Most Inspiring Historical Figures for Adam Savage

Tested member @RyanPeck asked Adam Savage, "When you think back on makers in history, like Nikola Tesla, Ben Franklin and other historical makers, do any stand out as a bigger inspiration?" Why, yes! And in this live stream excerpt, Adam describes the two that stand out the most. Are they who you expected?
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[@tested]

Are Adam's two most inspiring historical figures who you expected? Which historical figures have inspired you? River of Shadows by Rebecca Solnit: amzn.to/4aHeYCB Disclaimer: Tested may earn an affiliate commission when you buy through the links here. Join this channel to support Tested and get access to perks, like asking Adam questions during live streams: kzbin.info/door/iDJtJKMICpb9B1qf7qjEOAjoin

[@writerpatrick]

Without Muybridge there would be no KZbin. He accidentally created video photography.

[@CL-kn1rq]

This video was rather special to me, I enjoy science however I prefer history, so this question was great and Adam's answer was just brilliant, thank you.

[@M4nusky]

The Cavendish experiment, in the 1700 where English guy in shed measured the gravitational constant (albeit indirectly, he wanted the density of the earth) was always a great show of ingenuity and methodology for me.

[@CL-kn1rq]

@@M4nusky I'm going to look. It strikes me that if it wasn't for scientists working out how the earth works the cosmotologists wouldn't be so far in their developments today.

[@NicholasPaleveda]

lmfao I love you too my dude. Thanks for the educational content you and Jamie do, you're great teachers.

[@JadoShiRS]

Hearing people talk about things they're passionate about never ceases to captivate me. And I get some thrilling knowledge along the way. Thank you for the countless hours poured into this channel and for sharing from the plentiful well of knowledge you've gained over the years.

[@annm4833]

I love this comment, so well said. Adam is so engaging and interesting and I truly enjoy listening to him. I always learn something.

[@haswel22]

Adum bait

[@JohnDoe-fk6id]

So... the first gif (zoetrope), was actually a mechanical bullet-time camera setup, to settle a bet. Glorious.

[@walkingpizza1796]

2:58 I love the random table cleaning swipes Adam does :P

[@user-qi5rz4kf6o]

Me too… it’s quite reassuring!

[@Gabbro_1]

I do it too, he'll be feeling some debris, saw dust, whatever on his hands while he has them on the table, and you develop a tick to just sweep until you feel a clean table

[@DanDukeFan4Life]

Mr. Savage, I just wanted to say that I am beyond excited to meet you in Knoxville, in July. As a kid from when MythBusters was created until I was in college, I used to watch MythBusters with my father and I still do when I visit my family! I have every single episode on my iTunes account. Your show got me through depression and suicidal thoughts! When my Dad found out that you would be in Knoxville, he got me a ticket to meet and take a picture with you. You are a personal hero of mine, and I just wanted to thank you and the rest of the MythBusters crew for bringing me some happy times during a tough part of my life. Thank you!

[@EdDeadII]

One of my favourites is John Harrison, the humble inventor of the Marine Chronometer in the 1700s. It took him many years and trials , often battling against the Astronomical Scientists of his day, but ended up producing the timepieces that allowed navigators to easily calculate Longitude at sea. I have seen his Four Timepieces on display at Greenwich Observatory in London and they are fascinating. Back in the the early 2000s, there was a TV Movie made here in the UK about him starring Sir Micheal Gambon as Harrison and I still watch it occasionally - worth a watch if you can find it (maybe here on youtube). One of the most significant developments in history for any navigator

[@The_Modeling_Underdog]

Gambon did an sterling job on that movie.

[@ArtCOOL777]

As soon as I have the opportunity Adam, I will be happy to sponsor your channel. I honestly owe you for all 17 years of your efforts to test both Destroyers and testing. ❤❤❤

[@mdmn-ARCA]

Obviously Muybridge's accomplishments reach far and wide, essentially across all of cinema history, but it tickles me to think how much more clearly and directly responsible he is for the "bullet time" sequences in _The Matrix,_ 95 yesrs after his death. Hope he has a pair of sunglasses and a black leather trenchcoat, wherever he is now.

[@StefanieHow]

I can watch Adam talk about the things that he loves and the people he admires forever.

[@danherman4081]

Who else wants to see Adam work on daguerrerrotype and other ancient film techniques, or try recreating the bullet-time camera shot?

[@el_super_laser]

Mr Savage, never say "going in adumb tangent" we are hjere for your tangents, for all words that are droplets of wisdom. thanks for existing.

[@garychaiken808]

Great job. Thank you 😊

[@Hippogriff201]

Love your videos, Adam. Your channel is always the one which I drop everything to watch. Keep it up!

[@joelalain]

such an interesting story! thanks for sharing Adam!

[@ArtCOOL777]

Yes, the photography is great. Good advice. I can’t move without funds yet. But I have made progress on important matters.

[@SyntheticFuture]

We've come a long way with specialized cameras now being able to do tens of thousands of frames per second. Absolutely incredible.

[@BrewPub]

I am partial to Isambard Kingdom Brunell

[@danielabbey7726]

Yes indeed! Awesome engineer.

[@CallousCoder]

As is Jeremy Clarkson, who did a great documentary on him.

[@charangohabsburg1]

Interesting to learn about how focused people back then seemed to have been about discussing and seeing if a galoping horse's 4 feet ever left the ground at the same time when everybody can clearly hear it!

[@TheGreatAtario]

Huh? A horse standing stock still makes the same sound as a horse fully off the ground…

[@brutis888]

I would love to see a long form of this episode, perhaps a series, with Adam narrating the lives of important historical figures throughout history.

[@CarlAlex2]

That light has a speed was discovered by the Danish astronomer Ole Rømer who called it the hesitation of light and he did so based on 2 years of observations of one of the moons of Jupiter and he published it in 1676 in the journal of the French Royal Academy of Science. He couldn't get the speed itself since he didn't know the diameter of Earths orbit around the Sun, but he did calculate that it takes the light 22 minutes to traverse it. The correct value is a little less than 17 minutes, but given that it was based on noticing something odd about the orbit of a Jovian moon and using 18th century instruments its pretty impressive.

[@annwagner5779]

Such great enthusiasm for fascinating and important people! Muybridge is a vital part of many histories. You can still buy volumes of his photographic studies of motion by humans and all kinds of animals. They are still crucial for artists. But Adam, there were universities in the Middle Ages and before. There was a university in Fez, Morocco, in the 9th century. And a place called Oxford in the 11th century.

[@nathkrupa3463]

Great video sir

[@lorenzobarbano8022]

If you don't already know about it, check out Fizeau's 1851 experiment. It's one of the main inspirations for Einstein's theory of relativity! I came to know this experiment last year and it's so amazing that I'm trying to build a modern version of it.

[@shuttlepilot_]

When I hear Adam get excited about photography I fantasize of a group conversation of Adam, Ian Ruhter of Silver and Light, Gary Oldman the actor and Desten of Smarter Everyday. Look up the photography connection between them and it would be an epic podcast.

[@YouGuysAreAmazing]

Thanks Adam! I had no idea or knowledge of Muybridge. I always thought I knew that the very first movie was made by the Lumière brothers (1895). Question here of course is, what makes a movie? Maybe Muybridge is the father if GIFs 😁

[@briandeschene8424]

I agree that this was a good question. What was *great* was the answer!!!

[@olsonspeed]

Muybridge's technique was essentially the same as used in The Matrix bullet time sequences.

[@TheStockwell]

Mr. Early Photography Geek checking in. 2:30 Some fact checking. The earliest existing photograph, taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce ca. 1826, had an exposure time of several DAYS. The earliest daguerreotypes cut the time down to about twenty minutes. By the 1840s, that was down to under a minute. By the time Edgar Allan Poe and Lincoln sat in from of a camera, it was down to twenty seconds. When Lincoln was photographed in early 1865, it was a matter of seconds. The myth of everyone needing to have their heads in a clamp in order to be photographed is based on the slow exposure time of early daguerreotypes. By 1860, the daguerreotype process was obsolete, replaced by the much faster collodion on glass process used by Muybridge. Best wishes from Vermont (but formerly of San Francisco)

[@KravKernow]

I subscribe to the idea that painters like Caravaggio might have used a type of proto photography to assist them in their paintings. We do know optical assistance has been around for a while. Things like camera obscura projecting onto a canvas etc. But the issue is, was there a chemical process that could burn that image onto the canvas? They didn't have a fixer of anything like that. But the theory is an image stayed on the canvas just long enough to get the basic outline.

[@TheStockwell]

Hey! A question I can answer. Cool! The quick answer: no. It wasn't until the late 1770s and early 1880s that there was enough knowledge of chemicals to trigger as search for one which reacted to light. Thomas Wedgewood is considered to be the first person to have come up with the crazy idea of capturing images using a chemical process. In the 1790s, he was able to get images - but the light which created them also erased them. By the early 1800s, the race was on to find a way to capture images - and make them permanent. The oldest known existing photographic image will be 200 years in 2026. It's in Austin, Texas. Have a safe and interesting week 🥃🐧

[@KravKernow]

@@TheStockwell I appreciate it's a bit speculative, But the theory goes that they did stumble across some sort of chemical mix that responded to light. Even though it wasn't permanent. It would be interesting to test some suspected works to see if anything can be detected. But when you ask museums if they can let you have a Caravaggio (or even just a bit of one) to pulp and run through a mass spectrometer they get all shirty and uncooperative. Some people just have no enthusiasm for science.

[@KravKernow]

@@TheStockwell Hmm, thinking about it. If only we knew someone who could test if this was a myth or not?

[@TheStockwell]

@@KravKernow Don't get me started on museums with their oh-so precious Caravaggio paintings! What a bunch of snobs! You'd think they were the guardians of the true location of the ark of the Covenant, the secret of immortality, and Taylor Swift's eBay account information. The nervous swine! I mean, the Caravaggio people - not Taylor Swift. 😏 Yes, who'd miss a chunk of a Caravaggio? You need to destroy SOMETHING to advance human knowledge. It's like Kubrick said: "You can't make an omelette without breaking at least 438 eggs until you're satisfied." Besides, it's not like you'd hack out a chunk from the center - and so WHAT if you did? They can always go on KZbin and get in touch with that Baumgartner Restoration guy. He can fix anything! 😸 But, seriously . . . 😸 The major objection to there being a secret history of photography is the lack of evidence for it. There is no mention anywhere of anyone having created a chemical process for getting an image on paper or canvas, much less preserving it. Chemistry, even what those wily alchemists were doing, was fairly primitive during the Renaissance. The most rudimentary knowledge needed to come up with photographic chemistry didn't exist until the 1720s. That's when Johann Heinrich Schulze showed that light caused silver salts to darken. It would be another century until other people figured out how to turn that bit of information into what we recognize as photography. Sure, it would be amazing to know there was a Renaissance version of Ansel Adams we haven't yet discovered. Until there's any indication of it, however, we might as well wonder how the history of the United States would've been changed if George Washington had been a horse. Which he wasn't. Have a swell ol' time. 🐴

[@Bino43]

One of my favorite historical makers was Otto Lilienthal. He was to The Wright Brothers as Tesla was to Edison. He did it first,but moreover he did it more beautifully...more intuitively...more...purely.

[@peckenstein]

Thanks for answering my question. Introduced me to a name I wasn't familiar with, but someone whose work I was familiar with. ~Ryan Peck As someone who until recently owned a horse it's a fitting topic and one I never gave much thought to beyond 'hold on for dear life' when riding at more than a trot. (More the wife's horse if it isn't obvious, HAHA)

[@williambecwar7939]

It is especially relevant that you appreciate Muybridge. He was, after all, the first high speed camera operator, and he used the device to bust a pop science myth of the era. Old Ed was the beta Mythbusters!

[@alanknuth1671]

I wish museums who display the muybridge photos explained the story as well as adam did here.

[@ArtCOOL777]

How important it is to be on a horse. ❤

[@Rubrickety]

Muybridge and Edgerton were solving so close to the same problem that I sometimes confuse them in my mind despite their living three-quarters of a century or so apart.

[@FearsomeWarrior]

Jacques de Vaucanson is mine. I believe him to be the father of the lathe and all we have now is because of his invention. There are others but his was the first designed for rigidity required to produce silk crushing dies. The first time precision was made and flourished. He also made the first automatic loom and a goose that eats and poops. The lathe is viewable at the craft museum in Paris.

[@joncaradies3155]

Dude ! Write the script proposal And shop it around ..... That would be a film I would acturally go to see !!!!

[@mikehamm007]

Hello can you build this retro fit device they Are all Carlson was tailing about with Shawn Ryan. Sounds incredible and not crazy to retrofit a small generator as an experiment? Thank you

[@The_Floo_Network]

It sounds like Eadweard Muybridge was an early Mythbuster, by settling that horse debate!!! 😊

[@thisisaguy]

Eadweard Muybridge's horse galloping series is much like the airplane on a conveyor debate. Even after he had photographic proof, there was still debate and people mocked it as fake.

[@fishyfish6768]

Huge fan of Muybridge here.

[@DaxHamel]

Thank you Adam. Enjoyable and entertaining as always. However, from a place of genuine affection and apreciation I offer you a caution to take to heart or dismiss as you like. Beware of judgement. There is none righteous among us, no, not even one.

[@jeremybresley]

Sounds like Muybridge invented the "bullet time cameras" about 140 years earlier than commonly thought. Everything old is new again, we just forgot how things were done in the mechanical realm and try to reinvent them in the new digital realm.

[@mattslaboratory5996]

When a horse gallops there's no question all hoofs leave the ground. The bet was about a horse pacing -- like in racing with a gig.

[@joshsater4044]

He was an OG Mythbuster! Myth confirmed!

[@HansAndreasR1]

i would say that Muybridge is the grand father of movies... Emile Raynaud is the father! that being said: Muybridge is the first mythbuster!

[@isidorocosentino5681]

you should do a video on pier 24 photo gallery in sf its the largest photo space in the world and is closing this year they just opened their last exhibition and it's incredible.

[@yoschmoyo]

The author is Rebecca Solnit.

[@deepscuba7384]

I think it was a trotter racing horse. Very different gate from a gallop. There is actually a movie about his work AND this photographing of the trotter.

[@ArtCOOL777]

Yes, using chemicals and carrying out photographs for printing on plates, etching matrices for different colors, overlaying plates 1 2 3 4 printing on one sheet.

[@quirkyMakes]

4:00 I see what you did there........cheeky savage

[@paulc6210]

"Before there were universities.....the 1820s, 30s, 40s, 50s" (min 8:00+). Don't tell the University of Paris (the oldest in France). It was founded in 1150!

[@disgruntledStarWarsviewer.]

“A spectacular weirdo. Shot his wife’s lover. Somehow didn’t go to jail. This guy is spectacular.” 😂. I really enjoy Adam’s storytelling. The sheer interest and passion Adam has is spectacular 😃

[@edmocabral5000]

I believe you mixed up Michel Foucault (Philosopher) with Léon Foucault (inventor of the Foucault pendulum).

[@johnrobinson4445]

Good choice. According to IPA, it is "my-bridge".

[@theHardChargerVids]

I just bought River of Shadows…does anyone else blame Adam for all the stuff one buys when their wife complains 😁

[@ArtCOOL777]

Oh yes, I can talk and teach a lot from photography. I love two photographs taken on glass in 1902. One This is the largest one that could accommodate an American cavalry platoon. Second first Color photograph taken on glass plates 3 glasses blue red gold. This photo was also taken in 1910.

[@davidebomboy4697]

What’s the multitool by Adam’s elbow?

[@mkbuike7895]

1800’s…”before there were universities”? University of Heidelberg founded 1386.

[@AgentLynch616]

Alan Turing MBE and Sir Robert Alexander Watson Watt.

[@josephangiulo8601]

Among the shots Muybridge made: a man in Calistoga, a cold-blooded murder in 1874

[@michaelmcwhirter]

In terms of Cinema what do you think of the new AI SORA that can generate videos that are indistinguishable from reality?

[@ArtCOOL777]

Hello Adam, glad to see you here

[@conorquinn607]

Was it not Léon Foucault, not Michel?

[@Ayns.L14A]

My most inspiring historical maker Is George Stephenson.....

[@AB-ye7bw]

The original Matrix setup.

[@SophiaAphrodite]

How we long for the days where Cesar's thought about the American Empire.

[@ArtCOOL777]

Developing photographs 41 chemical processes. But plot and make a great photo. The photo is a sniper shot. Photographers lie in the cold snow or swamp for 4-6 hours for the sake of taking a shot and only get one shot

[@KravKernow]

The horse bet set up looked like that original Beyonce/Matrix bullet time set up.

[@mark_a_vigil]

So Edward was a Mythbuster?

[@ArtCOOL777]

The experience of other generations is saving 1000 years for combining a lot and realizing an idea from nothing

[@youtube_moderator]

+1 for Leonardo da Vinci

[@mrpenn4613]

And 112 years later the Wachowski's stole Muybridge's methodology for The Matrix.

[@DeFrisselle]

Muybridge proved Fredrick Remmington right

[@elcorado83]

Faster film doesnt get information quicker-it just works at a lower resolution so needs LESS information (or light)... that's why faster film is granier.

[@haswel22]

For those who want to learn more about the Fazeau experiment like I did: kzbin.info/www/bejne/j36yaqiLqM-Ll6ssi=zqNwM1EsnpowjR9w

[@MattWeber]

Why he didnt go to jail for shooting his wife's lover? Likely lack of photographic evidence! xD

[@jasonnunez6411]

He shot a man all right for sleeping with his wife. And he was found not guilty for justifiable homicide.

[@ArtCOOL777]

Yes, I’m the same as you Adam, but I only have different professional skills. I collect everything and invent everything for us, I take it from the information field, everything goes in meditation. All the information is there. Even when Space X launched a test of the second generation rocket, I knew that 3 engines would be turned off to test stabilization, but one turned off ahead of time on its own. Since there was a problem in the turbocharger And synchronization of work with software.

[@goldernie]

Let me guess.. he'll mention almost all women.

[@goldernie]

Sorry I feel like I owe everyone an apology for my assumption. He did NOT mention all women as I had wrongly assumed, I was wrong. He mentioned 2 men he admires for their scientific accomplishments and a woman he admires because she was rude.

[@MichaelStaghorn]

I violently disagree with you there, Adam. There's no such thing as a "dumb tangent" when you speak. I'd listen to you describe paint drying, and I'd find it relevant and interesting.

[@ArtCOOL777]

Men men men.

[@ArtCOOL777]

5

[@Formaldehydex]

Not a single Confederate general or leader. Better stay out of Virginia and the rest of the South.

[@jamesengland7461]

?

[@user-vk9nn7cs9b]

AVP 👽 But i won / ... sweet / ...oh yhe "spherical processor/and also the "hexanogla processor / ... right / and they....saw / but ignored it / their lost / / / ...

[@yoschmoyo]

The author is Rebecca Solnit.