The Show - So You Think You Know It All - A compendium of extremely interesting and slightly strange true stories

The bubble action fascinated Walker. He saw potential, but for what he didn’t really know. Nonetheless he began tinkering with liquids and wax, heating them with a light bulb that he had installed inside an orange cordial bottle. Later he used a glass cocktail shaker – a shape that would inform the finished product. Initially this was only a hobby for Walker – he was otherwise engaged with his films and then his nudist club – but he began to devote more time to the project in the late 1950s. Finally, in 1963, he had the perfect ratio of oil and wax, and achieved a sweet-spot melting point for the wax (which continues to be produced to a secret recipe). The egg timer was now a desk light cum moving objet d’art, which he called the Astro Lamp.

The mixture of oil and wax takes several minutes to warm and become liquid but then changes form and viscosity rapidly as it rises up the water column within the tube and into the cooler water. Before it hits the bottom, the heater has melted it again and the cycle restarts. Walker created 100 different designs over the years with range of different colours.

Once on sale the hypnotic ooze created by the lamps became instant conversation pieces in the hip homes of the 1960s. They achieved cult status thanks to being featured in hit shows like Doctor Who, The Avengers and The Prisoner . Sales of Edward’s Lava Lamp soared and even though it wasn’t marketed at the cool cats of the day, its bewitching yet mellow dance was seen as an ideal accompaniment to any psychedelic trip, forever linking it with the mind-altering drugs of the time. Asked if this concerned him, Walker commented, ‘If you buy my lamp, you won’t need to buy drugs.’ For him, the lamp was a groovy enough trip in its own right.

CASH IN A FLASH – JOHN SHEPHERD-BARRON HITS PAY-DIRT WITH THE ATM

ATM cash machines are so ubiquitous we see them only when we need them. But for weeks after the very first one went into service in 1967, people would travel from all over just to watch one magically dispense cash. It was a revolutionary concept that suddenly meant our hard-earned cash was available around the clock.

Like the Greek scientist Archimedes, who coined the phrase, the cash machine’s inventor, John Shepherd-Barron, had his eureka moment in the bath in 1965.

Earlier that day he had gone to the bank, only to arrive moments after it had closed. Until as recently as the 1980s, High Street Banks kept rigid hours; if you needed cash outside of 9 a.m. to 3.30 p.m. on a weekday (9 a.m. to noon on Saturdays), you were stuck.

As he soaked, John pondered how he could liberate his money when it suited him. He hit upon the idea of a chocolate bar dispenser that instead vended cash. As an executive with bank note printers De La Rue, John was able to arrange a chat with the Chief General Manager of Barclays Bank, who gave him just 90 seconds to pitch his idea. Apparently the pitch took 85 seconds, and the bank agreed a deal: six machines initially and a contract for De La Rue to provide the armoured trucks to fill them.

John’s idea wasn’t too far removed from the modern machines that are now present on every high street – and the major concern was, as it is today, fraud. Plastic bankcards stored with personal information were still a way off, so Shepherd-Barron had to work out a way to ensure that the only person who could get your cash was you. He developed a two-step process for this. Step One seems positively dangerous – radioactive cheques. These were impregnated with the compound carbon-14, an isotope the machine was programmed to recognise. John played down health concerns, claiming you would have to eat over 100,000 cheques for them to have any effect on health. Step Two is much more familiar. You’d have to prove to the machine you were the right person to withdraw money by punching in a personal identification number or PIN. If that PIN corresponded with the carbon-14 numbers on the voucher, the machine would pay out.

It was John’s wife Caroline who gave the world the four-digit PIN. Recalling his army days, John originally proposed using a six-digit personal identification number (PIN) but rejected the idea when Caroline insisted she could only ever remember four digits at a time. So four numbers became the world standard.

It took only two years to go from a rapid pitch to delivering the world’s first cash machine. But what was the prestigious address for such a technological wonder. Tokyo? Frankfurt? New York? No, Enfield in Middlesex. By keeping the launch relatively low profile – although Reg Varney, the comedian and future star of On the Buses, was on hand to officially launch the machine – Barclays and partners De La Rue could play down any teething problems. In fact, being made to look foolish by the robot teller was such a concern that a smaller than average man was actually concealed inside the machine to push the first bundle of notes through the slot in case of a breakdown.

Today there are more than two million cash machines in the world, and the only real difference from the Enfield model is that we use plastic cards and not glowing cheques to access them. John Shepherd-Barron was awarded an OBE in 2004, his only real reward for the idea. Ironically, having never patented the concept because he wanted to keep carbon-14 secret from potential forgers, he didn’t ever get any cash out of his own invention.

BRIGHT SPARK – WILLIAM BICKFORD INVENTS THE SAFETY FUZE

Working with gunpowder was a deadly business in the nineteenth century, so William Bickford’s invention of the safety fuse – a design in use to this day – was truly life-saving. Born in Ashburton, Devon, he moved to Truro in Cornwall, where he worked as both a currier and leather merchant. Even though he had no direct involvement with the mining industry, Bickford grew increasingly troubled by the number of fatal accidents and serious injuries that resulted as miners tried to break up large masses of rock. The method at the time was to use straws or goose quills filled with gunpowder. These had a wildly unpredictable burn rate and many fatalities were caused by explosives going off before miners could reach cover or by miners walking back to see if their fuses were still burning… and discovering too late that they were.

One day in 1831 Bickford had his eureka moment while watching a friend, James Bray, twining rope. As he observed Bray twisting separate strands together, Bickford realised that a similar approach could be used in order to make a safer type of fuse. He adapted the rope-making technique by trickling gunpowder into strands of jute cord as they were being twisted together. He then coated the strands in a waterproof varnish to create the safety fuse.

To help with the process, Bickford designed a machine that would spin the strands of jute over the gunpowder for him and also prevent them from ever untwisting. The finished product was so accurate that a burn rate of 30 seconds per 1.2 m (1 ft) of fuse could be safely relied upon. All that remained was for the person laying the explosive to cut off an appropriate length, in order to guarantee a safe escape.

Bickford patented ‘The Patent Safety Rod’, later renamed the ‘Safety Fuze’, and travelled Britain’s mines showing off his invention, gaining the approval of – and just as importantly, orders from – mine owners. He co-founded the factory that would eventually go on to become Bickford, Smith, & Company, and work soon began on the production of these new fuses. Within the first year, they had manufactured 72 km (45 miles) of fuse and the factory operated for more than 100 years, going on to make thousands of miles of it. Sadly, William died shortly before the factory opened and did not witness the profound effect his invention had in the mines, saving hundreds of lives and creating a process for making fuses which remains largely the same to this day. He truly was a bright spark.