Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Benky'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
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of Curiosities. Everybody underestimates the class clown. They're lazy, they're unfocused,
and in most cases they're pretty disruptive. They'd rather crack
a joke than crack a book. The thing is, they're
the ones you want to watch out for, because left
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to their own devices, they might wreak untold havoc or
start their own companies. In the late nineteen fifties and
early sixties, a new phenomenon was taking hold of america
youth and in a surprising place, Ivy League universities. It
was called phone freaking with a pH, and it was
an early form of hacking. Freakers as they were called,
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would find new and innovative ways to disrupt landline phone systems.
For example, they might impersonate switchboard operators or telephone company
employees while talking to unsuspecting customers. They would also pay
attention to the tones that rang out when calls were
routed or ended. Breakers with perfect pitch could then replicate
those tones with a whistle to open a phone line
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to connect themselves long distance for free. As time went on, however,
those who couldn't whistle wound up relying on simple devices
to create those sounds for them. One such device was
made famous by former United States Air Force engineer John Draper.
Draper had come into the possession of a Bosun's pipe,
a kind of signaling tool used by the Navy to
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send commands to a ship's crew. But how did a
member of the U. S. Air Force get hold of
a Navy whistle? Why straight from a captain, of course,
Captain Crunch. The little plastic pipes were given away as
prizes and boxes of cereal starting in the mid nineteen sixties.
It didn't take long for Draper to discover a hidden
secret about them, though. When he blew into the mouthpiece
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of his phone, the whistle made a perfect hurts tone,
the exact frequency needed to take over a phone line
on a T and T. Draper's little hack and the
tool he used to do it, earned him the nickname
Captain crunch and led to the creation of new technology
centered around bypassing onerous telephone company charges. They were called
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blue boxes, small electronic pads capable of generating the same
tones as the serial toy they were based on. Phone
freaking was not as widespread as computer hackiness today, but
it did spread pretty far and wide. Still, from its
inception in the nineteen fifties all the way to the
nineteen seventies, freaking hadn't caught on beyond pockets of enthusiasts
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who enjoyed pushing the limits of social and telephone engineering.
But around the blue box would grow beyond its limited
user group to a wider audience with the help of
a couple of guys from California. Steve was in high
school when he became best friends with a student at
nearby UC Berkeley. They spent much of their downtime tinkering
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around with electronics, and that's when Steve realized the widespread
potential in a digitized blue box, not just as a
nerdy hobby for board teenagers and college kids, that as
a real business. So they reached out to John Draper
and learned everything they could before building and selling their
own blue boxes. Looking back, it was the start of
a legendary and lucrative partnership. Steve tried his hand at
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college after graduating high school, but realized after one semester
it just wasn't for him, and so he dropped out. Instead,
he got a job in the relatively new video game
industry at a little company called Atari. He moved in
with his girlfriend and even took a spiritual journey to India.
Upon his return home, though, Atari presented him with a challenge.
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They were working on a new arcade game called Breakout,
and Steve was put in charge of building the circuit board.
They even incentivized him by promising a larger bonus if
he could reduce the boards size. There was just one problem.
Steve couldn't really build circuit boards. In fact, he'd lied
his way into the job at the company. He wasn't
really an engineer at all, but his friend from UC
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Berkeley sure was. With his help, Steve earned a whopping
five thousand dollars for handing in a smaller, more efficient
circuit board for the game. He told his friend that
they'd only made seven hundred and gave him half just
three fifty dollars, pocketing the rest for himself. Even when
his friend eventually found out what Steve had done, though
it didn't change their partnership. They soon went into business
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together again, designing their own circuit boards, oh and screens
and software. And if you haven't figured it out by now,
our Steve was Steve Jobs, co founder of Apple Computer,
and his friend, also a Steve Steve Wozniak or was.
Together they helped build one of the most successful and
influential companies in the world, and, thirty years after its founding,
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Jobs took the phone companies on one more time. This
time though he traded in his blue box for a
glass rectangle the beginning of a sensation that changed the
way we communicate forever. And that, my friends, is how
Captain Crunch, in a roundabout sort of way, gave the
world the iPhone. The ship had a name meant for greatness.
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It's hard to believe they were shooting for anything less
when they christened the clippers ship Neptunes Car. A few
people would have known that better than Mary Patton. After all,
her husband was the ship's captain, and Ry had traveled
with him on his successful voyages to San Francisco, China
and London. On those trips he had turned Neptune's car
into a symbol of swift sailing. So in eighteen fifty
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six there were more than a few clients. New York
merchants had machines and supplies ready for California gold mines,
so Neptune's car was loaded with cargo and on the
first of July the ship headed out to open sea. Again.
Mary was on board, and this journey would be a
long one, all the way from New York to San
Francisco by way of the dangerous Cape Horn far to
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the south. It was going to be a fifteen thousand
mile trip. She might have been a quiet New Englander,
but Mary was also educated, curious, and fiercely intelligence. On
their earlier voyages, Mary's husband had taught her the art
and science of navigation, measuring the son's angle and calculating
the ship's position. She even turned out to be the
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quicker mathematician, and she watched him command the three dozen
men on his crew as they pushed the tunes Car
to incredible speed. It's a good thing too, because their
journey in eighteen fifty six would turn out to be
a fateful one. To start with, there was trouble with
the first mate, Mr Keeler. He'd been a last minute
addition to their crew, and as the days rolled by,
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it became clear that he wasn't taking his work seriously.
He slept through his watches, he ignored orders to furral
and unfurrel sales. In fact, it became clear that he
wasn't doing much of anything at all. Soon enough, Mary
and the rest of the crew would learn why. You see,
Neptune's Car wasn't the only ship that had left New
York that summer headed for San Francisco. Others had launched
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as well, and as you can guess, there were plenty
of people who had placed bets on which ship would
reach their destination first. It was something of a race, actually.
Mr Keeler, though, thought he had an ace up his sleeve.
He bet against the Neptune's Car his own ship. He
thought he could do enough to slow down the clipper
and collect winnings on his return, but he got something
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else and stead. Mary's husband had him seized and thrown
into the brig. It was only after that drama that
the ship sailed into a massive storm. Wind and rain
and powerful waves crashed against the ship for eight days straight.
On the other side, the ship came through unscathed, but
Mary's husband wasn't as lucky. After the effort of surviving
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the storm, he collapsed. He was delirious and couldn't even stand.
The crew said he had what they called brain fever. First,
Mary ordered her thrashing, raving husband tied down to his bunk.
She tried to nurse him back to health, but he
didn't seem to respond, and with Mr Keeler locked up
for his attempt to sabotage the journey, there was no
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one in command, so that's when Mary stepped in. On
top of nursing her sick husband, Mary was soon enough
setting the ship's course. Working with the second mate, she
had the crew working overtime, headed again for San Francisco.
But that's where Mr. Keeler saw an opportunity. From his
place in lock up, he scribbled and out that the
crew brought to Mary. Think of the dangers, he wrote,
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think of the huge weights of responsibility. Wouldn't it just
be easier if you let me out and let me
take control of the ship. Mary's response was brief. He
had proved himself unfit for command, so he would stay below.
Furious with Mary, Mr Keeler tried to rally the crew
against her, but when Mary caught wind of the plot,
she called the mates and sailors to the aft of
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the ship and she addressed them. They knew what had
happened before, They knew what Mr Keeler had done, and
they were beginning to sense Mary's medal as well. If
they stood by her, she said she would get them
safely to San Francisco. Every single man in the weather
beaten crew gave her their word they would stand by her.
For weeks, Mary guided the Neptune's car through its treacherous voyage.
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They slipped through storms as they rounded Cape Horn, they
dodged icebergs in the narrow passage. Mary held the crew
together as they waited out duldrums, and when the clouds
were too impenetrable for Mary to use her sextant, she
led them by dead reckoning. So it was under her
firm hand that the ship, crew and cargo got back
on course and reached San Francisco on November. When they
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neared the Golden Gate Bay, Mary personally took the helm
and guided the ship to port. She had managed a
crew of three dozen men and kept her husband alive
through storm, sickness, and a failed insurrection. When she stepped
off of Neptune's car, Mary told the company officers that
she hadn't been able to change her clothes for fifty days.
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She was happy to leave the vessel in their care
and find herself and her husband a place to rest
and recover. I can only imagine their dumbfounded looks as
they agreed. It took some time for the enormity of
Mary's achievement to hit home. She had commanded a clipper
ship for fifty six days, and the newspapers at the
time said she brought it into ports better than any
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of her competitors, not to mention that she beat all
of them but one. By some accounts, this made her
the first woman to command an American merchant vessel. But
there are a couple more things that make her achievements
even more remarkable. First, when they left New York that July,
Mary was already four months pregnant. And second, when Mary
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Patton took command of Neptune's car, she was just nineteen
years old. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour 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
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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
over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
next time, stay curious.