Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly

podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray,

James Harkin, and Anna Tashinsky. And once again we have gathered around the microphones

with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in a particular order here we go

starting with fact number one and that is Andy the beep was invented in 1957

was it no well So I got this from an article which I won't name because it turns out now to be incorrect.

But basically it's about the beep that happened on the Sputnik satellite.

It's launched in 1957 and really annoyingly,

Anna has found about 58 examples with beeps dating back to the mid 14th century and it's just like, welcome back and

thank you so much. Yeah, we didn't get this from Maisie Adam I tell you that much.

Listen politely to the fact, I didn't question it. But it certainly, the beep became popular,

and a big thing about Sputnik was the fact that it beeped.

And in fact, I think, I think that's all Sputnik could do.

It basically, yeah. It was the, it was the size of a big

pumpkin and it was a ball of aluminium or metal and it just I would say the main

thing it could do was go around the earth in orbit. Like the beep was

secondary almost. Yeah, you're right. The main thing was it could

fly around the world. That's true. But no one would have known if it wasn't beeping.

Yes. Because it was broadcasting radio pulses. It was it was

orbited the earth every hour and a half roughly. It beeped for 21 days

only but the beep was seen as quite

spooky because you could hear it. Ham radio people could tune in and listen to Sputnik.

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