April 30, 2020 • 10 mins
Today's tour introduces some amazing creations that are on display inside the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
(00:28):
of Curiosities. No side really wins in a war. As
long as human life is sacrificed, every battle will be
a losing one. But one man tried to change that,
and he almost succeeded. Charles Kettering made cash registers. That
(00:51):
was just his day job, but in his spare time,
he was also an inventor. In the span of five years,
he was awarded twenty three patents. But he didn't limit
his expertise only to cash registers. He also liked to
tinker with cars, Always looking to make things better, Kettering
and a group of engineers would gather in a barn
owned by one of the other members to discuss improvements. Eventually,
(01:11):
their frequent meetings were so productive they decided to incorporate,
and their new company would focus on reducing automobile fatalities. Meanwhile,
Elmer Speary, a former electric company Magnate was working on
making ships and planes safer. His gyroscopic stabilizers helped large
ships balance in rough waters. They soon led to the
invention of small gyro compasses that would allow airplanes to
(01:34):
maintain true north while airborne. Sperry also had something else
up as sleeve, though too. He didn't want to just
make airplanes safer to fly. His goal was to eliminate
the pilots entirely. Sperry and his business partner Peter Hewitt
worked day and night on the first drone, an unmanned
aircraft meant to deliver a payload to a designated target.
(01:55):
The Navy didn't see a need for such a device,
but the Army was intrigued. One man named Edward Deeds
was a colonel in the U. S. Army and led
their aircraft production board. He was also one of the
original members of Charles Kettering's Barn Gang, the group of
engineers who had worked on improving automobiles in their spare time.
Deeds like Speary's drone, and he asked Kettering to come
(02:16):
on board as a supervisor. The operation was called Project
Liberty Eagle, and it was top secret. None of the
contacts listed exactly what would be produced. All components were classified.
It was up to someone named as the account manager
to fill in the Army's higher ups. Verbally. Kettering's idea
for the drone differed from his peers. He didn't think
(02:37):
that it was possible for an unmanned aircraft to drop
a bomb and return to its place of origin. He
wanted to launch the single use playing with an explosive
device attached to it, which could be launched at a
potential target. The Army agreed, and Kettering got to work.
He built his flying bombs out of wood wrapped in
fabric and paper mache, but found the engines to be
(02:57):
too costly. There was also the problem of the aircraft
knowing where to go when no one was controlling it.
Speary took care of that last part, though, inventing a
new kind of barometer to detect changes in air pressure
within a few feet. Those changes were then passed onto
a set of servos, which were used as a programmable
air system. Their first tests of the Kettering Bug, as
(03:19):
it was called, were complete failures. The first one crashed
after flying only three feet. The second bug lasted fifteen
seconds and then hit the dirt. After several rounds of
changes and bug fixes, including an updated engine, the Kettering
Bug successfully performed a targeted flight. Unfortunately, by the time
it was ready, it was too late. The Army had
(03:41):
wanted to use Kettering's flying bombs for the war going
on at the time, not the Gulf War or the
war in Vietnam, mind you. In order to manufacture these
aircraft for the army, a new company was formed by
Edward Deeds and Charles Kettering, who sought help from someone
with extensive experience in the flight industry. You might say
this person was the one who started it all well.
(04:03):
Along with his brother Orville Wright of the Right Brothers fame,
was appointed director of the new Dayton Right Company, which
was commissioned to produce the frames for the Kettering Bugs
during World War One, oh and to get the engines
at a reasonable price. Kettering reached out to the man
who had mastered the art of production efficiency, Henry Ford.
(04:23):
The greatest minds at the time came together to help
save lives during World War One. Although the Kettering Bug
never saw combat, it lives on today in torpedoes and
aerial drones. A promise of the future that wasn't quite
ready to take flight. How we decorate the rooms in
(04:53):
our home can tell a lot about who we are.
We might have had posters in our childhood bedroom of
our favorite bands and movie. As we get older and
our taste change, hopefully they mature, we might have paintings
adorning our walls now, or interesting works of art. Sophie, however,
turned entire rooms into a work of art. Sophie Charlotte,
(05:14):
the second wife of King Frederick of Prussia, wanted a
space to call her own within the walls of the
Berlin City Palace. Architect Andrea Schleuder designed for her a
series of ornate panels to cover one large room. The
panels were then built by master craftsman Gottfried Wolfram with
the assistance of two other men, who all helped give
the room its name. After all, they knew their way
(05:35):
around high end materials, specifically amber. Together the men used
tons of it, along with a heavy amount of gold
leaf to cover the elaborate crafted panels. The result was
a gilded masterpiece of royal decadence. Mosaics of amber were
juxtaposed against golden flowers and cherubic statues along the walls.
(05:56):
It was anything but subtle. The Amber room didn't stay
at the palace for long, though Russians are Peter the
Great came to see the room for himself in seventeen sixteen,
and soon after King Frederick gifted every last panel of
it to him. Seeking an alliance against Sweden, Empress Elizabeth,
Peter's daughter, had the room reinstalled at Katherine Palace, the
(06:17):
family's summer home. She made some changes and incorporated even
more amber and gold over the course of a decade.
By the time it was finished, over six tons of
amber covered almost six hundred square feet of wall space
in the palace. The room lived there for decades until
the start of World War Two. As German forces moved
through Europe and Russia, they were stealing arts and other
(06:39):
valuable items for themselves. The Amber room would have been
a treasure trove over the Nazis, so Russian experts tried
to disassemble it and move it out of the palace.
Their efforts, though, failed. Before they even began, the amber
in the walls had become brittle, any effort to remove
it would destroy it. Instead, wallpaper was put up to
try and hide it from prying eyes. But hiding six
(07:02):
tons of amber and gold from dedicated art thieves with
simple wallpaper was never going to work. In nineteen forty one,
the Nazis had raided the palace. They dismantled the room
piece by piece in under two days, taking everything to
Konigsberg Castle in East Prussia, where it was reassembled as
a kind of trophy room. It stayed there for three
(07:22):
years until nine Allied troops were advancing on Konigsberg and
the British Royal Air Force reigned fire on the town,
turning buildings to ash. The Germans held their ground for
five months until Hitler ordered every piece of art, including
the Amber Room, moved away from the town to safer ground.
Now here's where things get tricky. The man in charge
(07:43):
of that move, Eric Cooke, was supposed to oversee the
amber rooms transport, but he escaped Khonsberg and left his
subordinate in charge. The Russians arrived to occupy the town,
destroying even more of it in the process, and as
far as anyone knew, the Amber Room had not survived.
After the war, a recreation was erected within Katherine Palace
(08:04):
in Russia. It took twenty four years to complete it,
probably because all they had to reference were black and
white photos and sketches from the original room. All the
remaining amber craftsmen in the country were brought into fabricate
panels as close to the originals as possible. But what
of the once great room that had traveled from Berlin
to Russia and finally to Konigsberg. Was it destroyed by
(08:25):
Allied bombing? Well, yes and no. While it's unlikely that
the entire room was saved at the end of the war,
rumors have circulated about its survival. According to some who
were actually there, the panels had been loaded onto a
German military ship on January thirty ninety five, a ship
that was sunk by a Soviet submarine a short while later.
(08:46):
Treasure hunters naturally searched the wreck for years looking for
the panels, but they found nothing. In the late nineteen nineties,
researchers claimed to have found the Amber Room in two
different places. A group of German experts said it was
hidden in a over mine. A Lithuanian team, on the
other hand, said it was at the bottom of a lagoon.
Both teams. That turns out we're wrong. Unfortunately, modern assessments
(09:09):
have declared the Amber Rooms recovery a lost cause. It
was almost certainly destroyed in the Koenigsberg bombings at the
end of the war, but those who want to get
an idea of its opulence can still visit Catherine Palace
near St. Petersburg. It's as close as anyone will get
to what was once described as a true eighth wonder
of the world. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
(09:35):
of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
and television show, and you can learn all about it
(09:56):
over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
next time, stay curious. M
Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
(00:28):
of Curiosities. No side really wins in a war. As
long as human life is sacrificed, every battle will be
a losing one. But one man tried to change that,
and he almost succeeded. Charles Kettering made cash registers. That
(00:51):
was just his day job, but in his spare time,
he was also an inventor. In the span of five years,
he was awarded twenty three patents. But he didn't limit
his expertise only to cash registers. He also liked to
tinker with cars, Always looking to make things better, Kettering
and a group of engineers would gather in a barn
owned by one of the other members to discuss improvements. Eventually,
(01:11):
their frequent meetings were so productive they decided to incorporate,
and their new company would focus on reducing automobile fatalities. Meanwhile,
Elmer Speary, a former electric company Magnate was working on
making ships and planes safer. His gyroscopic stabilizers helped large
ships balance in rough waters. They soon led to the
invention of small gyro compasses that would allow airplanes to
(01:34):
maintain true north while airborne. Sperry also had something else
up as sleeve, though too. He didn't want to just
make airplanes safer to fly. His goal was to eliminate
the pilots entirely. Sperry and his business partner Peter Hewitt
worked day and night on the first drone, an unmanned
aircraft meant to deliver a payload to a designated target.
(01:55):
The Navy didn't see a need for such a device,
but the Army was intrigued. One man named Edward Deeds
was a colonel in the U. S. Army and led
their aircraft production board. He was also one of the
original members of Charles Kettering's Barn Gang, the group of
engineers who had worked on improving automobiles in their spare time.
Deeds like Speary's drone, and he asked Kettering to come
(02:16):
on board as a supervisor. The operation was called Project
Liberty Eagle, and it was top secret. None of the
contacts listed exactly what would be produced. All components were classified.
It was up to someone named as the account manager
to fill in the Army's higher ups. Verbally. Kettering's idea
for the drone differed from his peers. He didn't think
(02:37):
that it was possible for an unmanned aircraft to drop
a bomb and return to its place of origin. He
wanted to launch the single use playing with an explosive
device attached to it, which could be launched at a
potential target. The Army agreed, and Kettering got to work.
He built his flying bombs out of wood wrapped in
fabric and paper mache, but found the engines to be
(02:57):
too costly. There was also the problem of the aircraft
knowing where to go when no one was controlling it.
Speary took care of that last part, though, inventing a
new kind of barometer to detect changes in air pressure
within a few feet. Those changes were then passed onto
a set of servos, which were used as a programmable
air system. Their first tests of the Kettering Bug, as
(03:19):
it was called, were complete failures. The first one crashed
after flying only three feet. The second bug lasted fifteen
seconds and then hit the dirt. After several rounds of
changes and bug fixes, including an updated engine, the Kettering
Bug successfully performed a targeted flight. Unfortunately, by the time
it was ready, it was too late. The Army had
(03:41):
wanted to use Kettering's flying bombs for the war going
on at the time, not the Gulf War or the
war in Vietnam, mind you. In order to manufacture these
aircraft for the army, a new company was formed by
Edward Deeds and Charles Kettering, who sought help from someone
with extensive experience in the flight industry. You might say
this person was the one who started it all well.
(04:03):
Along with his brother Orville Wright of the Right Brothers fame,
was appointed director of the new Dayton Right Company, which
was commissioned to produce the frames for the Kettering Bugs
during World War One, oh and to get the engines
at a reasonable price. Kettering reached out to the man
who had mastered the art of production efficiency, Henry Ford.
(04:23):
The greatest minds at the time came together to help
save lives during World War One. Although the Kettering Bug
never saw combat, it lives on today in torpedoes and
aerial drones. A promise of the future that wasn't quite
ready to take flight. How we decorate the rooms in
(04:53):
our home can tell a lot about who we are.
We might have had posters in our childhood bedroom of
our favorite bands and movie. As we get older and
our taste change, hopefully they mature, we might have paintings
adorning our walls now, or interesting works of art. Sophie, however,
turned entire rooms into a work of art. Sophie Charlotte,
(05:14):
the second wife of King Frederick of Prussia, wanted a
space to call her own within the walls of the
Berlin City Palace. Architect Andrea Schleuder designed for her a
series of ornate panels to cover one large room. The
panels were then built by master craftsman Gottfried Wolfram with
the assistance of two other men, who all helped give
the room its name. After all, they knew their way
(05:35):
around high end materials, specifically amber. Together the men used
tons of it, along with a heavy amount of gold
leaf to cover the elaborate crafted panels. The result was
a gilded masterpiece of royal decadence. Mosaics of amber were
juxtaposed against golden flowers and cherubic statues along the walls.
(05:56):
It was anything but subtle. The Amber room didn't stay
at the palace for long, though Russians are Peter the
Great came to see the room for himself in seventeen sixteen,
and soon after King Frederick gifted every last panel of
it to him. Seeking an alliance against Sweden, Empress Elizabeth,
Peter's daughter, had the room reinstalled at Katherine Palace, the
(06:17):
family's summer home. She made some changes and incorporated even
more amber and gold over the course of a decade.
By the time it was finished, over six tons of
amber covered almost six hundred square feet of wall space
in the palace. The room lived there for decades until
the start of World War Two. As German forces moved
through Europe and Russia, they were stealing arts and other
(06:39):
valuable items for themselves. The Amber room would have been
a treasure trove over the Nazis, so Russian experts tried
to disassemble it and move it out of the palace.
Their efforts, though, failed. Before they even began, the amber
in the walls had become brittle, any effort to remove
it would destroy it. Instead, wallpaper was put up to
try and hide it from prying eyes. But hiding six
(07:02):
tons of amber and gold from dedicated art thieves with
simple wallpaper was never going to work. In nineteen forty one,
the Nazis had raided the palace. They dismantled the room
piece by piece in under two days, taking everything to
Konigsberg Castle in East Prussia, where it was reassembled as
a kind of trophy room. It stayed there for three
(07:22):
years until nine Allied troops were advancing on Konigsberg and
the British Royal Air Force reigned fire on the town,
turning buildings to ash. The Germans held their ground for
five months until Hitler ordered every piece of art, including
the Amber Room, moved away from the town to safer ground.
Now here's where things get tricky. The man in charge
(07:43):
of that move, Eric Cooke, was supposed to oversee the
amber rooms transport, but he escaped Khonsberg and left his
subordinate in charge. The Russians arrived to occupy the town,
destroying even more of it in the process, and as
far as anyone knew, the Amber Room had not survived.
After the war, a recreation was erected within Katherine Palace
(08:04):
in Russia. It took twenty four years to complete it,
probably because all they had to reference were black and
white photos and sketches from the original room. All the
remaining amber craftsmen in the country were brought into fabricate
panels as close to the originals as possible. But what
of the once great room that had traveled from Berlin
to Russia and finally to Konigsberg. Was it destroyed by
(08:25):
Allied bombing? Well, yes and no. While it's unlikely that
the entire room was saved at the end of the war,
rumors have circulated about its survival. According to some who
were actually there, the panels had been loaded onto a
German military ship on January thirty ninety five, a ship
that was sunk by a Soviet submarine a short while later.
(08:46):
Treasure hunters naturally searched the wreck for years looking for
the panels, but they found nothing. In the late nineteen nineties,
researchers claimed to have found the Amber Room in two
different places. A group of German experts said it was
hidden in a over mine. A Lithuanian team, on the
other hand, said it was at the bottom of a lagoon.
Both teams. That turns out we're wrong. Unfortunately, modern assessments
(09:09):
have declared the Amber Rooms recovery a lost cause. It
was almost certainly destroyed in the Koenigsberg bombings at the
end of the war, but those who want to get
an idea of its opulence can still visit Catherine Palace
near St. Petersburg. It's as close as anyone will get
to what was once described as a true eighth wonder
of the world. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
(09:35):
of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
and television show, and you can learn all about it
(09:56):
over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
next time, stay curious. M
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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