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Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is

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Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,

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Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales right there on display, just

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Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

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Speaker 1: We don't often think about the origins of the symbols

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Speaker 1: we see every day. For example, the amper sand which

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Speaker 1: we use in place of the conjunction, and is comprised

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Speaker 1: of the letters in the Latin word at, which translates

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Speaker 1: to and in English. The AT symbol or the A

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Speaker 1: with a circle around it in an email addressed today,

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Speaker 1: was once used by accountants to mean at the rate

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Speaker 1: of It was invented by monks centuries ago to help

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Speaker 1: them transcribe books much faster by reducing the number of

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Speaker 1: pen strokes. However, there are more modern symbols that have

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Speaker 1: permeated our culture as well. There's the mermaid in the

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Speaker 1: Starbucks cup, the Nordic letters for H and B that

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Speaker 1: make up the Bluetooth logo, and another symbol with an

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Speaker 1: unexpected origin. It all started with a man in Roland,

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Speaker 1: Roland was born on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, in eighty two.

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Speaker 1: His Quaker family could actually trace their roots back to

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Speaker 1: one of the nine original English families that came to

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Speaker 1: Nantucket in the mid seventeenth century, and just as his

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Speaker 1: forefathers had left England to explore their freedom, so too

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Speaker 1: did Roland. He set out on a whaling ship called

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Speaker 1: the Emily Morgan when he was fifteen years old. He

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Speaker 1: didn't like it much, though. All it took was for

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Speaker 1: him to get lost at sea one time to turn

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Speaker 1: him off from whaling for good. When it happened, Roland

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Speaker 1: followed a single star in the night sky to help

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Speaker 1: him find shore, and once safe, marked the experience by

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Speaker 1: getting a tattoo on his arm. With his wailing days

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Speaker 1: behind him and five dollars of hard earned money in

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Speaker 1: his pocket, Roland stayed put. He took a job helping

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Speaker 1: his father operate their famili's needle and thread shop in Boston.

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Speaker 1: The experience taught him a lot about running a business,

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Speaker 1: which came in handy after the store went bankrupt in

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Speaker 1: eighteen forty four. A few years later, Roland opened his

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Speaker 1: own dry goods shop in Harrol, Massachusetts. It too closed

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Speaker 1: rather quickly. He made ends meet by working in a

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Speaker 1: store owned by his brother in law, but decided to

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Speaker 1: try his luck out west Well he and the thousands

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Speaker 1: of others chasing the dream of the California gold rush.

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Speaker 1: It seemed like there was a curse following Roland. Wherever

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Speaker 1: he went, the stores he'd worked in and owned kept

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Speaker 1: going belly up, and he didn't turn up any gold

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Speaker 1: on the West coast either. Discouraged but not defeated, Roland

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Speaker 1: returned to Massachusetts to join his brother in a new

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Speaker 1: dry goods store in Haril. Unlike his other ventures, this

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Speaker 1: shop did well before eventually closing. Like all the others,

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Speaker 1: Roland's next door, however, opened up more than its doors.

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Speaker 1: It opened up its eyes. To keep things fresh, he

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Speaker 1: would travel to Boston and New York every two months

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Speaker 1: and bring the latest trends and fashions back to his shop,

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Speaker 1: and soon enough the trips made him realize that he

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Speaker 1: needed to expand. New York was so different from harl

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Speaker 1: It was big, it was bustling, and it was growing fast.

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Speaker 1: Roland moved there in eighteen fifty eight and opened a

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Speaker 1: new dry goods store on Sixth Avenue and fourteen streets.

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Speaker 1: This one, however, was different than his previous businesses, as

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Speaker 1: it featured a unique logo. He wanted something big, something

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Speaker 1: people could look at as a beacon among all the

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Speaker 1: other shops on the street, and it worked. Roland Store

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Speaker 1: continued to grow over the next twenty years. It went

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Speaker 1: from one employee to fifteen two hundreds. During the holidays,

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Speaker 1: he started a trend by employing a store Santa Claus,

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Speaker 1: to draw families inside. He also set up elaborate window

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Speaker 1: displays with and themed scenes. Roland's shop went from one

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Speaker 1: storefront to several, gobbling up neighboring properties, until it eventually

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Speaker 1: outgrew the block in nineteen o two, twenty five years

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Speaker 1: after his death. In eighteen seventy seven, the new owners

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Speaker 1: of the store, Brothers Is a Door and Nathan Strauss,

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Speaker 1: moved the shop to a much larger and visible spot

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Speaker 1: in Harold Square. Emblazing across the front of the building

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Speaker 1: was the symbol that had been inked onto Roland's own arm,

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Speaker 1: a representation of the light that had guided him home

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Speaker 1: from the sea and all the way to New York City,

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Speaker 1: a red star, and underneath it the surname of the

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Speaker 1: man who had built the biggest department store in the world,

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Speaker 1: a true miracle on thirty four Street. Roland's last name Macy.

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Speaker 1: John Castle was fury us someone had ripped off his

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Speaker 1: invention and they were selling their knockoff in the store too.

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Speaker 1: All his advertising was going to waste. His customers were

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Speaker 1: buying his invention from someone else, Mr Samuel Boyd. You see,

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Speaker 1: John Castle was a printer and merchant in London, and

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Speaker 1: Samuel Boyd well, he was a druggist in Dublin. Somehow

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Speaker 1: Mr Boyd had gotten John's recipe for a new lamp oil.

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Speaker 1: After all, John had advertised the oil far and wide.

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Speaker 1: That was the printer side of his business, and as

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Speaker 1: creative as he was at inventing new things, it was

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Speaker 1: his new ideas for printing that were really paying off

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Speaker 1: for him. He would go on to pioneer the serial novel.

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Speaker 1: The printed word would take over his life. Maybe that's

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Speaker 1: because in the early eighteen sixties John would learn a

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Speaker 1: hard lesson about the power of words. That's when he

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Speaker 1: started selling his new lamp oil and advertising it in

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Speaker 1: all the papers he could find. A safe, pleasant, economical,

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Speaker 1: and most brilliant illuminating agent. He wrote with perfect safety

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Speaker 1: from day of explosion and free from any objectionable smell.

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Speaker 1: Sold by dealers throughout the Kingdom. John wanted everyone to

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Speaker 1: know that his lamp oil was equally suitable for use

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Speaker 1: in drawing rooms, parlors and cottages. Of course, the process

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Speaker 1: for refining the new oil wasn't completely John's invention. He

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Speaker 1: had learned part of it from a French chemist and

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Speaker 1: acquired a new resource from America Petroleum, also known at

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Speaker 1: the time as American crude. But if there was something

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Speaker 1: that John knew well, it was bringing in goods from

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Speaker 1: far off places and selling them to British buyers. After all,

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Speaker 1: most of his work as a merchant had been convincing

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Speaker 1: people to drink coffee and tea instead of liquor. American

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Speaker 1: crude was only the latest product from the edges of

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Speaker 1: the British Empire that was going like gangbusters when it

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Speaker 1: got to London, and once John had put American crude

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Speaker 1: through the French refining process, it caught on soon. He

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Speaker 1: had orders flying in from all over Britain and Ireland,

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Speaker 1: and especially in Ireland, the number of orders was growing

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Speaker 1: and growing like he had never seen before his previous

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Speaker 1: tea and coffee business had been good, but never this good.

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Speaker 1: It seemed that the new lamp oil was going to

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Speaker 1: keep him afloat until he would later say, those orders

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Speaker 1: from Ireland fell off to a considerable degree, so fast,

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Speaker 1: in fact, that it surprised John and made him suspicious too.

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Speaker 1: So he started asking questions, and that's when he learned

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Speaker 1: about Samuel Boyd. John learned that, along with a few

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Speaker 1: other oil merchants, Samuel Boyd had begun selling what John

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Speaker 1: called a spurious article, but his customers thought they were

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Speaker 1: buying the original product because Samuel was using the name

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Speaker 1: that John had invented for the new oil. So Irish

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Speaker 1: customers had stopped ordering from John and started buying from

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Speaker 1: Samuel instead. After all, they thought they were getting the

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Speaker 1: authentic fuel, so why shouldn't they. So John sprang into action.

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Speaker 1: He wrote a letter to Mr Boyd to set things straight,

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Speaker 1: stopped selling his lamp oil and using the name that

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Speaker 1: he invented, But no answer ever arrived. That wasn't going

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Speaker 1: to stop John. He set sail for Dublin and headed

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Speaker 1: for Mary Street, where he found the shop of Samuel Boyd.

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Speaker 1: When he stepped inside, he found exactly what he expected.

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Speaker 1: He asked a shop assistant for the oil, and they

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Speaker 1: were only too happy to hand him a bottle. John

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Speaker 1: looked down and saw that his original name for the

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Speaker 1: product was printed right there on the label. But there

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Speaker 1: was something else. Someone had used a pen to turn

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Speaker 1: the sea on each bottle into a g As if

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Speaker 1: that solved the branding problem, John Castle wasn't having it.

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Speaker 1: He took Samuel Boyd to court. What followed would make

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Speaker 1: any printer and inventor blow his lid. The first thing

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Speaker 1: Boyd said to the accusations was that he had never

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Speaker 1: sold any lamp oil with John's name on it. Then

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Speaker 1: he said that he had ordered labels from a Manchester

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Speaker 1: printer and they simply got it wrong. And finally Samuel

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Speaker 1: said that he was the one who had been inspired

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Speaker 1: by a French invention, a product that he said was

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Speaker 1: called Gaza jene. It was all preposterous, and John won

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Speaker 1: his day in court. The magistrate scolded Samuel Boyd. Where

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Speaker 1: John Castle had fab bricaded a new and useful product,

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Speaker 1: Samuel Boyd had fabricated a web of lies to cover

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Speaker 1: for ripping it off. The magistrates condemned the practice of

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Speaker 1: counterfeiting trademarks. In fact, he said it made the whole

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Speaker 1: city of Dublin look bad. But if James Castle won

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Speaker 1: his day in court, it didn't stop the counterfeit name

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Speaker 1: of the new lamp oil from catching on. Samuel Boyd's

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Speaker 1: knockoff name starting with a G would win out. Soon enough,

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Speaker 1: lamps around the world would burn the oil. In England

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Speaker 1: and then throughout Europe. It would eventually be called by

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Speaker 1: a different brand name altogether coined in eight seventy petrol

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Speaker 1: ironically patented by a man named Eugene Carlos in the

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Speaker 1: United States, John Castle's lamp oil fueled car culture in

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Speaker 1: the most confusing way because that liquid oil would eventually

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Speaker 1: be called gas slang for the knockoff name of the

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Speaker 1: knockoff oil. That's because the lamp oil that James Castle

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Speaker 1: had invented was named after him castline and hopefully now

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Speaker 1: at every time you buy gas, it's a little reminder

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Speaker 1: of the time that John Castle won in court but

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Speaker 1: lost the name to his new invention, gasoline. I hope

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Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

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Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about

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Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show

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Speaker 1: was created by me, Aaron Manky in partnership with how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore

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Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show and

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Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World

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Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,