Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting
Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Paul Boyton was born in Dublin or Pittsburgh. Accounts differ,
Speaker 1: but one thing everyone can agree on is that he
Speaker 1: came into the world in eighteen forty eight. Boyton attended
Speaker 1: college in Pennsylvania, but didn't have plans for a normal
Speaker 1: job like a lawyer or a doctor. When he was
Speaker 1: only fifteen, he enlisted with the Union Navy to fight
Speaker 1: in the Civil War. Several years later, he even saw
Speaker 1: battle during the frame Go Prussian War. Perhaps it was
Speaker 1: the sight of his wounded comrades, or maybe the navies
Speaker 1: that he had served with just weren't keen on safety precautions.
Speaker 1: Whatever the reason, Boyton came back home to the US,
Speaker 1: where he started the United States Life Saving Surface. Their
Speaker 1: mission was to help rescue shipwrecked sailors and their passengers,
Speaker 1: with a branch in Atlantic City, New Jersey headed by
Speaker 1: Boyton himself. He took his job very seriously too, and
Speaker 1: quickly began coming up with new ideas on how to
Speaker 1: save more lives. He'd become fascinated with an invention by
Speaker 1: a guy named Clark S. Merriman. It was called the
Speaker 1: immersion suits, comprised of a rubber shirts and rubber pants
Speaker 1: that were cinched at the waist. Inside the suit were
Speaker 1: tubes that could be blown into in order to inflate
Speaker 1: a series of air pockets, making the wearer buoyant. But
Speaker 1: the immersion suit inflated, a person could float on their
Speaker 1: back and paddle themselves to safety. And Boyton knew that
Speaker 1: if there were more of these suits in circulation, he
Speaker 1: could protect more peace. He began promoting the immersion suit
Speaker 1: wherever he could, and there was no better way to
Speaker 1: do so than to demonstrate it to the public. He
Speaker 1: started paddling himself along a number of rivers in both
Speaker 1: the United States and Europe, hitching himself to a small
Speaker 1: boat that carried tools and items that he needed to
Speaker 1: stay afloat, and the people loved him for it. They
Speaker 1: would gather along the river banks to watch him go
Speaker 1: by celebrating his floating feats of fancy. But to really
Speaker 1: sell the utility of Merriman's invention, Boyton needed to go
Speaker 1: beyond simple river based exhibitions. He decided that he would
Speaker 1: board a ship in New York City headed for Europe.
Speaker 1: When he was a few hundred miles off shore, he
Speaker 1: was going to jump over the side, wearing the immersion
Speaker 1: suit and paddle back to land. Unfortunately, his grand scheme
Speaker 1: sounded way too dangerous to every captain he spoke to,
Speaker 1: so he took a different route. Instead, he snuck aboard
Speaker 1: a ship. It was a passenger ship to Ireland that
Speaker 1: Boyton had boarded using a disguise. With his plan in motion,
Speaker 1: he donned the immersion suit and waited until the ship
Speaker 1: was far enough away from the coastline to make his jump,
Speaker 1: and then he was caught. The crew stepped in, stopping
Speaker 1: him from killing himself while they were still in US waters,
Speaker 1: but they gave him the option of carrying on with
Speaker 1: his stunt once they reached Ireland. Boyton agreed to wait.
Speaker 1: He leapt overboard just as the ship was in sight
Speaker 1: of the Irish coast, and despite nearly getting killed by
Speaker 1: a passing storm, Paul Boyton successfully paddled his way back
Speaker 1: to land. His miraculous journey made him a celebrity and
Speaker 1: earned him a speaking opportunity in Cork. From there, he
Speaker 1: started performing other impressive stunts using his special rubber suit.
Speaker 1: For example, in May of eighteen seventy five, he crossed
Speaker 1: the English Channel in only twenty four hours. That same year,
Speaker 1: he traveled over four hundred miles along Europe's Rhine River.
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy six, he returned to the States to
Speaker 1: go from Alton, Illinois to Saint Louis, Missouri, paddling his
Speaker 1: body down the Mighty Mississippi. He sailed hundreds of miles
Speaker 1: and spent dozens of hours in the water with only
Speaker 1: his immersion suit and a paddle to help him, which
Speaker 1: took him from a local hero to a full fledged
Speaker 1: international celebrity, and he loved the spotlights. There's no doubt
Speaker 1: about that. He even used his fame to bolster others
Speaker 1: to superstardom, although not everyone fared well under his guidance.
Speaker 1: Robert Odlam sadly died after jumping from the Brooklyn Bridge
Speaker 1: in an effort to prove that people did not die
Speaker 1: from falling, only from landing. And Boyton had been the
Speaker 1: one to encourage him to perform the stunt in the
Speaker 1: first place. When Odlam's sister tried to bring Boyton to
Speaker 1: justice for his role in her brother's death, he silenced
Speaker 1: her by threatening a lawsuit of slander. After the tragic
Speaker 1: loss of Robert Odlam, Boyton performed with P. T. Barnum's
Speaker 1: circus for a while before moving to Chicago in the
Speaker 1: late eighteen eighties, and in eighteen ninety four he opened
Speaker 1: the country's first permanent amusement park. It was the first
Speaker 1: of its kind and even established the idea of an
Speaker 1: entry fee, where visitors would pay a set price to
Speaker 1: access all the rides and attractions within them parks borders.
Speaker 1: Paul Boyton was a complicated man, one who was never
Speaker 1: comfortable sitting still. He accomplished quite a lot in his
Speaker 1: seventy plus years on earth, and for his efforts he
Speaker 1: was forever remembered by a nickname, the Fearless Frogman. Apple
Speaker 1: founder Steve Jobs once said, innovation distinguishes between a leader
Speaker 1: and a follower. To make a splash in a marketplace,
Speaker 1: you need to come up with something new, something big
Speaker 1: and bold, a statement that will not only wow potential buyers,
Speaker 1: but also make them remember your name. In the realm
Speaker 1: of communication, several inventions stand out. The computer, the internet,
Speaker 1: and the cell phone probably come to most people's minds.
Speaker 1: But before those, we had the telephone, you know, the
Speaker 1: thing with numbers on it that we used to have
Speaker 1: to plug into our wall. Then before that was the telegraph.
Speaker 1: It was two English inventors who first brought the telegraph
Speaker 1: to the masses in eighteen thirty seven. Their names were
Speaker 1: William Cook and Charles Wheatstone, and their patent led to
Speaker 1: the proliferation of entire infrastructures based around telegraph communication. Their
Speaker 1: machine used electrical currents to move a series of metallic
Speaker 1: needles in specific directions. These needles were mounted on a
Speaker 1: diamond shaped grid of letters. One needle was used to
Speaker 1: convey one set of letters, while two more were used
Speaker 1: to convey a second set. Their patent was based on
Speaker 1: a five needle array, but a four needle system was
Speaker 1: soon installed along a London rail line between Euston and
Speaker 1: Camden Town stations. Their invention was a success and led
Speaker 1: to other types of telegraphs, even other methods of conveying
Speaker 1: signals across transmission lines. For example, Samuel Morris's electromagnetic telegraph
Speaker 1: set messages over a wire in much the same way
Speaker 1: as Cook's in Wheatstone's machine, except Morris's corresponding code allowed
Speaker 1: operators to send those messages much more or quickly by
Speaker 1: using dots and dashes to represent the letters of the
Speaker 1: alphabet instead. Telegraph operators on maritime vessels like the Titanic
Speaker 1: trained for years to learn the ins and outs of
Speaker 1: Morse code. They would send the dits and das wirelessly
Speaker 1: over a range of about three hundred miles. This technology
Speaker 1: lasted until the end of World War One, but prior
Speaker 1: to that. Around eighteen sixty five, one man came forward
Speaker 1: with a new idea. He was raising money for an
Speaker 1: invention of his own design, one that would bridge the
Speaker 1: gap between long distances with more than just dots and dashes.
Speaker 1: He wanted users of his groundbreaking device to hear each
Speaker 1: other on the other end of the line. According to
Speaker 1: a Boston newspaper article from that year, this entrepreneur's new
Speaker 1: invention would convey the human voice any distance over metallic wires.
Speaker 1: He called this miracle of modern engineering a telephone, a
Speaker 1: name that capitalized on the success of its predecessor, the telegraph.
Speaker 1: But the press was skeptical. After all, small electrical pulses
Speaker 1: were one thing, but could the sound of a person's
Speaker 1: voice really be carried over a wire the same way. Well,
Speaker 1: reporters weren't the only ones who thought the whole thing
Speaker 1: sounded fishy. So did the people this inventor was hitting
Speaker 1: up for money. He needed to fund the development of
Speaker 1: his device, but lacked the capital to do so, and
Speaker 1: at the time, his dream sounded exactly like that, just
Speaker 1: a dream. As a result, his fundraising efforts were cut
Speaker 1: short by the police, who arrested him for trying to swindle,
Speaker 1: as the papers put it back then, ignorant and superstitious
Speaker 1: people out of their hard earned money. Oh and this
Speaker 1: man's name was not Alexander Graham Bell. Bell's telephone wouldn't
Speaker 1: come out for another eleven years. The person who had
Speaker 1: just gone to jail for scheming innocent people out of
Speaker 1: money for his telephone was named Joshua Coppersmith. But the
Speaker 1: question remains. Was he really just a con man trying
Speaker 1: to make a quick buck like Harold Hill selling the
Speaker 1: Boys Marching Band and the music Man, or was he
Speaker 1: an inventor ahead of his time seeking to bring the
Speaker 1: world a way to communicate across oceans, a full decade
Speaker 1: before Bell's own telephone would be unveiled. Almost nothing is
Speaker 1: known about Joshua Coppersmith other than this one story, and
Speaker 1: so we're left to speculate as to what really happened.
Speaker 1: But it does bring another Steve Jobs quote to mind,
Speaker 1: one that's been attributed to Pablo Picasso. It goes good
Speaker 1: artist copy great artists, Steele Well, Joshua Coppersmith wasn't much
Speaker 1: of an artist, but he was an even lousier thief.
Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership
Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
Speaker 1: World of Loret. Come and until next time, stay curious. MHM.