JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Today is Monday, November 25th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.
NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, the WORLD History Book.
Two years ago, a tech company releases a powerful Artificial Intelligence product that changes the way people research and write.
Also today, what to do with Thanksgiving leftovers? Nearly 70 years ago a food supplier turned tons of extra food into a multi-million dollar business.
ROUGH: But first, the life of a famous Bible illustrator. Here’s WORLD’s Emma Perley:
EMMA PERLEY: 220 years ago, a small, sickly baby is born to a poor family in England. As he grows up, John Kitto takes refuge in books to get away from the harsh reality of poverty. At eight years old he receives some formal education, but is sent to work three years later. Kitto never goes back to school.
At 12 years old, he begins helping his father with the family roofing business. One day as Kitto clambers up the ladder with some supplies, he takes a misstep. He falls 35 feet to the ground, hitting his head. When he wakes up at home, he’s surrounded by friends, and Kitto sees that they’re writing to communicate … Voice actor Ed Phillips reads from his journal:
ED PHILLIPS: I was very slow in learning that my hearing was entirely gone … I said in great astonishment, “Why do you write to me ? why not speak ? Speak ! speak !” Those who stood around the bed exchanged significant looks of concern, and the writer soon displayed upon his slate the awful words — ” You ARE DEAF.”
Kitto turns to shoemaking at a workhouse, and he feels isolated.
But he eventually makes good friends at the factory. He starts praying more often and works hard. As he studies the Bible, he becomes convinced that God is calling him to missionary work.
PHILLIPS: Were it possible, O my God, that I could become a minister of Thy Word; that I could be permitted to point out to erring sinners the paths of peace and salvation. What more could I desire of Thee?
Kitto continues to grow in his faith, reading a wide range of Christian books. He is offered a job as a printer at a missionary college, because of his theological knowledge.
And he eventually travels the world, taking in the landscape of the Middle East and its culture.
PHILLIPS: At a very early period of life, and in the midst of untoward circumstances, and of occupations which left me the least possible leisure, I was a diligent collector of all the odds and ends of knowledge that fell in my way.
Kitto returns to England to design Bible illustrations, inspired by his travels. Unlike most other illustrations of the time, his portraits show careful research and cultural knowledge. He anonymously publishes the first volume covering Genesis to Ruth in 1836, and the work is widely praised. Kitto immediately sets out to create another. And another. He tells a friend of his labors,
PHILLIPS: It has been of infinite advantage as an exercise on my own mind. It has afforded me an opportunity of bringing nearly all my resources into play.
Kitto contributes 23 books to Christian scholarship, including nonfiction history books and a 3 volume Pictorial Bible. He passes away in Germany on November 25th, 1854. He was 50 years old.
Next, after the Thanksgiving season of 1953, food corporation Swanson puzzles over what to do with 260 tons of leftover turkey.
The corporation buys 5,000 aluminum trays. They then arm employees with spatulas and ice cream scoops. In an assembly line, they fill the trays with turkey, sweet potatoes, gravy, peas and cornbread dressing. And voila! They’ve just prepared a Thanksgiving-themed dinner …
AUDIO: They take you away from the everyday, to a world where the food makes you want to stay. Those real sensational international frozen dinners from Swanson!
Although Swanson isn’t the first company to sell frozen prepackaged meals, its version sees huge success. For only 98 cents, a home cooked meal can be ready in 25 minutes.
Convenience—combined with the rise in family dinnertime around the television set—makes these TV dinners an affordable and appealing choice. Audio from a 1955 Swanson commercial.
AUDIO: Lucky me! My wife uses Swanson TV turkey dinners, and make your husband lucky too. Get Swanson TV turkey dinners …
Within the first year, Swanson sells 10 million Thanksgiving dinners. Their success inspires other companies to capitalize on frozen meal production. TV dinners eventually decline in popularity due to health concerns, as they’re quite high in saturated fat and sodium. But at least 128 million Americans still eat frozen meals every year.
Finally, on November 30th, 2022, OpenAI launches ChatGPT. Audio here from an ABC News interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
AUDIO: I think people really have fun with it and they see the possibility and they see the ways this can help them, this can inspire them, this can help people create, help people learn, help people do all of these different tasks.
What does ChatGPT have to say for itself on this anniversary? We asked it to find out …
OpenAI built on their GPT-3.5 model, a powerful AI designed to understand and generate human-like text. The tech company trained it using a massive dataset of text from the internet.
This approach helped the AI learn to respond more naturally and accurately in conversations. The launch made ChatGPT a hit for casual chats, professional tasks, and creative projects. It quickly became a widely-used tool.
OpenAI has stayed true to its mission: to make AI safe, useful, and available to everyone, proving that technology can truly help shape a better future. As of November 2024, ChatGPT continues to be a leading AI language model, with over 200 million weekly active users worldwide.
Well, there’s no humility there…
Large language models like ChatGPT have become a huge part of daily life in the two years since its launch. Everything from search engines to cell phones have embraced the technology.
AUDIO: What I hope instead is that we successively develop more and more powerful systems that we can all use in different ways that get integrated into our daily lives, into our economy, and become an amplifier of human will.
But the tool is only as good as the material it samples, leading to concerns about biased and outright false returns.
That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Perley.
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