This is an IHeart podcast.

Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, A production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. comical place in our cultural imagination.

We picture wacky people trying to get rich quick off of a niche device that barely works.

The movie Gremlins probably had a lot to do with this.

Who could forget the scene where

the mom uses her husband's inventions to dispatch the monsters in increasingly grotesque ways?

Pop culture touchstones like this might cause us to forget that inventors originally occupied

a very noble place in society. And without one inventor in particular, the modern world might have never

come to be. Henry was the epitome of the wacky inventor archetype. Born in 1813 in England,

he eventually grew into a man who was endlessly curious and self-assured. Anytime he encountered

some modern invention or tool, he immediately wanted to take it apart

and figure out how he could make it better.

Case in point.

When he purchased an expensive gold picture frame for his sister, he immediately wondered

how he could make it cheaper.

He invented a bronze paint that made wooden frames look just as good at a fraction of

the price. The invention

was a huge success. But by 1854, Henry had set his mind on more life-and-death inventions.

The Crimean War had broken out, and Henry wondered if he could find a way to make cannons

that fired more accurately. The iron ones of the time used round cannonballs that had a tendency

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