100 Objects #4: Lowe's Gas Bag

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0:45AT &T Business is designed to be a reliable provider, helping small businesses stay up and running without added stress or disruption. Powered by AT &T Business. Built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com. 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.

1:36Fabius Sobieski Koulincourt Lowe. That was his full name. His parents gave him names they pulled out of obscure novels. This is author and journalist Jack Hitt. Fabius 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. And at 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.

2:30in a single night, carried in the basket of a gas bag. Well, 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.

3:12And 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. They were incredibly dangerous. They seem dangerous to me now. Like I would never go in one. And remember, this is hydrogen gas. This is the Hindenburg. We have this really clean, lovely floating image of a hot air balloon.

3:57And one reason maybe why we should call them gas bags is because these were really the beta models of the modern hot air balloon. 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. And he believed, as did others, that up in the upper atmosphere, there was supposed to be this consistent west to east wind.

4:48This 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. Balloons. The Cincinnati Gazette actually had hired a Mr. J.C. Bellman as their first official, quote, balloon editor. That's a golden age of journalism right there.

5:38You 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. 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 of Lincoln War.

6:15He's in a broadcloth coat, which 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 he 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, D.C.

6:57In 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.

7:27From 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.

7:52It's 4 a.m., and Thaddeus Lowe is now alone in the wicker basket of his gas bag, somewhere far above Cincinnati, 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 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 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 fill balloon.

8:34And 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 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 that was not the slightest sense of motion whatsoever.

9:30So Lowe sort of discovers that he's not only in the wind, he is the wind, right? Heading who knows where. 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. 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? 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 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 sound didn't come from up up hadn't been invented 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 and then lowe 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.

11:05And 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 Lowe 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.

11:52Did 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.

12:33Something 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, 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. Yeah. But it was just Cincinnati. 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. He cut one open. They'd frozen, right? Being out of it. Very, very cold.

13:15Cut one open to show them that, you know, there's just ice inside. But of course, he later realized that was the worst thing he 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? That's an excellent point. Got 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 at this point, he's been arrested by these planters and these foremen out in the field.

13:55And he's being taken into Unionville to go to jail because he's a spy. And 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 in a top hat and tails, that he might be a man of some means or someone of importance. And somebody does finally find some local erudite person who has heard of Thaddeus Lowe. 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 uh 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 escaping the south i mean the war and he realizes the war is on soldiers are going both ways.

14:58Everyone was getting ready because suddenly, as Thaddeus realized, it was war. 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? Pivot's beautiful. He just needs a new stunt and he comes up with it.

15:42And 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 his window. And so he taps out a telegraph message. The first part of it reads, I can see nearly 50 miles in diameter.

16:29The city with its girdle of encampments presents a superb scene. So he gets a little poetic, but you know, he is a con man too. I mean, he's a carnival barker too. So he adds in a little LinkedIn sort of jibber Jack. 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.

17:08Because Lincoln, it turns out, is an early adopter. He's really into new tech. Yeah, yeah. And so 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 whole going up and coming back down thing actually useful. So Thaddeus lays out his sales pitch to Lincoln. 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 one or two or three people on individual horses and just sending them off into the woods to sort of scout.

17:49Right, right. And Lincoln got it. Yeah. 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. Yeah. Comes back a few hours later and says, he's at lunch. Comes back a little while later and 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.

18:29Okay. When the war broke out, he was 75 years old. Oh, my Lord. That's in 1861. Those are some road miles on 70. Yeah. 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.

18:50Oh, 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 low quoting Lincoln. General, this is my friend, Professor Lowe, who is organizing an aeronautic corps for the Army and is to be its chief.

19:36I 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. Thank you.

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23:02Terms and conditions apply. Hiring? Do it the right way with Indeed. 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? Well, they were terrifying when the Confederates realized what these things were, that these were, you know, observatory balloons. They would shoot at them.

23:42In 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 usillads of fire on these balloons. But of course, their guns couldn't, they were a 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. 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 U.S. military, he was going to have a direct impact on the war.

24:19In 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. 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. 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. Now, what that typically meant was somebody important, right?

24:56Officers 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. 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.

25:47And yet a battery by chance had our range and our exact distance and poured upon us a terrifying fire. But it was not by chance. So not by chance. And if those shots had connected, the war would have ended. Oh my God. In fact, the gas bag was so successful that the South tried to copy it. 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 get materials easily. And so rather scandalously, they appropriated or was donated all of the petticoat material by the ladies of the South.

26:28so all the foundation garments and other bits would have to be sacrificed for the greater good um so they didn't have they didn't have any silk and so therefore they made their uh underwear balloon basically 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 Juan.

26:57And 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.

27:28The 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, it's another stunt to sort of like increase the funding for the balloon corps. Despite the failure of the petticoat balloon, Thaddeus's core remained incredibly successful. No Union balloon was ever shot down and no balloon core 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.