i've been bingeing your lectures since I found them a few days ago, I think you have no idea how fantastic your production is, I find your material super valueble, thanks so much for sharing this, just to let you know, I watch every minute and to be honest I wouldn't mind if they were 3hours long!

Just found these lectures, brilliant idea even for an eighty year old. You never stop learning, thank you for my enjoyment.

Binge watching the whole course from Buenos Aires. Already knew quite a bit about these subjects but I'm learning a lot more. Matt makes it entertaining to learn.

Love your lectures. One clarification. Being an electrical engineer, I listened closely to your words about Edison (who was not a very nice person, nor was he a brilliant inventor). Edison did not start Westinghouse. George Westinghouse founded Westinghouse. Westinghouse got many of his patents from Nicola Tesla who was a trained engineer and worked for Edison until they had a falling out over Tesla's desire to go to alternating current (as the world is today) instead of Edison's direct current. Edison's company was The Edison Electric Illuminating Company. Like many inventors, Edison was not a good manager. He got into financial trouble. JP Morgan rescued him, but Edison lost control of the company which evolved into General Electric where he was given the token position of senior inventor. Edison did not invent the light bulb. Humphry Davy holds that honor of creating the first bulb in 1802. It was not commercially usable and neither were the many improvements until Edison came along. In 1840 it was improved by using a platinum filament. Problem was platinum's resistance decreases as it gets hot to incandesce. As the resistance decreases it draws more current making it hotter yet. You can see that this can snowball leading to the bulb's self destruction. Edison overcame this problem in 1879 by using carbon impregnated string whose resistance goes up as it gets hot thereby causing current it draws to decrease as it gets hotter, and decrease current allows it to cool. Hence carbon allowed bulbs to be self regulating. Interesting sidenote: George Westinghouse outbid Edison for equipping the first large scale use of light bulbs (the platinum filament kind) at the 1893 Columbia Exposition in Chicago (bet Edison burned over that!). Ultimately the Westinghouse/Tesla combo was many times more successful in determining the future of electricity in America, in fact the whole world. However kids never learn the facts about that in school because it appears America fixated on the romanticism of a story about Edison that is not complete nor factual -- much like America glorified all the gilded era robber barons whose moral compasses pointed nadir indicating the direction of their souls in the afterlife (except for George Eastman).

Learning so much from ur videos Incredible content Thank you

Thank you for putting these out for everyone to watch! Im not a student, but i still cant get enough since i found you about 4 days ago!

I’ve never had this such a good history of design lecture. It really helpful. 🤩

I'm loving these lectures - such a great teacher. Just a minor UK geography point: Crystal Palace is nowhere near Battersea.

your lectures are amazing! thank you!

In ChCh, New Zealand where I grew up there's a museum with pieces that went to the 1852 Expo. I was fascinated by a stove chimney in the shape of a suit of Armour, European culture in NZ doesn't go back to the middle ages so its like a design statement saying "we may be a tiny place at the bottom of the world, but we have heritage and history too"

I’ve done some steam bending and also thin strip laminating in my wood working business. You mentioned steam bending laminating which you said is usually one or the other but not done together. I actually had to do some steam bending of strips because they were too hard to cold bend and glue. I steamed several strips and then clamped them into my form to cool and set. Then after cooling I applied glue between the layers and then re clamped them to create the final form. It was a replacement of one side of a 60’s cantilever chair that a client wanted to save because it was a sentimental object and too valuable to just discard. FYI - enjoying your lecturers, getting some great historical insight on design. I went through art school 40 years ago but always loved furniture design so this is great. If interested I could send you a picture of the process I did on that repair.

Matthew, you should put product placement adds or something in the outtakes, my kids won’t let me turn you off until they have seen all the way to the end for the out takes. At this point, I can’t tell the difference between your lectures and a marvel movie 😊 please tell us you are sponsored by a shoe company ❤

I love , The 78's shellac , you should do a video about the beginning of recorded Music!😎

Hey, Mama herself is on today's shirt !!! Can't wait to see the next one ;-)

There was Also... the 1909 Baker Electric. (See Jay Leno's channel) It was marketed towards Rich young Ladies who's Daddies could afford them. I believe He said there were LOTSSS of the in NYC! That they were a Big hit there!

Thomas Edison's labs and home can be visited in West Orange, NJ. Both are fascinating!!

Did Thonet chairs come with inscrutable Ikea-like instructions and random extra parts?

The "keyboard is designed to be inefficient" idea is a myth. It's very common for R or D to follow E, and they are right next to E. G and H are commonly used together... and are right next to each other. Uncommon letters Q and Z are hidden on the left in the corners. If the keyboard was designed as the myth described, then it was a failure. Rather, it seems clear that the design aimed to group letters that were used together, but in a time before the field of linguistics met the field of statistics.

Edison didn’t start Westinghouse. Westinghouse started Westinghouse. Tesla and Westinghouse were competitors to Edison. Your video states that Edison started Westinghouse to distribute products. That is incorrect.