In 1608 a Dutch spectacle maker put two lenses in a tube to spot enemy ships, and the government wouldn’t even give him a patent. Four hundred years later the same idea is a ten-billion-dollar gold mirror a million miles from home, catching light older than the Earth. Renee and Marc follow the glass from Galileo to Webb: telescopes held up with string, a mirror polished perfectly to the wrong shape, and Renee’s forty-year grudge against a smudge.

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Join Renee and Marc as they discuss the history of technology, and what it teaches us about now.

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For this week's episode Marc and Renee look to the sky. Big fans of telescopes and astronomy the Nerds run through the history and future of astronomical instruments. Humble beginnings as tools for naval intelligence to instruments that peer into the very beginning of time.

So, our song this week is about that longing to see farther that you can with your eye and the desire to see the heavenly bodies more clearly. Lyrics below.

[Verse 1]
Lay me down in the cool night grass
Mama gazing way up high
That one's a world just like ours
Just a light up in the sky

[Pre-Chorus]
Only little lights
Only tiny sparks
Twinkle through the night
Hiding in the dark

[Chorus]
I want to see farther (see farther)
Farther than the eye
I want to see clearer (see clearer)
Clear across the sky

[Verse 2]
Held the glass up to my eye
Jupiter came swimming in
Four small moons were at his side
Saturn wore a silver ring

[Pre-Chorus]
Oh, I never knew
All that waited there
Hiding in the blue
Hanging in the air

[Chorus]
I want to see farther (see farther)
Farther than the eye
I want to see clearer (see clearer)
Clear across the sky

[Bridge]
Every light I'm looking at
Left before my mama's day
Some of them burned out and gone
Still they're shining down my way
Lookin' back (lookin' back)
A long, long way

[Final Chorus - key change]
I want to see farther (see farther)
Farther, far away
I want to see clearer (see clearer)
Clear to yesterday

[Outro]
Farther (farther)
Farther than the eye

We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes.

Join Renee and Marc as they discuss the history of technology, and what it teaches us about now.

email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com

Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Merch is available on the site too. It helps cover the cost of the podcast.

A secret radar valve crossed the Atlantic in 1940, a candy bar melted in an engineer’s pocket, and the first microwave oven weighed 750 pounds and needed its own plumbing. Fifty years later it was a $200 box in nine out of ten kitchens. Marc and Renee get into the magnetron, a radio telescope tricked by somebody’s lunch, and a brother who set his hair on fire with a paper towel. And, after eighty years, why your leftovers are still cold in the middle.

Shout out to Tom for correcting us on some pigeon facts from the storage episode. We talk about that and thank Tom at the end of the show after the outro. Here's a link to a film he worked on about microfilm. https://www.tombessoir.com/microfilm

We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes.

Join Renee and Marc as they discuss the history of technology, and what it teaches us about now.

email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com

Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Merch is available on the site too. It helps cover the cost of the podcast.