Why isn’t Leonardo Da Vinci remembered as an engineer?

Summary

Summary of "Why isn’t Leonardo Da Vinci remembered as an engineer?"

Podcast: This is History: History’s Greatest Fails
Hosts: Elizabeth Day and Dan Jones
Release Date: April 28, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores why Leonardo da Vinci—known worldwide as one of history’s greatest artists—is not equally remembered for his ambitious engineering projects, many of which failed by conventional standards. Hosts Elizabeth Day and Dan Jones unpack the complex idea of "failure" through Da Vinci’s career, discussing how accidental discoveries and unsuccessful experiments have historically propelled progress. The conversation then broadens to other transformative "failures"—from microbiology’s founding to the invention of gunpowder and champagne—demonstrating how setbacks and unexpected results frequently shape history far more than straightforward success.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Leonardo da Vinci: Artist or Engineer?

• Da Vinci’s Self-Perception vs. Historical Memory
  • Da Vinci is universally celebrated for works like the Mona Lisa, Last Supper, and the Vitruvian Man, but "if you look into Da Vinci’s notebooks … being an artist was not top of his list ... He considered himself an inventor, a creator, an engineer.” (Dan, 03:27)
• His Letter to the Duke of Milan
  • Da Vinci wrote an audacious job application to Ludovico Sforza, touting his ability to create war machines, novel bridges, siege equipment, and architectural marvels—art is listed last (06:56-07:10).
  • Many of these engineering projects were never completed or didn’t work, prompting Dan to assert: “If judged on a metric of what he said he was going to do versus what he actually did, the guy was a failure. And yet here we have the man who’s considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, fine artists of all time.” (03:27)

2. The Value and Psychology of Failure

• Da Vinci the ‘Failure’ and the Power of Trying
  • Elizabeth: “He tried so much and had so many ideas … some of them stuck and some of them didn’t. But how much more successful is that than the person who never tries in the first place?” (09:21)
  • Reflection on how polymaths often value their hardest pursuits above their innate talents: “The thing that they are innately brilliant at is the thing that they value the least ... I wonder if Leonardo felt that about his astonishing ability to paint.” (Elizabeth, 08:40)
• Contradictions in Genius
  • Dan highlights Leonardo’s humanism and discomfort with violence—despite designing war machines, he was a vegetarian and abhorred cruelty (11:02).
  • Elizabeth mentions the theory that Da Vinci may have sabotaged some military designs out of pacifist conviction (11:52).

3. Historical Parallels: Accidental Discoveries

• Champagne
  • Created by accident when wine in Dom Perignon’s monastery went fizzy; initially considered a fault, then became prized (22:31-23:24).
  • Dan’s memorable anecdote: “Pay me in your cheapest champagne and crate upon crate … had a pile of champagne crates that almost reached the ceiling.” (23:13)
• Gunpowder
  • Accidentally created by Chinese alchemists seeking an “elixir of life.” Instead, sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter produced an explosive with massive implications for war (25:53).
  • Elizabeth’s summary: “Something that started out as an attempt to discover an elixir for life became an instrument of death.” (26:04)
• Microbiology and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
  • Born 1632, a Dutch draper grinding lenses to study fabrics, Leeuwenhoek “ended up discovering sperm … the first to observe spermatozoa.” (18:00-18:06)
  • Overcame skepticism from scientific elites; upended the prevailing theory of spontaneous generation (18:33-19:29).
  • Elizabeth speculates on the personal motivation behind Leeuwenhoek’s curiosity, tying it to his tragic personal loss (19:42-20:19).

4. The Broader Concept: Failure as Data

• Embracing Unexpected Outcomes
  • Penicillin and post-it notes cited as famous “failures” that changed the world (27:20-28:21).
  • Elizabeth’s maxim: “All failure is data acquisition … it’s data about what doesn’t work and I can eliminate that and get closer to the thing that does.” (28:21)
• Staying Curious
  • The importance of open-mindedness and curiosity—traits shared by Da Vinci, Leeuwenhoek, and other experimenters—underpins progress (29:30).

5. Playful Moments and Notable Quotes

• On Da Vinci’s reputation:
  • Dan: “If judged by what he said he’d do … the guy was a failure. And yet here we have … one of the greatest … artists of all time.” (03:27)
• On Leeuwenhoek’s challenge to dogma:
  • “Who is this upstart who claims to have reinvented science? Curtain Boy is writing us about sperm. What the fuck?” (Dan, 18:33)
• On innovation and accidental invention:
  • Dan (on gunpowder): “They came up with a mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter which didn’t provide eternal life, but did … burn their hands and faces and … burn their houses down.” (25:53)
• On failure as learning:
  • Elizabeth: “All failure is data acquisition.” (28:21)

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Memorable & Humorous Exchanges

• Mona Lisa’s Tan Lines
  • Elizabeth: “You can tell he [Da Vinci] used a real-life model … she has tan lines … members of the aristocracy would have shielded their skin from sunlight.” (13:56)
  • Dan: “Made me think of the Mos Def song, Miss Fat Booty ... now I’m imagining the subject of the Mona Lisa singing Sade’s Sweetest Taboo ... could easily make with AI.” (14:35)
• Rubik’s Cube Routine
  • The Rubik’s Cube was invented as a teaching aid, only accidentally becoming a puzzle toy. Dan claims he can solve it under a minute, but recounts being sabotaged on national TV by a tampered cube (30:29-31:13).

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Da Vinci’s Letter & Career Aspirations: 06:56 – 07:11
• Polymathy and the Psychology of Failure: 08:40 – 09:55
• Gunpowder’s Accidental Origin: 25:53 – 26:49
• Leeuwenhoek and Spontaneous Generation: 17:07 – 19:29
• Failure as Data Acquisition: 28:21 – 29:30
• Rubik’s Cube Anecdote: 30:29 – 31:13

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• Many of history’s so-called failures (Da Vinci’s engineering projects, Leeuwenhoek’s hobbyist microscopy, gunpowder’s dangerous mishaps) were seeds for enormous progress.
• The episode highlights how willingness to try—and to fail—is both the wellspring of innovation and a crucial lens for understanding historical "failures."
• Curiosity, data-acquisition, and reframing what we mean by failure are essential not just for scientists and artists, but for anyone seeking to create, experiment, or change the world.

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Next Episode Preview:
The series continues with a discussion of artists dismissed in their time but revered by posterity—further exploring how history’s “failures” often become its most enduring successes.

Transcript

[A]

What's the most embarrassing accident that you've ever experienced? Basically I'm asking, when have you wet yourself?

[B]

When was the last time I wet myself?

[A]

My theory is that the world splits into two types of people. Those that routinely shit themselves and those that don't.

[C]

Oh.

[A]

Some people think it's completely standard to shit themselves. I'm not one of them personally, but I tell you who is.

[B]

Your ex boyfriend?

[A]

Yes. Do you know your friend and mine? Yeah.

[B]

Well, just to protect the non innocent, he texted me the other day. He just shit himself in Uniqlo.

[A]

Shut up. He's still doing it. He's still doing it?

[B]

Yeah. He's still shitting himself in public and he's getting towards the point where shitting himself in public is going to be like just normal because he's old.

[A]

That is just so undignified on multiple levels.

[B]

Well, what do you want it to be? Fucking Harrods.

[A]

Just not in a shop. Why is he shitting himself? Was he hungover? What?

[B]

I didn't. You know what? It's happened so often I didn't ask for details.

[A]

Well, this is. I'm so glad I opened this rich stream of conversation.

[B]

You opened a rich stream? All right. Should we do the show?

[A]

Yes, let's do the show.

[D]

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[A]

Hello, this is History's Greatest Fails with me, Elizabeth Day, author and podcaster.

[B]

And I am Dan Jones, fellow author and podcaster.

[A]

We're old friends and fellow history graduates and in this podcast we're going to dig into failures of historical proportions to

[B]

understand why failures make history.

[A]

And this episode, Dan, you're bringing us world changing accidents and experimen.

[B]

Yes, this is one of my favourite topics. This is about the attempt to discover something which fails, maybe catastrophically, but in the end produces an achievement of another type. So I want to talk about Leonardo da Vinci in particular, and then a little bit about gunpowder and then maybe a hotchpotch of others about champagne, about microbiology. You're disappointed we might get into microbiology, but I want to talk more about biology.

[A]

I mean, to marginalize our microbiologists and I'm just not Having it.

[B]

I just. Yeah. I can't. I can't.

[A]

It intimidates you. I get it. Don't worry, I'll take it on. I'll do that bit. You can kick off with da Vinci.

[B]

I just can't pronounce his name. Not Leonardo da Vinci. Yeah. I wanna talk about Leonardo da Vinci. What's the first thing you think of when I say da Vinci? Don't try and be clever.

[A]

I mean, I suppose actually I think of lots of different things simultaneously.

[B]

I think your mind is just so alive. You're like da Vinci in that sense. Huh.

[A]

I think about the Last Supper. I think about the Mona Lisa. I think about that drawing of the Vitruvian Man. Yes. And I think about helicopters. And I think about an amazing holiday that we had in Italy where we stayed in this form. No, not you and me. We stayed in this former monastery that's now an exquisite hotel, and we had breakfast every morning on what used to be the colonnade, and it overlooked this gorgeous hillside. And that's where Leonardo da Vinci tried out his flying machines. That's what I think of. Is that what you expected or did you just want Mona Lisa?

[B]

Yep, I wanted Mona Lisa. You've. You've really done my job for me. No, I think. Look, when we think about Leonardo da Vinci, he generally falls into the category of great artists, because Mona Lisa, Last Supper, Virgin of the Rocks times two. So good, he did it twice. And Salvator Mundi, you know, most expensive painting in the world, attributed to da Vinci about 15 years ago. But if you. If you look into Da Vinci's. The notebooks, the writing, the letters. Being an artist was not top of his list of sort of things on his cv. He considered himself an inventor, a creator, an engineer. And so I think he's an interesting case study in the context of what we're going to be talking about today. Because here is someone who, if judged towards the end of his life, when he was living in France, if judged on a metric of what he said he was going to do versus what he actually did, the guy was a failure. And yet here we have the man who's considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, fine artists of all time. And I will illustrate that counterintuitive point. Don't look so shocked. I'm going to illustrate by way of reading a letter from Leonardo da Vinci.

[A]

You've come so prepared. This doesn't normally happen. Look at me with my sheafs of paper.

[B]

Sheafs, plural. Because you've got multiple Sheafs attached with sheaves. Sheaves like leaves.

[A]

Is it sheaves or sheafs?

[B]

You tell me.

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

It's got she in it. That was last I did.

[A]

Don't you tell me. Illustrate the point.

[B]

No, I don't want to now.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

Why do you have to be like this? In 1482, Leonardo da Vinci wrote a letter to Ludovico Sforza, who, as you know, was the Duke of Milan at the time. And why is that funny? I don't know.

[A]

It's just so. You're so annoying. You're so annoying.

[B]

You're so annoying.

[A]

Sorry, but you're just seeing a reflection of yourself. I know. Yes.

[B]

That's the thing, isn't it?

[A]

It's like it's what triggers us. And the other person is the thing we have to address in ourselves.

[B]

This is why this is good for us.

[A]

Yeah. Carry on.

[B]

In 1482. Yes, that's the right year. Leonardo da Vinci, about 30 years old, writes to the Duke of Milan because he wants a job. We've all been there. And he. The Duke of Milan, where he's living, is the man with all the dough. And who, you know, you write to if you want a job. So here's. Here's what da Vinci says, and I think from this you get a sense of how he sees himself, or at least how one of the ways he presents himself. He says, most illustrious lord. Not often letters begin that way these days, or not to me at any rate. Having now sufficiently studied the proofs of all those who count themselves masters and inventors of instruments of war, and finding that their invention and working of the said instruments do not differ in any respect from those in common use. It's a very long winded slight on everybody else who's a military engineer. I shall endeavor to explain myself to your excellency, showing your lordship my secrets. And the secrets he goes on to describe himself being a master of. Are bridges very light and strong machines for siege, defense and assault, including plans for destroying every fortress or other stronghold in even if it were founded on a rock? Mortars for use on land and sea. Underground tunneling methods, armored cars, light ordinance of very useful and beautiful shapes, catapults, mangonels, trebuchets, other engines of wonderful efficacy and blah, blah, blah. He goes on and on and on. He says he's available for architecture and construction of buildings, both private and public. Sculpture in marble, bronze or clay. And finally, I can also do painting.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Whatever can be done, as well as

[A]

any other so if I were the Duke of Milan, I would get that and I would categorise that as Green Ink Brigade. Those people who used to write to newspapers in green ink, and they were all slightly unhinged and claiming that people were talking to them through the television. But he wasn't unhinged. He actually could do so many of these things. How extraordinary, right?

[B]

And it's amazing. I mean, the Duke of Milan hired him, but he ended up doing almost none of any of that. There's a sort of pattern throughout da Vinci's life that he goes and works after he's been in Milan for Cesare Borgia, you know, son of the Pope, looking to carve out a kind of patrimony for himself in Italy. And Borgia kind of sends him down to Imola and he draws this amazing map of Imola, but he's there to inspect military defenses. So there is these moments throughout his life where he's seeing himself really as an engineer. And even the same is true at the end of his life when he crosses the Alps and goes. He's in this, I think, his 60s at this point. He goes to be the kind of artist in residence, semi retirement at the court of Francois Premier in France, who just sort of likes to have the kind of genius man around, and he's got these kind of grand designs that he's going to build a kind of model city and it's going to sort of showcase all of the great thinking he's done about architecture and engineering. And what does he end up doing? He sort of makes, like, little theatrical displays for kids, baptisms and does a bit of painting.

[A]

I think what's so interesting often about polymaths is that the thing that they are innately brilliant at is the thing that they value the least, because it comes too easily to them. And I wonder if Leonardo felt that about his astonishing ability to paint, that he actually thought, well, you know, but I really want to be an engineer. That's where the real value is. And I wonder, given that we're talking in the context of failure, whether he felt like a failure in his own lifetime or whether that grandiloquent element that we hear there in that letter stayed with him. I don't know. I find him a very intriguing figure and I absolutely bloody love him.

[B]

Because the only reason Leonardo stan I am.

[A]

Yeah, the only reason he's in this episode is because he tried so much and he was so brilliant and had so many ideas that he put them all out there and explored them all, and some of them stuck and some of them didn't. But how much more successful is that than the person who never tries in the first place? Because they're scared of putting themselves out there? And that, to me, goes to the heart of what failure can be. Failure can be an opportunity for curiosity and growth and literal invention.

[B]

Can I ask you. I want your instant response here.

[A]

Mona Lisa.

[B]

Wrong question. Two men born in 1452. Who's your favourite? Da Vinci and Richard III.

[A]

Ooh, that's hard. Richard III. Because.

[B]

What is wrong with you?

[C]

That's the.

[A]

Because Leonardo da Vinci doesn't need me to campaign for the resurrection of his reputation.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Richard III needs everyone that he can get. Kitchener. No, he just needs more. I love an underdog. And so I suppose, you know, Leonardo da Vinci is revered the world over. As much as we're, like, talking about him as if he's a failure.

[B]

I've got the Passion Book of lil. Book of Richard iii.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Yes. I mean, an extraordinary character. The war machines is interesting to me with Leonardo, because such an unusual man of his age. I mean, he was a vegetarian. He couldn't abide the thought of cruelty to animals. The sort of bless. I mean, this, I think, with a capital H. Such a humanist.

[E]

Yes.

[B]

And such a. Such a lover of life. And what you see through those notebooks, through that, you know, as you brilliantly describing, through that, that curiosity about absolutely everything.

[A]

I mean, there's nothing in enthusiasm. I think that's what I love. Yeah, you're right. He is a humanist and yet able

[B]

to deploy some sort of compartmentalization that would allow him to go and work, for example, for Cesare Borgia. I mean, the most monstrous. I mean, not that many people, I think, are genuinely evil, but Cesare Borgia's probably got a good shout to be included in that category. The designs of machines of war always strikes me as sitting very curiously with that sort of deep love of life.

[A]

Although there is a theory that he deliberately sabotaged his design for an armored tank so that it wouldn't work because he was a pacifist. And I wonder again, I mean, I've

[B]

got a better sabotage. Don't design it.

[A]

Well, to quote Dan Jones back to himself in the previous episode, when we were talking about overlooked or forgotten women, you were talking about paying attention to the context of the time. The context of the time for Leonardo was he has to please rich patrons in positions of enormous power.

[B]

Yeah. And I suppose maybe then there's, you know, we can look at this example of genius in context in, I suppose, the second World War. If you look at everyone who worked on the. The Manhattan Project and Oppenheimer, of course, being the subject of the movie, but Oppenheimer and that whole circle all working towards a scientific goal which they knew was going to lead to catastrophic loss of life.

[A]

It's fascinating in a way. It's like the human flaw. It's like the development of AI.

[B]

It's probably going to Promethean. Yeah.

[A]

Do us out of a reason to exist.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But we are so driven by the notion of progress and discovery and achievement. Yes, yes. It's part of our.

[B]

Well, there it is in the Garden of Eden, you know. And they both, like, chomp on that apple. Right. God says, listen, you can have everything, you can live in peace, but you must remain stupid. That's the essence of the story. Right.

[A]

I've never heard it put like that, but that's what it said.

[B]

Don't eat from the tree of knowledge.

[A]

Yes. And that kind of mischief, making that like, I want to eat the bloody apple. Anyway, Leonardo da Vinci, the other thing that I just wanted to share because I think it speaks to what you were saying about him as a humanist. The Mona Lisa, arguably one of his most famous works. Part of what I

[B]

arguably argue it's probably.

[A]

It is one of his most famous works.

[B]

One of them.

[A]

Sorry, that was like a history essay adverb. The thing that I really like about it is that you can tell he used. No, fucking hell, Dan. Let me get a sentence out is that you can see that he used a real life model, which was unusual for the time, and that the real life model was probably someone of lower social stock, because you can see in the portrait that she has tan lines. And of course, members of the aristocracy would have shielded their skin from sunlight in order to maintain this aristocratic pallor.

[B]

Yeah. It's made me think of the Mos Def song, Miss Fat Booty. It's got lyrics. Show me her tan lines and her tattoo singing Sade's Sweetest Taboo. So now I'm imagining that the subject of the Mona Lisa singing that which we could easily make with an AI,

[A]

that is what Leonardo da Vinci would have wanted and what a testament to his powerful legacy. Thank you so much, Dan. Now, moving on.

[B]

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[C]

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[B]

He's the guy who forced all his

[C]

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[A]

Can we please talk about Leeuwenhoek, who I know you're a very good friend of Anthony van Leeuwenhoek, who is Dutch. He was born in 1632 in Delft and he started out as a draper. And as a draper, he wanted to be able to examine the quality of fabric. And to this end, he ground lenses to make his own microscopic spectacles. And the spectacles that he made in some cases were 50 times more powerful than an average microscope. So not only could he start looking at fabrics, but he started looking at the world around him and he discovered microbiology. So he discovered that there were these little protozoa and bacteria in the human mouth and in the intestine. He ended up discovering sperm. Dan.

[C]

What?

[A]

He was the first.

[B]

No one had ever heard of sperm before.

[A]

He was the first to observe it. He was.

[B]

He was under a microscope.

[A]

Well, I suppose he was the first to observe what it consisted of, obviously. Yeah, spermatozoa I should have said the actual spermatozoa. Yeah. And because he was a draper, he was sending all of these letters to the Royal Society in London, and they thought, a bit like Leonardo da Vinci probably would have been thought of by the Duke of Milan after that first letter. Who is this upstart who claims to have reinvented science?

[B]

Curtain Boy is writing us about sperm.

[A]

What the fuck? He was absolutely right. As we know, and prior to Leeuwenhoek, there was a theory that living beings developed through spontaneous generation. I didn't know this until we researched this episode. And what that meant was that they thought living organisms developed from non living matter. So according to this theory, pieces of cheese and bread wrapped in rags and left in a dark corner, for example, were thought to produce mice rather than attract mice. I know. And eels were thought to have been formed by dew. Dew drops. So Leeuwenhoek, even though he started out trying to do one thing, which was to examine the microscopic fibres of fabric, actually ended up reinventing the scientific theory of life.

[B]

Good for him.

[A]

Well done him. That's what I say.

[B]

Yeah. Okay, you've convinced me. I was kind of instinctively anti Leeuwenhoek, but I think that Curtain Boy has. You've sold me on him.

[A]

I also think, and again, this is where my own subjectivity as a novelist comes into play. And clearly there's no sort of historical fact attached to this interpretation. But he was married twice and his first marriage, they had five children and only one survived childhood. And there's part of me that wonders whether the amount of loss that he sustained as a parent made him fascinated in life. How to preserve it, how to protect it, how to understand it.

[B]

Have you thought about writing a historical novel about Leeuwenhoek?

[A]

Obviously, when I read about him, that was my first thought.

[B]

Have you read. I can never quite get the title of this novel right, but you'll probably know it if you've read it. An Incident of the Finger Post.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Is it called that?

[A]

Yes, it's by Ian Pears, I think.

[B]

Yes. I haven't read that, but I have read the Incident, the Finger Bang or whatever it's called, which.

[A]

I'm so sorry, listeners and viewers for Dan, consistently dragging the tone into the gutter.

[B]

If they've heard my show, they've come to expect it. In fact, they're probably the how to

[A]

Fail Community are shocked.

[B]

Well, I'm sorry. How to Fail Community. I'm doing my very best.

[A]

Wait, so the Incident of the Finger Post.

[B]

Well, because it's set in that sort of. That world of discovery of the kind of the 17th century, you know, the Enlightenment getting going, the experimentation with. With the natural world, with biology, with chemistry, with. With dissection, with blood transfusion. All of that is. It's very exciting. And I think that it also provides ripe territory for telling analogies and symbolism. And I think that the, you know, the power of the lens, maybe it's too obvious.

[A]

He was also apparently in a Vermeer portrait, because Vermeer was a contemporary. And so there are some theories that Leeuwenhoek was in the background of one of his paintings, you see, and you wanted not to do the microbiologist. And I insisted, even though I did single science gcse, I'm the one who stood up for it.

[B]

Were you not good at science?

[A]

No, no, still not good at science. Pretty terrible.

[B]

What was single science?

[A]

They phased out at my school the year after I did it. Because you just did one subject. It was all of them in one subject and it was extremely straightforward and rather simple. So they phased it out at my school afterwards. People are quite shocked when they hear that I was allowed to do it. But I did do it. I did single science. Talk to us about either gunpowder or champagne, Dan.

[B]

I'll talk briefly about champagne and then at more length about gunpowder with that.

[A]

Perfect.

[B]

Champagne, I think, is a good example of the world realising the value of something that has been considered valueless. So there is a real Dom Perignon. He's part of a monastic community that makes wine. And this wine, under certain atmospheric conditions goes all fizzy, can cause the bottles to explode, but tastes change and they realize that actually fizzy wine's quite nice. That's the very short story. I'm more interested in telling you that I once knew more about this and gave an entire lecture on the history of champagne and had the option to be paid in money or in champagne.

[A]

Did you go for champagne?

[B]

I went for champagne and I said, pay me in your cheapest champagne and crate upon crate. I mean, I literally had a pile of champagne crates that almost reached the ceiling of my kitchen.

[A]

Oh, I love champagne so much.

[B]

Well, every Saturday I would just guzzle champagne as though it were water.

[A]

As though you were Winston Churchill about to wage a war effort.

[B]

We called it Champagne Saturday.

[A]

Dom Perignon, talking about the Age of Enlightenment, was born six years after Anthony Leeuwenhoek. So all of this stuff is happening at the same time.

[B]

Yes, but Leonardo da Vinci before them, he could have done it.

[A]

Yes, that's how he's too busy.

[B]

Oh, does it?

[A]

Okay. Gunpowder.

[B]

Gunpowder, I think is a, is, is a very interesting case because it's an example of a discovery that the, the search for gunpowder came out of the search in China, so early medieval China for an elixir of life. So there's this, this belief that through kind of alchemy, as we'd call it, or the experimentation with all sorts of natural materials that one could come up with a substance that would give you eternal life. And eventually they, they came up with a mixture of sulfur, charcoal and saltpeter which didn't provide eternal life, but did sometimes burn at such a furious burn their hands and faces and even burn their houses down. So we have these descriptions. I mean they probably got similar substances hundreds of years before this. But certainly in 9th and 10th century AD China you've got the, the beginnings of gunpowder and eventually people realize that, well, this might not keep you alive, but it does have weapons properties. So in the 10th and 11th centuries in the Song Dynasty, Chinese military thinkers start experimenting with using concoctions of what we'd call gunpowder in fire arrows and bombs, in very simple sort of gun type weapons which, which fire. Well, you've got flamethrowers and then you have weapons which fire arrows and then you've got arrows which have little bits of gunpowder on them which sort of explode. By the time you get to the 13th century, you've sort of crossed a threshold within gunpowder where you, you're now, you've now got explosives and by the time this its way into Europe, probably through the mongols from the 12th, 13th century onwards who've adopted this technology. You certainly see it when you look at accounts from the Crusades that the Crusaders are coming across these new weapons technologies where there is like these flashes and bangs. From the 13th century you have writers like Roger Bacon in the west who've got access to the recipe for gunpowder. And then from the 14th century onwards there are, there were guns on the battlefield.

[A]

So something that started out as an attempt to discover an elixir for life became an instrument of death.

[B]

You got it.

[A]

There we go.

[B]

What about that, huh? I suppose over the course of the history of the last 1500 years is a totally transformative invention in the way that it's changed the whole nature of warfare. And from the 15th century onwards, when you've got, got gigantic cannon being cast in the Low Countries and in Italy, it changes the nature of fortification. When you get into the American Civil War and you've got, you know, rifled cannon you can't even build forts and castles anymore because it strips down to the value that, to the importance in weapons development of, of gunpowder.

[A]

And the only thing I have to add to that comprehensive summary is there is a, a type of green tea, which is a gunpowder tea. And I've always wondered about why it's called that, but I wonder if actually it's called that because green tea is seen as adjacent to this elixir for life. So anyway, that's my green tea digression. What did all of these happy accidents teach us about the concept of historical failure?

[B]

Well, I think that there's, I think you can put gunpowder into a broader category which includes all, I mean, a huge range of other things that have been invented over the last thousand years or whatever. And it ranges from, I mean, penicillin is a famous example of what looked like a load of old mold turned into eventually antibiotics and arguably. I mean, have I bored you with my theory about times I wouldn't live in history?

[A]

Yes, but I can't remember it because I was so bored I just didn't take it in.

[B]

Well, let's see if we can put you to sleep again. Anytime before penicillin and painkillers. I mean, it's, I think it's one of the undersold revolutions in history, but it comes from something, you know, from something completely unintentional. And then we've got the, you know, they can sound almost pathetic when set next to penicillin and gunpowder. But you've got post it notes where there's this search for the strongest possible adhesive. And one of the adhesives that's rejected is this incredibly weak one. Who would want a very weak adhesive?

[A]

Well, it turns out, yeah, I think that's, it's, it's a great insight because I'm fond of saying on how to fail that all failure is data acquisition. And sometimes it's data acquisition in terms of what we don't want to do. So if you are a scientist looking for a cure for a terrible disease, when an experiment fails, you don't automatically internalize that failure and think you're the failure. You think, okay, that's given me really invaluable data about what doesn't work and I can eliminate that and get closer to the thing that does. And then there's incidences like Leeuwenhoek where it's again, where the data acquisition comes as a byproduct and he turns something that was intended for something else so could be perceived of as A failure, but he turns it into a success because he stays curious and he doesn't dismiss something as not worthy of examination simply because it doesn't fit his viewpoint. And I think there's something very important about humans staying open minded. That's where progress can come from.

[B]

Yes. And I mean, for someone who only did single science, I mean, that's the essence of the scientific mentality you've absorbed. So clearly something was going right in your school.

[A]

Well, maybe I get the concept, but it's just facts about photosynthesis where I struggle.

[B]

The Rubik's Cube.

[A]

Tell me about the Rubik's Cube. I know you're dying to show off.

[B]

Oh, God. You asked about the Rubik's Cube. Well, the Rubik's Cube was not invented as a toy. It was, it was a model to show that you could, from Dr. Rubik, that you could create a cube that moves in this way without losing its integrity as a cube. And then the guy sort of muddled it up, stuck at his desk and went, yeah, I'll give that a go at putting it back together.

[A]

Why was Dr. Rubik trying to make a cube like that?

[B]

It's just his vibe.

[A]

Who is Dr. Rubik?

[B]

I don't know, he's Hungarian. I'm more interested in telling you about,

[A]

like, the importance of curiosity and you're like, I don't know.

[B]

He was curious about the movement of a cube and then he invented. Look, can I just get to the point?

[A]

Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

[B]

I can do the Rubik's Cube.

[A]

Yes, that is the point. Sorry. This entire episode.

[B]

I wonder how quickly I can do it.

[A]

Do you have one here? How quickly can you do it?

[B]

Under a minute, actually. Under a minute which isn't fast forward.

[A]

Can you do it right here, right now? As Fat Boy Slim once sang, was

[B]

that song about the Rubik cube?

[A]

You wish. We could easily get producer Alan to bring one in.

[B]

I'm not going to do the Rubik's Cube right now because I had a terrible experience doing the Rubik's Cube on national television and someone had messed with the Rubik's Cube and swapped the stickers around and so it wouldn't solve. So as I was, in your words, smugly solving Rubik's Cube while talking, I realized it wouldn't solve and I explained why it wouldn't solve. But they stitched me up in the voiceover and made it look. I couldn't really do it when I was lying.

[A]

Maybe this is something you could offer your royal favourites. Your subscribers, there could be a video of Dan attempting to solve a Rubik's Cube.

[B]

When you say attempting.

[A]

Yeah, I did that deliberately to wind you up.

[B]

Talking of winding up, should we end this?

[A]

Yes. Oh, well done. What a pro. Let's wind up. So, next week, Dan, we're going to be talking all about the world's artistic failures. Those artists who might have been dismissed in their lifetime, but whose legacies were later revered by many centuries later.

[B]

Well, I'm looking forward to that very much. And in the meantime, if you want to learn more about failures, do listen back to past episodes of History's Greatest Fails, where Elizabeth and I have discussed Richard III and history's forgotten women. And if you want more of Elizabeth, be sure to listen to her excellent podcast, How To Fail. Go on, tell us more about it.

[A]

How To Fail is all about why failure is data acquisition and why we can apply that in all areas of life. It doesn't just have to be microbiology. If you do want more historical failures, do listen to this episode's accompanying bonus, where Dan and producer Al dig into some of the best maritime failures, as submitted by Dan's royal favourite.

[B]

Yes, you can find that episode and listen along ad free over on patreon.com thisishistory and as always, if you've got a question about anything we've discussed on Greatest Failures so far, my royal favorites can DM me on Patreon or email [e-mail] that's all for us this episode.

[A]

Let's fail again next time.

[B]

I'm not that smug.

[A]

No, you're not at all.

[E]

Spring just slid into your DMs. Grab that boho. Look for that rooftop dinner, those sandals that can keep up with you. And hang some string lights to give your patio a glow up. Spring's calling, Ross, Work your magic.