Kobuk the Destroyer
99% Invisible
This episode of 99% Invisible explores the fascinating world of product testing, focusing on the unconventional method of using grizzly bears to test
Key takeaways
- Realistic product testing often requires simulating actual use conditions, including unpredictable behaviors like those of bears.
- Kobuk's success as a tester underscores the value of natural behavior over artificial simulations in evaluating durability.
Main topics
- Bear-resistant product testing
- Real-world vs. laboratory testing
Notable quotes
If your product survived Kobuk, it might even get written up in a local paper.
Conclusion
Product testing, whether through bears or algorithms, plays a crucial role in ensuring
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) This is 99 % Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. I live in Northern California, and when it comes to camping in the backcountry up here, bears are always something you plan for. The best way to avoid bears is to not attract them in the first place, and that means putting your food and any fragrant items into a bear canister. But how do we know that bear canisters actually work? For decades, product testers would assess the bear resistance of a canister by dropping a weight on it from a set height or by trying to puncture it with a spike that simulated a bear's tooth. But they kept running up against a problem. These tests weren't close enough to reality. They weren't accounting for a bear's creativity Speaker 1 (0:44) and resourcefulness. Speaker 2 (0:46) So then, in the early 2000s, they hit upon an idea of testing the canisters by using something slightly more realistic. Bears. Speaker 1 (0:56) A manufacturer would say, I have this new design for a bear-resistant canister that I want campers to use. They bring it to this bear sanctuary. They fill it up with bear treats like fish and honey and all sorts of goodies. And they just throw it to a grizzly bear. Speaker 2 (1:16) This is journalist Alex Davies. He says that these bears will bite, chew, claw, and jump up and down on these products. If a product gets through one hour of contact with a bear and isn't opened, it gets certified as bear resistant. Some bears are more successful than others. And the most famous of these bears? His name is Kobuk. Kobuk became Kobuk Speaker 1 (1:40) the Destroyer because he was the best. Speaker 2 (1:43) As a cub, Kobuk was dubbed a problem bear for getting into human food. He was removed from the Alaska wilderness and brought to a sanctuary where he and his fellow problem bears were put to work. Speaker 1 (1:54) And there, instead of becoming problem bears, they became problem-solving bears. Because the work of the bear sanctuary wasn't just to keep bears safe. It was actually to have those bears test out supposedly bear-resistant products. Kobuk, above all other Speaker 2 (2:15) bears, became known for his ability to break into almost anything. If your product survived Kobuk, it might even get written up in a local paper. Kobuk was more Speaker 1 (2:24) a destroyer of ego and of product design than anything. He was just really good at it. Speaker 2 (2:32) Alex Davies is the author of the new book, Kobuk the Destroyer, and other tales from the wild and unseen world of test engineering. His book takes us through the long history of how things are tested and all the behind-the-scenes work that goes into making sure things work. Speaker 1 (2:48) And I constantly felt like an emotional pendulum, where one day I'd feel like everything is crap. nothing is tested properly. They're all cutting corners. They're just trying to make a profit. And then the next day I'd read a different example. I'd go, oh my God, these engineers are heroes. The work they put into figuring out to make this thing safe for my kid is incredible. And obviously, like all things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. But I do think that for the most part, you can come away with a sense of awe. that there is all of this work that goes into not making something, but making it work. Speaker 2 (3:33) I think when people, certainly when I picture product testing, I don't picture a bear. I picture like a man in a white lab coat, maybe with eye protection on, and he's dropping a bowling ball on a hard hat to see if it endures such treatment. In your book, I think you roughly classify this kind of testing as limit testing. Could you describe limit testing and its origins? Speaker 1 (3:55) Limit testing is probably the most basic kind of testing. You're examining a product usually for its strength and for its durability. So it's everything from how far can you bend the wings of a 777 Boeing airplane before they snap to how many times can you hit the space bar on your computer before it breaks. Speaker 1 (4:22) The understanding of a product's limits has been around as long as people have been building stuff. Everyone knew that if you're building a new branch, it has to be really strong. But the actual work of limit testing, of trying to figure out in a scientific way with a rigorous method of evaluation, I trace that back to the foundation of the underwriters' laboratories, which came about in the very beginning of the 20th century. And that was started by a guy named W.H. Merrill. And he had this idea of... People are terrified of electricity because it sets a lot of stuff on fire. Speaker 2 (5:13) This Speaker 1 (5:13) was an age when entire cities were still burning down on a fairly regular basis. Speaker 1 (5:21) Also, at the same time, a lot of electrical appliances were coming into the home. Before, you had an electric iron. An iron was a chunk of iron that you got really hot and you pressed it on your clothes. That's why it's called an iron. And now, all of a sudden, electricity was coming into the home, and Merrill saw this business opportunity to say, like, hey, what if I actually tested these things to make sure They're not liable to set your entire home or your entire city on fire. And he created a whole business out of this. Underwriters Labs has always been about testing a product against a manufacturer's claims. Speaker 2 (6:04) And Speaker 1 (6:05) so within 15 years or so, they were testing millions of products a year. And the products that passed got the Underwriters Labs seal of approval physically stamped onto them. And that became a real mark of consumer trust at a time when electricity coming into the home, all new kinds of products coming into the home, created a new kind of risk. Test engineering rose to meet the challenge of that risk. Speaker 2 (6:32) Yeah. And this, you know, this mark of Underwriters Laboratory, you know, it really mattered to consumers and to retailers. Speaker 1 (6:39) It became a huge deal. There were entire cities, I think Los Angeles was one of them, and store chains like JCPenney, which existed at the time, that said, you can't buy an electric appliance if it's not UL approved. It has to have that stamp on there. Speaker 2 (6:57) I mean, to do this type of testing, you need a lot of standardization, right? How did Underwriters Labs go about making sure everything was tested in a way that was considered fair and trustworthy? Speaker 1 (7:09) They kept incredibly detailed handwritten reports at the time of just exactly what it did. When they were testing safes, for example, which the big thing with safes at the time was... One, so that they could keep burglars out. But they were also really important for resisting fire. Because if your building caught fire and all of your business papers were in your safe, it was hugely important that all of your business records didn't burn up. So a lot of the testing they did on safes was fire resistance. It wasn't just, we're going to heat this thing to 1500 degrees Fahrenheit and see what happens. They had a very specific heat. over time gradient. And it was this chart. And it said after three minutes, it should be 90 degrees. After four and a half minutes, it should be 115 degrees. And that's how meticulous they were in their testing. Speaker 2 (8:02) Yeah, it brings up this interesting dilemma. I mean, I just wonder how manufacturers and testers decide how safe is safe enough, like how reliable is reliable enough? How does this line get determined for each product? Speaker 1 (8:16) If you look at different products, it's always a sliding scale. An airplane has to be more reliable than your laptop's keyboard, Speaker 2 (8:23) right? Speaker 1 (8:24) A medicine bottle that could get in the reach of a two-year-old has to be more child-resistant than a jar of jelly. And it's always this kind of negotiation between things, asking, what's the product? What's the user? What's the cost? And what's the risk? Speaker 2 (8:46) Right, right. The designing of these tests is, you know, they can get pretty ingenious. And there's ways in which you're trying to sort of balance this idea of repeatability versus real world uses. I wanted to talk about the bird ingestion test in this regard when it comes to aviation testing. Can you describe what is going on there and what they're testing for? Speaker 1 (9:10) Sure. Speaker 1 (9:12) If you remember the miracle on the Hudson story where Captain Sully had a bunch of geese take out both engines of his planes and he miraculously, although real pilots will say, well, he just did what, anyway, that's going down a rabbit hole. Speaker 1 (9:28) Captain Sully had a bunch of geese take out both engines on his plane, and he very