Welcome to History's Not Boring by kidopoly.com. I'm Mira! And I'm Finn! Before we start, we have some huge shout-outs today. First, to Dominic, who is 11, and Aurelio, who is 9, listening all the way from Sarasota, Florida.
SPEAKER_00They love planes and our aviation episodes. And they actually requested this exact topic. Since we're always looking for amazing listener ideas, we decided to jump right in and do it today.
SPEAKER_01We also want to say a big aloha to Brooklyn, Emma and Jackson in Hawaii. You three love the show, so this episode is dedicated to you.
SPEAKER_00Wait, so what is the amazing topic Dominic and Aurelio picked?
SPEAKER_01Close your eyes and imagine this. It's night time, and suddenly thousands of glowing lights float up into the pitch black sky. They swirl around and form a massive, glowing, 500-foot-tall dragon.
SPEAKER_00Whoa! Is it magic or UFOs? Or a giant sky monster?
SPEAKER_01Neither! It's thousands of drones flying in perfect sync. Today we are talking about the crazy history of drones.
SPEAKER_00I love drones. You can fly them with a remote, do flips in the yard, and take videos from way up in the air.
SPEAKER_01Exactly! But long before today's flying cameras, inventors dreamed of pilotless aircraft for decades. We're going to see how a top secret military experiment from a hundred years ago turned into a flying toy in millions of homes. Let's start with the basics. The real name for a drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV. That means it's an aircraft with absolutely no human pilot inside.
SPEAKER_00No pilot? But how does it know where to go? Does it have a tiny robot brain?
SPEAKER_01Today they use computer chips and GPS. But our story actually starts back in 1917, during World War I. The Wright brothers had only invented the airplane 14 years earlier, but engineers were already building radio-controlled flying bombs.
SPEAKER_00A flying bomb? That sounds really dangerous. Where exactly was this happening?
SPEAKER_01It was happening right in the United States. In 1918, an American inventor named Charles Kettering built something called the Kettering Bug. It was a pilotless biplane with a 15-foot wingspan powered by a 40 horsepower Ford engine. But it was made of cheap wood and papier mache.
SPEAKER_00Haha, papier mache. Like the messy newspaper and glue stuff we use in art class to make fake volcanoes?
SPEAKER_01Exactly! The bug weighed 530 pounds, which is about as heavy as an adult grizzly bear, and cost exactly $400 to build.
SPEAKER_00So how did a paper aeroplane as heavy as a grizzly bear fly without a remote control?
SPEAKER_01They used math and mechanics. Engineers calculated the wind speed and the exact distance to the target. Then they set an internal timer. The bug would take off, fly up to 40 miles, and when the timer ran out, the engine would shut off completely.
SPEAKER_00Let me guess. Then it went boom.
SPEAKER_01In theory, the wings were designed to pop right off, dropping 180 pounds of explosives. But honestly, it was a total disaster. What went wrong with it? Almost everything. A strong gust of wind would blow them way off course, engines would randomly fail, and most of them just spun out of control and crashed right after takeoff. They were so incredibly unreliable, they were never actually used in battle during World War I. The kettering bug was a total flop, but the military did not give up on the idea. Fast forward to 1939 and the start of World War II, they realised they needed drones for something entirely different. Target practice.
SPEAKER_00Target practice? Like anti-aircraft gunners shooting at them up in the sky.
SPEAKER_01Exactly! Gunners needed real practice shooting at moving targets. Using real planes was way too dangerous for the pilots, so they needed small, pilotless planes to shoot at instead. That makes perfect sense. Who built them this time? You won't believe this. They were built by a Hollywood movie actor named Reginald Denny.
SPEAKER_00Wait, an actor built military drones? How does that even happen?
SPEAKER_01Reginald loved model airplanes. He even owned a busy hobby shop right on Hollywood Boulevard. He and his engineers started a company called Radioplane, and they built the OQ2, the very first mass-produced drone in America. How big was the OQ2? Was it paper again? Not paper this time. It was made of wood and canvas, about the size of a large dining table. It had a 12-foot wingspan and two spinning propellers on the nose. It flew at 85 miles per hour, and the US military bought nearly 15,000 of them during the war.
SPEAKER_0015,000? That's enough to fill a whole sport stadium. Did they all get blasted into pieces?
SPEAKER_01Many did, but they had a very clever trick. If a drone survived the practice run, the operator pressed a special button on the radio box, and a 24-foot parachute popped out, letting the drone drift safely to the ground to be reused. That is genius! Recycle and reuse. And here is a crazy fun fact. In 1945, an army photographer went to the radio plane factory in California to take pictures of the drones. He spotted a 19-year-old woman assembling propellers who was incredibly photogenic.
SPEAKER_00Let me guess, she became famous?
SPEAKER_01Very famous. Her real name was Norma Jean Doherty, but the world soon knew her as the Hollywood superstar Marilyn Monroe. The drone factory is literally where she was discovered. After World War II, drones became a highly protected military secret. For decades, engineers worked intensely on making them fly much higher and for much longer.
SPEAKER_00How high and how long are we talking?
SPEAKER_01Well, in the 1980s, a brilliant engineer named Abraham Caram built a drone in his Los Angeles garage called the Albatross. It could stay in the air for 56 hours straight without landing once.
SPEAKER_0056 hours? That's more than two whole days. My remote control car dies in 10 minutes.
SPEAKER_01Mine too! Abraham's design evolved into the famous military predator drone, which first flew in 1994. The Predator was 27 feet long, about the size of a moving truck, could fly 25,000 feet in the air, and changed modern history by sending live video from anywhere in the world.
SPEAKER_00Giant high-flying military robots. That is cool but slightly terrifying. How did we go from giant military drones to the tiny fun ones I see at the park?
SPEAKER_01That is the best part! While aircraft with four horizontal spinning rotors existed since the early 1900s, scientists in the 1990s and 2000s successfully shrank that design down into tiny modern drones. Oh, a quadcopter! Because it has four rotors! Yes, the quadcopter! Having four spinning blades made the drone incredibly stable. It could hover perfectly in place, go straight up, or zoom sideways like a robotic hummingbird.
SPEAKER_00So when did regular people start buying them for fun?
SPEAKER_01The massive turning point was in 2010. A French technology company called Parrot did something revolutionary. They took the quadcopter design, which weighed less than a single pound, and figured out how to control it without a bulky radio remote. What did you use instead? A video game joystick? A smartphone. They put a tiny Wi-Fi chip and a camera on the drone. You could look at your phone screen, see exactly what the drone saw from the sky, and just tilt your phone to steer it. Suddenly, the drone hobby exploded worldwide.
SPEAKER_00Using a phone to fly a drone sounds absolutely amazing. You can see over tall fences and pretend you're a bird. Totally!
SPEAKER_01And today, drones do so much more than take backyard photos. Hollywood directors use them to film those crazy swooping action movie shots that big heavy helicopters could never do safely. What else do they do in the real world? They are super helpful. Drones inspect the undersides of giant suspension bridges and the tops of 100-story skyscrapers so human workers don't have to dangle from super dangerous ropes.
SPEAKER_00Ew! Imagine dangling under a dark bridge and getting covered in giant sticky spiderwebs. I am very glad robots do that job now.
SPEAKER_01Me too. And in some cities, drones are even delivering pizzas and packages. The drone flies straight to your house at 40 miles per hour, hovers above your yard, and gently lowers your dinner box on a string.
SPEAKER_00A flying pizza robot? That is officially the greatest invention in the entire history of the universe.
SPEAKER_01It gets wilder! Have you heard of drone racing leagues? Human pilots wear virtual reality goggles that show the live camera feed from the drone. They fly through crazy neon obstacle courses at over 100 miles per hour.
SPEAKER_00100 miles per hour? If I crashed at that speed, my drone would turn into a cloud of plastic confetti.
SPEAKER_01Oh, they crash spectacularly. But remember the glowing dragon I mentioned at the beginning of the episode? Oh yeah, the thousands of glowing lights. How do they do that? Those are drone light shows. Companies program thousands of tiny drones using one central computer. At the 2018 Winter Olympics, they flew over 1,200 drones at the exact same time. They fly up together and use bright LED lights to draw giant 3D moving pictures in the night sky.
SPEAKER_00That is absolutely amazing. And they are way quieter than fireworks. So dogs everywhere probably love drones.
SPEAKER_01Alright Finn, it's time for the quiz.
SPEAKER_00Are you ready to test your drone knowledge? Oh boy, I hope I remember all those crazy numbers. But okay, I'm ready. Hit me with the questions. First question.
SPEAKER_01What was the name of the Pepier Mache flying bomb built during World War I? Next one. What Hollywood actor created the radio plane company that built target drones during World War II? Question 3. Who was the famous movie star discovered while building drones in a factory in 1945? Here's number four. What French company revolutionised the hobby in 2010 by letting you steer a drone with a smartphone? Last question. What do we call a drone with four horizontal spinning rotors? Great job! Let's see how you did. The first answer is the kettering bug. For question two, it was Reginald Denny. Number three, the answer is Marilyn Monroe. Question four, the company was parrot. And the final answer is a quadcopter.
SPEAKER_00Woohoo! I love that Marilyn Monroe worked in a drone factory before she was famous. That is such a wild piece of history.
SPEAKER_01Right? History is full of totally surprising connections like that. And just think, going from a massive papier mache plane that instantly crashed all the way to flying pizza robots and 3D light shows is an incredible journey.
SPEAKER_00If you loved learning about that journey as much as we did, please leave us a five-star review. You can just scroll down on your podcast app right now and tap the five stars.
SPEAKER_01Yes! Tell us what your favourite drone fact was in your review. Oh, and don't forget to check out our site kidopoly.com. We've got tons of fun learning games, cool activities, and awesome history resources waiting for you there.
SPEAKER_00It is super fun. Just head over to our site, kidopoly.com, to explore. And hey, if you want a shout out on the show, like Dominic, Aurelio, Brooklyn, Emma, and Jackson, just send us an email at hello at kidopoly.com.
SPEAKER_01We love hearing from you and finding out what amazing history topics you want us to explore next. Thanks for learning with us today. Bye everyone! See you next time on History is not boring.