SPEAKER_07: Every kid learns differently, so it's really important that your children have the educational support that they need to help them keep up and excel. If your child needs homework help, check out iXcel, the online learning platform for kids. iXcel covers math, language arts, science, and social studies through interactive practice problems from pre-K to 12th grade. As kids practice, they get positive feedback and even awards. With the school year ramping up, now is the best time to get iXcel. Our listeners can get an exclusive 20% off iXcel membership when they sign up today at iXcel.com slash invisible. That's the letters iXcel dot com slash invisible. Squarespace is the all in one platform for building your brand and growing your business online. Stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience and sell anything. Your products, content you create, and even your time. You can easily display posts from your social profiles on your website or share new blogs or videos to social media. Automatically push website content to your favorite channels so your followers can share it too. Go to squarespace dot com slash invisible for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code invisible to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.
SPEAKER_07: At the end of the calendar year and into the new year, the 99PI staff collects a bunch of short, joyful little stories that are fun to produce and make us happy. We call them mini stories. This is the third and final episode of this batch and the 14th volume overall. And it's a good one. We have stories about surprisingly architectural sports commentary, Ben Franklin's role in daylight saving time and the origin of the fire pole. Wake the kids. Stay with us. So I'm with producer Emmet Fitzgerald and Emmet, if past is present, you either have a sports story for us or an environmental story for us. So which is it?
SPEAKER_08: This week it's sports, Roman. Fantastic. Okay. I am ready. All right. So as I imagine you might have noticed, I got pretty into biking during the pandemic. I did notice you would put a little note on slack that would say, like, I'm going to be gone for the next hour.
SPEAKER_07: And it was because you were biking. Yeah. I mean, I had ridden bikes before covid hit, but I kind of leveled up during the pandemic.
SPEAKER_08: I took that canceled gym membership money and bought a road bike and some of the proper outfits and started riding up and down the East Bay Hills. Torturing myself. And then a few months in, you know, to this new hobby, the Tour de France happened. And I had never really watched the Tour de France before, but I figured, you know, I'm into this now. Give this a try. And what was immediately clear was that it's just like a very different spectacle from the other kinds of sports that I was used to watching. You know, things like basketball or soccer. Yeah. And then the biggest difference is really just one of time, like the tour stretches on for several weeks and there's a stage nearly every day that lasts like four to six hours. And within each stage, you know, there are moments of really intense, exciting action. But there's also long stretches where there isn't a whole lot happening, at least at least to my eyes, as like an unsophisticated newbie. And so, you know, I wasn't giving it my undivided attention all the time. It kind of became this sort of pleasant morning ritual that I would have on in the background as I, you know, drank my coffee and wrote my morning emails. Yeah. It sounds kind of like slow TV, like watching a train over the course of 12 hours.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That was at least at least that was how I was treating it. Maybe that's disrespectful to serious cycling fans.
SPEAKER_08: But, you know, as I was doing this, I started to notice something kind of strange, which was that the cycling announcers, they don't just talk about cycling. And one of the things that they really talk about a lot is architecture.
SPEAKER_03: Looking down here at the church of Saint-Jean, built in 1862 in the shape of a Greek cross on the debris of the old parish church of Saint-Andéol, it's got a porch-type bell tower with the roof flanked with four pinnacles surmounted by a spire burning a huge cockle.
SPEAKER_11: Can't see it from this angle. Oh, yes, I can. There it is, right on the front. Well spotted. Cock-a-doodle-oo.
SPEAKER_07: Whoa, I could get into this. Yeah, it's like this extremely detailed architectural description of, you know, a church or something.
SPEAKER_08: And if you watch a lot of this, you notice this all the time. Like the announcers will be talking about, you know, Team Jumbo Visma's tactics and whether Primoz Rablich has what it takes to recover from that crash he suffered earlier in the stage. And then suddenly they're talking about like an abbey.
SPEAKER_00: This is an abbey by the books of it, the old Abbey de l'Ocdu. And it was at this abbey in 1940 that the Mona Lisa was moved to, along with more than a thousand other paintings from the Louvre, to be put in storage for safety at the outbreak of the wall. So it played a significant role in protecting some of the great artwork of not just of France, but of the world.
SPEAKER_07: Well, I'm really into this. I had no idea that the announcements had so much history and context. That is really stunning. Yeah, I love it too. And you know, I just find it so charming because it's like, you know, these serious sports announcers have like a sort of nearly encyclopedic knowledge of random buildings and little towns like throughout the French countryside.
SPEAKER_03: This is the valley where in 218 BC Hannibal came through here with 90,000 men and 10,000 horsemen and 37 elephants on his way back home.
SPEAKER_11: And imagine what the road conditions were like in those days, Paul.
SPEAKER_03: It was pretty tough for the elephants, I have to say, once they got over the top, because fortunately with their large pads, they didn't slip too much on the snow. Would there be Indian elephants? No, actually there were African elephants. Very unusual. I'm surprised they could train them.
SPEAKER_11: Four minutes and 18 seconds, 92 kilometers to go now. Here's our poor man left on the way.
SPEAKER_07: I don't even know how to react to that. That's just like, that's a stunning digression. This is totally new to me. Is this, is this the way it's always been? Have they always been this like Wikipedia of architecture and world history at their fingertips and presented it when they're announcing the race? Yeah, I wanted to answer that question. And there's really one person who I think is best equipped to explain how we got here.
SPEAKER_08: And he's actually one of the announcers who you just heard there talking about African elephants. His name is Phil Liggett and you know, he's, he's kind of like the most famous voice in professional cycling. In fact, there's a documentary about him that came out last year called Phil Liggett, the voice of cycling. And I talked to Phil on Zoom and he basically told me that he's been doing the Tour de France for decades. And in the very beginning, he was really one of the only English speaking cycling commentators in the world.
SPEAKER_02: I work for the BBC, for ITV, CBS, Channel 7 in Australia, CBCC in Canada, Television New Zealand, EtoStar Television in China. I work for everyone. Phil said, you know, it's a little hard to pinpoint exactly when the whole Chateau Church Abbey commentary got started.
SPEAKER_08: But he, he does remember one moment in particular. He was working with his long term partner. They were a famous duo, the late, great Paul Sherwin. And the cameras panned over this dilapidated old Abbey. A real wreck. It was a ruin. And I just jokingly said to Paul Sherwin, I said, hey Paul, this old Abbey here needs a bit of renovation, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02: As a joke, I don't know if it was probably the 14th century. And Paul looked up and he said, oh yeah, he said, Louis the 14th lived there. And Phil looked at Paul just like, how did you know that? Like, how did you know that Louis the 14th lived there?
SPEAKER_08: Like you're a, you're a cycling journalist. And so how did he know it? Well, Paul had lived in France before when he was a pro cyclist. And I think that in that specific instance, it was just kind of like a fun fact that he had learned along the way. But they started to do more of that, just like offering these like little bits of commentary about the landscape that the bikers were passing through them. The buildings and the flora and the fauna. And, you know, I think part of it at the time was that they were really trying to sell cycling to an American audience who was not as familiar with the sport as people in Europe. But really, people from all over the world started writing in to say that they loved it. And pretty soon the Tour de France itself sort of realized what was happening. The Tour de France brought up when they heard what we're doing and they started to sell the country more.
SPEAKER_08: The tour basically realized that they could use this to their advantage, what Phil and Paul were doing. Phil told me that this was all happening at a time when the race wasn't doing very well financially. And people in France were actually getting kind of annoyed because it would lead to all of these road closures. There was a sense that it was like bad for business. And so when the tour organizers picked up on what Phil and Paul were doing, they were like, oh, we could make this work for us and almost reframe the tour as like a three-week long advertisement for the country of France. So it's competitive cycling like wrapped in this advertisement for the French tourism board.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_08: And so they started telling the camera operators to try and get pretty shots of the beautiful old churches and the bridges and waterfalls. And they encouraged Phil and Paul to talk about that stuff. And for a while they had to do all the research themselves, but eventually the tour actually started producing this incredible book for them. Which they call the Speaker's Guide to the Tour de France, Tourist and Historical Information.
SPEAKER_02: And in the book, it's because every stage and every monument or old house or garden or bird in that region that we pass through is pictured in here.
SPEAKER_08: So it's basically a guidebook to the French countryside, except it's designed exclusively for Phil and like a handful of other people who are cycling commentators for the tour. Like exclusively for them, like meaning that they printed it just for them.
SPEAKER_07: Like it's not available to the general public at all. No, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_08: Like you can't even it's like pretty hard to find a copy, even if you're like searching on like eBay and stuff like they don't even even if you're like a cycling journalist, you can't get a copy. It's just like people it's like for the handful of people who are on the mic doing the commentating for the various TV stations that are broadcasting the event. Phil showed me his just like through the zoom and you know, it's basically just like this giant homemade book with like hundreds of hundreds of pages. And he said that it's really all put together by this one person. And every year when the tour route is announced the following year in October, it's her job to drive every inch of the route, all two and a half to three and a half thousand miles of it.
SPEAKER_02: And basically document all of the points of interest that the cameras might linger on during the race.
SPEAKER_08: Every chateau, every palace, every gardens, the mountains, the flora and the fauna, I'll put it all in this book, and then on the day before the tour starts, the organization gives every commentator a copy of the book in English and French.
SPEAKER_02: And each entry just has like a bunch of interesting tidbits and facts about particular buildings or bridges that you know, the cameras might might pass over.
SPEAKER_08: But there's this moment in the in the broadcast that Phil described to me where it's like you have to make sure that you have found the right thing. Like what you're looking at on the cameras is the thing that you're you don't want to read the facts for the wrong chateau. So and so he described all these moments to me where he would just be looking over and seeing his partner, Paul, like frantically trying to find the right building in the book.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm watching Paul savagely rip the book apart to find a picture of this long chateau. And I'm just dying to laugh. I tell him I'm a big black car because I'm live on that. And I can see the sweat on his brow because he's desperate. Then all of a sudden he'll come in and I'll say, what do you think of that Paul?
SPEAKER_08: And then Paul, you know, who had in the meantime had, you know, been been had found the right page, which is cool. You read off a few interesting facts about the building as if he knew them, you know, right off the top of his head. What do we know about that? Well, the Ponticue, this is one of those medieval villages I was telling you about a little earlier.
SPEAKER_03: They were all very much fortified. They've got a lot of very narrow streets in there. It's situated right on the Uveza Valley. And it was extremely important in years gone by for its military and military control. Just looking, there's a problem there at the back with a flat tire. He's waiting for the time.
SPEAKER_08: You'd never know. He's been, you know, tearing through this book, trying to come up with that, you know, fact about the military might of the Uveza Valley or whatever, you know. No, I mean, they're amazing broadcasters.
SPEAKER_07: That's what you really take away from these clips is just how good they are at their job.
SPEAKER_08: Yeah, they're really talented. And Phil, you know, he says he gets emails all the time from people who appreciate this detail and want to know, you know, like the exact route from the tour from that past year because they saw this like particular village that they thought was beautiful. And, you know, I think in France, too, it also has worked like the tour is thought to be a real showcase for the country now. And towns will actually pay money to have the tour go through their town because it will bring in, you know, the tourist revenue. And also that, you know, people from all around the world will kind of get a chance to see their town and maybe hear someone like Phil describe, you know, their chateau. Your 14th century abbey. Yeah, exactly. And they might want to come visit sometime.
SPEAKER_07: Well, that's amazing. I am really, really impressed by Phil as a broadcaster and it's so much fun to listen to him. So this is so great. I'm into it. I'm now going to watch the Tour de France. I love this idea. Yeah, put it on in the background at the very least.
SPEAKER_08: That sounds great. Emmet, thank you so much for introducing me to Phil Liggett. I think that's a gem of a human.
SPEAKER_08: Thank you, Roman.
SPEAKER_07: OK, so I'm here with Chris Perubay. Chris, what do you have for us?
SPEAKER_09: Hi, Roman. So over the summer, you might remember we did a story about daylight saving time. Yes, saving no S. Saving with no S. Yes, the biggest news you can use I have ever provided on this podcast is that it is daylight saving time. So I have a follow up to that story. And before I get there, just a quick recap of what we talked about with daylight saving time. It was episode 443. We told the story of William Willett. He's kind of the father of daylight saving time. He was this British architect who campaigned for the idea for years and then he died. And one year after his death, the British Parliament finally tried out daylight saving time. And that's why we have it today. There's a commemorative sundial to him in Kent. Beautiful wrap it up with a nice bow type of story. Yes, I remember that part of the story. That's great.
SPEAKER_07: So after I put out that story, I got quite a few emails from listeners who were saying, love the story. Great job.
SPEAKER_09: But wait a second. I thought Benjamin Franklin invented daylight saving time. Benjamin Franklin like, yeah, the American founding father, Benjamin Franklin.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, like Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin.
SPEAKER_09: He was responsible for so many things, you know, according to lore.
SPEAKER_07: Well, and as soon as I started getting these emails, I was thinking, is he responsible for it? Like he invented so much other stuff.
SPEAKER_09: Like it seems entirely plausible. So I decided I have to get to the bottom of this. So I did a little investigation. All right. Let's hear it. So I called up this guy. Hello, is this Ranger Thomas Daniels? Yes, it is. Should I call you Ranger Daniels? What is the right way to refer to you? You just call me Tom.
SPEAKER_09: So park ranger Tom Daniels works at the Independence National Park in Philadelphia. It includes lots of American landmarks, including the Liberty Bell and also the Benjamin Franklin Museum. And at the park, he is their resident Benjamin Franklin nut.
SPEAKER_10: I would say he's always been a fascinating character for me. And the more you learn about him, the more you're amazed by how much he actually accomplished in one lifespan. So we talked for a while about Franklin. I explained the whole thing.
SPEAKER_09: You know, William Willett, the angry emails. And I finally asked him the question, did Benjamin Franklin invent Daylight Saving Time? So what's fascinating about that is I think this is one of the stories where Benjamin Franklin becomes so famous that he starts getting things attributed to him that are not necessarily attributable to him.
SPEAKER_10: And Daylight Savings Time is one of those.
SPEAKER_09: And that's the end of the story. Benjamin Franklin did not invent Daylight Saving Time. No, there's more. I would expect a little bit more.
SPEAKER_07: There's a little bit more. I know this is a mini story, but it's not quite that brief.
SPEAKER_09: So there is a funny connection between Benjamin Franklin and Daylight Saving Time. It comes from 1776 after the Declaration of Independence was signed and the Continental Congress was getting ready to go to war with Britain for the independence of the United States. And they wanted French military support to fight the war. So they decided we need to send somebody over there who will win over French hearts and minds. And who better to send than Benjamin Franklin, the world famous inventor and writer. So they send Benjamin Franklin over to France as a diplomat and his charge is to essentially try and secure a formal alliance with the French.
SPEAKER_10: There's no guarantee that that we were going to be capable of winning independence. So this this was going to take a lot of convincing. So Franklin really dived into it. He really ingratiated himself into French society. So what does that mean, to ingratiate himself into French society?
SPEAKER_09: It basically means he was going to a lot of parties. So every night, Ben Franklin was just staying up really late, hanging out with all these important French people. According to some accounts, he was basically living like a college student. And then one day Benjamin Franklin's in Paris and there's a loud noise outside his window and he wakes up and he looks outside and he sees that the sun is coming up. And it's six or seven a.m. And this is a revelation for Benjamin Franklin.
SPEAKER_10: And he writes an essay in the Journal of Paris and it's called an economical project. And he he basically gently chastises the citizens of Paris for not getting up with the sun.
SPEAKER_07: The gall of that diplomat to go in there and tell them how to do things.
SPEAKER_09: Roman, here, actually, Tom read me an excerpt from an economical project. He says, your readers, who with me have never seen any sign of sunshine before noon and seldom regard the astronomical part of the almanac, will be as much astonished as I was when they hear of his rising so early.
SPEAKER_10: And especially when I assure them that he gives the light as soon as he writes. I am convinced of this. I am certain of my fact. One cannot be more certain of any fact. I saw it with my own eyes.
SPEAKER_09: That is Benjamin Franklin's great revelation is that the sun comes up in the morning. Well, you get a little bit from his tone here of like what he's trying to do.
SPEAKER_07: He's overdoing it a little bit in a fun way, actually. Yeah. I mean, Tom called this essay satirical.
SPEAKER_09: I think that's right. And it includes these recommendations at the end that are pretty outlandish. One of the regulations says every morning, as soon as the sun rises, let all the bells in every church be set ringing.
SPEAKER_10: And if that is not sufficient, let cannon be fired in every street to wake the sluggards effectually and make them open their eyes to see their true interest. Well, firing a cannon seems pretty extreme, but I have to kind of I kind of dig it.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, Roman, what else is going to awaken the sluggards?
SPEAKER_09: You have to effectually awaken those sluggards.
SPEAKER_09: OK, so in conclusion, Benjamin Franklin did not invent Daylight Saving Time. He did write this funny essay about everyone in Paris waking up to the sounds of cannons being fired, which I guess is why people make that mistake, because it's also about waking up earlier with the sun. But there's something bigger going on here, which is that lots of inventions get attributed to Benjamin Franklin that he is not responsible for. And Tom told me this actually happens at his job sometimes. I think the most famous one is people think that he invented they think he invented the light bulb, which, of course, was Thomas Edison.
SPEAKER_10: I think the confusion comes from Franklin's experiments with electricity.
SPEAKER_09: Some other common ones I found on the Internet, there are people who believe Benjamin Franklin invented the streetlight. He did not invent the streetlight. He was involved in improving a certain design of streetlight. There is actually a page on the Franklin Institute website dedicated to quotes that are falsely attributed to Ben Franklin. So would you like to hear an example? I would love to, yeah.
SPEAKER_07: OK.
SPEAKER_09: Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain. And most fools do. Oh, OK. That sounds very Franklin-y or it's kind of Mark Twain-y as well. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, it's a little more modern than that. That was actually said by Dale Carnegie, the guy who wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People.
SPEAKER_09: So someone who's pretty different.
SPEAKER_07: Well, this is so fascinating. Well, so Benjamin Franklin did a lot of amazing things and we were not diminished from Benjamin Franklin, but he did not invent daylight saving time.
SPEAKER_09: He did not invent daylight saving time, not to diminish his other accomplishments. Please be careful when you're reading those articles online that say the 10 amazing things created by Ben Franklin. Please approach those with suspicion.
SPEAKER_07: That's a good warning. Thanks so much, Chris. Thanks, Roman.
SPEAKER_02: Coming up, we get to the bottom of the Fire Bowl after this.
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SPEAKER_07: This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Do you ever find that just as you're trying to fall asleep, your brain suddenly won't stop talking? Your thoughts are just racing around. I call this just going to bed. It basically happens every night. It turns out one great way to make those racing thoughts go away is to talk them through. Therapy gives you a place to do that so you can get out of your negative thought cycles and find some mental and emotional peace. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Get a break from your thoughts with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp dot com slash invisible today to get 10 percent off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P dot com slash invisible. So I'm here with producer Lasha McDon. Hey, Lasha. Hey, Roman. So what do you have for us? Well, I wanted to talk with you about fire poles.
SPEAKER_06: Oh, excellent. I was just thinking about fire poles and then I didn't know what they were all about.
SPEAKER_07: But you're talking about the shiny brass poles that firefighters slide down to get from the second floor to the first floor. Exactly. And sometimes from the third floor to the first floor. So the fire pole as an object is pretty symbolic of the firefighting profession.
SPEAKER_06: Right. But the actual use of the pole has kind of become a thing of the past. If you learned about firefighters as a kid, maybe from your parents or teachers or even a storybook, you were probably told about the pole because at one time it was in nearly every fire station. Any guesses why? Well, my first guess is the obvious one, which is it gets you from one floor to the other very, very fast.
SPEAKER_07: Right. Fast was the way to go. Putting out a fire fast meant getting to the fire fast. And for years, fire poles have helped firefighters do that.
SPEAKER_06: But the origin story of the pole is actually pretty interesting. OK, well, wait on me. I called up retired Chicago battalion chief DeKalb Walcott Jr.
SPEAKER_06: My name is DeKalb Walcott Jr. I moved to the ranks from fireman, engineer, lieutenant, captain and served four years as a battalion chief. So Chief Walcott is fine.
SPEAKER_06: Chief Walcott is now a firefighter historian. He's been archiving black firefighter history in Chicago, where our fire pole origin story takes place. But Roman, before we get to the polls, let's talk about the firefighters. OK. The first firefighters were the bucket brigade. This was the 1600s before engines and hoses.
SPEAKER_04: They would have a long line of men, women, children, slaves, freedmen, whoever could hold a bucket, probably. And they passed the buckets on until they got to the seat of the fire or the person that was first in line that was dumped in the water.
SPEAKER_06: The bucket brigade was basically a long human chain. Over time, they improved the system of firefighting with the goal of putting fires out as fast as possible. By the 1800s, there were engines being pulled by horses. But one thing didn't change throughout this whole time period. Each group of firefighters, which were called fire companies, were in furious competition to fight the same fire.
SPEAKER_07: Huh. So why were they competing? Originally, volunteer companies were basically at the whim of the insurance carrier.
SPEAKER_04: Whoever got to the fire first put water on the fire first were the ones who were paid.
SPEAKER_06: And no one else was paid, even if they got there a little bit later? No.
SPEAKER_06: Essentially, insurance companies would pay only one fire company, the one that made it to the scene, hooked up to the hydrant and put out the fire first. And with so much competition, things got messy.
SPEAKER_07: This seems like a really bad system. It's a bad setup. So tell me more about how it got more messy.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I mean, well, so first of all, most firefighters weren't getting paid much at all. Insurance companies would offer incentives to particular fire stations over others. And so those fire stations sometimes did what they could to slow down their rivals. DeKalb told me there was also a huge culture of drinking among volunteer firefighters. Many firehouses were even outfitted with their own bars. And in Chicago, DeKalb said that taverns would sometimes give alcohol out to firefighters at the scene of a fire to help them get their bravery up. And sometimes that alcohol helped facilitate full on brawls on the street. And they would get into fights not only with the public, but also with the other fire companies they were competing against.
SPEAKER_04: There were a lot of complaints by the public also because here you have a fire company fighting in the street when they should be putting water on fire. So there'd be like fire consuming a building and firefighters from different stations would be having like a brawl in the street right in front of it.
SPEAKER_07: Yes, exactly. That's a terrifying image.
SPEAKER_06: And it's in this competitive atmosphere that a new fire station, Engine Company 21, is formed.
SPEAKER_04: Engine 21 was an all-black fire company.
SPEAKER_06: And actually Engine 21 was the first paid black fire company in the country.
SPEAKER_04: They had approximately eight black members. Many of those members were ex-Civil War veterans and also slaves.
SPEAKER_06: So it was 1872 and for the very first time the mayor of Chicago, Joseph Medill, allowed black people to join the Chicago Fire Department. As you can imagine, members of the newly formed Engine 21 firehouse felt a particular need to prove themselves. And Engine 21 is credited with coming up with the fire pole.
SPEAKER_07: Oh, this is so fascinating. Okay, so how did that happen?
SPEAKER_06: Well, Roman, it has to do with horses and staircases and a whole lot of hay. Okay, I have no idea where this is going because I'm pretty sure horses can't use fire poles.
SPEAKER_07: But I can't wait to learn more.
SPEAKER_06: Roman, have you ever been inside a fire station?
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I have been to them. Yeah, sure. There's lots of different ones. There's a cool round one and sort of the Albany Berkeley Junction that I've been inside.
SPEAKER_06: So the traditional structure of most firehouses of the 1800s, like Engine 21, were built three stories high. The horses were stabled on the first floor, the humans sleeping and eating quarters on the second, hay on the third, and a set of stairs connecting them. It worked pretty well, except that the horses would often follow the smell of human food and try to climb up the stairs. And horses can make it up a set of stairs just fine, but when it comes to going down the stairs, they'd often get stuck. Okay, that sounds harrowing.
SPEAKER_07: Now Roman, we've never had to remove a spooked horse from the stairway at work, have we?
SPEAKER_06: No, definitely not. Thank goodness.
SPEAKER_07: But if we did, we'd quickly find a way to make sure that doesn't happen again.
SPEAKER_06: That's something that happens once.
SPEAKER_07: So to solve for this problem, most fire companies blocked off the old stairs and they put in one very tight spiral staircase, which was fully horse-proof.
SPEAKER_06: But this caused a new problem. It took a lot longer for a team of firefighters to get down a tight spiral staircase. And if Engine 21's firefighters were too slow at the door, they wouldn't be the first to the fire. And if it happened too often, they couldn't save lives, couldn't make a living, and their reputation might suffer too, to the point where maybe they'd stop getting calls altogether.
SPEAKER_04: Engine 21's total existence brought on competition. In order for Engine 21 to survive during that time period, they had to do everything right. They had to be correct. Couldn't get into altercations on the street when people would call them out of the name. I've read many instances where they went into bars or taverns and were not served, even in uniform. And that's kind of how it went for a couple years.
SPEAKER_06: And then one night, in 1878, Engine 21 firefighter George Reed was in the hayloft on the third floor when the alarm went off. He acted on instinct, and instead of running down two flights of spiral stairs to catch up to the group, he just slid down a pole from the third floor all the way down to the first.
SPEAKER_07: Where did the pole come from?
SPEAKER_06: So the pole was a wooden binding pole that was used for securing hay to the wagon during transport. When that pole wasn't in use, it was stored vertically from the loading area all the way up to the hayloft. So anyway, George was able to get saddled in and ready to go way before anyone else who took the winding staircase from the second floor. And people were like, where did you come from? How'd you get here so fast? And then later, Engine 21's captain, Captain Kenyon, was like, let's install a permanent hole in the floor, run a three-inch round wooden pole through the hole, and why don't we just slide that instead of taking the stairs? So they did. So they get down three stories really, really fast. Does it actually help them get to the fires first?
SPEAKER_07: Well, I should say that DeKalb told me that at first Engine 21 was the butt of many jokes because of the pole.
SPEAKER_06: They were laughed at. It was a joke to everybody else, but it stopped being a joke when they found out that Engine 21 was putting out their fires, getting in first,
SPEAKER_04: and the city, as a matter of fact, annual report for April of 1878 stated that sliding poles increase members' response time. And as a result, sliding poles were being installed throughout Chicago, throughout all the firehouses in Chicago.
SPEAKER_07: Hmm. I mean, I can imagine that sliding down a pole instead of going down a tight spiral staircase would shave off a few seconds,
SPEAKER_07: but it doesn't sound like a lot of time, but maybe, you know, like that's enough of an edge. I mean, maybe that's the difference between life and death in some situations. That could mean everything.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah. And Engine 21 didn't just install a pole. They turned that pole into their skill, one that set them apart from all other fire companies, because it's not as easy as it looks to slide efficiently down a thin wooden pole, multiple flights of stairs, but they became very good at their craft. They would drill in the daytime. They had, their timeframe was 12 to 14 seconds getting out of the door.
SPEAKER_04: That's astounding. We can't do that today. They would drill regularly doing that, though. They would slide the pole, hook the horses up and out the door. They went. Wow. In 12 to 14 seconds.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah. The fire pole, it revolutionized the way firefighters responded to emergencies, and eventually they were installed around the world. Like you said, it saved lives. But the pole also created a new kind of problem for firefighters, a new kind of life or death problem, because in leaping onto the pole and accelerating, firefighters were sometimes injuring themselves before they even got to the scene. I've heard stories of intoxicated firemen going to reach to slide the pole, missed the pole, and his head was the first thing that hit the concrete.
SPEAKER_04: Sprained ankles, concussions, falls. Some inebriated or sleepwalking firefighters have simply wandered over the hole and fallen into it,
SPEAKER_06: accidentally falling 20 or 30 feet. And at their most dangerous, the poles have led to deaths. Today, fire poles have been phased out of use in a lot of cities.
SPEAKER_07: So if firefighters aren't using fire poles, are they back to using spiral staircases? Well, without horses, there's no need for horse-proof staircases. In multi-story firehouses, some have considered installing slides and other straight staircases,
SPEAKER_06: although both options are slower than what Engine 21's response time was with the pole. And most newer fire stations now operate from a single story of space permits, so they're on the ground floor already. But all this doesn't mean that you won't see a fire pole in your local firehouse anymore, just that over time, it's really just become a symbol.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I mean, considering that it went through a phase of non-existing, it existed for a while and now it's being phased out, it really has stuck in the popular imagination. Like if you'd ask anyone what they'd find in a firehouse, they would talk about an engine, maybe a dalmatian, and then there would be like a pole. Like my kids could tell you about a fire pole, even though they probably weren't in active use during their lifetimes. Right. Yeah. I even read an article with an architect who specializes in firehouse design, and he said that in his latest designs,
SPEAKER_06: fire poles were specifically requested by city administrators because of what they represented, even though the firefighters these days wouldn't necessarily use them. These days, it's just simultaneously an emblem of innovation and of tradition.
SPEAKER_07: Well, it's so cool. I'm so glad I know more about fire poles. This is great, Lasha. Thanks so much. Thank you.
SPEAKER_07: 99% Invisible was produced this week by Emmet Fitzgerald, Lasha Madon, and Chris Berube. Mix and tech production by Amita Kanatra. Music by our director of sound, Swan Rial. Delaney Hall is the executive producer. Kirk Colstate is the digital director. The rest of the team is Christopher Johnson, Vivian Lay, Joe Rosenberg, Sophia Klatsker, and me, Roman Mars. Special thanks to Jacob Maldonado Medina for production help on the mini stories this year. We are part of the Stitcher and Sirius XM podcast family now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building in beautiful uptown Oakland, California. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet me at Roman Mars and the show at 99 P I org on Instagram and Reddit, too. You can find links to other Stitcher shows I love, as well as every past episode of 99 P I, including 13 more volumes of mini stories. If you like that sort of thing at 99 P I dot org. You've been listening to a Stitcher podcast from Sirius XM. Great sleep can be hard to come by these days, and finding the right mattress feels totally overwhelming. Serta's new and improved perfect sleeper is a simple solution designed to support all sleep positions with zoned comfort memory foam and a cool to the touch cover. The Serta perfect sleeper means more restful nights and more rested days. Find your comfort at Serta dot com.
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