Friedel Klussmann and San Francisco's Cable Cars

San Francisco’s cable cars are the last working system of their kind. The reason they haven’t been completely replaced by more modern modes of transportation is largely the advocacy of a woman named Friedel Klussmann.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Earlier this year,
we finished up our West Coast tour and our last
stop there was in San Francisco. Whenever we have a

(00:24):
break on the tour, we have kind of a choice
of where do we want to spend our night off
in the place where we just finished the show or
the place where we're doing the next show. And I decided,
since I had never been to San Francisco, to choose
the one where we were doing the next show. I
spent my night off there. And while I was in
San Francisco, I stumbled across the San Francisco Cable Car

(00:44):
Museum by happenstance, and right in the front of the museum,
I was immediately captivated by a plaque dedicated to someone
who was known as the Cable Car Lady. Cable cars,
of course, are an iconic part of San Francisco. In
San Francisco's cable cars are the last working system of
their kind in the world. The reason they haven't been

(01:06):
completely replaced by more modern modes of transportation is largely
because of the advocacy of women, and in particular the
advocacy of Fridel Klusmann, who is the person who became
known as the cable car Lady. Spain established what would
become the city of San Francisco in September of seventeen
seventy six, initially as a military post. A mission commonly

(01:28):
known as Missieon de Lores opened that October. Its more
formal name is Missieon San Francisco de Ossis, and like
the city itself, it was named for Saint Francis of Assisi.
The mission's purpose was to christianize the native population, and
it was built using conscripted labor from northern California's native peoples.

(01:49):
The area became part of Mexico after the Mexican War
of Independence, which ended in eighteen one, but it was
eighteen thirty five before there was an actual European settlement
in the area beyond that mission and military post. That
settlement was the village of Your bu Buena. In eighteen
forty six, eleven years after Your bub Buena was established,

(02:10):
Captain John B. Montgomery captured it for the United States
during the Mexican American War. On January thirty of eighteen
forty seven, it was renamed San Francisco. San Francisco became
part of the United States, along with the rest of California,
under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which
ended that war. At first, San Francisco's population was quite small.

(02:33):
By the end of the Mexican American War, there were
about five hundred people, including Europeans, Africans, Native Americans, and
Pacific Islanders. But after the gold rush started in eighteen
forty nine, the population of San Francisco boomed. We talked
about this a little bit in our Levi Strouss episode,
and suddenly tens of thousands of people were flocking to
the city hoping to strike it rich or to make

(02:55):
lots of money off of the people who were hoping
to strike it rich. The city grew incredibly rapidly, and
by eight seventy its population was about a hundred and
fifty thousand people, and one of its ongoing challenges was
transportation and shipping. If you have never been to San Francisco,
it is very, very hilly. Even if you've seen footage

(03:17):
of the city, and movies are on TV. The steepness
of some of the hills can be really incredibly startling
when you experienced them for the first time in person.
It was a huge, huge challenge to safely move people
and cargo up and down all these hills, especially in
the winter when the city could be very damp, and
all of this was also compounded by the fact that

(03:38):
the terrain was very sandy. Andrew Smith Halliday gets the
credit for coming up with San Francisco's famous solution to
this problem. Halliday was born Andrew Smith and was named
after his father, and he took the name Halliday later
on in honor of his uncle and godfather. So Andrew Smith.
The father and Andrew Smith Halliday the son had immigrated

(04:00):
to the United States from the UK during the Gold Rush,
although Smith returned home in eighteen fifties three. Halliday had
been a tinkerer since he was a boy, and Smith
was an engineer and inventor, and some of Smith's patents
were for wire rope, something that Halliday had worked with
him on and which other inventors had been refining and
developing as well. As the name suggests, wire rope was

(04:23):
like hempen rope, but it was made with wire and
consequently was a lot stronger. Since its initial development in
the early nineteenth century, wire rope had started to replace
hempen rope for our tasks that needed to something that
was particularly strong. So the Royal Navy had started replacing
hempen rope with wire in the eighteen thirties, and soon
it was also being used to pull heavy mind cars

(04:45):
that were loaded with ore, and to support aerial trams
and mountainous areas. Suspension bridges, including the Brooklyn Bridge, were
also using wire rope for their suspension cables. Halliday started
working on an idea to imp oi wire rope in
a mass transit system in the early eighteen seventies. He
was reportedly inspired to do so a few years earlier

(05:07):
after witnessing a tragic incident. He had seen a team
of horses pulling a heavy load up one of San
Francisco steep hills, being aggressively driven on by their handler,
only to lose their footing on wet cobble stones, and
he hoped that he could work out a system that
would be safe for moving people in freight, especially on
those steep hills. He wanted to eradicate quote the great

(05:30):
cruelty and hardship to the horses engaged in that work.
Halliday's idea was also informed by his time in the
mining industry that which happened after he arrived in the
United States. He had worked on a flume that transported
mining cars up and down a hill, with the loaded
cars being pulled up by the weight of the empty
cars coming back down. He'd also worked on aerial tramways

(05:54):
and suspension bridges. All of this relied on wire rope,
and all this work he was doing with what launched
the manufacturing of wire rope in California. He's like a
pre Disney imagineer with the ways he comes up with
to move stuff around. Yeah, a lot of his inventions
were pretty ingenious. When it came to San Francisco's hilly terrain,

(06:15):
he thought he could create an underground system of wire
ropes wound around a series of pulleys to pull cars
above ground. And he called this underground system an endless
wire ropeway. And it required him to refine his wire
rope until it had enough flexibility and tensile strength to
handle all of this winding and moving without breaking. And

(06:37):
the system a powerhouse would drive the cable through the
endless wire ropeway. This was basically a bunch of giant
wheels that would move the cables as they turned, and
the system of pulleys that held everything at the right tension.
Although today's powerhouse is electric, the first powerhouses in the
nineteenth century were steam powered, so keeping all of this

(06:58):
running required huge amounts of steam and huge amounts of
coal to power the boilers that we're making all the steam.
At street level, the system involved a set of steel
tracks for the cable cars to run on, and between
these tracks is a slot. Under that slot is that
continually moving cable. And we could get into a lot
more detail here, uh, And there are several different setups

(07:20):
of how all this work which have evolved over the years,
but just to get a general sense of it, a
grip operator on the street car itself operates controls that
gripped the cable through the slot, and that cable pulls
the car, and today that cable moves at a steady
nine point five miles per hour that's about fifteen kilometers
per hour. As a side note, the word for the

(07:41):
person who does this job, grippman, is still widely in
use because it's a job that's been almost exclusively done
by men. Only two women have ever worked as grip
operators in San Francisco. The first was Fannie May Barnes,
who finished her training and started working. The grip operator
also let's go of the cable when necessary, for example,

(08:03):
when two cables for different lines cross over each other,
or when there's a curve or grade that the car
should coast through rather than being pulled. The operator would
also let go at the end of the line so
that the car could coast onto a turntable, which would
then be used to turn around and point the car
the other direction to go back down the same track.
Cable cars also have several breaks for things like going

(08:26):
down steep hills and for emergency stops. Holiday By the
time you started working on this was well known in
San Francisco. He was a respected businessman and engineer. He
was president of the Mechanics Institute. But at the same time,
a lot of people thought this whole cable car idea
was completely cockamami, so he had to struggle to get
funding before finally forming the Clay Street Hill Railroad along

(08:50):
with several other partners. Their first attempted line ran up
Knob Hill was a distance of hundred feet that's about
eight hundred and fifty three meters with a eyes of
three hundred seven feet or ninety four meters. The passenger
car looked a lot like the horse drawn passenger cars
of the day, with a grip car called an open
dummy replacing the horse They had a deadline to finish

(09:13):
this first stretch of cable car line, and that deadline
was August one, seventy three. They had been working on
it for quite a while, and as this deadline got
closer and closer, they got more and more frantic, trying
to finish it on time, even after working overnight. They
ultimately missed it by a day. But the first test
run on August two went exactly as planned, with one exception.

(09:37):
After the trip up the hill, which happened around midnight,
the car was all set to go back down around
four or five am, but the operator was too terrified
to do it. The hill was just so steep and
it was very foggy and dark, so Hallity took the
car back down knob Hill himself. I completely understand that fear.
That hill is steep. It is, and I mean I

(09:59):
won't even like bride roller blades down an incline like Idre,
staying cabulately and even though they had missed their deadline.
Once that successful first trip happened, people started to get
really excited about Halliday's invention. It opened for public service
on September one, eighteen seventy three. For the next four years,

(10:21):
Clay Street Hill Railroad was the only cable car company
in San Francisco, although many more followed after that. Ultimately,
eight railroad companies lay fifty three miles of track over
the eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties. Other cities also built
their own cable car lines as well. Holliday's original Clay
Street line in San Francisco was dismantled and replaced in eighteen.

(10:45):
On April eighteenth, nineteen o six, the Great earthquake and
fire did serious damage to the cable car system, including
destroying many of the cars, and by that point another
innovation had come along, electric street cars, which had been
developed in eight just a year before the last cable
car tracks were laid down in San Francisco. The electric

(11:06):
street cars were more efficient and they were much less
expensive to build and maintain, so after the Great earthquake
and fire, most of the cable car lines were replaced
with electric street cars. But if you compare a cable
car's performance to an electric street car in nineteen o six,
the cable car could still do a much better job

(11:26):
at managing San Francisco's steepest hills. So as most of
the cable car system was replaced with electric street cars,
the hilliest cable car routes were repaired and rebuilt as
cable cars. Street cars continued to improve, though, which meant
that after a while they were better able to manage
San Francisco's hills as well. More and more cable car

(11:47):
lines shut down, replaced by electric street cars and other
forms of transit. By the nineteen forties, there were only
a few cable car lines left. We will get to
how they almost went away entirely. After a sponsor break
into the Market Street Railway Company in San Francisco was

(12:12):
going to shut down, voters approved a measure for the
city to buy the company, giving San Francisco control of
the Powell, Mason and Washington Jackson lines. The mayor at
the time was Roger Lapham, and after the Market Street
Railway handed over all of its assets to the city.
He had a photo op piloting one of the cars
that was formerly owned by Market Street all through the town.

(12:35):
But Lapham's relationship to the cable cars turned out to
be fraught. He had campaigned on the idea of running
the city in a business like way, modernizing and approving
efficiency as the nation came out of World War Two.
In six the city raised rates on the cable cars
from seven cents to ten cents, hoping to make the
system self sustaining. On top of that steep increase, the

(13:00):
ike went into effect while the operators were all on strike,
and this contributed to a call for a recall election,
with Lapham himself signing the petition that called for it.
Although the city did hold a vote, the measure failed.
Voters rejected the recall. Seven cents to ten cents probably
doesn't sound like that giant of an increase to a

(13:22):
modern ear, but like that's a huge percentage. Yeah, I
mean that's uh, you know, almost fifty increase. If you
if you amped that up to bigger numbers, like if
you were paying, for example, this isn't a real number,
seventy dollars a month for parking and then it was
suddenly a hundred the next month, you would be alarmed.

(13:43):
It's a huge jump. Then seven, after all of that
had happened, as part of a citywide effort to modernize
and improve efficiency, Lapham started talking about shutting the cable
cars down completely and replacing them with buses. By that point,
city was operating only the Powell Street cable car line.
California Street Cable Railroad, which had been formed by some

(14:07):
wealthy businessmen to get to their mansions on Knob Hill,
had another three lines, and those are the only cable
cars that were left in the city. So what the
city was talking about shutting down was those city owned
Powell Street lines. On January Lapham said this in his
annual message to the Board of Supervisors, which is the

(14:28):
city's governing body. Quote, I know there are strong sentimental
reasons for keeping this old, ingenious and novel mode of transportation.
The fact remains that the sentimentalists do not have to
pay the bills and do not have to run the
risk of being charged with criminal negligence in the very
possible event a cable breaks and a car gets loose

(14:48):
on one of our steep hills. This supposedly very possible
event of a cable break was really not all that likely, though.
Although there had been accidents on the cable cars, as
is the case with any mode of transportation, these accidents
had not been caused by cable brakes. Fraying sections of
the cable were repaired or replaced before total brakes could happen,

(15:09):
and totally snapped cables are extremely rare. News spread immediately
about the mayor's plan to replace the cable cars with busses.
The front page of the San Francisco Chronicle on January said,
junk the cable cars, Lapham says the antiquated system in
dangers lives. Another headline the next day read cable cars

(15:32):
on way out. City orders superbusses. Days of the grip
men are nearly over. Officials tired of operating at a loss.
But the news from city hall became a little disjointed
from there. On January James H. Turner, who was the
utilities manager, made a statement that totally contradicted what the
mayor had just said. He claimed that the ten busses

(15:54):
that the city had ordered weren't supposed to replace the
cable cars entirely, that they were just supposed to pick
up a few difficult and hilly roots, he said. Quote
the fact that someone in his office said that the
new buses would be used on Powell Street was just
sort of a rumor. And then Public Works Director Harry
Vinceanno said that there was no way that the incoming

(16:16):
buses could safely climb the hills in question in wet weather,
contradicting both the utilities manager and the mayor's previous statements.
He said the only way to make those hills safer
busses was a twenty four thousand dollar refurbishment job to
resurface those hilly streets, and no money had been earmarked
for such a project. An editorial in the San Francisco

(16:38):
Chronicle on February three read quote, bus lines would be
a good deal less expensive, but against this saving should
be waited first passenger comfort, which has some money value,
even if it cannot be demonstrated, and second the market
value of an institution, which helps make the city stand
out amongst cities of the world. Late or in February,

(17:01):
reports started to circulate that voters were going to get
to choose the fate of the cable cars, but it
turned out that news was not about the city owned
Powell Lines. It was about those privately owned cable cars
that belonged to California Street Cable Railroad. The voters were
going to get to decide whether the city bought the
California Street Lines, not whether it kept the Powell lines.

(17:24):
And if the city did by the California lines, the
plan was to operate those but shut down Powell Street
because the Powell Street lines were the more expensive ones.
In the midst of all this chaos, two organizations came
together and held a meeting on March fourth. The two
host organizations where the San Francisco Federation of the Arts

(17:44):
and the California Spring Blossom and Wildflower Association. Also in
attendance at this meeting were the leaders of twenty seven
different women's civic groups from San Francisco, and the result
of this meeting was the formation of the Citizens Committee
to Save the Cable Cars, also known as the Save
the Cable Cars Committee. It's leader was Fredel Klusman of

(18:06):
the Federation of the Arts. Klusman was a longtime resident
of the Telegraph Hill neighborhood. She was an artist who
had studied at the California School of Fine Arts, which
is now San Francisco Art Institute. In addition to her
civic involvement, she had been a member of the San
Francisco Women Artists and the San Francisco Artists Association. Even

(18:27):
though she was a fairly private person by nature, she
threw herself into the public effort to save the cable cars.
What followed was a series of dueling reports from city
Hall and from the committee. The city claimed that the
cars were unsafe, but the committee claimed the opposite, with
transit authorities actually backing them up on the idea that,

(18:47):
especially when it came to those extreme hills, the cable
cars were a safe way to travel. Another issue was
traffic congestion. The cable cars run on the same roadways
that cars used, and the Mayor's office argued that having
cars and street cars and cable cars all using the
same space was causing too many traffic jams. The mayor's
office correctly pointed out that the cable car system was

(19:09):
operating at a daily loss and claimed that the proposed
bus replacement would be profitable. The Cable Cars Committee countered
that the year before, tourism had generated more than thirty
four million dollars in revenues for the city, and that
getting rid of the cable cars would be a blow
to that industry. The committee also noted that the bus
system as a whole was not profitable at all, with

(19:31):
the cable cars, while offering much more limited service, also
losing a lot less money than the busses did. A
statement of retention of the Powell Street System, which was
released by the Cable Cars Committee, put it this way,
quote no one suggests the discontinuance of busses because they're
losing money. Any present monetary loss in the operation of

(19:53):
the cable cars is more than compensated for by the
wide publicity they give San Francisco Throughout the world. Lapham
kept hammering on the idea that the cable cars were
outdated and obsolete, including having one drawn through the city
by a horse just to make a point. Kusman kept
pointing to the uniqueness of the cable cars and the

(20:14):
city's fondness for them and the character that they brought
to San Francisco, as well as their importance to the
tourism industry. Meanwhile, women across the city were gathering signatures
on a petition to put this matter to a vote.
This dispute between the city government and the Cable Cars
Committee became national news. It was covered in publications like

(20:35):
Time Life. In the Saturday Evening Post, Glenn Hurlbert with
Greg Mcritchey and his orchestra released a song called the
Cable Car can scherto. Celebrities started announcing that they wouldn't
come to San Francisco if there were no more cable cars.
I read a whole collection of reports in The New
York Times that had this just delighted tone to the

(20:56):
whole spectacle, with one of them calling the cable car
system quote anachronistic but eminently likable. That'd be a great epitaph.
Richard Gump, who was head of the retail enterprise. Gumps
put an ad in Time magazine asking for the opinions

(21:17):
of people outside of San Francisco, and all but one
of these sacks and sacks of letters that came in
said to keep those cars. And as a side note,
Dumps was founded during the Gold Rush and it was
still in business as of this recording, although there are
some news reports from August of this year which is
that say it may be out of business. By the

(21:38):
end of this year due to financial problems. Ultimately, it
started to look like all of that signature gathering and
knocking on doors and making calls and speaking that Kliffsman
and the committee we're doing was going to pay off.
A headline in the March six edition of the San
Francisco Chronicle, red Cable cars get a boost. San Francisco

(22:00):
women may force city to let voters decide. On March thirteenth,
Eleanor Roosevelt wrote about the dispute in her My Day column.
During a stay in San Francisco. She said that she
understood why people were so passionate about it, because the
cars were one of the first things that people thought
of when it came to San Francisco. But it also
went on to say that she thought the bay and

(22:20):
the bridges really offered the most charm. After months of effort,
Kliffman and the Cable Car Committee were successful. They gathered
forty thousand signatures on their petition, and it was announced
that San Francisco voters would get to weigh in on
Proposition ten in November of This proposition would amend the
city's charter to make the San Francisco Municipal Railway and

(22:43):
the Public Utilities Commission responsible for maintaining the cable car lines.
On election day, more than one hundred sixty six thousand
people voted yes on Proposition ten. Just a little more
than fifty one thousand voted no. This wasn't the end
of the struggling with the cars, though, and we'll get
to that after another quick sponsor break. Propositions ten was

(23:11):
something of a temporary reprieve when it came to San
Francisco's cable cars. There was trouble of one kind or
another for about four decades, everything from budgets to maintenance
problems to city officials trying again to winnow down how
many cable car lines the city had. In nineteen fifty two,
the city finally took over the California Street cable railroads

(23:33):
after Lloyd's of London canceled its insurance policy following an accident.
At first, the city continued to operate all of the
California Street lines, but it turned out that, contrary to
what they've been thinking back in, these lines were even
more expensive than the Powell Street lines. In nineteen fifty four,
the issue was again put to a vote, with two

(23:54):
competing propositions on the ballot. Proposition JA, which would have
kept all all of the lines running at full capacity,
was defeated Proposition E, which included the two Powell Street
lines and one California line, one by a very narrow margin.
This had involved another spirited campaign, with Kluchman once again

(24:15):
returning to the public eye and as one example, the
Playhouse Theater Group riding in cars and costume carrying signs
protesting the idea of shutting any of the cable cars down.
In the end, the three lines that remained after the
passage of Proposition E were the ones that still exist today,
the Powell Hide Line, the Powell Mason line, and the

(24:37):
California Line. Also in the nineteen fifties, Rice Erroney the
San Francisco Treat was introduced by the d Domenico family
of San Francisco, and the famous jingle, complete with the
sound of a cable car bell followed in The product
packaging still features a silhouette of a cable car, and

(24:57):
the product itself has been advertised eised on the sides
of cable cars and as another side note, every year
since nineteen fifty five, cable car operators have had a
bell ringing competition. Now I want Ray SERRONI. It is delicious.
In nineteen sixty one, a plaque was unveiled in Kluseman's
honor at the cable car powerhouse on Mason Street. The

(25:19):
inscription is long, but we're gonna read the whole thing
because it's quite charming and it reads. On the morning
of January seven, San Franciscan's read the news that a
fleet of buses would replace the cable cars operating on
Powell Street. In this almost casual manner, San Franciscan's, who
have a feeling and an affection for their cable cars,

(25:39):
were informed that the most colorful transportation line in their
city was to perish. Indeed, the Powell Street line, starting
at a turntable on Market Street, slipping past Union Square,
increasing the knob and Russian Hills on its meandering way
to the Bay, might well be the most colorful street
railway in the world. Now it was announced the cable

(26:00):
cars would be scrapped and their tracks torn up, a
rumble of indignation was heard throughout San Francisco. At first,
this anger remained directionless for want of a leader with
energy sentiment dedication and an intelligent sense of history. It
was not long, however, before the embodiment of these qualities
came forward, in the person of Fredel Klusman. San Franciscan's

(26:23):
had found their general. Mrs Klusman organized the Citizens Committee
to Save the Cable Cars, and the campaign against indifference
and shortsightedness was on. Mrs Klusman and her forces maintained
that a life and death decision about the cable cars
should be made by the people, and not by administrative order.
Against odds and disappointments, which would have discouraged a less

(26:45):
determined person. Mrs Klusman's efforts secured a place for the
Powell Street line on the ballot, and while the nation,
fascinated by this sentimental and nostalgic struggle, looked on, San
Francisco went to the polls and by an overwhelming major
already said save the cable cars. This and future generations
are in debt to the cable car Lady, as Mrs

(27:07):
Clusman is affectionately known, and to the timely forces which
she organized. She not only preserved a way of transportation
that continued to serve and delight, but also saved the
city's trademark. In nineteen sixty four, San Francisco's cable cars
became a National Historic Landmark. There's actually one other street
car designated as a National Historic landmark in the United States.

(27:30):
That is the New Orleans St. Charles street car line,
which is an electric street car. We tried to take
that street car while we were in New Orleans, and
we failed because they were all full. Yeah, we were.
We were trying to do a leisurely look around ride,
and it kind of became apparent that people who actually
lived in the city needed it because it was already

(27:50):
crowded with people doing a leisurely look around, right, And
so we did not cram on. So that one was
designated as a landmark in and is the oldest continual
operating street car in the world. By nineteen sixty four,
politicians were well aware that messing with the cable cars
was likely to be a hugely unpopular move. As one example,

(28:11):
Mayor George Mosconi remarked, anyone attempting to fool with the
cable cars in any shape or form is apt to
be run out of town on a spike. But while
it was taken for granted that trying to shut down
the cable cars would be a deeply unpopular move. Voters
weren't all that enthusiastic about approving funding to keep them
well maintained. This is like the trial of public transportation everywhere.

(28:35):
Being designated a National Historic Landmark had protected the cable
cars existence, but it hadn't really protected them from a
lack of maintenance and upkeeps. So by the nineteen seventies,
the cable car system was facing very very serious problems.
Everything about the whole cable car system had deteriorated through
everything from normal wear and hair to earthquakes. The result

(28:56):
was a massive restoration project in the early nineteen eighties,
spearheaded by then Mayor Diane Feinstein. The total renovation took
twenty one months, during which the cars were shut down.
It cost about sixty million dollars. The system finally reopened
on June one, four. That system is also currently undergoing

(29:16):
a gearbox renovation that has involved a few multi day shutdowns.
Fredel Klusman died October nine, eighty six, and her home
on Telegraph Hill at the age of ninety. Dianne Feinstein
called her quote one of San Francisco's truly modern heroines
in The turnaround at the end of the Powell Hide
Line at Fisherman's Wharf was named the Fridel Klusman Memorial Turnaround.

(29:40):
Klusman's effort to save the cable cars in nineteen seven
also led to the establishment of San Francisco Beautiful. That year,
she became its first president and remained so until her death.
That organization still exists today and advocates for civic beauty,
neighborhood character, and accessible public art. Today, the San Francisco

(30:01):
Municipal Railway or MUNI, is responsible for San Francisco's three
cable car lines. There are two types of actual cars
still in regular use. The California lines cars are larger
and they're open on both ends, with the open spaces
having a platform where people can stand and hold on.
The two Powell lines have smaller cars that have this

(30:21):
open area only on one end. There are also a
few restored cars from other models that come out on
special occasions. For the most part, these two types of
cars run the same way, although the cars on the
California Line can go in either directions, so when one
gets to the end of the line, it just runs
in the other direction. On the way back with the
flip of a switch. The cars on the two Powell

(30:43):
lines run in one direction only, so when they get
to the end of the line, they're manually turned around
on a turntable. The powerhouse that runs all of these
at Washington and Mason Streets is also now home to
the Cable Car Museum, which was established in nineteen four.
You can go in there and see the miss Janery
that runs the underground cables, plus lots of retired cable
car models, lots of other information about San Francisco history

(31:06):
and the history of the cable cars. I happened to
walk directly past it after having climbed an incredibly steep
hill and then gone down the other side. And I
would have gone in there anyway, but it was particularly
appealing to be in a flat place for a few minutes.
Do you have a little bit of listener mail for us?

(31:28):
I do. This is a correction. It is from Terraisea,
and Terisa says, Dear Tracy and Holly, I absolutely adore
your show, but as a check I couldn't not notice
a mistake in your statement quote. The violence started in
Germany then spread into Austria as well as to Betton Land,
which Germany had recently annexed from the Austria Hungarian Empire.

(31:52):
That is from our episode on Crystal Knock. So that
land was annexed by the Munich Diktat from Czechoslovakia, not
from the Austro Hungarian Empire, which fell apart in nineteen
eighteen at the end of World War One. The establishment
of Czechoslovakia was formally announced on October eighteen. The Munich Diktat,

(32:13):
or as we often call it, the Munich Betrayal, is
still a very painful part of Czech history. Czechoslovakia was
basically informed by Great Britain and France that we could
either fight Germany alone or submit to giving up our
border regions to Germany. Our officials knew how hopeless and
tragic a war against Germany would be for us, so
they reluctantly capitulated on September thirty eight. Now, when I'm

(32:35):
thinking about it, this is a great episode suggestion the
Munich dick took. Thanks for all the wonderful work you do.
I listen to your show on my commute to work
when I do chores or some laborious and boring stuff
in the lab. I'm a scientist. Knowing that your episode
is waiting for me makes me look forward to boring activities,
even to washing dishes. Have a wonderful day, to raise it,

(32:56):
to raise a thank you for this note A piece
of this not only did I know, but we have
done it this day in history class episode about the
establishment of Czechoslovakia. What I did was when I saw
usdon Land, I was like, Okay, I gotta refresh my
memory about where exactly that was, because I did not
immediately recall. And the piece of information that my mind

(33:18):
just sort of latched onto was its earlier history, not
what was actually current by the time we were leading
up to World War Two. So that was just my
failure to follow through one piece of information to its
logical conclusion. We have also gotten several emails from people
living in Germany about how in Germany crystal knocked is

(33:41):
not really called that anymore. It is called Reich's program knocked,
which means exactly what it sounds like, the Reich's program
Night and Uh. The term crystal knock is still basically
ubiquitous in English language publications, including from like Jewish His
Three Centers and the World Holocaust Museum and and all

(34:03):
of that. So in Germany it is no longer widely
used because it was basically a term that was coined
by Nazis as a euphemism, and so uh in in
Germany it's not typically used anymore for that reason. Outside
of Germany, I don't think I found any source that
did not use it, so um, there is a little

(34:26):
disparity there. So thank you again Teresa for sending your note,
and to the folks that have written to us about
Reich's program Nocht If you would like to write to
us about this or any other podcast or history podcasts
at how stuff works dot com. We are also on
social media at missed in History. That's where you'll find
our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Our website is missed

(34:47):
in history dot com, where you will find show notes
on all the episodes Holly and I have done together
and a searchable archive of every episode. Ever. You can
subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the
I Heart Radio app, anywhere else you get your podcasts.

(35:08):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com. M