Post War Inventions and Mount Lowe

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The year is eighteen sixty one, and America is deeply disconnected From east to west, our nation is the biggest it has ever been, and yet construction of the Trcontinental raailroad won't even begin for another two years. On a whistle stop trip to take the oath of office, it had taken the newly elected Abraham Lincoln eleven whole days to travel from Cincinnati to Washington, DC by train On a genius or a madman would think it was possible to cut that trip down to just one night Sabius Sobiesky Kulencourt Low. That was his full name. hisis parents gave him names. they pulled out of obscure novels This is author and journalist Jack hit Faddus Low was one of these sort of huckster Pomoters, not quite a con man Carnival Barker part inventor part scientist And Thaddeus Low wore those eccentricities for everyone to see. long flowing hair and that' sort of Mistachio that was popular and that time you also had what was then called a chin puff So he had that sort of wizardly look,? The look of a great eccentric man of science of that time And it was this chin puffed man of science who had come up with a new scheme that involved traveling from Cincinnati to Washington, DC in a single night carried in the basket of a gas bag Well we call it a hot air balloon, but at the time, it was also known as a gas bag. Gas bags have been around for a while at this point A lot of them just going up and coming back down Tether to the ground That was how the first balloon flight had happened near Paris almost eighty years earlier But in the decades that followed, no one had really discovered what to do with the gas bag I think every new technology enters that sort of liminal period where it's either a novelty gimmick. It's gonna to become silly putty or it's going to become the computer. Yeah. right. And the balloon at this time was sort of in that strange sort of twilight space. Yeah. It was seen as both like sort of Magical, mystical. I mean we have always wanted to escape Earth's clutches. And the balloon was the first actual real practical way. that we could do it But it was also it seemen as incredibly dangerous and people did float away on these things and nobody ever heard from them again Um They were incredibly dangerous. They already seem they seem dangerous to me now. Like I would never go in one And remember, this is hydrogen gas. is this is the Hindenberg. Okaykay? So you know, we have this really clean, lovely floating image of a hot air balloon. One reason maybe why we should build them gas bags is because These were really the beta models of the modern hot air below You know, the very balloon smelled like it came out of the, you know, the pits of hell Gas bags were so dangerous, in fact, that King Louis XVI suggested that if balloons were going to go up untethered, then convicted criminals should be the ones to pilot them the gas bag's considerable flaws, people were searching for its ultimate purpose. Thatatdy you slow. knew what the real purpose would be He wanted to invent Onight Mail carrier serviced, sort of the FedEx of eighteen sixty one. Wow And he believed, as did others, that up in the upper atmosphere there was supposed to be this consistent west to east wind. This is not necessarily even close to true, but it was the theory at the time And if he was right about the wind and all Thaddus needed to achieve his dream. was money And so, on april nineteenth, eighteen sixty one, he set up an evening of fundraising in what was then known as the Ballooning Cital of America Cincinnati Cincinnati became sort of the Balloon beginning center. I mean, a lot of balloonists would come there and try out there balloons, the Cincinnati Gazette actually had hired a Mr. JC Bellman as their first official quote Balloon editor That's a golden age of journalism right there. You have a balloon editor on staff. You know when they fired the balloon editor, Roman, that's when the decline of print journalism began And it was in this boom of balloon journalism that Thaddeus Low wanted to demonstrate to investors that his gas bag, an aircraft he named the Enterprise, would take him from Cincinnati to Washington, DC in a single night There were several days of festivities like Le gave an add dress at the opera house and there were parties and so on. But finally, this big night comes He shows up in classic sort of American style. He's in a stove pipe hat, the kind of Lincoln wore. He's in a broadcloth coat, which is we would recognize it as like tuxedo tails. And late toward the end of the evening, his assistants come in and say the winds are moving east. It's time to go. So he gets in there with like, you know bottles of water and food and brand new wet inky copies of the Cincinnati paper so that when he arrives he can prove that he was in Cincinnati that morning. Oh yeah yeah and Cuts loose and then poof He just disappears into the night Just like that. Thaddeus vanished He wouldn't be seen or heard from again until the next morning by which point he hoped to have landed on the mall in Washington, DC In reality, Thaddus wouldn't see the sunrise behind the unfinished Washington Monument. In fact, he wouldn't even get particularly close But Thaddeus Lowe's flight from Cincinnati would prove to be a defining moment in his life Instead of taking him to the nation's capital, his foul smelling balloon would instead lead him to a series of new discoveries discoveries that continue to shape America. T this very day from ninety nine percent invisible in BBC stududios. This is a history of the United States in a hundred Objects I'm Rowan Mars. And today, the Enterprise Gas bag. and the birth of the American obsession with pushing higher and higher. It's four AM. Thaddy sllow is now alone in the wicker basket of his gas bag. somewhere far above Cincinati, Ohio but he isn't exactly sure Where? It's even sort of a mystery to him as to what he would find when he, you know, went up this high Night Of course, remember, this is before the invention of the electric bulb. So when night fell It was a night So he could look down a mile or two or three and of course, he saw nothing. and up above him, he just saw stars and some moons Right And while he's up there, he's doing his tests and measurements in this little basket beneath this hydrogen gas fill balloon and out here at the edge of the then known universe for humans He discovered the oddities of being there He is coming along at these amazing speeds that no one had ever you know reached at this time But he's stunned to discover that, you know Inside his little basket, he's not moving at all He says, Everything around me was perfectly quiet and still So still that I could have carried a lighted candle without any protection And I let loose sheets of paper without fear of them being disturbed The reason for this may not be quite clear to my readers But I was floating with as well as in the undisturbed atmosphere There was not the slightest sense of motion whatsoever So Low sort of discovers that He's not only in the wind He is the wit heading Who knows where Thadeus had embarked on a kind of journey that nobody had ever been on before He was suspended in the inky black sky all on his own. And in that darkness Thaneas had no way to orient himself. He wouldn't know where he was until the sun came up the next morning. He comes down and sees an open field And there's a man at a plow. that he Let's off some gas and comes down low enough that he can shout out What state is this And the man, he looks left, he looks right far off into the woods, but it doesn't make any sense that the sand would come from the woods And does it see anybody And he keeps looking around. Low shouts it again What state is this And he just keeps looking And Low later realizes, of course, the man didn't look up Because no one had ever looked up before. Why would you look up? This down didn't come from U. Up hadn't been invented y right the guy the guy does shout. he finally he just shouts towards the woods because he's What's the answer? least says Virginia. And then Lo thinks, well, I don't I don't want to stop here. So he unties one of his bags and lets the sand out And it falls near the man who finally looks up. and then when he sees what's above him, he goes running off into the woods to hide The man runs for his life But Le decides to keep going, figuring he must still be close to DC In reality He was much further south He travels on a little bit further And he finally does come down into a field in Unionville, South Carolina remember I mentioned to you, april nineteenth, eighteen sixty one, That date might ring a little familiar in your head because april twelfth, one week before. This is the firing on Fort Sumter Thaddeus had found himself in the deep south onlyn one week after the first shot of the Civil War Des Thdaddeas know that the Civil War had started a week before he left on this trip They did, but of course and this is something he's going to find out in the next like twenty four hours. You know, the shot had been fired, you know, but no life had been lost. So yes, the civil warar had started, but The Civil War hadn't started Right? kindind of like a You know, maybe this will just go away. And I think most people sort of believe that, but as Status is about to learn that was increasingly not the case Despite not really believing in the war yet, the people of South Carolina were still deeply suspicious about Thaddus and his intentions. Something about him just didn't seem quite right Once he landed, And all these men with guns showed up. He tried to convince them that he was you know, a human Because he wrote at one point he says, manyany of them thought that I was the inhabitant of some ethereal or infernal region who had floated to Eth to do them damage and injury. Yeah. But it was just Cincinati Right Thaddeus takes some crackers and butter rolls out of his basket, thinking they might show that he's human. And finally he pulls out a few rubber hot water bottles. cut one open. It could been frozen, right? Be ad Very, very cold. cut one open to show them that, you know, this' just ice inside. but of course You later realize that was the worst thing you could have done because one of them immediately said How could anyone but a devil put so large a piece of ice through so small a place as that nozzle It's an excellent point You gott to give it to him. He was not convincing anybody that he was a normal human Despite this, Thaddeus does somehow manage to persuade them But that only creates more problems So of course, they all thought he was some kind of Yankee spy So this one he's been arrested by these planters and these foremen out in the field, and he's being taken into Unionville to go to jail because he's a spy when he gets there. They can't put him in it because it's already packed with quote abolitionists. Okay. Wow, okay So they take him to the hotel where they're going to put him in a room under armed guard Now they do recognize because he's on a top hat and tails that he might be a man of some means or someone of importance. And somebody does finally find some like local sort of erudite person who has heard of Thaddeus Low As so he vouches for him and keeps him out of jail for the day Word has spread And there's like a lynch mob there and they're they're out to get it. And so he is balloon is put on a train and then he separately has to go back to firstirst Kentucky and then Cincinnati and then back East. He sort of describes like, you know, these trains are packed and it's full of people escaping the south. I mean the war, and he realizes the war is on. Soldiers are going both ways Yeah. Everyone is getting ready. h because suddenly Padius realized it was war Heading home on that train, Thaddus knew his scheme had failed. His balloon had come down nearly four hundred miles southwest of his intended destination In fact, he was almost exactly as far away from Washington as where he began The FedEx idea was dead And on top of that, the world had changed overnight the war had started, and so if he was ever going to see his aeronautical ambitions come true, that is slo needed to go back to the drawing board So how does that is Tivot H it's beautif He just needs a new stunt and he comes up with it And it's only a few weeks later So that was April. Now it's june eighteenth He is come to DC with his gas bag And he's inflated it right outside the White House and nailleded it to the ground But this time, he puts a telegraph system in the basket and runs a wire straight down to the ground where he has a little messenger boy And he sends the first airborne telegram And the return address is Balloon Enterprise in the air june eighteenth, eighteen sixty one to his excellency. Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States You know, this balloon is right outside his window And so he's Taps out a telegraph message The first part of it reads, I can see nearly fifty miles in diameter. The city with its girdle of encampments, presents a superb scene He gets a little poetic, but you know, he is a con man too. I mean, he's he's a carnival Barker too adds in a little linkedIn sort of jibber jack, right? It goes on to say and acknowledging indebtedness to your encouragement for the opportunity of demonstrating the availability of the science of aeronautics in the service of this country. I am your Excellency's obedient servant So That message goes into the White House. and believe it or not, Lincoln invites him to dinner Because Lincoln, it turns out, is a early adopter. Yeah. He's really into new tech. Yeah. Yeah. And so he goes he goes into the White House and he says they talked late into the night, but he explains like, you know, we should use them for spying capability. This would be a novel purpose for the gas bag. One that made the wholeo going up and coming back down thing actually useful. So that is lays out his sales pitch to Lincoln He explains like, you know, I think we can get up there and we can We can see things that no one has ever seen before. And understand in those days, Intel was gathered by putting you know one or two or three people on individual horses and just sending them off into the woods to sort of scout. R, R. Lincoln got it. It gave d a letter of introduction to Lieutenant General Winfield Scott whoo was at that time the head man The war He has this letter of introdion. He goes over there. Winfield Scott's tent. And his assistant, the orderly says, Well, the general' busy right now So Lo comes back a couple hours later and says, he's still busy. Yeah comes back a few hours later and says He's at lunch comes back a little while later and says the generenal is now sleeping. So he realizes, okay, I'm being blown up. Yeah ye Here's one thing you need to know about General Winfield Scott Okay. When the war broke out, he was seventy five years old Lord That's In eighteen sixty one, those are some road miles on seventy. Yeah, R. He was a veteran of the war of eighteen twelve His nickname, Just so you know that he wasn't an early adopter, it was old fussin feathers Oh my goodness. So Low goes back to the White House. says he tells him that, you know, General Scott could not be seen on official business even at the president's suggestion Lincoln looked at me a moment laughed He rose seized his tall silk hat and bade me comeome on. And so they walked out of the White House. And they walked over to the general's headquarters. This time, the general's guard turned and announced The president of the United States. Everybody' suddenly saluting and This is low quoting Lincoln General, this is my friend Professor Low, who is organizing an aeronautic corps for the Army and is to be its chief I wish you would facilitate his work in every way and give him all the necessary things to equip his branch of the service on land and on water And with that, he leaves and suddenly Thaddus Low is the chief aeronaut of the United States Balloon Corps in service to the Federal Army. Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why drivers have trusted prorogressives name your price tool for years. Just tell prorogressive what you want to pay and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget Visit progressive. com to find a car insurance rate that works for you. Progressive casualty insurance Comany and affiliates, prrice and coverage match limited by state law. 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By the fall of eighteen sixty one, the kinks have been worked out and everything is in place. Thaddeus and his balloon corps are ready to launch on the battlefield How did the soldiers perceive these balloons Well They were terrifying when the Confederies realized what these things were, that these were, you know, observatory balloons They would shoot at them. In fact, at first, it was like you know, ignorant Romans perceiving Hannibal's elephants. You know it was like Oh my God, what are these? And they just just unleash, you know, the flades of fire on these balloons, but of course, their guns couldn't mile up. They couldn't reach anywhere close. And in fact, Lowe sort of took delight in the fact that the Confederates were just using up all their ambo on his balloons Just like that, Thaddeus had found a purpose for the purposeless gas bag And if you can believe it, as chief of the first aerial component of the US. military, he was going to have a direct impact on the war. In fact, Thaneus was regularly breaking new ground. First, there was the time Thaddus and his men attached one of the balloons to an old coal barge They moved it up and down the Potomac River so they could move their balloon into place up and down in different battles along on the edge of this river That barge is still referred to by some historians as the first aircraft carrier Then, one day, when Thaddus was doing his regular reconnaissance, he rose into the air and from his vantage point, saw a group of men on horseback, behind Confederate lines Now what that typically meant was Somebody important. Right offfficers for on horse, right And so he sent word down the line, aim your cannons over here. There's a bunch of officers over here. bombard here. and they do, they come close but miss And those guys scatter And years afterwards in a century war book General James Longstreet wrote a little passage about how at one point they were amazed because President Jefferson Davis. General Robert E. Lee General James Longstreet Probably Stonewell Jackson too were all there with their staff this one moment. And then he writes, It was impossible for the enemy to see us as we sat on our horses in this little field surrounded by tall, heavy timber and thick undergrowth. And yet battery by chance had our range and our exact distance andoured upon us a terrifying fire But it was not by chance. So not by chance and Those shots had connected The war would have ended In fact, the gas bag was so successful that the South tried to copy it The South had to respond, you know, there was an arms race of sorts, right And off course, they didn't have Tade with the South, there was no more foreign trade. right? So theyn't they couldn't get materials easily And so Rather scandalously, they appropriated or was donated all of the petticoat material by the Ladies of the South So all the foundation garments and other bits would have to be sacrificed For the greater good. So they didn't have they didn't have any silk. and so therefore they' made their underwear balloon Basically. It was it was the underwear everyone. you know, the Sers the Sers claim I mean they got angry about this by the way later Not a single Southern belle was asked to give up her Sunday bestest for the cause, said one. And of course, these were bolts dress material before they were made into agual clothes. but this Petticoat balloon finally gets launched. The arms race is on. They bring the balloon up to Richmond in eighteen sixty two, and they put it in action and Low's balloon was also in that fight So they had two observation balloons at the same time Your official military historians will say this is the first air to air combat. The Union eventually captured the balloon and gave it to Thaddeus And they cut him up into little squares and every congressman in the North was given one of these little squares of the petticoat you know, is another stunt to sort of like increase the funding for the balloon Cps. Despite the failure of the petticoat balloon, Thaddeus's Cps remained incredibly successful No union balloon was ever shot down and no balloon cororps aeronaut was ever killed. But strangely, you know And this is true of all new sort of inventions. There's a set of people that just simply don't care how good it is They like the old w. And strangely, despite all of its successes It just kind of faded from use by eighteen sixty three and kind of disappeared. Like still in the war, it faded from use. Oh yeah mhm Yeah, by the end of sixty two, it was pretty much out of business. After all that, Daddus' balloons were ground. carried on doing what he did best using his failures as a launching pad to the next big thing At this point, you know, the war ends and Thdeus does what What you do in peacetime, which is he decides to make money Some people decide to make money during wartime too. but they did That's true. That's f Very famously there are those. Thaddeus took everything he learned from his blonist days and turned them into two huge money making opportunities First, Dadi has took what he learned about heating up gas on the fly for the battlefield and turned that into what would become the first home gas heaters He brought gas into the house to heat homes better than firewood. better than coal. And so the lows gas works made a forune Then Thaddeus turned his sights from heating to cooling Remember that Cincinati boonide in the strange world of the upper atmosphere, Thaddeus observed a phenomenon up there that he couldn't explain At night the balloon would groan and sort of almost breathe And occasionally when it did bushel of ice would come crashing down on his head. and he later discovered as the balloon would go up and down moisture would you know, freeze on the inside of the balloon attaches it just like a glass of you know, ice tea out on a summer porch A moisture inside the balloon would stick to the balloon and then when it got a little closer to the earth or warmed up in some way All of that would loosen and come showering down on Th Islo's head. That gave him the idea that maybe you could make ice on land. You know? And so He starts the citizens' ice compomany. and I think it's the first public ice company Oh. And of course That makes a fortune. Oh my Godd. He became so fabulously rich He started the Citizens Bank of Los Angeles, Needless to say he'd moved to the West coast. whereere everybody goes once they, you know, make their money or want to make even more money In California, he uses that money in a distinctly fadious way, not to buy a house or a boat but to take over an entire mountain. Oak Mountain just north of Los Angeles, which even becomes known as Mount Lowe Seriously, look at the map. it's still called that today. The plan was to create something that would bring the sky high experience to the masses A resort topop of the world What's really cool about the Mount Lo Rort is getting to the top of a mountain It was not something most people ever did. Yeah Yeah I think thataddius wanted to share that balloon experience, right being at the edge of the world, right? The outer edge. And so he created this large funicular train, you know, the kind that goes up the steep slope. And I've seen pictures of this funicular. you know I feel perfectly safe for some reason in a funicular, but this trolley car, oh my God I mean Dr. Sus could not have drawn it more rickety I would never even get anywhere close to this trolley car But it would take you to Mount Loe's Alpine Tavern Hotel. And there was a casino there, there was a zoo up there At night there was this massive searchlight that they had appropriated from a World's Fair that they could shine and you could see downtown Los Angeles you know, daytime, you could see the Pacific Ocean from up there And he sort of democratized the entire sort of experience of what he had done in that bon. Building a mountaintop resort isn't cheap, no matter what you've invented. and before long, Thaddus' relentless ambition had once again gotten the better of him They went bankrupt sort of right around the turn of the twentieth century lost all of his money You know, he longed to be buried at Arlington for his service in the war. and they said, you know, that's only for enlisted soldiers. And you were just some made up dude called an aeronaut to no And so he's kind of fading at the turn of the century, but his image as to who he was, this icon of invention and kind of eccentricity was very much in the air. You know You won't find this in any history book, but this to you. Okay So nineteen hundred is the year that L. Frank Baum wrote his book. Yeah wizard of Oz. So the titular character is in the beginning of the book, you know, he is this old man in white hair. withith insane mustaches sort of half scientist, half crackpot con manan And then in the dream world of that book, you know, he becomes the showman who invents this whole world and then in the end, you know, jumps in this balloon and flies off His last words or I don't know how to ster this. I can see it You can see it, right? Absolutely. I can see it Thaddy Slow's legacy is hard to pin down, despite his mountain, his many inventions, or even his apparent influence on classic literature Most of us have never heard his name But I think you can make the argument that his gasbag, his dream, planted the seed for every future attempt to fly higher, from the airplane to the space shuttle Stay with me here When we think of air fllight, we think about the Wright brrothers But when the Wright brothers thought of air fllight, They thought of Thaddty is low And in nineteen ten, only seven years after their own pioneering flight, the Wright brrothers were hosting the first major airs show in the US and they specifically invite Thaddus Low to come You know, because he's the gra old man of air fllight Right. And he had sort of institutionalized this This longing to get out to the farthest, the longest, the fastest. He is the Bren Franklin of the air and you know, they want him to come and honor him And so he goes And he has a granddaughter nameam Florence Leontine L. She is eight years old and In one of the exhibits, there is this sort of cartoon like display with like movable airplanes and, you know, they knew that Thaddeus Low was going to bring his granddaughter. So they had a cartoon cut out of Florence in the airplane as the pilot. Yeah. nice Before long, Florence would pick up where her grandfather left off And it's to Florence that I'm going to let Jack just trace the long tale of Thaddus's legacy. Though by her adulthood, she wasn't called Florence anymore She was called. Contro Barnes She dressed as a man, smokes cigars, and she gets her pilot's license in nineteen twenty eight At that time, a lot of air experimentation was done by women as much as men It's not just Amelia Earhart, wh we've all heard about. In fact, Poncho, we'll now call her, became the first female stunt pilot in Hollywood. My goodness. She broke Amelia Earhart's speed record She clocked one hundred and ninety six point one nine miles per hour That's amazing And after breaking that record, Poncho turned a patch of land in the desert into the destination for Hollywood starlets, test pilots, and anybody else who wanted to land their plane somewhere where they would be guaranteed a good time. The resort quickly became a notorious party destination that Poncho named. The Happy Bottom Riding Club. It became the hangout after World War two. And people would come out there and go horseback riding, but there would also be these wild parties at night. And you know, anyone who broke a record got a free steak dinner in the restaurant, you know that kind of thing. so everybody hung out there. Chuck Jager was one of the big attendees there It' Chuck Jager, the first pilot in history to break the sound barrier By the way, great little story that I think he tells years later, but the night before He broke the sound barrier. He went for a midnight ride with Poncho and some others at at the Happy Bottom Riding Club And someone had closed a gate and they couldn't see it on the way back. So the horse hit it and he flew off and broke a couple of his ribs And so when he did his famous test flight that the next day, he had several broken ribs. If he had told anybody, he would not have been scrubbed. Yeah. And when he got into the cockpit, I think somebody noticed that he closed the thing with his left hand because he couldn't use his right hand Despite the groundbreaking achievement, Jager wouldn't become an astronaut like the other test pilots largely because he didn't have a college degree but he did train them In fact, he trained one of the ones that went to the moon When I was little, everybody, of course, we all loved Neil Armstrong He was handsome and tall and brave and Buzz Aldrren, he was talkative and cocky. He Buzz. He was going Buzz. But it wasn't Neil Armrong or Buzz Aldrin that Jaagger trained It was Jack Hitt's personal favorite the one almost everyone forgets There's a third guy My cars. Yeah The other guy And that's interesting that all of his life, he explained that there was only one question He ever got asked And that was what it was like to be far away from Eth as anyone has ever been. becauseause that was his achievement Right? That was his thing As Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrim left to walk on the moon, Collins was the one who had to stay behind on the spacecraft And in the module, he would orbit the Mon traveling the farthest from Earth that anyone ever has And he did so Hellone Be remember, when he turns the corner, when he goes around to the dark side of the moon, He's out of radio contact and there's no light. Right? There is nothing. You can see nothing. He's in this tin camp and he