Joining me today, he reads books you know, it's Chris Joel.

[MUFFLED BY COFFEE] Hello.

Drinking coffee. I timed that really...

Prioritise, prioritise baby.

Everybody's favourite Gary Brannan, Gary Brannan.

And so the man says to the lady, "I'll have another go, but I don't know if I can fit another bread roll up my ass!"

Now, now the question is, I know Gary was planning to prep lines for this series.

And the bounciest man on the Internet, Matt Gray

Series five. Welcome!

In front of me I've got an article from Wikipedia and these folks can't see it.

Every fact they get right is a point and a ding [DING].

And there's a special prize for a particularly good answers, which is ♫[MYSTERY BISCUITS]♫

If you've never watched this before, you're in for a treat.

Every season we get new people. You... oh my God, the s*** you are about to endure. Let's face it.

Today we are talking about the hydraulic telegraph.

Holy moly! That's a wet telegram.

I, erm, well I'll give you a point. There is water involved.

Well yes, there is f***ing water involved!

IT'S HYDRAULIC!

I'm a moron, I know nothing about science.

It's all pissing witchcraft, even I know that bit!

And you are still getting a point for it. [DING]

Well I won't moan too much then.

"Stand in front of the nozzle to receive your message."

On that point...

"Aunt Mildred says hello, but I don't want to tell you what she's been up to."

On that point yesterday, I genuinely, this is a genuine story.

I saw a coach company called Morse Coaches. Right?

That's good.

It was reversing, but I couldn't understand why the beeping noise was just saying 'S' repeatedly.

It was probably just saying 'eeeeee'!

The thing is, we all pedanted your Morse code there, in different ways.

He's like, "that's E". I'm like, "no that's T, that's a long one".

Surely it could say "Warning! This vehicle is reversing!" in Morse, is what I was what I was thinking.

People wouldn't move out of the way. They would be too busy trying to read it.

W... A... R... N... [THUD]

You committed to that hit there.

I did. I did, I did, I did, yeah.

It wasn't Morse code.

Not any version of it.

Flags!

Little tin flags or something. Metal flags that would pop up.

So it spells out the message.

You're thinking of the optical telegraph.

I'm thinking of an optical telegraph powered by water, thank you very much.

Ooh! I'm going to give you a point for that. [DING]

- Ooh! - Fountains?

No.

No. How would you... There are flags and there is water.

And this is... First of all, let me clue you in.

And there are shoes! And there are boxes.

And there are houses... And there are doors.

And orang-utans.

There are also oranges.

Today we have the handle on nouns.

- There are two versions of this... - Hello children.

Welcome along.

Today we are learning about things.

Today we are learning about flags.

And there is water.

And shoes.

And there are antelope.

Goodbye. We'll see you next week.

Goodbye.

I don't think we can really explain what Tom is though, without adjectives.

Are you done(?)

Probably not, but you know, have another go.

That's the most exasperated look you've ever done.

"Are you done, children(?)"

Anyway.

Is it some kind of coastal system for getting messages out into the water, by sending...

different pressures to pop up things, that would spell out a message?

Yeah, I'll give you the point there [DING].

- I'll definitely give you the point. - So it's Pop Up Pirate, but telegraph?

Sounds like it, yeah.

When do you think this was?

19th century. Everything was iron and hydraulic then.

- Right. - Ooh, steady.

This is not the version we are talking about. There is a 19th century version. Again, I'll give you a point [DING].

But, I'm going to come to that later.

Is this the mid 90s version in Eureka, in Halifax?

Ooh!

I mean...

Northern reference.

I get... I went there.

Specific northern reference.

- We all went. - We all went as kids, to Eureka

It's still there as far as I know.

- It is still there. - But I didn't know they had a hydraulic telegraph?

Neither do I, but if there was somewhere that would have one.

They had a massive Archimedes screw on the ceiling.

Lucky Archimedes.

Wait! We are talking about Archimedes, we are pretty much in the right area.

Ah! So Greco-Roman

Yeah! Fourth century BC Greece.

Yeah! [DING] Point.

I'm trying to imagine a fourth century Greece. I'm just trying to put Greased Lightning into Latin,

and I'm failing badly, at the minute.

Well if you can't none of us have got a chance.

Hang on, hang on. He's studied Latin.

Classical education.

It's been more than a decade since I got my GCSE in Latin now.

Can you manage, "I've got chills, they're multiplying"?

Probably not.

- Habeat... - Yes.

Chillea..?

Er.

- Frig... frig... - Expandero!

Habeat frigits... frigidare-something.

Et saeu... erm, multiplicanus. Or something like that.

Multiplicanus est. Yeah. Yeah.

Corrections in the comments, for all of you YouTube watchers who know Latin.

So. Ancient Greece

Yes.

There are two signal towers, on two hills. With two identical tubs of water.

How do they get them to both show the same message?

Inscriptions on the side of the tub of water. How do they get them to synchronise?

Gentle and well timed piddling?

Oh, I'm so tempted to give you a point.

Gentle and well timed horse piddling.

No, they're not putting water in.

Gentle Piddling is a village isn't it?

It's in the Cotswolds.

You're thinking of Much-Piddling-on-the-Wold, there.

They let some out? They let some water out with a tap or something like that.

Yes, a spigot.

[DING] Ooh! What else!

And did they have a tube from the bottom of one, to the bottom of the other? So it auto levelled.

No. That's the British system that comes later. So I'll give you a point [DING].

But, that's not how they synchronised between two far away hills.

Men yelling?

Mobile phones?

No, it can't be something else, because the water is the communication method.

Or is that storing the message?

Hang on, we never actually established that this water is any method of communication.

At the minute we just have two towers that let some water out occasionally.

Yeah, and there's things inscribed on little bowls.

- OK. - Where the water comes out.

So how do you get both sides to time when they're taking the plug out and putting it back in again?

Lights?

Mmm, fourth century BC?

Candles?

I mean it's a big candle.

Fire! Bonfire!

There we go. [DING]

- 'Cos that's the way they used to communicate anyway. - Big candle.

Big candle! Bonfire.

"Big candle!"

Why the water? They lit fires anyway.

Because a bonfire can only send one signal.

"I'm on fire!"

"By, it's warm out t'day!"

It can send two signals.

"I'm not on fire."

- That's true. - On and off.

Yeah, well that's how they did it. [DING]

Binary.

Unplug. Off. Put it back in. What's the message? You both read down your bowls.

Bowl says "I'm on fire!"

Must be a big bowl.

They said an earthenware bowl. The depth being some three cubits.

What the hell is a cubit?

-- It's about there... -- There to there, innit?

Oh! Yes, absolutely. Have a point. [DING] I was going to look up 'cubit definition' there, but that's roughly right.

- Has he got two dancing cubits? - Those are my cubits, baby!

Oh God!

So yeah, about... yea big. and presumably draining quite slowly so they can synchronise...

"Please send chips", or whatever... the Greek equivalent of that is.

Pita!

Yeah.

Half way down, one of them is just that laughing and crying emoji.

Drama!

"LOL."

Smiling poo.

It's halfway between ROFL and LOL. I don't know where we stand on this?

ROL.

He's sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth a bit.

No, its not that, it's like anything where you use LOL

You see it reach LOL on the watermark, you look over, he's just sat there, doing that.

- Slight intake of breath. - You just see...

I don't know why I had this ancient Greek man looking at his phone.

Cause that's what they used to communicate, I just said!

LOL has fallen out of fashion now though. It is just emojis now.

People don't type LOL as much.

The amount... it's one of those kind of things, isn't it,

where people who aren't used to emojis yet, keep using the laughing and crying one.

- For actual crying. - Yeah!

Which changes the tone of a message, like

"I'm sorry to hear your aunt's died."

And then have the crying with laughter emoji on it.

Well, it's like the parents who thought LOL meant lots of love.

Yes! That happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

"Sorry to hear you broke your ankle, LOL."

But...

That's like MSN messenger was.

Remember MSN Messenger, everybody?

No they don't! Some of them are too young for it!

It was like Facebook messenger...only s***er.

You would wait all night for your friend to appear, and they may not.

So there was an idea.

As I think you said, British 19th century.

Yes.

For two connected tubes.

♫ Tu-u-bes! ♫

I don't know why I said it like that

♫ Tubes. ♫

Um, and the idea was, you would put in water or take out water and it would synchronise at the other side.

What were some of the problems with that system?

Putting the tube in, in the first place?

I'll give you a point. [DING] It was £200 a mile. Which in 1838 money, is a lot of money.

Compared to just sending a messenger.

They would have to be made out of copper or something expensive.

- Oh yeah. - Rather than just PVC tube from Wickes.

Yeah.

- That's a hardware store. - Cast iron was often used for hydraulic tubes.

'Cos they could take the pressure.

What distance are we talking? Are we talking like over a dock, or over London?

Cause London was basically hydraulically powered up until the 1920s.

Oh that's true.

London had a big hydraulic power system.

So, if it's over London...

You should explain how that works.

Well you just had big accumulators. So big towers would be used to store the pressure.

And it would be used for moving lifts, for goods lifts, for cranes.

It would be powered off a central hydraulic power system.

- Cool. - With pipes all over London.

And they're still... I think they're used as cable runs now.

Under London. It was a huge London wide system. Especially using the docks, with dock gates,

and cranes and lifts and other things that need... powering left and hither and yon.

Like dumb waiters in hotels.

So they just have a massive water tank at the centre of the system, that created...

Well several tanks, yeah.

...created the pressure. That gets pumped through.

And you can use some pressure if you wanted?

Yeah!

For the love of God, will somebody Biscuits that man!

♫[MYSTERY BISCUITS]♫

That's fair. That's fair, thank you for reminding me to Biscuit that.