater,
but could any of these movie-worthy machines
ever hit the road for real?
[dramatic music]
- In 1977, the James Bond film
"The Spy Who Loved Me", is a huge hit,
and one of the reasons is because of
the submarine car in the movie, the Lotus Esprit S1.
[dramatic music]
But that's all movie magic,
because no one actually had a car
that could drive on land
and then become a submarine.
- [Dan] That unforgettable car
may have been a special effect,
but for Swiss engineer Frank Rinderknecht
it was something more.
- Frank starts his company, Rinspeed,
two years after the movie in 1979.
[suspenseful music]
He spends the next few decades
building concept cars,
but he just can't get his mind off of this
submarine car that he saw in the Bond movie.
- By the 2000s,
Frank's company is quite successful,
and he feels he has both the money
and the proper expertise to finally
tackle and build the submarine car.
[dramatic music]
- If you think about how a car operates on the road,
it would be totally opposite of that in the water.
You can't have a normal engine that has an air intake,
because then you'd get water in the engine
and the engine would stop working.
- So he switches to an electric motor.
Therefore, he can encase it in a waterproof housing,
and the electric motor can power the two propellers
and the jets needed to maneuver the car underwater.
- [Dan] But generating power underwater
isn't Frank's only challenge.
[dramatic music]
- The Bond car is portrayed as a closed vehicle,
which takes a lot of weight
and a lot of strength to make
to keep the water out.
[engine revving]
- So to circumvent these problems,
Frank decides that his car
has to be a convertible.
- Now you would think a convertible
and a submarine would be a terrible idea together,
but Frank thought of that.
That's why it's got a scuba mask
and an oxygen tank to keep your breathing.
- [Dan] Finally, in 2008,
30 years and 1.5 million in development expenses later,
Frank is able to unveil his masterpiece, the sQuba.
[dramatic music]
- The sQuba when finished can go 75 miles an hour on land,
and, yes, [dramatic bass music]
you can drive it right into the water.
[dramatic music]
When he introduces the sQuba,
he's got rich people all around
the world clamoring saying, "I want one,"
but scaling up production for a vehicle,
that cost him one and a half million dollars
to make just one
is a massive financial undertaking
that he's just not ready for.
- In the end, his company gets a lot more notoriety,
because the sQuba car, there's only the one.
[dramatic bass music]
- A slow-moving, underwater convertible
may have its functions,
but winning a war isn't one of them.
For that you need something a little more nimble,
like this lethal bit of Soviet tech
used to ice out the enemy.
[gunfire blasting] [tense dramatic music]
- When the Nazis invade Russia in June of 1941,
what becomes known as Operation Barbarossa,
[gunfire blasting]
they're not expecting to be there for a long time,
but famously they get bogged down in the Russian winter
and they're not prepared.
- The Germans lack the supplies.
They lack the extreme cold weather gear that they need
to fight a winter war in the Soviet Union.
Then the Soviets launch a counteroffensive against them.
[bomb blasting]
- [MJ] And famously they end up
losing this war of attrition.
- [Reporter] Here 27,000 Nazi soldiers died.
- [Dan] That victory is not just thanks
to the home field advantage,
but to a strange machine
from the innovative mind of Igor Sikorsky.
[dramatic drum music]
- Many know Igor Sikorsky
as the Ukrainian-born inventor of the helicopter,
[helicopter blades rumbling]
but back in 1909,
Sikorsky is a young 20-year-old kid
basically tinkering with toys in his garage.
He's fascinated by the propeller.
- [Reporter] The motors sputter and catch, weights drop.
- [MJ] Which was developed by the Wright Brothers
only a few years earlier.
- [Reporter] The Wright Brothers won immortality.
- He starts thinking about what other kinds of vehicles
he can strap these propellers to.
- [Dan] In no time, Sikorsky's terrorizing pedestrians
on the snowy streets of his hometown, Kyiv,
in the world's first motorized sleigh.
- It works really well, but motorized sleighs
aren't really a necessity in World War I,
considering that the majority of the war is trench warfare.
However, as we get into the 1930s,
the Soviets realize, "We could have use of this tech."
[gunfire blasting]
- [Dan] Inspired by years of frozen combat,
[dramatic music]
the Soviets create the NKL-26,
better known as the Combat Sleigh.
- This thing is covered in a 10-millimeter armor plating,
not to mention it's got an airplane engine
attached to the back of it.
- It can travel at 45 miles an hour across the snow.
Compare that to a typical German tank that would've
plodded through the snow at about 15 miles an hour.
That is a massive advantage in a mobile war.
[gunfire blasting] [tense dramatic music]
- And it's also muscular,
because it has that rotating turret on top of it,
and inside the rotating turret, you have a
7.62-by-54-millimeter rimmed automatic weapon capable
of putting down very effective machine gunfire.
[tense dramatic music]
- When the Nazis invade the Soviet Union in 1941,
the Red Army brass commissioned a building
of 4,000 of the NKL-26 units.
- And they're trying to just deliver them
as fast as possible, so much so,
that they're even putting children in factories
to manufacture these sleighs at breakneck speed.
- [Dan] The NKL-26 may be built by kids and look funny,
but the Nazis aren't laughing.
Their forces are repeatedly hit with surprise attacks
by the Santa sleighs from Hell.
[suspenseful music]
- The combat sleigh really proves
its effectiveness in the Battle of Moscow
where everything is mired
in the wintery conditions.
The key with the combat sleigh
is that it doesn't require roads.
So the Soviets can now swarm their victims,
coming in from all different directions.
It is a nightmare for the Germans.
[gunfire blasting] [suspenseful music]
- The Soviets just dominate and decimate.
[suspenseful music]
- It's got to be a bizarre scene to be sitting there
and watch these things come in from all directions
and not just the sleighs,
but they're towing ski-borne commandos,
who then break off and assault your positions.
[engine humming]
- I think it's safe to say that these Nazis
probably hoped that they never ever saw
another combat sleigh for the rest of their life.
[gentle music] [engine rumbling]
- The combat sleighs live on
in a much less terrifying way.
They're used in Siberia,
not to deliver lead,
but to deliver mail.
- Most inventors who've gotten rich creating
new machines follow a basic principle:
Identify a consumer need and fill it.
Now what about the brave vanguards
who ignored that advice
and dared to invent machines nobody ever asked for?
[dramatic music] [crowd cheering]
- Running a marathon is
one of the most grueling things you can do,
because marathoners are facing extreme fatigue,
dehydration, muscle cramp, injury
across a 26.2 mile race course.
- Over the course of a marathon,
a runner can burn as much as 4,000 calories.
That's why you often see runners
eating those energy gels, those Gu's,
or something like a banana
or an orange on the course.
[dramatic music] [crowd cheering]
[crowd applauding]
- [Dan] Yet, in 2015,
a Japanese company invents a bizarre machine
to supply a different kind of fruit on the run.
[eerie dramatic music]
- Tomatan is a robotic running apparatus created
by Japanese fruit and vegetable company Kagome.
- The goal of this machine is as the marathon runner
is running their race, it will feed them tomatoes.
[eerie dramatic music]
- The machine holds six fresh tomatoes in its magazine,
and with the push of a button delivers the tomato
straight into the runner's eating position.
- [Dan] The question is why tomatoes?
[light dramatic music]
- Kagome is Japan's largest supplier
of tomato products, tomato juice and ketchup,
and they attest that the tomato is a really
efficient way to provide energy for runners.
- [Dan] So are tomatoes actually a super food?
Maybe more so than you think.
- They do have vitamin K.
They have potassium,
which will help with muscle fatigue.
They also give an amazing hydration boost.
[light dramatic music]
- So maybe the Tomatan is onto something.
It's an opportunity for marathon runners
to consume a super food,
keeping them energized while
having it fed to them by robot.
But here's the problem.
Tomatan weighs 18 pounds.
- I know a lot of runners who will go for anything
to shave an ounce off of weight with carbon fiber shoes,
so I highly doubt an 18- pound, tomato-feeding robot
is going to be in their running regimen.
[light dramatic music]
- Is this the most efficient way to eat a tomato on the go?
No. However, until somebody comes up with a more efficient,
smaller robot that can feed you bananas while on the go,
the Tomatan has no competition.
[dramatic bass music]
- If running's not your thing, why not try a ride
where your feet don't even have to touch the ground?
[engine humming] [dramatic music]
- It's 1960 in London
at the Cycle and Motorcycle Show,
and as trade shows go,
this one's kind of a dud
until the Americans show up.
[dramatic music]
- This American company, Rhoades Incorporated
is showing off this new space-age looking vehicle.
It has a bicycle seat and it has handlebars,
but other than that, it doesn't look cycley at all.
[eerie dramatic music]
- They start it up,
and things get even weirder.
[engine rumbling]
- [Dan] To the amazement of the crowd,
the bizarre contraption is able
to float several inches off the ground.
It's called the Hover Scooter.
[dramatic music]
- Rhoades builds it as a hybrid
of a scooter and a hovercraft,
and he builds it just a few years
after the very first hovercraft
was demonstrated in England.
But they're big military vehicles.
This is a small vehicle
that you could have at home.
[light dramatic music]
- It's a cool idea.
It's got a motorcycle engine
that actually turns the fan that fills up the airbag,
and then it's basically riding on this cushion of air.
[engine buzzing]
- But unfortunately,
the overwhelming impression of everybody there
is that this thing is just loud as hell.
[engine buzzing]
It takes so much power to achieve that air cushion,
that the noise level basically rivals
an airplane engine or a helicopter.
- Now there's no way that anyone would miss you riding this,
especially when you hit the water,
because the noise that this thing makes
would scare every fish to death.
- The Hover Scooter is at one time slated
to be manufactured by a UK company,
but that deal falls apart.
- And sadly, we never get the chance to see a bunch of Brits
terrorizing people in their local parks
on the Hover Scooter.
[engine buzzing]
[dramatic music]
- Whether it's an earthquake machine
that caused a tremor in Mark Twain's trousers,
a six-shooter mousetrap that said, "Make my day,"
or a Soviet death sleigh,
these are the machines so strange
they are truly "Unbelievable."