A surprising number of Nobel Prize winners credit their childhood chemistry set for sparking their interest in science. But most kids just used them to make stuff explode. Compared to the originals, today’s versions are super safe, pale shadows.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What sparked the interest in chemistry sets?
It was Kingsley's Primus Chemical Magic and Practical Chemistry Cabinet. And it had everything you needed to carry out like these serious chemistry experiments. And it came with a booklet, too, that had plenty of instructions. But it also had a lot of stuff to set things on fire and instructions on how to essentially make fireworks and things like that.
Yeah, I would love to see a Venn diagram of Gen X kids who had chemistry sets, who could pull a rabbit out of a hat or a card out of somebody's ear and knew how to do the Rubik's Cube and draw a flip book. That's the trifecta. Yeah, that was my brother in a nutshell.
Sure. It's like, oh, Rubik's Cube? Sure.
You want to see how to solve it? But he wouldn't even say, watch this. He'd be like, here, let me help you. Right.
Exactly.
I also, just as a little side note, I'm like, why do they call that a Primus chemistry cabinet? So it turns out Primus, one of the definitions of it is a small stove that burns paraffin. So presumably that was included in the kit as like a Bunsen burner. And it went a little deeper. I was like, okay, why is the band Primus called Primus? And it turns out they were originally called the Primates.
There was another band called the Primates that said, we will sue the pants off of you if you call yourself the Primates. So Les Claypool and friends looked up Primus.
primate definitions and words and found out that primus is the root word for primate so they went with primus instead look at that one of my most hated bands of all time really yeah i hate primus and you know what i'm gonna hear from primus fans oh yeah you are not yucking your yum i i love for you to love what you love but i've got to be able to hate primus as well sure
They can't yum your yuck? Yeah. Like everybody? It's not like you're telling them not to listen or that they suck for listening.
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Chapter 2: How did early chemistry sets differ from today's?
Yeah, and this was definitely it. And I've seen in multiple places that the reason why this was the golden age of chemistry sets was because this was a time when America in particular was feeling pretty good about science. Not only had America been the first to come up with the bomb, We were also making things like nylon. We were making more durable goods out of plastics.
Like science was improving people's lives. And at the heart of this was chemistry. So there was a real desire to keep the party going by creating the next generation of chemists by really going all in on the chemistry sets. And so they started selling even better than they ever had before.
Yeah, the two slogans changed in the 50s and 60s. For Kim Kraft, they changed it to Porter Science Prepares Young America for World Leadership. And Gilbert responded in kind with Today's Adventures in Science Will Create Tomorrow's America. And it was this idea, like I think even A.C. Gilbert, the founder, like included a note. that said, hello, boys. It said, hello, boys.
The need for chemists is greater now than at any point in our country's history. This Gilbert chemistry set may well be the means of launching you on a useful and well-paying career. So it was like, hey, this is a toy, but if you're interested in science, just wait, because there's a career out there waiting for you.
Yeah. If you like making things catch on fire, wait until they pay you money to make things catch on fire. You're going to really like it. And so things just kind of started to get like anything they could throw at the wall because they were selling so many of these. They were willing to try a lot more than just the standard chemistry set.
And one of the ones that came out, Chuck, in I think 1950 is widely considered, at least by some, the world's most dangerous toy.
Was it Bag of Glass?
It was even worse than that. Although, I don't know, at the end of the day, I think Bag of Glass might be worse.
That, of course, was from the great Saturday Night Live from the 70s, I think, Dan Aykroyd. But we did, or maybe you did, back in the day when we were tasked with doing, what do we call them, image galleries?
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