December 3, 2024 • 25 mins
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… an ad for cigarettes?! For the past 102 years, people have been using airplanes to turn exhaust into ads, political slogans, birthday greetings, and more. But where did this strangely brilliant idea come from? What kind of sorcery do pilots use to make it happen? And why is it at risk of becoming a lost art?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Guess what mango was that gave. So you probably had
this marked in your calendar already, but last week was
actually the one hundred and second birthday of commercial skywriting
in America. I did not have that on my calendar
for some odd reason. But I really am surprised we
can pin down an exact start date for such an
old medium, Like I know, there are so many candidates
(00:35):
for like the first newspaper ad or the first billboard,
and there's a lot of confusion there, that's true, but
it's a little different when the ad appears out of
thin air ten thousand feet above times square, somebody's going
to keep track of that. And that's exactly what happened
on November twenty eighth, nineteen twenty two, when British pilot
Captain Cyril Turner took to the skies above New York
(00:56):
City using a specially designed exhaust system spelled out Hello USA,
Carl Vanderbilt seventy two hundred. It was the first time
skywriting had been used to promote something in the US,
and even though it wasn't clear what was being promoted,
the ad still worked like a charm. Within a couple hours,
roughly forty seven thousand people had called that not in.
(01:20):
The mystery behind the message had piqued people's interest, proving
the effectiveness of skywriting and securing its place as a new,
eye catching way to promote a product.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
That is such a bizarre slogan like Hello USA called
Vanderbilts in two hundred, Like, what is that even advertising?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah, well that's the thing. It was actually an ad
for skywriting itself. While Captain Turner was painstakingly writing the
message overhead, his partner, Major John Jack Savage was watching
from the ground with a very special guest, George Hill,
the then president of the American Tobacco Company. So the
real purpose of the stunt was to persuade Hill to
(02:03):
advertise his cigarettes via skywriting, but Hill was skeptical since
the average message only lingered for about ten minutes in
a light wind, which didn't give people much time to
see it.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
I mean, it certainly gave enough people at the time
to call that phone number. But I guess that's where
the phone number idea came in here. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
It was the number of the hotel where George Hill
was staying, Hotel Vanderbilt, and the resulting flood of phone
calls convinced Hill to take a chance on skywriting. So
the following year, the American Tobacco Company used skywriting in
a successful campaign for Lucky Strike cigarettes, and in the
decades that followed, skywriting became a popular form of advertising.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I mean, it is pretty fitting that the first client
of smoke based advertising would be a cigarette company, right,
That's pretty perfect. But that is just the first of
nine high flying facts we've got about skywriting. We've got
so much more to cover, so let's strap in and
take off. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to part time Genius.
(03:23):
I'm Monga's shatiguler and on the other side of that
soundproof glass arranging cotton balls on his desk to spell
out PTG, which is a very sweet tribute. That is
our friend and producer, Dylan Fagan. It's probably not as
effective as real skywriting, but we will take what we
can get. Thank you so much. Dylan. Also, Will is
not here today. He's off on a business trip doing business.
(03:46):
But joining me today is our old research Palal Gabe
and our friend and super producer Mary Philip Sandy Gabe,
you came up with idea for this Nine things? Why skywriting? Well,
I think it's probably the most whimsical form of advertising
that we have, and I've heard a lot about how
it's kind of a dying art form and that was
(04:08):
really interesting to me. And I also don't think I've
ever seen it in person myself, so I'm really hoping
to get the chance before it kind of, you know,
goes by the wayside. Wait, you've never seen skywriting? No,
not really. I've been to air shows, so I've seen
like streaks of smoke behind jet planes or something like that.
But for the most part, I feel like I've only
seen like the budget form of skywriting, which is like
(04:30):
those long banners that trail behind planes, like at the
beach or something telling me to go to a pizza place.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah, I've never seen skywriting of you.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Where are you going where there's skywriting?
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I don't know if I've seen it a few times
at the beach.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
What beach, I don't know, Provincetown they had, okay, well.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
A fancy beach.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Yeah, not the kind of beach I go to.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Well, I go to not fancy team too. I'm just
saying I've seen it at the beach. I know that
is where I've seen to play in the sky writing.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
We'll take your word for it.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Yeah, everyone, just everyone go to a fancy beach and
you might see some skywriting.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Cross your fingers.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
But I don't know. I've lived like more than forty years.
I feel like you supposed I have seen something.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
He feels really attack right now.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
It's okay, We're not judging you from sky writing jealous.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
I'm happy for you. Okay. So Mary Gabe got it
started with the intro. Why don't we throw to you
for the first five Okay.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
As someone who has never seen skywriting, I had to
do some research. But one thing I learned this week
is that part of the reason we've had so few
encounters with skywriting is because the medium really took a
nose dive after its heyday in the early twentieth century.
And that's partially because of the popularity of television and
then eventually the Internet, which are much easier mediums for
getting the word out, but concerns about public safety also
(05:50):
played a big role. After nine to eleven, the airspace
around major cities became much more tightly restricted, and the
kind of erratic movements that are involved with skywriting began
to make people nervous. So while skywriting remains a draw
at air shows and sports events and music festivals, it's
just become a lot less common in everyday life.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
It's also, I imagine, like pretty expensive, right.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yes, most skywriters charge a few thousand dollars for just
ten letters, and if you want a longer message, or
you want it repeated multiple times, then it could set
you back more than ten thousand dollars easily. And that's
not even counting the transportation costs, because in most cases,
the pilot's plane has to be shipped to the location
where they actually want the skywriting to appear.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Lane. That's crazy. It also sounds like a pretty big
hidden cost, right.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Yeah. I don't know how much it costs to ship
a plane, but I would imagine it's not cheap.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, that is interesting. Well, one thing I learned this
week is that skywriting was actually invented for military use.
The practice was developed at the beginning of World War One,
and this was back when British pilots in the Royal
Air Force discovered that they could create white smoke that
hung in the air by running Harriffin oil through the
plane's exhaust pipes. Right, And at first they just used
(07:04):
the smoke to play around during air drills, but pilots
quickly realized that it could actually be used to create
smoke screens to obscure the movements and confuse enemy pilots.
It's a really fascinating use. And it wasn't until after
the war that those British officers started working on a
way to use skywriting in advertising.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
This was England that gave us the idea of commercial skywriting.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
That's right, and so in nineteen twenty one, Major Savage
developed a more sophisticated method for generating smoke and controlling
its release, and in May of the following year, Captain
Turner tested the device in England by skywriting the word castrol,
which you've probably heard of as a kind of engine
lubricant used in both cars, and.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Playing sure castroll.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Yeah or if you've seen Cars movie, that's in it.
Now you're speaking my language. Okay, yeah, skywriting Cars movie.
I've seen everything. But the pair's first attempt at aerial
advertising didn't draw much notice. They actually decided to try
one week later, and for that flight they found a
(08:09):
paying customer. So the men were contracted by the Daily Mail,
you know, the newspaper, to spell out the paper's name
over Epsom Downs during the Derby Steaks horse race.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
So people did they pay attention then?
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah? Of course, I mean, and it wasn't just Derby fans.
The message could actually be seen for miles in all directions,
including by people who did not know it had been
written by a plane, which is crazy, right, Like if
you think about the phenomena, there were kids at a
nearby school who saw the message outside of the classroom
window and they assumed it had been written in the
clouds by an angel. I mean, that's so incredible, Like
(08:46):
it's this message from heaven. That's just an ad telling
you to get a newspaper.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yeah, especially the Daily Mail. I don't know that the
angels read the Daily Mail, which is.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Right, Heaven's paper is the tagline? Yes, Well, to be
fair to those kids, there is something vaguely supernatural about
floating letters in the sky, and while expert skyriders can
make the job look easy, it's actually an extremely demanding profession,
Like pilots have to map out there every move before takeoff,
(09:18):
every turn, roll dive, and every flip of that smoke switch,
and then they have to execute those maneuvers from memory
while going one hundred and fifty miles per hour at
ten thousand feet in the air. It's kind of like
performing a choreographed dance while also painting. Amiral is insane.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I actually would have assumed that there's like, you know,
a digital technological assistance here right, like a flight path,
you know, like when they're actually using the plane to
fly places. But it sounds like you're saying they just
have to know what to do.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, they have to just be like dead on precise,
and there's not much room for error either, Like the
smallest slip up could ruin the look of the entire message.
For instance, if a pilot doesn't open or close the
flow of smoke it's just the right moment, then two
letters might bleed together, or one letter might end up
taller or shorter than the rest. Plus all the letters
(10:11):
have to run along the same straight line to spell
out the word, and they have to be spaced apart evenly.
It is so much to keep track of, But probably
the hardest part is that the message has to be
written backwards and upside down, like it's something I never
thought of before. But because the pilots are writing parallel
to the ground, they have to spell out the letters
(10:31):
in reverse so that the message appears correctly when viewed
from below. And some letters are particularly hard like skywriters
often say, oh is the hardest because you have to
maintain a constant angle of bank during the turn. But
the straight parts of a letter are a different kind
of challenge, and that's because you have to keep them
roughly the same height, and pilots have all kinds of
(10:53):
tricks for getting the timing just right. Some count mississippis,
and at least one of them, a pilot named Nathan Hammond,
sings the Scooby Doo scene song to help him stay
in the right rhythm.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Whatever works right, whatever works. But speaking of music, one
of the most famous instances of skywriting was a holiday
message that John Lennon and Yoko Ono commissioned over the
city of Toronto in December of nineteen sixty nine. They
hired the legendary skywriter Wayne Mansfield to spell out the
message quote war is over if you want it, Happy
(11:25):
ex miss from John and Yoko I.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Love that there's a legendary sky writer.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Yeah, Way Mansfield.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Oh you ever heard Wayne Mansfield?
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Look, I've only seen skywriting. I don't know who does.
It could have been him, but obviously that message is
so much longer than ten letters.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
It's actually forty four letters to be exact, which makes
it one of the longest sky written messages of all time.
It was so long, in fact, that Mansfield had to
make special preparations ahead of the flight. So for reference,
a pilot will typically take up about thirty gallons of
skywriting flu which is enough to write about a dozen letters,
but for John and Yoko's message, Mansfield had to haul
(12:05):
four times that amount. But all that extra effort earned
him some repeat business from the couple, because eleven years later,
Yoko hired Mansfield again, this time to deliver a birthday
greeting to her husband and their son, Sean. The second
message was written over the skies of Manhattan, and although
it was a little bit shorter than the last one,
it just said Happy Birthday, John and Sean Love Yoko.
(12:25):
Mansfield still had to bring plenty of fluid. Yoko wanted
him to write it out nine times nine times feels
successful by nine. Both John and Sean were born on
October ninth, so I don't know, maybe that's why. But
the number also held some special significance for Lenin throughout
his life. The numbers on the school bus that he
wrote as a child added up to nine. The first
(12:47):
house he lived in was at nine Newcastle Road, and
the Beatles' first appearance at the Cavern Club was on
the ninth of February in nineteen sixty one. And as
John Lennon himself once said, it's just a number that
follows me around. But numerological apparently I'm a number six
or three or something. But it's all part of nine.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
That is just math there.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
That's math.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
But you know, as long as we're talking pop culture,
I do want to share the inside scoop on what's
probably the most well known skywriting scene in movie history,
and that is, of course, the surrender Dorothy sequence from
the nineteen thirty nine film The Wizard of Oz. Does
the Wizard of Oz hold a special place in either
of your lives?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I've never heard of it.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
I had a Scottish terrier because of that movie. Really,
her name was Toto's Tama shanter In fact. Oh wow, yeah, perfect,
we called hermy.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
That's very very.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
So you were definitely familiar with this scene. And it
is a scene that takes a place a little over
halfway through the movie, shortly after Dorothy and her entourage
arrive at the Emerald City. They're on their way to
meet the Wizard, when all of a sudden, the Wicked
Witch of the West appears in the sky on her
broomstick and skywrites the words surrender Dorothy.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Okay, so I was kidding. I have seen The Wizard
of Oz and that part you're talking about. It always
baffled me as a kid, Like I knew she wasn't
really flying, but I could not figure out how they
made it look. So convinced, Well.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
This would have been like way before digital effects were
a thing, Right, So I'm guessing if I had to guess,
I would say they took footage of a real skywriter
and then they just superposed like a little broomstick over
the plane part.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Right, Yeah, I mean that's what I thought too. But
according to the special effects artist who actually handle the sequence,
and this is a genius named Jack McMaster, there's actually
no skywriting in the movie. In fact, the sky that
we see is just the bottom of a class tank
filled with tinted water. And as for the witch's broomstick, well,
let me tell you how McMaster explained it. Quote. The
(14:47):
bottom of the tank was covered with an inch and
a half of water mixed with cala oil, and that
was supposed to be the sky. The camera was beneath
the tank shooting up. The miniature which who did the skywriting,
was three eighths of an inch high, and the broom
she was writing was a hypodermic needle filled with a
combination of canned milk and black dye. I wrote the
(15:08):
message upside down and backwards in the fluid in the tank,
using the needle in place of a pen. I practiced
for two months before I did it.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Is not incredible, that's that is so elaborate. I've seen
that movie dozens of times. I never would have guessed
that's how they did it. But I do like that
even though it wasn't real skywriting, he still had to
master the art of writing upside down and backwards.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Yeah, I guess that definicultly carried over. But apparently the
message he wrote was even a little longer in the
original cut. Of the movie. It actually read surrendered, Dorothy
or die, and it was signed with the Witch's initials WWW,
which is the basing she's.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Like not claying around. So why they shorten it?
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Well, according to The New York Post, it was because
the Wicked Witch was deemed too scary by test audiences,
so the producers went back and they toned her down
a little bit, including by cutting out that death threat.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
It's probably a good call, is She's still plenty scary
if you ask me. But it is interesting that they
went with black smoke for the scene. You know, it's
suitably witchy and stands out against the blue backdrop. But
you'd be hard pressed to find anything but white smoke
in real skyriding.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yeah, why is that? Actually I've seen colored smoke, like
you know, at air shows, and the.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Technology exists, No, absolutely, but white smoke is the default
because that's the natural color produced when paraffine oil is vaporized.
And in the case of black smoke, I mean, if
you saw that pouring out of the back of a plane,
you'd probably assume something was wrong with the engine and
maybe take cover. But as for the multi colored smoke
trails that you often see at an air show. Those
(16:42):
are possible because the planes are flying at much lower altitudes.
Skyriders tend to work much higher up, and it's hard
to produce a consistent, legible colored smoke at that height
because of atmospheric conditions. And that doesn't mean it can't
be done. But the main reason it's never caught on
is that colored smoke requires some heavy duty dies to achieve,
you know, the different hues, and they tend to stain
(17:04):
everything they touch. That's not a huge deal when the
smoke is just trailing behind you in a straight line,
but a skywriter has to swoop and dive and curl
to spell out a message, so there's bound to be
some blowback. And for most skywriters, colored smoke just isn't
worth the extra effort of, you know, scrubbing it off
the plane's exterior after every job.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
That's interesting that it just causes such a mess that
they don't want to deal with it. Well, I know
we've got a couple more facts to go before we
crown a winner here, but first let's take a quick
ad break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're
(17:52):
talking all things skywriting. So Mary, I think as far
as the order goes, you are up next. Yes.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
So one thing I I was curious about is why
skywriting smoke is necessary in the first place. I mean,
we've all seen the white streaks or contrails that jet
planes produce, and those aren't the results of purposely adding
something to the exhaust like with skywriting. I mean, it's
just the results of jet fuel combustion at high altitudes.
It just happens when the fuel is burned, carbon dioxide
and water vapor are expelled from the jet's exhaust pipe,
(18:21):
and when that hits the cold air of the upper atmosphere,
the water vapor condenses and then it freezes along with
the other particles, and it creates that visible cloud that
you can see from the ground.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
So why do skywriders actually bother with smoke? Then if
they could just use the contrails.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Well, actually they can't. It turns out they cannot use
the contrails. So that's why that's a reason it's not possible.
Skywriters have to fly at a much lower altitude for
their messages to be visible from the ground, so the
air is not consistently cold enough to produce those contrails.
And not only that, most skywriters are using smaller propeller
driven planes. A jet is not maneuverable enough to make
(18:56):
those tight turns that you need to do to form letters,
and so without the water vapor from jet fuel combustion,
contrails wouldn't form even if the air was cold enough.
But that said, there is one way for skywriters to
produce clouds, and that is to draw them using smoke.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
That's a real thing. Like people say, skyriders thousands of
dollars to just draw a fake cloud.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
I wouldn't say it's a regular occurrence, but it has
happened on at least one occasion, and this was back
in two thousand and one. It was part of a
public exhibit by Brazilian artist Vik Munis. He's a photographer
first and foremost, and a lot of his work deals
with the relationship between illusion and perception. But for his
first large scale project, he decided to explore that theme
through a different medium, skywriting. But to be clear, he
(19:38):
was not the one actually doing the flying. He just
designed a series of cloud shapes and then he hired
a pilot to draw them in smoke all over the
Manhattan skyline. And they did this about four times over
the course of one week in February, and although the
cloud outlines only lasted a short time before being blown away,
there were still all these reports of people on the
streets and in office buildings just being completely trans fixed,
(20:00):
you know, standing there waiting to see what the plane
was drawing.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
So there was like no message or anything being advertised.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
It was art. It was art. It was just clouds.
It was It was more of a like an ephemeral exhibit, right,
like a sand sculpture. It's there and then it isn't.
But full disclosure, the cloud stunt was meant to coincide
with a show of his photography at the Whitney Museum,
So I guess in a way you could say it
was an advertisement or self promotion, but no one on
the ground would have known that or made that connection
(20:28):
in the moment. So for most people, it was just
this like fun, weird thing that happened randomly in the
middle of org day.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
I mean, it is interesting that like something that I
can command people's attention just because it's happening in the sky, right, Like,
think about how many sculptures and murals New Yorkers walk
past on a daily basis and we don't even glance
at them, right, But if you draw a few clouds
in the sky, it's the type of thing that you
can look away from.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Yeah, And I think I think that's what makes sky
writing such a powerful tool, right, because it makes use
of a space that is visible to everyone, but that
most people don't have a way of interacting with. And
while a lot of us have tried to draw a
meaning from the sky in one way or another, like
using the stars navigate or making a podcast about astrology,
or analyzing clouds to predict the weather, you don't usually
(21:14):
look up and just find a clear cut message or
a work of art, So people tend to take notice
when it happens.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Well, we are definitely giving skywriting our full attention today,
and we're not the only ones to reassess the concept.
In recent years, thanks to smartphones and social media, it
is easier than ever to capture and share a skywriting message,
which makes the medium's temporary nature much less of a
drawback than it used to be. It is worth noting, though,
that so far we've only talked about traditional skywriting, which
(21:42):
isn't the technique used for most modern skywriting messages.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
What wait you're going to spring that on us in
the night set that there's this whole other form of skywriting.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
It's all been a lie.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Most of what you'll see in the skies or on
Instagram are examples of a more recent, more audit techniques
called sky typing. Now, both methods use paraffine oil. They
send it through the plane's exhaust to create a trail
of white smoke, but only traditional skywriting requires the pilot
to control the release of the oil and by extension,
the smoke using controls in the cockpit. But for sky typing,
(22:17):
it's more like what Mary imagined earlier, Right, Like the
release of the oil is controlled by an onboard computer.
The pilot enters the message they want to type, and
the computer kind of plots a course, pumping out dots
of smoke to form each letter along the way. Now,
this is actually the type of skywriting I saw over
the summer. But another difference is that sky typing pilots
(22:38):
don't fly their planes in the shape of each letter. Instead,
a series of pilots work in tandem, flying across the
same patch of sky in parallel lines, while releasing the
dots to form this message.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
That seems a little less fun, but I mean, I
guess it's kind of like an old dot matrix.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Printer, right, Yeah, especially up close, right, it's just a
bunch of broken dots, But when you view it from
far enough away, it looks like solid letters. And the
process is faster, cheaper, it's easier than traditional skywriting, but
as old school skywriters will tell you, it is also
less artful.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, it sounds like it. I mean, you know, I
think Gabe was saying earlier, it's like skywriting is like
painting a mural, and this just sounds kind of more
like paint by numbers, right, like you just kind of
follow the pattern. There's less skill involved.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah. Well, you don't have to warn for traditional skywriting
just yet, because while it is much rare these days,
there are still a handful of pilots out there who
fly the old fashioned way, and they are teaching their
skills to the next generation. And since the old method
doesn't require all the equipment and manpower for skytyping, it's
still the most accessible way for solo flyers who you know,
(23:46):
want to paint on the world's biggest canvas.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Well, I don't know how you pulled it off, but
now you've got me feeling sentimental about what are essentially
big smoky billboards. So Mary, what do you say we
give them the trophy this week?
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Yeah? Yeah, I liked his Wizard of Oz fact too,
and you know he's actually seen skywriting, so I think
he scarned it.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah, you just pick on me for the first part,
you give me a trophy and send me off in
the end. But I'm gonna take this trophy and you
guys can live with your decisions.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
We will.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Well, I'm afraid that's all the time we have for
today's Part Time Genius from Mary, Gabe, Dylan, Will and myself.
Thank you so much for listening. And while we have
the show, don't have enough money for skywriting, we do
have an Instagram account. Just drop us a line at
part Time Genius and we'll be back with more soon.
Thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is
(24:58):
a production of Kaleidoscope and I Heart Radio. This show
is hosted by Will Pearson and Me Mongays Chatikler, and
research by our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was
engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan, with support
from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart
by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social media support
(25:20):
from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viny Shorey. For
more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Guess what mango was that gave. So you probably had
this marked in your calendar already, but last week was
actually the one hundred and second birthday of commercial skywriting
in America. I did not have that on my calendar
for some odd reason. But I really am surprised we
can pin down an exact start date for such an
old medium, Like I know, there are so many candidates
(00:35):
for like the first newspaper ad or the first billboard,
and there's a lot of confusion there, that's true, but
it's a little different when the ad appears out of
thin air ten thousand feet above times square, somebody's going
to keep track of that. And that's exactly what happened
on November twenty eighth, nineteen twenty two, when British pilot
Captain Cyril Turner took to the skies above New York
(00:56):
City using a specially designed exhaust system spelled out Hello USA,
Carl Vanderbilt seventy two hundred. It was the first time
skywriting had been used to promote something in the US,
and even though it wasn't clear what was being promoted,
the ad still worked like a charm. Within a couple hours,
roughly forty seven thousand people had called that not in.
(01:20):
The mystery behind the message had piqued people's interest, proving
the effectiveness of skywriting and securing its place as a new,
eye catching way to promote a product.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
That is such a bizarre slogan like Hello USA called
Vanderbilts in two hundred, Like, what is that even advertising?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah, well that's the thing. It was actually an ad
for skywriting itself. While Captain Turner was painstakingly writing the
message overhead, his partner, Major John Jack Savage was watching
from the ground with a very special guest, George Hill,
the then president of the American Tobacco Company. So the
real purpose of the stunt was to persuade Hill to
(02:03):
advertise his cigarettes via skywriting, but Hill was skeptical since
the average message only lingered for about ten minutes in
a light wind, which didn't give people much time to
see it.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
I mean, it certainly gave enough people at the time
to call that phone number. But I guess that's where
the phone number idea came in here. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
It was the number of the hotel where George Hill
was staying, Hotel Vanderbilt, and the resulting flood of phone
calls convinced Hill to take a chance on skywriting. So
the following year, the American Tobacco Company used skywriting in
a successful campaign for Lucky Strike cigarettes, and in the
decades that followed, skywriting became a popular form of advertising.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I mean, it is pretty fitting that the first client
of smoke based advertising would be a cigarette company, right,
That's pretty perfect. But that is just the first of
nine high flying facts we've got about skywriting. We've got
so much more to cover, so let's strap in and
take off. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to part time Genius.
(03:23):
I'm Monga's shatiguler and on the other side of that
soundproof glass arranging cotton balls on his desk to spell
out PTG, which is a very sweet tribute. That is
our friend and producer, Dylan Fagan. It's probably not as
effective as real skywriting, but we will take what we
can get. Thank you so much. Dylan. Also, Will is
not here today. He's off on a business trip doing business.
(03:46):
But joining me today is our old research Palal Gabe
and our friend and super producer Mary Philip Sandy Gabe,
you came up with idea for this Nine things? Why skywriting? Well,
I think it's probably the most whimsical form of advertising
that we have, and I've heard a lot about how
it's kind of a dying art form and that was
(04:08):
really interesting to me. And I also don't think I've
ever seen it in person myself, so I'm really hoping
to get the chance before it kind of, you know,
goes by the wayside. Wait, you've never seen skywriting? No,
not really. I've been to air shows, so I've seen
like streaks of smoke behind jet planes or something like that.
But for the most part, I feel like I've only
seen like the budget form of skywriting, which is like
(04:30):
those long banners that trail behind planes, like at the
beach or something telling me to go to a pizza place.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah, I've never seen skywriting of you.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Where are you going where there's skywriting?
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I don't know if I've seen it a few times
at the beach.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
What beach, I don't know, Provincetown they had, okay, well.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
A fancy beach.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Yeah, not the kind of beach I go to.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Well, I go to not fancy team too. I'm just
saying I've seen it at the beach. I know that
is where I've seen to play in the sky writing.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
We'll take your word for it.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Yeah, everyone, just everyone go to a fancy beach and
you might see some skywriting.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Cross your fingers.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
But I don't know. I've lived like more than forty years.
I feel like you supposed I have seen something.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
He feels really attack right now.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
It's okay, We're not judging you from sky writing jealous.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
I'm happy for you. Okay. So Mary Gabe got it
started with the intro. Why don't we throw to you
for the first five Okay.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
As someone who has never seen skywriting, I had to
do some research. But one thing I learned this week
is that part of the reason we've had so few
encounters with skywriting is because the medium really took a
nose dive after its heyday in the early twentieth century.
And that's partially because of the popularity of television and
then eventually the Internet, which are much easier mediums for
getting the word out, but concerns about public safety also
(05:50):
played a big role. After nine to eleven, the airspace
around major cities became much more tightly restricted, and the
kind of erratic movements that are involved with skywriting began
to make people nervous. So while skywriting remains a draw
at air shows and sports events and music festivals, it's
just become a lot less common in everyday life.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
It's also, I imagine, like pretty expensive, right.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yes, most skywriters charge a few thousand dollars for just
ten letters, and if you want a longer message, or
you want it repeated multiple times, then it could set
you back more than ten thousand dollars easily. And that's
not even counting the transportation costs, because in most cases,
the pilot's plane has to be shipped to the location
where they actually want the skywriting to appear.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Lane. That's crazy. It also sounds like a pretty big
hidden cost, right.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Yeah. I don't know how much it costs to ship
a plane, but I would imagine it's not cheap.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, that is interesting. Well, one thing I learned this
week is that skywriting was actually invented for military use.
The practice was developed at the beginning of World War One,
and this was back when British pilots in the Royal
Air Force discovered that they could create white smoke that
hung in the air by running Harriffin oil through the
plane's exhaust pipes. Right, And at first they just used
(07:04):
the smoke to play around during air drills, but pilots
quickly realized that it could actually be used to create
smoke screens to obscure the movements and confuse enemy pilots.
It's a really fascinating use. And it wasn't until after
the war that those British officers started working on a
way to use skywriting in advertising.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
This was England that gave us the idea of commercial skywriting.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
That's right, and so in nineteen twenty one, Major Savage
developed a more sophisticated method for generating smoke and controlling
its release, and in May of the following year, Captain
Turner tested the device in England by skywriting the word castrol,
which you've probably heard of as a kind of engine
lubricant used in both cars, and.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Playing sure castroll.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Yeah or if you've seen Cars movie, that's in it.
Now you're speaking my language. Okay, yeah, skywriting Cars movie.
I've seen everything. But the pair's first attempt at aerial
advertising didn't draw much notice. They actually decided to try
one week later, and for that flight they found a
(08:09):
paying customer. So the men were contracted by the Daily Mail,
you know, the newspaper, to spell out the paper's name
over Epsom Downs during the Derby Steaks horse race.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
So people did they pay attention then?
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah? Of course, I mean, and it wasn't just Derby fans.
The message could actually be seen for miles in all directions,
including by people who did not know it had been
written by a plane, which is crazy, right, Like if
you think about the phenomena, there were kids at a
nearby school who saw the message outside of the classroom
window and they assumed it had been written in the
clouds by an angel. I mean, that's so incredible, Like
(08:46):
it's this message from heaven. That's just an ad telling
you to get a newspaper.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yeah, especially the Daily Mail. I don't know that the
angels read the Daily Mail, which is.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Right, Heaven's paper is the tagline? Yes, Well, to be
fair to those kids, there is something vaguely supernatural about
floating letters in the sky, and while expert skyriders can
make the job look easy, it's actually an extremely demanding profession,
Like pilots have to map out there every move before takeoff,
(09:18):
every turn, roll dive, and every flip of that smoke switch,
and then they have to execute those maneuvers from memory
while going one hundred and fifty miles per hour at
ten thousand feet in the air. It's kind of like
performing a choreographed dance while also painting. Amiral is insane.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I actually would have assumed that there's like, you know,
a digital technological assistance here right, like a flight path,
you know, like when they're actually using the plane to
fly places. But it sounds like you're saying they just
have to know what to do.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, they have to just be like dead on precise,
and there's not much room for error either, Like the
smallest slip up could ruin the look of the entire message.
For instance, if a pilot doesn't open or close the
flow of smoke it's just the right moment, then two
letters might bleed together, or one letter might end up
taller or shorter than the rest. Plus all the letters
(10:11):
have to run along the same straight line to spell
out the word, and they have to be spaced apart evenly.
It is so much to keep track of, But probably
the hardest part is that the message has to be
written backwards and upside down, like it's something I never
thought of before. But because the pilots are writing parallel
to the ground, they have to spell out the letters
(10:31):
in reverse so that the message appears correctly when viewed
from below. And some letters are particularly hard like skywriters
often say, oh is the hardest because you have to
maintain a constant angle of bank during the turn. But
the straight parts of a letter are a different kind
of challenge, and that's because you have to keep them
roughly the same height, and pilots have all kinds of
(10:53):
tricks for getting the timing just right. Some count mississippis,
and at least one of them, a pilot named Nathan Hammond,
sings the Scooby Doo scene song to help him stay
in the right rhythm.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Whatever works right, whatever works. But speaking of music, one
of the most famous instances of skywriting was a holiday
message that John Lennon and Yoko Ono commissioned over the
city of Toronto in December of nineteen sixty nine. They
hired the legendary skywriter Wayne Mansfield to spell out the
message quote war is over if you want it, Happy
(11:25):
ex miss from John and Yoko I.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Love that there's a legendary sky writer.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Yeah, Way Mansfield.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Oh you ever heard Wayne Mansfield?
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Look, I've only seen skywriting. I don't know who does.
It could have been him, but obviously that message is
so much longer than ten letters.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
It's actually forty four letters to be exact, which makes
it one of the longest sky written messages of all time.
It was so long, in fact, that Mansfield had to
make special preparations ahead of the flight. So for reference,
a pilot will typically take up about thirty gallons of
skywriting flu which is enough to write about a dozen letters,
but for John and Yoko's message, Mansfield had to haul
(12:05):
four times that amount. But all that extra effort earned
him some repeat business from the couple, because eleven years later,
Yoko hired Mansfield again, this time to deliver a birthday
greeting to her husband and their son, Sean. The second
message was written over the skies of Manhattan, and although
it was a little bit shorter than the last one,
it just said Happy Birthday, John and Sean Love Yoko.
(12:25):
Mansfield still had to bring plenty of fluid. Yoko wanted
him to write it out nine times nine times feels
successful by nine. Both John and Sean were born on
October ninth, so I don't know, maybe that's why. But
the number also held some special significance for Lenin throughout
his life. The numbers on the school bus that he
wrote as a child added up to nine. The first
(12:47):
house he lived in was at nine Newcastle Road, and
the Beatles' first appearance at the Cavern Club was on
the ninth of February in nineteen sixty one. And as
John Lennon himself once said, it's just a number that
follows me around. But numerological apparently I'm a number six
or three or something. But it's all part of nine.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
That is just math there.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
That's math.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
But you know, as long as we're talking pop culture,
I do want to share the inside scoop on what's
probably the most well known skywriting scene in movie history,
and that is, of course, the surrender Dorothy sequence from
the nineteen thirty nine film The Wizard of Oz. Does
the Wizard of Oz hold a special place in either
of your lives?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I've never heard of it.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
I had a Scottish terrier because of that movie. Really,
her name was Toto's Tama shanter In fact. Oh wow, yeah, perfect,
we called hermy.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
That's very very.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
So you were definitely familiar with this scene. And it
is a scene that takes a place a little over
halfway through the movie, shortly after Dorothy and her entourage
arrive at the Emerald City. They're on their way to
meet the Wizard, when all of a sudden, the Wicked
Witch of the West appears in the sky on her
broomstick and skywrites the words surrender Dorothy.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Okay, so I was kidding. I have seen The Wizard
of Oz and that part you're talking about. It always
baffled me as a kid, Like I knew she wasn't
really flying, but I could not figure out how they
made it look. So convinced, Well.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
This would have been like way before digital effects were
a thing, Right, So I'm guessing if I had to guess,
I would say they took footage of a real skywriter
and then they just superposed like a little broomstick over
the plane part.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Right, Yeah, I mean that's what I thought too. But
according to the special effects artist who actually handle the sequence,
and this is a genius named Jack McMaster, there's actually
no skywriting in the movie. In fact, the sky that
we see is just the bottom of a class tank
filled with tinted water. And as for the witch's broomstick, well,
let me tell you how McMaster explained it. Quote. The
(14:47):
bottom of the tank was covered with an inch and
a half of water mixed with cala oil, and that
was supposed to be the sky. The camera was beneath
the tank shooting up. The miniature which who did the skywriting,
was three eighths of an inch high, and the broom
she was writing was a hypodermic needle filled with a
combination of canned milk and black dye. I wrote the
(15:08):
message upside down and backwards in the fluid in the tank,
using the needle in place of a pen. I practiced
for two months before I did it.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Is not incredible, that's that is so elaborate. I've seen
that movie dozens of times. I never would have guessed
that's how they did it. But I do like that
even though it wasn't real skywriting, he still had to
master the art of writing upside down and backwards.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Yeah, I guess that definicultly carried over. But apparently the
message he wrote was even a little longer in the
original cut. Of the movie. It actually read surrendered, Dorothy
or die, and it was signed with the Witch's initials WWW,
which is the basing she's.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Like not claying around. So why they shorten it?
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Well, according to The New York Post, it was because
the Wicked Witch was deemed too scary by test audiences,
so the producers went back and they toned her down
a little bit, including by cutting out that death threat.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
It's probably a good call, is She's still plenty scary
if you ask me. But it is interesting that they
went with black smoke for the scene. You know, it's
suitably witchy and stands out against the blue backdrop. But
you'd be hard pressed to find anything but white smoke
in real skyriding.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yeah, why is that? Actually I've seen colored smoke, like
you know, at air shows, and the.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Technology exists, No, absolutely, but white smoke is the default
because that's the natural color produced when paraffine oil is vaporized.
And in the case of black smoke, I mean, if
you saw that pouring out of the back of a plane,
you'd probably assume something was wrong with the engine and
maybe take cover. But as for the multi colored smoke
trails that you often see at an air show. Those
(16:42):
are possible because the planes are flying at much lower altitudes.
Skyriders tend to work much higher up, and it's hard
to produce a consistent, legible colored smoke at that height
because of atmospheric conditions. And that doesn't mean it can't
be done. But the main reason it's never caught on
is that colored smoke requires some heavy duty dies to achieve,
you know, the different hues, and they tend to stain
(17:04):
everything they touch. That's not a huge deal when the
smoke is just trailing behind you in a straight line,
but a skywriter has to swoop and dive and curl
to spell out a message, so there's bound to be
some blowback. And for most skywriters, colored smoke just isn't
worth the extra effort of, you know, scrubbing it off
the plane's exterior after every job.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
That's interesting that it just causes such a mess that
they don't want to deal with it. Well, I know
we've got a couple more facts to go before we
crown a winner here, but first let's take a quick
ad break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're
(17:52):
talking all things skywriting. So Mary, I think as far
as the order goes, you are up next. Yes.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
So one thing I I was curious about is why
skywriting smoke is necessary in the first place. I mean,
we've all seen the white streaks or contrails that jet
planes produce, and those aren't the results of purposely adding
something to the exhaust like with skywriting. I mean, it's
just the results of jet fuel combustion at high altitudes.
It just happens when the fuel is burned, carbon dioxide
and water vapor are expelled from the jet's exhaust pipe,
(18:21):
and when that hits the cold air of the upper atmosphere,
the water vapor condenses and then it freezes along with
the other particles, and it creates that visible cloud that
you can see from the ground.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
So why do skywriders actually bother with smoke? Then if
they could just use the contrails.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Well, actually they can't. It turns out they cannot use
the contrails. So that's why that's a reason it's not possible.
Skywriters have to fly at a much lower altitude for
their messages to be visible from the ground, so the
air is not consistently cold enough to produce those contrails.
And not only that, most skywriters are using smaller propeller
driven planes. A jet is not maneuverable enough to make
(18:56):
those tight turns that you need to do to form letters,
and so without the water vapor from jet fuel combustion,
contrails wouldn't form even if the air was cold enough.
But that said, there is one way for skywriters to
produce clouds, and that is to draw them using smoke.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
That's a real thing. Like people say, skyriders thousands of
dollars to just draw a fake cloud.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
I wouldn't say it's a regular occurrence, but it has
happened on at least one occasion, and this was back
in two thousand and one. It was part of a
public exhibit by Brazilian artist Vik Munis. He's a photographer
first and foremost, and a lot of his work deals
with the relationship between illusion and perception. But for his
first large scale project, he decided to explore that theme
through a different medium, skywriting. But to be clear, he
(19:38):
was not the one actually doing the flying. He just
designed a series of cloud shapes and then he hired
a pilot to draw them in smoke all over the
Manhattan skyline. And they did this about four times over
the course of one week in February, and although the
cloud outlines only lasted a short time before being blown away,
there were still all these reports of people on the
streets and in office buildings just being completely trans fixed,
(20:00):
you know, standing there waiting to see what the plane
was drawing.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
So there was like no message or anything being advertised.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
It was art. It was art. It was just clouds.
It was It was more of a like an ephemeral exhibit, right,
like a sand sculpture. It's there and then it isn't.
But full disclosure, the cloud stunt was meant to coincide
with a show of his photography at the Whitney Museum,
So I guess in a way you could say it
was an advertisement or self promotion, but no one on
the ground would have known that or made that connection
(20:28):
in the moment. So for most people, it was just
this like fun, weird thing that happened randomly in the
middle of org day.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
I mean, it is interesting that like something that I
can command people's attention just because it's happening in the sky, right, Like,
think about how many sculptures and murals New Yorkers walk
past on a daily basis and we don't even glance
at them, right, But if you draw a few clouds
in the sky, it's the type of thing that you
can look away from.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Yeah, And I think I think that's what makes sky
writing such a powerful tool, right, because it makes use
of a space that is visible to everyone, but that
most people don't have a way of interacting with. And
while a lot of us have tried to draw a
meaning from the sky in one way or another, like
using the stars navigate or making a podcast about astrology,
or analyzing clouds to predict the weather, you don't usually
(21:14):
look up and just find a clear cut message or
a work of art, So people tend to take notice
when it happens.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Well, we are definitely giving skywriting our full attention today,
and we're not the only ones to reassess the concept.
In recent years, thanks to smartphones and social media, it
is easier than ever to capture and share a skywriting message,
which makes the medium's temporary nature much less of a
drawback than it used to be. It is worth noting, though,
that so far we've only talked about traditional skywriting, which
(21:42):
isn't the technique used for most modern skywriting messages.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
What wait you're going to spring that on us in
the night set that there's this whole other form of skywriting.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
It's all been a lie.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Most of what you'll see in the skies or on
Instagram are examples of a more recent, more audit techniques
called sky typing. Now, both methods use paraffine oil. They
send it through the plane's exhaust to create a trail
of white smoke, but only traditional skywriting requires the pilot
to control the release of the oil and by extension,
the smoke using controls in the cockpit. But for sky typing,
(22:17):
it's more like what Mary imagined earlier, Right, Like the
release of the oil is controlled by an onboard computer.
The pilot enters the message they want to type, and
the computer kind of plots a course, pumping out dots
of smoke to form each letter along the way. Now,
this is actually the type of skywriting I saw over
the summer. But another difference is that sky typing pilots
(22:38):
don't fly their planes in the shape of each letter. Instead,
a series of pilots work in tandem, flying across the
same patch of sky in parallel lines, while releasing the
dots to form this message.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
That seems a little less fun, but I mean, I
guess it's kind of like an old dot matrix.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Printer, right, Yeah, especially up close, right, it's just a
bunch of broken dots, But when you view it from
far enough away, it looks like solid letters. And the
process is faster, cheaper, it's easier than traditional skywriting, but
as old school skywriters will tell you, it is also
less artful.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, it sounds like it. I mean, you know, I
think Gabe was saying earlier, it's like skywriting is like
painting a mural, and this just sounds kind of more
like paint by numbers, right, like you just kind of
follow the pattern. There's less skill involved.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah. Well, you don't have to warn for traditional skywriting
just yet, because while it is much rare these days,
there are still a handful of pilots out there who
fly the old fashioned way, and they are teaching their
skills to the next generation. And since the old method
doesn't require all the equipment and manpower for skytyping, it's
still the most accessible way for solo flyers who you know,
(23:46):
want to paint on the world's biggest canvas.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Well, I don't know how you pulled it off, but
now you've got me feeling sentimental about what are essentially
big smoky billboards. So Mary, what do you say we
give them the trophy this week?
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Yeah? Yeah, I liked his Wizard of Oz fact too,
and you know he's actually seen skywriting, so I think
he scarned it.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah, you just pick on me for the first part,
you give me a trophy and send me off in
the end. But I'm gonna take this trophy and you
guys can live with your decisions.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
We will.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Well, I'm afraid that's all the time we have for
today's Part Time Genius from Mary, Gabe, Dylan, Will and myself.
Thank you so much for listening. And while we have
the show, don't have enough money for skywriting, we do
have an Instagram account. Just drop us a line at
part Time Genius and we'll be back with more soon.
Thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is
(24:58):
a production of Kaleidoscope and I Heart Radio. This show
is hosted by Will Pearson and Me Mongays Chatikler, and
research by our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was
engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan, with support
from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart
by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social media support
(25:20):
from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viny Shorey. For
more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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