Jack Hitt
speaker
849 appearances
5 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 3 Jul
Jack Hitt’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
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.
So he had that sort of wizardy look, right?
The look of a great eccentric man of science of that time.
We called it a hot air balloon, but at the time it was also known as a gas bag.
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.
And the balloon at this time was sort of in that strange sort of twilight space.
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 nobody ever heard from them again.
And remember, this is hydrogen gas.
This is the Hindenburg.
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 pits of hell.
But Thaddeus Lowe knew what the real purpose would be.
He wanted to invent an overnight mail carrier service, sort of the FedEx of 1861.
Wow.
Showing 321–340 of 849 · page 17 of 43
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