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Chapter 1: 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.
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Chapter 2: 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. in a single night.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did gas bags face during their early use?
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 does shout. He finally just shouts towards the woods because he wants to answer. And he says, Virginia. And then Lo thinks, well, 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 Lo decides to keep going, figuring he must still be close to D.C. In reality, he was much further south.
So he travels on a little bit further, and he finally does come down into a field in Unionville, South Carolina. Now, 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.
Thaddeus had found himself in the Deep South only one week after the first shot of the Civil War. Did Thaddeus 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 24 hours, you know, 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 was increasingly not the case.
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.
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Chapter 4: What was Thaddeus Lowe's vision for overnight mail service?
He explains, like, you know, I think we can get up there and we can see things that no one has ever seen before. 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. Right. Right. And Lincoln got it.
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 Lowe comes back a couple hours later and says, he's still busy.
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. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And here's one thing you need to know about General Winfield Scott. Okay. When the war broke out, he was 75 years old.
Oh, my Lord. In 1861, those are some road miles on 70. Right.
He was a veteran of the War of 1812. His nickname, just so you know that he wasn't an early adopter, was Old Fuss and Feathers. Oh, my goodness. So Lowe 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. 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 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 United States Balloon Corps.
In service to the Federal Army. 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?
Well, they were terrifying. When the Confederates realized what these things were, that these were observatory balloons, they would shoot at them. In fact, at first, it was like ignorant Romans perceiving Hannibal's elephants. It's like, oh my God, what are these? And they just unleash fusillades of fire on these balloons. But of course, their guns couldn't ever mile up.
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Chapter 5: How did Thaddeus Lowe's flight go off course?
I mean, Dr. Seuss could not have drawn it more rickety. Yeah. 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 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.
Yeah, yeah. But building a mountaintop resort isn't cheap, no matter what you've invented. And before long, Thaddeus' relentless ambition had once again gotten the better of him.
He went bankrupt sort of right around the turn of the 20th 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. So no. Wow.
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 won't find this in any history book, but I'll put this to you. So 1900 is the year that L. Frank Baum wrote his book, The Wizard of Oz.
So the titular character is, in the beginning of the book, 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, he becomes the showman who invents this whole world and then in the end jumps in this balloon and flies off. And his last words are, I don't know how to steer this thing. I can see it.
You can see it, right? Absolutely. I can see it. Thaddeus Lowe'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 pack, 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 flight, we think about the Wright brothers. But when the Wright brothers thought of air flight, they thought of Thaddeus Lowe. And in 1910, only seven years after their own pioneering flight, the Wright brothers were hosting the first major air show in the U.S., and they specifically invite Thaddeus Lowe to come.
You know, because he's the grand old man of air flight, right? And he had sort of institutionalized 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 Leontine Lowe. She is eight years old.
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