100 Objects #4: Lowe's Gas Bag
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What historical context leads to Thaddeus Lowe's balloon flight?
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, D.C. by train. Only a genius or a madman would think it was possible to cut that trip down to just one night.
Thaddeus Sobieski Kuhlenkort Lowe. That was his full name. His parents gave him names they pulled out of obscure novels. This is author and journalist Jack Hitt. Thaddeus Lowe was one of these sort of huckster promoters, not quite a con man, part carnival barker, part inventor, part scientist.
And Thaddeus Lowe wore those eccentricities for everyone to see.
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.
And it was this chin-puffed man of science who had come up with a new scheme that involved traveling from Cincinnati to Washington, D.C. in a single night, carried in the basket of a gas bag.
We called it a hot air balloon, but at the time it was also known as a gas bag.
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.
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.
They were incredibly dangerous. They seemed dangerous to me now. I would never go in one.
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.
Who was Thaddeus Lowe and what were his eccentricities?
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.
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.
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. 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, then all Thaddeus needed to achieve his dream was money. 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.
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.
Ha ha ha!
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 Lowe wanted to demonstrate to investors that his gas bag, an aircraft he named the Enterprise, would take him from Cincinnati to Washington, D.C.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What historical context leads to Thaddeus Lowe's balloon flight?
0:00–2:56
2
Who was Thaddeus Lowe and what were his eccentricities?
2:56–9:31
3
What challenges did gas bags face during their early use?
9:31–16:33
4
What was Thaddeus Lowe's vision for overnight mail service?
16:33–27:28
5
How did Thaddeus Lowe's flight go off course?
27:28–38:44