100 Objects #4: Lowe's Gas Bag

In 1861, one man and a “gas bag” filled with hydrogen sparked America's obsession with going higher, farther, into the unknown.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Roman Mars?

  This fall, LL Bean is celebrating the moments people look forward to all year. The first school drop-off, the first sweater-weather day, and the first chilly evening around the fire pit. For over 100 years, LL Bean has been part of these traditions: crunching leaves in Maine-made Bean boots, cheering from the sidelines in Scotch plaid flannel, and walking the dog in a rugged field coat. So grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean: Be an Outsider. Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds. Because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on the things

• 0:44Roman Mars?

  you love, like those iced lattes that help you get ready to face the day. So switch your home and auto to Progressive and see if you could save and keep stepping away. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states. 99% Invisible is presented by Acura. Curating and designing the perfect experience takes meticulous craft, an obsession with detail, and a love for innovation. Just like museum designers, Acura carefully considers every detail to curate the most engaging, exhilarating, and rewarding experience for drivers.

• 1:26Roman Mars?

  That craft isn't always something you can see, but it's something you'll feel: that flutter in your heart when the engine roars. Every Acura is designed with deliberate intention around how people actually use the vehicles. And that is precision-crafted performance. The year is 1861, and America is deeply disconnected. From east to west, our nation is the biggest it has ever been, and yet, construction of the transcontinental railroad 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 11 whole days to travel from Cincinnati to Washington DC by train.

• 2:10Roman Mars?

  Only a genius or a madman would think it was possible to cut that trip down to just one night.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Fabius Sobieski Kulencourt Lo, that was his full name. His parents gave him names they pulled out of obscure novels.

• 2:27Roman Mars?

  This is author and journalist Jack Hitt.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Thaddeus Low was one of these sort of huckster promoters, not quite a con man, part carnival barker, part inventor, part scientist.

• 2:42Roman Mars?

  And Thaddeus Low wore those eccentricities for everyone to see.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  He had long flowing hair and that sort of mustachio that was popular in that time. He also had what was then called a chin puff.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  So he had that sort of wizardy look, right? The look of a, of a great eccentric man of science of that time.

• 3:05Roman Mars?

  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.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Well, we called it a hot air balloon, but at the time it was also known as a gas bag.

• 3:26Roman Mars?

  Gas bags had been around for a while at this point. A lot of them just going up and coming back down tethered to the ground. That was how the first balloon flight had happened near Paris almost 80 years earlier. But in the decades that followed, no one had really discovered what to do with the gas bag.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  I think every new technology enters that sort of liminal period where it's either a novelty gimmick, it's going to become silly putty, or it's going to become the computer.

• 3:55Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  All right. And the balloon at this time was sort of in that strange sort of twilight space.

• 4:02Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  It was seen as both like sort of magical and 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 seen as incredibly dangerous and people did float away on these things and they, nobody ever heard from them again.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  They were incredibly dangerous.

• 4:25Roman Mars?

  They already seemed, they seemed dangerous to me now. Like I would never go in one.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  And remember, this is hydrogen gas. This is this, this is the Hindenburg. Okay, so, you know, we have this really clean, lovely floating image of a hot air balloon. And one reason maybe why we should fill them gas bags is because these were really the beta models of the modern hot air balloon. You know, the very balloon smelled like it came out of the, you know, the pits of hell.

• 4:52Roman Mars?

  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. Yet despite the gas bag's considerable flaws, people were searching for its ultimate purpose.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  But Thaddeus Low knew what the real purpose would be. He wanted to invent an overnight mail carrier service, sort of the FedEx of 1861.

• 5:21Roman Mars?

  Wow.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  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.

• 5:40Roman Mars?

  And if he was right about the wind, then all Thaddeus needed to achieve his dream was money.

• 5:48Roman Mars?

  And so, on April 19th, 1861, he set up an evening of fundraising in what was then known as the ballooning capital of America, Cincinnati.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Cincinnati became sort of the balloon beginning center. I mean, a lot of balloonists would come there and try out their balloons. The Cincinnati Gazette actually had hired a Mr. J.C. Bellman as their first official, quote, "balloon editor."

• 6:18Roman Mars?

  That's a golden age of journalism right there. You have a balloon editor on staff.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  You know, when they fired the balloon editor, Roman, that's, that's when the decline of print journalism began.

• 6:30Roman Mars?

  And it was in this boom of balloon journalism that Thaddeus Lowe 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.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  There were several days of festivities, like Lowe gave an address 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 stovepipe hat, the kind 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 a brand new wet, inky copies of the Cincinnati paper, so that when he arrives, he can prove that he was in Cincinnati that morning.

• 7:21Roman Mars?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  And he cuts loose and then poof, he just disappears into the night.

• 7:28Roman Mars?

  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, Thaddeus 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 to this very day.

• 8:10Roman Mars?

  From 99% Invisible and BBC Studios, this is a history of the United States in 100 objects. I'm Roman Mars. And today, the Enterprise gas bag and the birth of the American obsession with pushing higher and higher.

• 8:35Roman Mars?

  It's 4 a.m. and Thaddeus Lo is now alone in the wicker basket of his gas bag, somewhere far above Cincinnati, Ohio. But he isn't exactly sure where.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  It's even sort of a mystery to him as to what he would find when he, you know, went up this high at 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.

• 9:06Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  And some moon, right? And while he's up there, he's doing his tests and measurements in this little basket beneath this hydrogen gas filled balloon. And out here at the edge of the then-known universe for humans, he discovered the oddities of being there. He is just humming 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,

• 9:47Speaker 01

  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 that was not the slightest sense of motion whatsoever." So Lo sort of discovers that he's not only in the wind, he is the wind, right? Heading who knows where.

• 10:22Roman Mars?

  Thaddeus 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, Thaddeus had no way to orient himself. He wouldn't know where he was until the sun came up.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  The next morning, he comes down and sees an open field, and there's a man at a plow. And he lets off some gas and comes down low enough that he can shout out, "What state is this?"

• 10:59Speaker 01

  And the man, he looks left, he looks right, far off into the woods, but it doesn't make any sense that the sound would come from the woods and doesn't see anybody. And he keeps looking around. Lo shouts it again. What state is this?

• 11:15Speaker 01

  And he just keeps looking. And Lo later realizes, of course, the man didn't look up because no one had ever looked up before. Why would you look up? Sound didn't come from up. Up hadn't been invented yet. That's right. But the guy, the guy does shout, he finally, he just shouts towards the woods because he wants to answer. And he says, Virginia.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  And then Lo thinks, well, I don't want to, 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.

• 11:57Roman Mars?

  The man runs for his life, but Lo decides to keep going, figuring he must still be close to DC. In reality, he was much further south.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  So he travels on a little bit further and he finally does come down into a field in Unionville, South Carolina. Now, you remember, I mentioned to you, April 19th, 1861, that date might ring a little familiar in your head because April 12th, one week before, is the firing on Fort Sumter.

• 12:27Roman Mars?

  Thaddeus found himself in the deep south, only one week after the first shot of the Civil War.

• 12:35Roman Mars?

  Did Thaddeus know that the Civil War had started a week before he left on this trip?

• 12:41Speaker 01

  They did, but of course, and this is something he's going to find out in the next like 24 hours. You know, the, the shot had been fired, you know, but no life had been lost. So yes, the Civil War had started, but the Civil War hadn't started, right? It was kind of like a, you know, maybe this will just go away. And I think most people sort of believe that, but as Thaddeus is about to learn, that's, that was increasingly not the case.

• 13:08Roman Mars?

  Despite not really believing in the war yet, the people of South Carolina were still deeply suspicious about Thaddeus and his intentions. Something about him just didn't seem quite right.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Once he landed and all these men with guns showed up.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  He tried to convince them that he was, you know, a human. Cause he wrote at one point, he says, "Many of them thought that I was the inhabit of some ethereal or infernal region who had floated to earth to do them damage and injury."

• 13:37Roman Mars?

  Yeah, but it was just Cincinnati.

• 13:43Roman Mars?

  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.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  He cut one open, they'd frozen, right? Being out in it, very, very cold. Cut one open to show them that, you know, this was just ice inside. But of course, he later realized that was the worst thing he could have done. Cause 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?"

• 14:15Roman Mars?

  That's an excellent point.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Gotta give it to him. He was not convincing anybody that he was a normal human.

• 14:22Roman Mars?

  Despite this, Thaddeus does somehow manage to persuade them, but that only creates more problems.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  So of course, they all thought he was some kind of Yankee spy. So this one, he's been arrested by these, 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. And when he gets there, they, they can't put him in it because it's already packed with, quote, abolitionists.

• 14:49Roman Mars?

  Okay. Wow. Okay.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  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 in a top hat and tails, that he might be a man of some means or somewhat of importance. And somebody does finally find some like local, sort of erudite person who has heard of Thaddeus Low. And so he vouches for him and keeps him out of jail for the day. But word has spread and there's like a lynch mob there and they're, they're out to get it. Um, and so he is, his balloon is put on a train and then he separately has to go back to first Kentucky and then Cincinnati and then back east. And he sort of describes like, you know, these trains are packed and it's full of people

• 15:35Speaker 01

  escaping the South. I mean, the war, and he realizes the war is on. Soldiers are going both ways.

• 15:40Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Everyone was getting ready, uh, because suddenly Thaddeus realized it was war.

• 15:46Roman Mars?

  Yeah. Heading home on that train, Thaddeus knew his scheme had failed. His balloon had come down nearly 400 miles southwest of his intended destination. In fact, he was almost exactly as far away from Washington as where he began. So 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, Thaddeus Lowe needed to go back to the drawing board. So how does Thaddeus pivot?

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Pivot's beautiful. 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 18th. He has come to DC with his gas bag and he's inflated it right outside the White House and nailed 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 18th, 1861 to his excellency, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States. You know, this balloon is right outside

• 17:02Speaker 01

  his window. And so he taps out a telegraph message. The first part of it reads, "I can see nearly 50 miles in diameter. The city with its girdle of encampments presents a superb scene." So it gets a little poetic, but you know, he is a con man too. I mean, he's a, he's a carnival barker too. So he adds in a little LinkedIn sort of jibber jabber, 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."

• 17:41Roman Mars?

  Wow.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  So that message goes into the White House and believe it or not, Lincoln invites him to dinner.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Because Lincoln, it turns out, is an early adopter.

• 17:55Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  He's really into new tech.

• 17:57Roman Mars?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  And so he goes, he goes into the White House and they, he says they talked late into the night. But he explains like, you know, we should use them for spying capability.

• 18:06Roman Mars?

  This would be a novel purpose for the gas bag, one that made the whole going up and coming back down thing actually useful. So Thaddeus lays out his sales pitch to Lincoln.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  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.

• 18:22Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  And understand in those days, intel was gathered by putting a, you know, one or two or three people on individual horses and just sending them off into the woods to sort of scout.

• 18:31Roman Mars?

  Right, right.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  And Lincoln got it.

• 18:35Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  He gave Thaddeus a letter of introduction to Lieutenant General Winfield Scott, who was at that time, the head man of the war. So he has this letter of introduction. He goes over there to Winfield Scott's tent. And his assistant, the orderly, says, well, the general's busy right now. So Lo comes back a couple hours later and says, he's still busy.

• 18:57Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Comes back a few hours later and says, he's at lunch. Comes back a little while later, he says, the general is now sleeping. So he realizes, okay, I'm being blown off.

• 19:07Roman Mars?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  And here's one thing you need to know about General Winfield Scott.

• 19:11Roman Mars?

  Okay.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  When the war broke out, he was 75 years old.

• 19:14Roman Mars?

  Oh, Lord. That's in 1861, as there's some road miles on 70.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 19:20Roman Mars?

  He was a veteran of the War of 1812. His nickname, just so you know that he wasn't an early adopter, was Old Fussin' Feathers.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness. So Lo goes back to the White House. He 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, come on.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  And so they walked out of the White House and they walked over to the generals headquarters. This time, the generals guard turned and announced, "The President of the United States." Everybody's suddenly saluting. And this is Lowe quoting Lincoln. "General, this is my friend, Professor Lowe, 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, Thaddeus Lowe is the chief aeronaut of the

• 20:34Speaker 01

  United States Balloon Corps in service to the federal Army.

• 20:46Roman Mars?

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• 21:26Roman Mars?

  This fall, LL Bean is celebrating the moments people look forward to all year. The first school drop-off, the first sweater weather day, and the first chilly evening around the fire pit. For over 100 years, LL Bean has been part of these traditions: crunching leaves in Maine-made Bean Boots, cheering from the sidelines in Scotch plaid flannel, and walking the dog in a rugged field coat. So grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean, being outsider.

• 22:01Roman Mars?

  Whoever says saving money is hard doesn't know that new customers who bundle and save with Progressive save hundreds because switching your home and auto insurance is better than cutting down on the things you love, like those iced lattes that help you get ready to face the day. So, switch your home and auto to Progressive and see if you could save and keep sipping away. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.

• 22:32Roman Mars?

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• 23:07Roman Mars?

  Thaddeus gets to work right away. He oversees the building of seven hydrogen balloons specifically for the army, and he personally takes the first balloon, aptly named Union, through extensive testing. By the fall of 1861, 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?

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Well, they were terrifying. When the Confederates 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's like, oh, my God, what are these? And they just unleash, you know, the estillades of fire on these balloons. But of course, their guns couldn't ever mile up. They couldn't reach anywhere close. And in fact, Lowe sort of took delight in the fact that the Confederates were just, you know, using up all their ammo on his balloons.

• 24:05Roman Mars?

  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, Thaddeus was regularly breaking new ground. First, there was the time Thaddeus and his men attached one of the balloons to an old coal barge.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  And they moved it up and down the Potomac River. So they could move their balloon into place, up and down in different battles along the edge of this river.

• 24:34Roman Mars?

  That barge is still referred to by some historians as the first aircraft carrier. Then, one day, when Thaddeus 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.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Now, what that typically meant was somebody important, right? Officers were on horseback. 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 Stonewall Jackson too, were all there with their staff at this one moment.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  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, a battery by chance had our range and our exact distance and poured upon us a terrifying fire."

• 25:52Roman Mars?

  But it was not by chance.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  So, not by chance. And if those shots had connected, the war would have ended.

• 25:58Roman Mars?

  Oh my God. In fact, the gas bag was so successful that the South tried to copy it.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  The South had to respond, you know, it was an arms race of sorts, right? Now, of course, they didn't have, you know, trade with the South. There was no more foreign trade, right? So they couldn'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.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  So all the foundation garments and other bits would have to be sacrificed for the greater good.

• 26:33Roman Mars?

  So they didn't have, they didn't have any silk and so therefore they made their underwear balloon.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  It was, it was the underwear balloon. Now, you know, the Southerners, the Southerners claim, I mean, they got angry about this, by the way, later. "Not a single Southern belle was asked to give up her Sunday best for the cause," said one. And of course, these were bolts of dress material before they were made into actual clothes. But this Petticoat balloon finally gets launched, the arms race is on, they bring the balloon up to Richmond in 1862 and they put it in action and Lowe'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.

• 27:22Roman Mars?

  The Union eventually captured the balloon and gave it to Thaddeus.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  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, as another stunt to sort of like increase the funding for the balloon corps.

• 27:43Roman Mars?

  Despite the failure of the Petticoat balloon, Thaddeus's corps remained incredibly successful.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  No Union balloon was ever shot down and no, no balloon corps 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 ways. And strangely, despite all of its successes, it just kind of faded from use by 1863 and kind of disappeared.

• 28:19Roman Mars?

  Like still in the war, it faded from use.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, by the end of 62, it was pretty much out of business.

• 28:26Roman Mars?

  After all that, Thaddeus's balloons were grounded, but he carried on doing what he did best, using his failures as a launching pad to the next big thing.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  At this point, you know, the war ends and Thaddeus does what, what you do in peacetime, which is he decides to make money.

• 28:44Roman Mars?

  Some people decide to make money during wartime, too.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Oh, they did. That's true. That's right. Very famously, there are those.

• 28:51Roman Mars?

  Thaddeus took everything he learned from his balloonist days and turned them into two huge money-making opportunities. First, Thaddeus 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.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  He brought gas into the house to heat homes, better than firewood, better than coal. And so the Lowes Gas Works made a fortune.

• 29:16Roman Mars?

  Then Thaddeus turned his sights from heating to cooling. Remember that Cincinnati balloon ride? In the strange world of the upper atmosphere, Thaddeus observed a phenomenon up there that he couldn't explain.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  At night, the balloon would groan and sort of almost breathe. And occasionally, when it did, sort of a 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 of just like a glass of iced tea out on a summer porch. The 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 Thaddeus Lowes' head. So that gave him the idea that maybe you could make ice on land, you know? And so he starts the Citizens Ice Company.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  And I think it's the first public ice company.

• 30:16Roman Mars?

  Wow.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  And of course, that makes a fortune.

• 30:19Roman Mars?

  Oh, my God.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  He became so fabulously rich, he started the Citizens Bank of Los Angeles. Needless to say, he'd moved to the West Coast.

• 30:27Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Where everybody goes once they, you know, make their money or want to make even more money.

• 30:33Roman Mars?

  In California, he uses that money in a distinctly Thaddeus 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 a map. It's still called that today. His plan was to create something that would bring the sky-high experience to the masses, a resort on the top of the world.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  What's really cool about the Mount Lowe Resort is getting to the top of a mountain was not something most people ever did.

• 31:08Roman Mars?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  I think Thaddeus wanted to share that balloon experience, right, of 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. Seuss 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 Lowe'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.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  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 balloon.

• 32:04Roman Mars?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:08Roman Mars?

  But building a mountaintop resort isn't cheap, no matter what you've invented. And before long, Thaddeus's relentless ambition had once again gotten the better of him.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  He went bankrupt sort of right around the turn of the 20th century. He 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, so 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. And, you know, you won't find this in any history book, but... I'll put this to you.

• 32:52Roman Mars?

  Okay.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  So 1900 is the year that L. Frank Baum wrote his book.

• 32:58Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  The Wizard of Oz. So the titular character is in the beginning of the book, you know, he is this old man in white hair with insane mustaches, sort of half scientist, half crackpot con man. 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. And his last words are, I don't know how to steer this thing.

• 33:31Roman Mars?

  I can see it.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  You can see it, right?

• 33:34Roman Mars?

  Absolutely, I can see it.

• 33:38Roman Mars?

  Thaddeus Low'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 gas back, his dream planted the seed for every future attempt to fly higher, from the airplane to the space shuttle. So stay with me here. When we think of air flight, we think about the Wright brothers. But when the Wright brothers thought of air flight, they thought of Thaddeus Low. And in 1910, only seven years after their own pioneering flight, the Wright brothers were hosting the first major airshow in the US and they specifically invite Thaddeus Low to come.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  You know, because he's the grand old man of air flight. Right. And he had sort of institutionalized this, this longing to get out to the farthest, the longest, the fastest. He is the Ben Franklin of the air. And, you know, they want him to come and honor him. And so he goes. And he has a granddaughter named Florence Leon Tyne.

• 34:41Roman Mars?

  No.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  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.

• 35:01Roman Mars?

  Yeah, nice.

• 35:04Roman Mars?

  Before long, Florence would pick up where her grandfather left off. And it's through Florence that I'm going to let Jack just trace the long tail of Thaddeus' legacy, though by her adulthood, she wasn't called Florence anymore. She was called Poncho Barnes.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  She dressed as a man, smoked cigars, and she gets her pilot's license in 1928. And at that time, a lot of air experimentation was done by women as much as men. It's not just Amelia Earhart, whom we've all heard of. In fact, Poncho, we'll now call her, became the first female stunt pilot in Hollywood.

• 35:41Roman Mars?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  She broke Amelia Earhart's speed record. She clocked 196.19 miles per hour.

• 35:48Roman Mars?

  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.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  It became the hangout after World War II. 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, it was that kind of thing. So everybody hung out there. Chuck Yeager was one of the big attendees there.

• 36:25Roman Mars?

  Chuck Yeager, the first pilot in history to break the sound barrier.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  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 the Happy Bottom Riding Club. And someone had closed the 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 on the flight.

• 36:56Roman Mars?

  He would have been scrubbed, yeah.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  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.

• 37:05Roman Mars?

  Despite the groundbreaking achievement, Yeager 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.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  When I was little, everybody, of course, we all loved Neil Armstrong. He was handsome and tall and brave. And Buzz Aldrin, he was talkative and cocky.

• 37:29Roman Mars?

  He was called Buzz?

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. He was called Buzz.

• 37:34Roman Mars?

  But it wasn't Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin that Jaeger trained. It was Jack Hitt's personal favorite, the one almost everyone forgets.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  There's a third guy, Mike Collins, the other guy. And it's interesting that all of his life, he explained that there was only one question that he ever got asked, and that was what it was like to be as far away from Earth as anyone has ever been, because that was his achievement, right? That was his thing.

• 38:03Roman Mars?

  As Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left to walk on the moon, Mike Collins was the one who had to stay behind on the spacecraft. And in the module, he would orbit the moon, traveling the farthest from Earth that anyone ever had, and he did so alone.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Because, 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. He can see nothing. He is in this tin can, and he originally answered the question, "Outside my window, I can see stars, and that is all. Where I know the moon will be, there is simply a black void. The moon's presence is defined solely by the absence of the stars." I am alone now, truly alone and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  If a count were taken, the score would be 3 billion plus 2 over on the other side of the moon, and 1 plus god knows what on this side.

• 39:11Roman Mars?

  Collins was alone, surrounded by an inky blackness punctuated only by stars.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Wow. I mean, what you're describing is very much the scene of Thaddeus Low taking off an un-electrified world for his flight. Absolutely. Low's description of the sky and the sensation of being out there, you know, three and a half, four miles above the Earth, seems so very close to what Mike Collins is describing, you know, hundreds of thousands of miles above the Earth.

• 39:49Roman Mars?

  Collins was weightless in his gravity-free capsule, floating like Thaddeus in his balloon all those years earlier.

• 39:59Roman Mars?

  Despite being separated by more than a century, these two men were experiencing the same thing: one in a wicker basket over Cincinnati and the other in a tin can on the dark side of the moon. And it was the exact same instinct that had led both the aeronaut and the astronaut to take to the skies.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  It seems like specifically a very American obsession to try to push their way to the outer edge of something. That whole frontier mentality that has kind of been with us from the beginning.

• 40:39Roman Mars?

  This is great, Jack Hitt. Thank you so much for talking with me. I just had a delightful time.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  Great. Me too.

• 40:49Roman Mars?

  Jack Hitt is an author and contributing editor of Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, and This American Life. If you liked this story about Thaddeus Low, you should check out Jack's book, Bunch of Amateurs, which is an inside look at the inventors, tinkerers, and other eccentrics whose creations have made America what it is today.

• 41:25Roman Mars?

  A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC Studios. It's hosted and curated by me, Roman Mars. This episode was produced by Isaac Fisher. Our other producers are Ellie Lightfoot, Brenna Dahl Dorff, and Priscilla Alabey. This series was edited by Annie Brown and Courtney Harrell. Mixing by Charlie Brandon King. Fact checking by Amy Bracken. Our theme song is by Swan Real. From 99% Invisible, our executive producer is Cathy Tu. From BBC Studios, our executive producers are Annie Brown and Courtney Harrell. Our production coordinator is Shan Pelé. And the production manager is Mabel Finnegan Wright. Artwork by Stefan Lawrence.

• 42:09Roman Mars?

  99% Invisible is part of the SiriusXM Podcast family headquartered in beautiful Uptown Oakland, California. And BBC Studios is headquartered in beautiful White City, West London. If you want to get in touch or have an object for us to consider, email us at [email protected].