Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy he Wilson. So Tracy,
Speaker 1: I think you might be like me where there are
Speaker 1: some subjects to the podcast that are at the top
Speaker 1: of the list for a really long time, and in
Speaker 1: my case, I feel like I'm sort of circling them
Speaker 1: like an animal stocking prey. I'll do a little bit
Speaker 1: of research on him and then back away, and it's
Speaker 1: like I want to tackle them, but I'm also a
Speaker 1: little unsure of when to jump for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 1: Uh And Hugo gerns Back has been one of those
Speaker 1: for a very long time, and he's tricky for a
Speaker 1: few different reasons. For one, he was ceaselessly interesting, and
Speaker 1: he did a lot of things that influenced the world
Speaker 1: we live in today. And topics like that are hard
Speaker 1: because you don't want to get into the like a
Speaker 1: big minutia party where you just list all the stuff
Speaker 1: that they did and touched and and and how it's
Speaker 1: you know, echoing in today's world. But you also don't
Speaker 1: want to leave any of the important stuff out so
Speaker 1: it could just be a little bit wilming to try
Speaker 1: to figure those out, and for another he can be
Speaker 1: a little bit polarizing. There are people who laud him
Speaker 1: as a genius, and there are others who label him
Speaker 1: as a crackpot opportunist, but they do usually acknowledge that
Speaker 1: he was an insightful crackpot opportunist. Um. He is the
Speaker 1: man who, in the words of Ray Bradbury quote made
Speaker 1: us fall in love with the future. But he's also
Speaker 1: been berated as kind of a hack whose proclamations about
Speaker 1: what does and does not qualify as science fiction have
Speaker 1: been problematic and limiting from the start. But even people
Speaker 1: who have very little nice to say about the man
Speaker 1: acknowledge his influence and importance on the world of science fiction.
Speaker 1: He was also an inventor of some wacky and marvelous
Speaker 1: things and a writer himself. He was also a prognosticator
Speaker 1: of the future with some startling lee accurate insights, and
Speaker 1: odds are very good that you have come across references
Speaker 1: to him, whether you know it or not. So. Author
Speaker 1: William Gibson, who penned one of my top three books
Speaker 1: of all time, Neuromancer, wrote a short story called The
Speaker 1: gerns Back Continuum in eight one to reference him, and
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty five Steven Spielberg created a TV series
Speaker 1: inspired by Gernsback's magazine Amazing Stories. There was also a
Speaker 1: revival of Amazing Stories in and Today the Hugo Awards,
Speaker 1: recognizing science fiction and fantasy writers for excellence each year
Speaker 1: are given out in his name. That was an award
Speaker 1: that started when he was still alive, even though he
Speaker 1: was not the one that gave it. One journalist once
Speaker 1: described him as part scientist, part inventor, part joker, part
Speaker 1: little boy, and I kind of feel like that might
Speaker 1: be the best way to think of him as we're
Speaker 1: talking through his life story, because he could be very mercurial,
Speaker 1: and he would make a case or stayed an opinion
Speaker 1: about something and then not very much later, say something
Speaker 1: completely contradictory to that other statement. But he didn't seem
Speaker 1: to see how that was a problem. Was just always
Speaker 1: exploring ideas from a fairly conceptual place without getting two
Speaker 1: mired in the details, and he seemed to have no
Speaker 1: problem at all jumping from one idea or project to another.
Speaker 1: He is always described as ceaselessly energetic and following his
Speaker 1: thoughts down whatever path they led. Some of those and
Speaker 1: we will talk about them very problematic. But lately I
Speaker 1: keep running into references to him, even when I am
Speaker 1: looking at things that seemed completely unrelated. So it seems
Speaker 1: like the universes like, girl, just do that Hugo episode,
Speaker 1: already do it? Uh, So here we are. Hugo Gernsbach
Speaker 1: was born Hugo Gernsbacher on August four and Luxembourg City, Luxembourg.
Speaker 1: His family was quite comfortable. His father, more as Gernsbacher,
Speaker 1: was a successful wine wholesaler who had moved to Luxembourg
Speaker 1: from Germany. Hugo was the third son born to Mori
Speaker 1: ITTs and his wife Bertha Derlocker Gernsbacher, and from a
Speaker 1: very lie age, Hugo Gernsback was a tinkerer. When he
Speaker 1: was six years old, he was given a battery bell
Speaker 1: kit by the man who took care of the Gernsbaka
Speaker 1: State of handyman named Jean Pierre Gorgan, and Gorgon taught
Speaker 1: Hugo how to wire the bells to a battery called
Speaker 1: the le clanche. So Hugo loved this entire process and
Speaker 1: particularly was captivated by the green sparks that were admitted
Speaker 1: when the bell rang. He told the story over and
Speaker 1: over throughout his life, and he was soon ordering additional
Speaker 1: supplies from Paris to create new, bigger iterations of this
Speaker 1: simple system. And he said to have eventually wired his
Speaker 1: family home with intercoms and little buzzers, and soon he
Speaker 1: was assembling similar setups for his friends and neighbors homes.
Speaker 1: And from there he was basically constantly working on batteries
Speaker 1: and battery powered devices and became recognized in his community
Speaker 1: as something of an expert. By the time he was
Speaker 1: a teenager, the local Carmelite convent hired him to install
Speaker 1: buzzers in their building. This was a bit of a
Speaker 1: sticky situation aation though, because Gernsbach had turned thirteen after
Speaker 1: the Mother Superior of the convent had hired him, he
Speaker 1: was suddenly considered to be a man in the eyes
Speaker 1: of the church, and according to him, that meant he
Speaker 1: was not allowed to enter anymore. But the Mother Superior
Speaker 1: got a special dispensation from the Pope to allow the
Speaker 1: young Hugo to do the work, and that permission letter
Speaker 1: from Rome became a prized possession throughout his life. I
Speaker 1: have always wondered, having heard this story many times in
Speaker 1: relation to him, if he forged that letter. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: had a question being for real, Yes, because his wife
Speaker 1: even talked about it after he had passed, and how
Speaker 1: she still had it and it was something you loved.
Speaker 1: And part of me is always like, is she hanging
Speaker 1: onto a like a fake document that she but I
Speaker 1: don't know. Uh. Hugo was educated by private tutors. As
Speaker 1: we said, his family was very comfortable financially, and he's
Speaker 1: often referred to as having received a technical education in Luxembourg.
Speaker 1: He actually did y poorly when he was enrolled in
Speaker 1: an industrial school as a teenager, and his performance at
Speaker 1: college and bing in Germany was similarly underwhelming. But he
Speaker 1: was an avid reader throughout his youth and enjoyed applying
Speaker 1: his technical knowledge to speculation about the future and problem solving.
Speaker 1: He told the story that a translated copy of Mars
Speaker 1: as the Abode to Life by Percival Little sent him
Speaker 1: into just the delirium when he read it at the
Speaker 1: age of nine, and that set his imagination so ablaze
Speaker 1: that the family called a doctor to watch him while
Speaker 1: he talked endlessly about the creatures and technology that could
Speaker 1: possibly be on the Red planet. But this story and
Speaker 1: many of the others about his youth are solely from
Speaker 1: Gernsbach himself, and so they're hard, if not impossible, to substantiate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you know he was a storyteller. Uh. In
Speaker 1: nineteen o four, at the age of nineteen, Hugo moved
Speaker 1: to the United States, shortly after his father died. His
Speaker 1: father had never really understood his son's drive to pursue
Speaker 1: a career in the emerging field of electrics. He kind
Speaker 1: of hoped he would go into wine like he did.
Speaker 1: But once there was no longer a disapproving patriarch in
Speaker 1: the picture, Hugo made his move and shipped off to
Speaker 1: New York. He changed his name to the americanized Gern's
Speaker 1: Pocket and eventually became a naturalized US citizen. He had
Speaker 1: always had a fascination with the US and US culture
Speaker 1: that was driven in part by reading popular American authors
Speaker 1: like Twain and Poe. Additionally, European patent offices hadn't granted
Speaker 1: him various patents he had applied for, and he was
Speaker 1: hoping to do better with patenting his inventions in North America.
Speaker 1: He was very aware of personal presentation and he cultivated
Speaker 1: a style for himself that was distinctive and conveyed a
Speaker 1: sort of eccentric European aristocrat persona. He was known to
Speaker 1: wear a monocle that he didn't need. He always had
Speaker 1: very formal, beautiful suits, then the occasional opera cape. He
Speaker 1: was also very charming and witty, and that added this
Speaker 1: other layer of a lure. Yeah, he definitely was good
Speaker 1: at putting together like the man he wanted to be.
Speaker 1: He was also multi lingual, so people just automatically like
Speaker 1: gave him a certain degree of of like cloud. He's
Speaker 1: just amazing European genius. He is said to have worn
Speaker 1: a formal three piece suit even on the boat crossing
Speaker 1: to land at hoboken Um. Hugo's intention in the States,
Speaker 1: in addition to those patents, was to parlay his electrical
Speaker 1: and battery knowledge into a career, and he first approached
Speaker 1: Packard Motors and showed them a battery that he had
Speaker 1: designed for use in automobiles. His original design needed to
Speaker 1: be tweaked to work, but he did get a contract
Speaker 1: with Packard and he used that money that he yearned
Speaker 1: on that job to go into business for himself under
Speaker 1: the company name Electro Importing Co. Which had a storefront
Speaker 1: at sixty nine West Broadway. One of the first radio
Speaker 1: sets offered to the general public was a design of
Speaker 1: Hugos that he created in his early years as a businessman.
Speaker 1: This was the Talimco Wireless. That particular invention, which guaranteed
Speaker 1: that it would work up to one mile, was written
Speaker 1: up in Scientific American in nineteen o five. That article
Speaker 1: was written by CERN's back himself under the pen name
Speaker 1: Huck after the Twain character. This tiny radio was ahead
Speaker 1: of its time enough that it wasn't all that useful.
Speaker 1: There weren't many radio stations in operation yet for it
Speaker 1: to actually pick up. It was also considered suspicious enough
Speaker 1: that police insisted on a demonstration of the device to
Speaker 1: make sure that he was not making fraudulent claims. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: like yeah, but how do we know if it works
Speaker 1: if there's no radio station. Hugo got married for the
Speaker 1: first time in nineteen o six to a woman named
Speaker 1: Rose Harvey. They had a daughter in nineteen o nine,
Speaker 1: but that marriage did not last. He started a magazine
Speaker 1: called Modern Electrics. In this featured articles largely written by
Speaker 1: gurn's Back himself, often under alias is that touted the
Speaker 1: technology used than many of his inventions. It was an
Speaker 1: outgrowth of his earlier electro importing catalog, which he started
Speaker 1: in nineteen o six. Over time, this expanded to include
Speaker 1: wider coverage of radio and other tech that home enthusiasts
Speaker 1: were eager to learn about, as well as letters to
Speaker 1: the editor from subscribers. Girls Back employed numerous freelancers to
Speaker 1: work on this magazine, as well as getting his company's
Speaker 1: staff to contribute. He worked on inventions and experiments with
Speaker 1: his brother Sydney, as well as his collaborators Louis Coxhall
Speaker 1: and Harry Winfield, and Modern Electrics included articles that tracked
Speaker 1: their progress and music experiments. In some cases, he would
Speaker 1: be describing the development of a product that he would
Speaker 1: then sell, often through the magazine, which has led to
Speaker 1: some modern criticism that it was sort of a long
Speaker 1: haul sales mechanism. Yeah. Yeah, He was definitely not shy
Speaker 1: about being his own hype man anyway. He was very
Speaker 1: willing to write up his work and praise himself under
Speaker 1: other names. The growing popularity of Modern Electrics magazine led
Speaker 1: Gernsbach to delve into a new creative space as he
Speaker 1: hustled to assemble enough material for each issue. So the
Speaker 1: story goes that in April nineteen eleven, he was coming
Speaker 1: up short on his magazine, so to fill pages, he
Speaker 1: decided to write a piece of fiction, and that was
Speaker 1: the birth of a character that on page is Ralph
Speaker 1: one to four c four one plus sign and it's
Speaker 1: meant to be read as it plays out in the
Speaker 1: pages of the book, or as the story as one
Speaker 1: to four see for another. Ralph was an astronaut living
Speaker 1: in the twenty seven century. The story begins in sixty
Speaker 1: The story was very much pulpic shin right down to
Speaker 1: the damsel in distress trope. This was alice to one
Speaker 1: to be four to three, but it was also filled
Speaker 1: out with futuristic detail that was rooted in Hugo's knowledge
Speaker 1: of science and technology. The opening description of the character
Speaker 1: sets the tone for the whole work. Quote. His physical superiority, however,
Speaker 1: was nothing compared to his gigantic mind. He was Ralph
Speaker 1: once to foresee for one plus one of the greatest
Speaker 1: living scientists and one of ten men on the whole
Speaker 1: planet Earth permitted to use the plus sign after his name.
Speaker 1: Ralph's adventures were fairly formulaic, but this story really captivated readers,
Speaker 1: and while Gernsbach may have initially thought he was just
Speaker 1: filling out the page count to modern electrics, it turned
Speaker 1: out he had started a new feature series, and one
Speaker 1: that was extremely popular. He had closed that initial story
Speaker 1: on a suspenseful cliffhanger, so it was pretty natural to
Speaker 1: keep going, which he did for eleven more installments. The
Speaker 1: writing isn't spectacular. An amazing aspect of these stories was
Speaker 1: the way they wave science and inventive ideas into the
Speaker 1: narrative story. One installment includes a diagram and description that
Speaker 1: is essentially radar, well before these systems were in use. Quote.
Speaker 1: A pulsating polarized ether wave, if directed on a metal object,
Speaker 1: can be reflected in the same manner as a light
Speaker 1: ray is reflected from a bright surface. By manipulating the
Speaker 1: entire apparatus like a searchlight, waves would be sent over
Speaker 1: a large area. Sooner or later these waves would strike
Speaker 1: a space flyer. A small part of these waves would
Speaker 1: strike the metal body of the flyer, and these rays
Speaker 1: would be reflected back to the sending apparatus. Here they
Speaker 1: would fall on the Actina scope, which records only the
Speaker 1: reflected waves, not direct ones. From the intensity and elapsed
Speaker 1: time of the reflected impulses, the distance between the Earth
Speaker 1: and the flyer can then be accurately estimated. Another prescient
Speaker 1: description in the series pre dates video chat by decades,
Speaker 1: but describes exactly that he wrote quote. Stepping to the
Speaker 1: telefot on the side of the wall, he pressed a
Speaker 1: group of buttons, and in a few minutes, the face
Speaker 1: plate of the telefont became luminous, revealing the face of
Speaker 1: a clean shaven man about thirty, a pleasant but serious face.
Speaker 1: As soon as he recognized the face of Ralph in
Speaker 1: his own telefonte, he smiled and said, Hello, Ralph. The
Speaker 1: twelve part series was collected into a novel for publication,
Speaker 1: but not until that was fourteen years after their serialized release. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's still in print today. You can get it very,
Speaker 1: very easily, and you can usually get a pretty inexpensive
Speaker 1: E reader edition if you are curious. But again, this
Speaker 1: is not where you go for great literary writing. Next up,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about Girl's Box continuing work in radio,
Speaker 1: and we will do that after we pause for a
Speaker 1: sponsor break. While Hugo Gernsbach continued to write fiction after
Speaker 1: Ralph one to four See for one plus, most of
Speaker 1: his publishing efforts were in electric and radio journalism and
Speaker 1: advocacy for years. As the wireless radio community grew, Gernsbach
Speaker 1: formed the Wireless Association of America in nineteen o nine
Speaker 1: and published a directory of operators called the Blue Book
Speaker 1: once a year so that people could connect more easily
Speaker 1: to one another. He also wrote a lot about best
Speaker 1: practices that would keep them from interfering with government radio
Speaker 1: stations and suggested ways that radio frequencies could be allocated
Speaker 1: and managed. He thought government regulation was only going to
Speaker 1: be problematic, writing that the creation of a wireless telegraph
Speaker 1: board to regulate quote is of no practical value whatsoever
Speaker 1: un American, and will keep down the progress of a
Speaker 1: young and useful art, which in time may develop into
Speaker 1: an as yet undreamed of asset of the nation's power.
Speaker 1: Wireless telegraphy and telephony in a country of vast distances
Speaker 1: as America, is a very valuable means for cheap transmission
Speaker 1: of intelligence, and it is the duty of the government
Speaker 1: to encourage it and not to pass a resolution to
Speaker 1: throttle it, like England and Germany have done, in which
Speaker 1: two countries the art is almost unknown. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: this sounds like discussions about internet regulation happening today. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, we definitely need radio bands that emergency
Speaker 1: services can use that are not overrun with other traffic.
Speaker 1: So Hugo would later claim that his writing on these
Speaker 1: issues which suggested a number of common sense measures that
Speaker 1: could be self regulated by users, uh, which I feel
Speaker 1: like is optimistic, But that was used word for word
Speaker 1: in the Wireless Act of LVE. But that's really not accurate.
Speaker 1: His concepts are all there, but the act itself is
Speaker 1: not in his words. But the start of World War
Speaker 1: One really put an end to amateur wireless broadcast activities
Speaker 1: so that naval operators were the sole users. This was
Speaker 1: an issue that caused just a great deal of chagrin,
Speaker 1: and that all played out in the pages of Gerns
Speaker 1: Box periodical. Yeah, he was left a little bit kind
Speaker 1: of um scrambling to figure out what he was going
Speaker 1: to do, since suddenly all of the people that were
Speaker 1: buying his magazine to build things and to to talk
Speaker 1: about what they were working on weren't allowed to build
Speaker 1: or work on those things anymore. Uh Guern's box sold
Speaker 1: Modern Electrics in nineteen to the publisher of Electrician and
Speaker 1: Mechanic magazine, and it eventually became part of Popular Science
Speaker 1: Monthly after many changes and shifts, and then he started
Speaker 1: a fresh magazine called The Electrical experiment Er, and this
Speaker 1: was similar in tone to Modern Electrics, but it was
Speaker 1: also a lot more focused on building the community of
Speaker 1: the readership. Subscribers were encouraged to submit their own designs
Speaker 1: for prizes, and there were how to sections for setting
Speaker 1: up a homework area, aggregation and discussion of all the
Speaker 1: latest developments in the electrical field. There was also a
Speaker 1: column for helping readers get their inventions patented, with a
Speaker 1: Q and a element where a reader could send in
Speaker 1: a question along with a dollar and get advice on
Speaker 1: their invention and their application for patent. The Electrical Experimenters
Speaker 1: more carefully plotted out contents yielded a growth and readership
Speaker 1: to a hundred thousand subscribers. As the magazine continued to
Speaker 1: expand through its combination of practical advice and speculative technological ideas.
Speaker 1: Gernsbach also hired illustrators to help readers imagine what the
Speaker 1: future might look like if some of them mentioned ideas
Speaker 1: were implemented. The Electrical experiment Er eventually changed names to
Speaker 1: Science and Invention, covering not only the at home, grassroots inventor,
Speaker 1: but also including stories that covered work in science and
Speaker 1: engineering at the corporate level. Science and Invention became influential
Speaker 1: enough that other publications around the world started picking up
Speaker 1: their articles and stories for reprint. To maintain the connection
Speaker 1: to that independent home inventor demographic, he launched a new periodical,
Speaker 1: Radio Amateur News, which later shortened to Radio News, and
Speaker 1: he would continue to launch new titles in response to
Speaker 1: the changing times to keep growing his readership and offer
Speaker 1: niche information to his long term audience. He always maintained
Speaker 1: that the most exciting work was being done in what
Speaker 1: we today would call open source or even crowdsource style,
Speaker 1: with the sharing of ideas, rather than behind the doors
Speaker 1: of research and development divisions at corporations, writing quote, everyone
Speaker 1: knows that the more people who are working on an art,
Speaker 1: the more rapid the progress will be in the end.
Speaker 1: In one Gerns Black married his second wife, Dorothy Cantrowitz.
Speaker 1: Information on Dorothy is pretty sparse. This marriage was not
Speaker 1: his last, and it's not really clear how it ended.
Speaker 1: In guns By founded a radio station w r n
Speaker 1: Y under the auspices of his publishing company, experiment Or Publishing,
Speaker 1: and this was an experimental station. Hugo and his collaborators
Speaker 1: would test new media and technology on the station and
Speaker 1: then keep track of how the station's listeners reacted. The
Speaker 1: station would later broadcast early television broadcasts and was one
Speaker 1: of the first broadcast entities to regularly broadcast television signals
Speaker 1: on a schedule. These are very short. He published schematics
Speaker 1: for a receiver for these broadcasts in his magazine so
Speaker 1: enterprising readers could order their supplies, put them together, and
Speaker 1: then watch these short like five minute daily programs on
Speaker 1: a screen about the size of a postage stamp. He
Speaker 1: also introduced television magazine to capitalize on interest in the
Speaker 1: new medium. In he Go launched his first magazine venture
Speaker 1: with the strictly fiction focus. On April six, the first
Speaker 1: issue of Amazing Stories came out, and in it in
Speaker 1: Sboch laid out his aspiration for the periodical quote. At
Speaker 1: first thought, it does seem impossible that there could be
Speaker 1: room for another fiction magazine in this country. The reader
Speaker 1: may well wonder, aren't there enough already with the several
Speaker 1: hundred now being published. True, but this is not another
Speaker 1: fiction magazine. Amazing Stories is a new kind of fiction magazine.
Speaker 1: It is entirely new, entirely different, something that has never
Speaker 1: been done before in this country. There is the usual
Speaker 1: fiction magazine, the love story and the sex appeal type
Speaker 1: of magazine, the adventure type, and so on. But a
Speaker 1: magazine of scientifiction is a pioneer in its field in America.
Speaker 1: By scientifiction, I mean the Jules Verne, H. G. Wells,
Speaker 1: and Edgar Allan Poe type of story, a charming romance
Speaker 1: intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision. And he used
Speaker 1: this new platform to both draw readers in with established
Speaker 1: content like worked by Jules Vernon H. G. Wells, and
Speaker 1: to test out new stories and new writers. And because
Speaker 1: of all of this, Hugo Gernsbach is often credited with
Speaker 1: inventing the science fiction genre, and Isaac Asimov even called
Speaker 1: him the father of science fiction. But that's not because
Speaker 1: Gernsbach wrote the first works in the space, because he
Speaker 1: absolutely did not, and really he's not considered a literary genius,
Speaker 1: but because he was the first person to group such
Speaker 1: stories together and kind of try to create a genre
Speaker 1: of them. Although it was all fiction, Amazing Stories had
Speaker 1: a lot of the community crowdsourcing character of Gernsbach's nonfiction magazines.
Speaker 1: There was still a busy letter column which often was
Speaker 1: home to ongoing back and forth among readers and with
Speaker 1: the publisher, and readers were invited to suggest plot ideas.
Speaker 1: Amazing Stories was very, very popular, but Gernsbach was not
Speaker 1: really great with money. He was known to have problems
Speaker 1: with his writers when it came to paying them in
Speaker 1: a timely manner or to rate that they felt was fair.
Speaker 1: He also underpaid his staff, both under his electric standard
Speaker 1: under his publishing compared to industry standards, but he did
Speaker 1: give himself and his brother very comfortable salaries, and his
Speaker 1: paper supplier eventually took legal action against his company, experiment
Speaker 1: Or Publishing, for non payment. According to HP Lovecraft biographer
Speaker 1: Els breg to Camp, Lovecraft and other writers referred to
Speaker 1: Gernsback as Hugo the Rat. After Experimenter was declared bankrupt
Speaker 1: by the court, it went into a receivership. The staff remained,
Speaker 1: but Hugo and his brother were forced out. Amazing Stories
Speaker 1: has continued on over the years, passing through multiple hands
Speaker 1: of ownership and sometimes switching to an online only publishing model.
Speaker 1: In response to losing his position of power and Amazing Stories,
Speaker 1: Gernsbach launched two competing magazines with similar content. In they
Speaker 1: were called Science Wonder Stories and Air Wonder Stories. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about the ongoing debate of what readers wanted out
Speaker 1: of these publications. After a quick pause for a sponsor break,
Speaker 1: Science Wonder Stories and Air Wonder Stories merged into one
Speaker 1: publication under the name Just Wonder Stories. In n and
Speaker 1: not all readers were comfortable with this change. One road
Speaker 1: end quote. Your aim, I take it is to make
Speaker 1: the title more catchy to that class of magazine addicts
Speaker 1: who are already reading sappy stories, slushy romances and so
Speaker 1: on ad nauseum. I believe this is a mistake. It
Speaker 1: will attract a type of reader to whom s a
Speaker 1: means sex appeal and not scientific adventure. Just in case
Speaker 1: you thought for even a moment the fandom ire with
Speaker 1: some invention of the modern world. Uh, you can see
Speaker 1: that there is an element of worry that women might
Speaker 1: invade this clubhouse. In that complaint, there were some women
Speaker 1: readers that were done coumented, but not very many comparatively,
Speaker 1: And this idea that taking the science off the title
Speaker 1: might invite ladies is actually reinforced even by the supporters
Speaker 1: of the new name uh, some of whom even suggested
Speaker 1: that it might be great that the name changed drew
Speaker 1: in more women to the material within. From the start
Speaker 1: of Amazing Stories, there were also always discussions and disagreements
Speaker 1: among Gernsbach, the various writers who contributed to the magazines,
Speaker 1: and the readers about how much fiction versus how much
Speaker 1: real science should be included in scientifiction literature. Gernsback's weigh
Speaker 1: in was that quote the ideal proportion of a scientifiction
Speaker 1: story should be seventy percent literature interwoven with twenty five
Speaker 1: percent science. He was pretty flexible on how he applied
Speaker 1: those definitions and what can be considered scientific fact or
Speaker 1: something that should be characterized as fiction. He wrote several
Speaker 1: essays about it, sort of working through the ideas himself
Speaker 1: the way one might tackle an electrical problem to be solved,
Speaker 1: He sort of landed at a place where in order
Speaker 1: for something to be labeled, in his view as scientifiction,
Speaker 1: it had to have an element of prediction to it.
Speaker 1: Gernsbach also wanted stories that educated the public about science
Speaker 1: and made it appealing to people who might not want
Speaker 1: to necessarily study engineering or astronomy or another scientific field. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he felt like it was, you know, an ultimately an
Speaker 1: educational tool. Gersbach was also a fan of practical jokes.
Speaker 1: In three, he ran an April fools Day article about
Speaker 1: a new invention from westing Mouse. There was a tiny
Speaker 1: handheld radio. He included detailed diagrams to this fictional mouse
Speaker 1: sized device, but readers who did not catch the joke
Speaker 1: apparently harangued Westinghouse about the product, to the point that
Speaker 1: the company got a little bit miffed at Hugo. Also
Speaker 1: in n three, Gernsbach, ever on the lookout for expansions
Speaker 1: to publishing holdings, started a magazine called sex Oology. It
Speaker 1: would eventually also be called sex Ology Together, and then
Speaker 1: sex Ology. Today, sex Oology is often cited as a
Speaker 1: precursor to magazines like Playboy and play Girl, but it
Speaker 1: was much tamer. It discussed sex in a way that
Speaker 1: shared a bit of DNA with Gerns box other magazines.
Speaker 1: In terms of taking an analytical approach, doctors are all.
Speaker 1: The articles and sex and sexuality were discussed in a
Speaker 1: way that made clinical knowledge of human sexuality something accessible
Speaker 1: to the average reader. It was definitely intended to appeal
Speaker 1: to people as a way to demystify sex and improve
Speaker 1: readers sex lives, but with a foundation based in science,
Speaker 1: though that science was of its time and largely very
Speaker 1: outdated by today's standards, so outdated um troublingly outdated. The
Speaker 1: articles and sex ology tackled a wide range of topics,
Speaker 1: sometimes really only tangentially related to sex. In one issue,
Speaker 1: for example, there's an article on the scientific possibility of
Speaker 1: creating babies to the parents specifications, another on how alcoholism
Speaker 1: affects a marriage, and an examination of lesbianism as an
Speaker 1: identity that is woefully ignorant. If you go reading it,
Speaker 1: just no upfront, it will probably make you really angry. Uh.
Speaker 1: An article that was titled love Stimulants in that issue
Speaker 1: may sound kind of salacious, but the opening paragraph is quote,
Speaker 1: most people have exceedingly erroneous ideas about magical medicines that
Speaker 1: will influence the other sex and give vigor, and then
Speaker 1: it kind of breaks down, like the reality of what
Speaker 1: has been sold as an aphrodisiac and how it is
Speaker 1: largely quackery. Uh. There is also a statement in the
Speaker 1: periodical that reads, quote, the policy of this magazine is
Speaker 1: that no questionable advertising of any kind will be accepted,
Speaker 1: no quack medicine, and no contraceptive advertising will be printed.
Speaker 1: The only acceptable form of advertising is that of educational
Speaker 1: sex literature. Still, even though it had a lot of
Speaker 1: those kind of caveats to protect itself, it was a
Speaker 1: controversial publication and at times there were even issues just
Speaker 1: getting it sent through the mail to subscribers. In ninety six,
Speaker 1: Hugo started sending an unusual alternative to Christmas cards. He
Speaker 1: started printing a mini magazine each year that he would
Speaker 1: send out to all the scientists he knew. It would
Speaker 1: include predictions of future inventions that often stimulated the minds
Speaker 1: of its recipients and would eventually come into fruition, though
Speaker 1: not for decades in many cases. For instance, he wrote
Speaker 1: in one about what he called language rectified telephony, which
Speaker 1: was a communication which would translate languages between two speakers
Speaker 1: in real time. Like apps you might find out a
Speaker 1: phone today. He also predicted the future importance of computer
Speaker 1: driven diagnostic equipment in the medical field, and some things
Speaker 1: we haven't seen yet, like flying cars to east traffic.
Speaker 1: Flying cars is kind of a go to many of
Speaker 1: these holiday many magazines included the hopeful line quote, never
Speaker 1: forget for an instant that all man's greatest inventions are
Speaker 1: still to come. This annual publication became so popular that
Speaker 1: Gernsbach was often contacted by scientists he did not know,
Speaker 1: and he knew a lot of famous scientists, but others
Speaker 1: that he had not even heard of. In some cases
Speaker 1: asked to be added to his holiday lists, and there
Speaker 1: were even pleased for back issues, but Gernsbach had to
Speaker 1: keep his list limited and he had to set up
Speaker 1: a no back issues policy. Through the publication of Sexology,
Speaker 1: Hugo Gernsbach met the love of his life, Mary Hanscher.
Speaker 1: Mary was hired onto the magazine as an assistant editor,
Speaker 1: and in nine fifty one h Go and Mary were
Speaker 1: married in Chicago. Notable trivia regarding their wedding they were
Speaker 1: married by a judge in Chicago. That judge Hugo Friend
Speaker 1: had presided over the nineteen Black Socks scandal trial, which
Speaker 1: took place in According to an interview Mary gave later
Speaker 1: in life, Hugo was an adoring and romantic husband who
Speaker 1: sent her flowers every single week. They also traveled together extensively,
Speaker 1: and they really lived a very privileged life. Yes, she
Speaker 1: mentioned that, like he always made sure that she had
Speaker 1: staff so she didn't have to do anything she didn't
Speaker 1: want to. Uh. He clearly really did treat her, uh
Speaker 1: like the most important thing on earth. Girls. Black, as
Speaker 1: we've said, was an inventor. He came up with myriad
Speaker 1: ideas for future technologies, but while some got to the
Speaker 1: finish line, most of them really didn't ever come to
Speaker 1: fruition as products. It's sort of a funny twist of
Speaker 1: fate that he started publishing to bolster his sales of
Speaker 1: electric equipment, and it ended up being that the publishing
Speaker 1: was what actually took off. Among his ideas were a
Speaker 1: submersible amusement device that was sort of a cross between
Speaker 1: a ferris wheel and a roller coaster, with riders and
Speaker 1: sealed pods that could dunk underwater, and locations like boardwalk
Speaker 1: amusement parks. He also came up with a product he
Speaker 1: called an isolator. This was a giant helmet that looks
Speaker 1: almost like a sleeker diving bell with an airline and
Speaker 1: eye windows. It was meant to isolate the wearer from
Speaker 1: noise and distractions that could concentrate and get more work done.
Speaker 1: It looks like it might make you claustrophobic and sweaty
Speaker 1: if you've seen a picture of it. It reminds me
Speaker 1: of that knitting pattern of like the sweater that would
Speaker 1: just extend like a turtleneck up past your head and
Speaker 1: then totally encompass your computer monitor so you could focus
Speaker 1: on that no thank you. The claustrophobe in me just
Speaker 1: gets real twitchy looking at pictures of the isolator. Um
Speaker 1: He also championed this idea of a monument to electricity
Speaker 1: being built, a one thousand foot tall replica of a
Speaker 1: generator that would, like the Pyramids, stand quote for practically
Speaker 1: all time, and he thought it would be a great
Speaker 1: boon to everyone's happy us to devise a scientific test
Speaker 1: series that would determine marriage compatibility. Then this test series
Speaker 1: involved a physical attraction test, a sympathy test, a body
Speaker 1: odor test, and a final test of nervous disorders and
Speaker 1: according to gernsbox uh plan for this. If science were
Speaker 1: to give the hopeful couple of failing grade, in Gernsbok's mind,
Speaker 1: they should be denied a marriage license. By the time
Speaker 1: he died, Gernsbach held eighty patents. One of those was
Speaker 1: for an asophone, which used bone to conduct sound, and
Speaker 1: that technology has been used as the basis for hearing
Speaker 1: aid designs. As he got older, journalists would often report
Speaker 1: on Hugo's predictions. Some of these got very yikes E.
Speaker 1: In a hurry, we mentioned that his magazine Sexology predicted
Speaker 1: that humans would engineer the babies they wished to have.
Speaker 1: That was a concept he continued to talk about right
Speaker 1: into the nineteen sixties. But one of the most cringe
Speaker 1: e predictions that he made in nineteen sixty three was
Speaker 1: that Kimma Janetta Cysts would offer a method quote to
Speaker 1: control the amount of melanin produced in the body, and
Speaker 1: he suggested that by nineteen seventy two, black people would
Speaker 1: be offered the option to change their skin to a
Speaker 1: lighter tone if they wished. Yikes, yikes, yikes on bikes.
Speaker 1: I just I was reading that was just like, this
Speaker 1: is so horrifying. Uh, Mixed in with that troubling couple
Speaker 1: of predictions was one that was actually spot on, and
Speaker 1: that was the prediction of pocket computers. Gernsbach described quote
Speaker 1: a personal electronic computer so small it could be carried
Speaker 1: in your pocket and capable of it giving it to
Speaker 1: us your quote, almost instant answers to almost any complex
Speaker 1: business problem. He also described a technology he called ray
Speaker 1: FAR radio automated facsimile reproduction. He thought that a technology
Speaker 1: to send newspapers over radio waves was not far off,
Speaker 1: and that ray FAR would enable newspaper staffs to thrive
Speaker 1: as they expanded their reach and instantly transmitted stories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he thought, like of everyone at home will want to
Speaker 1: get these newspapers and print them out and then read
Speaker 1: them at home. That way close, but not quite. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna read them on our handheld pocket computers that
Speaker 1: bring us both solutions and problems. Right. Gernsbach died on
Speaker 1: August nine, ninety seven, at the age of eighty three,
Speaker 1: and he willed his body to Cortnell University for scientific
Speaker 1: and educational use. Do you know if he like had
Speaker 1: opinions on the awards ceremony that became named after him.
Speaker 1: I didn't find any direct ones. I saw one thing
Speaker 1: that I couldn't substantially and I couldn't find it on
Speaker 1: the Hugo Awards site. It started when he was still
Speaker 1: alive and was named for him, but was not his project.
Speaker 1: And there was like one line that I saw somewhere
Speaker 1: that said that he was given an honorary Hugo in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty, but I didn't find corroboration on it. It
Speaker 1: may be out there, but it huh. Well, I feel
Speaker 1: the ongoing years and years of chaos and drama involving
Speaker 1: the Hugo Awards, like outside the scope of this episode
Speaker 1: for hundred percent. Uh. Yeah, he's um. He's a chaotic
Speaker 1: and dramatic figure on his own. Yeah. Uh. It's interesting
Speaker 1: to see people sometimes refer to him as like this
Speaker 1: genius prophet and other like he's kind of like P. T. Barnum,
Speaker 1: you guys, Yeah, yeah, and everything in between, and all
Speaker 1: of it is true, um or not. But uh, that
Speaker 1: is Hugo, who I have equal parts of love and
Speaker 1: chagrin over. I have to admire anyone who dresses that snazzy,
Speaker 1: but then he says gross things on occasion. I just
Speaker 1: had flashbacks to every fan convention I've ever been to. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have fun and delicious and also silly, which seemed
Speaker 1: like the right tone. Listener mail for this one. It
Speaker 1: is from our listener Carl, who writes a Dear Holly
Speaker 1: and Tracy. Listening to her a pick use episode reminded
Speaker 1: me of one of my favorite memories of working in
Speaker 1: a public library. Shortly after we bought our first house,
Speaker 1: we hosted a murder mystery party for my library colleagues.
Speaker 1: The theme for the mystery was Ancient Rome, and I
Speaker 1: went down a rabbit hole searching for authentic recipes. I
Speaker 1: know that I must have found Derek Coquinadia because I
Speaker 1: remember serving dates stuffed with nuts and drizzled with honey.
Speaker 1: But you mentioned in the episode, I remember thinking that
Speaker 1: our new neighbors must have wondered what they were getting
Speaker 1: into when librarians and togas started showing up at our door. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they even made a T shirt for the event,
Speaker 1: which he sent us a picture of and he still has,
Speaker 1: which I love anybody who's organized, um a party that
Speaker 1: has T shirts that go with it? It says at
Speaker 1: two librarious Uh, I love it. Um. I always love
Speaker 1: a themed get together to begin with. So anytime you
Speaker 1: can do all of the stuff and have both uh
Speaker 1: fun costumes and food that are connected to a theme,
Speaker 1: you're doing it right. If you would like to write
Speaker 1: to us and share your theme party experiences, you can
Speaker 1: do that in History Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on social media and you
Speaker 1: can subscribe to the show easy peasy. You can just
Speaker 1: do that on the I heart Radio app or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in
Speaker 1: History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For
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