Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: We don't often think about the origins of the symbols
Speaker 1: we see every day. For example, the amper sand which
Speaker 1: we use in place of the conjunction, and is comprised
Speaker 1: of the letters in the Latin word at, which translates
Speaker 1: to and in English. The AT symbol or the A
Speaker 1: with a circle around it in an email addressed today,
Speaker 1: was once used by accountants to mean at the rate
Speaker 1: of It was invented by monks centuries ago to help
Speaker 1: them transcribe books much faster by reducing the number of
Speaker 1: pen strokes. However, there are more modern symbols that have
Speaker 1: permeated our culture as well. There's the mermaid in the
Speaker 1: Starbucks cup, the Nordic letters for H and B that
Speaker 1: make up the Bluetooth logo, and another symbol with an
Speaker 1: unexpected origin. It all started with a man in Roland,
Speaker 1: Roland was born on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, in eighty two.
Speaker 1: His Quaker family could actually trace their roots back to
Speaker 1: one of the nine original English families that came to
Speaker 1: Nantucket in the mid seventeenth century, and just as his
Speaker 1: forefathers had left England to explore their freedom, so too
Speaker 1: did Roland. He set out on a whaling ship called
Speaker 1: the Emily Morgan when he was fifteen years old. He
Speaker 1: didn't like it much, though. All it took was for
Speaker 1: him to get lost at sea one time to turn
Speaker 1: him off from whaling for good. When it happened, Roland
Speaker 1: followed a single star in the night sky to help
Speaker 1: him find shore, and once safe, marked the experience by
Speaker 1: getting a tattoo on his arm. With his wailing days
Speaker 1: behind him and five dollars of hard earned money in
Speaker 1: his pocket, Roland stayed put. He took a job helping
Speaker 1: his father operate their famili's needle and thread shop in Boston.
Speaker 1: The experience taught him a lot about running a business,
Speaker 1: which came in handy after the store went bankrupt in
Speaker 1: eighteen forty four. A few years later, Roland opened his
Speaker 1: own dry goods shop in Harrol, Massachusetts. It too closed
Speaker 1: rather quickly. He made ends meet by working in a
Speaker 1: store owned by his brother in law, but decided to
Speaker 1: try his luck out west Well he and the thousands
Speaker 1: of others chasing the dream of the California gold rush.
Speaker 1: It seemed like there was a curse following Roland. Wherever
Speaker 1: he went, the stores he'd worked in and owned kept
Speaker 1: going belly up, and he didn't turn up any gold
Speaker 1: on the West coast either. Discouraged but not defeated, Roland
Speaker 1: returned to Massachusetts to join his brother in a new
Speaker 1: dry goods store in Haril. Unlike his other ventures, this
Speaker 1: shop did well before eventually closing. Like all the others,
Speaker 1: Roland's next door, however, opened up more than its doors.
Speaker 1: It opened up its eyes. To keep things fresh, he
Speaker 1: would travel to Boston and New York every two months
Speaker 1: and bring the latest trends and fashions back to his shop,
Speaker 1: and soon enough the trips made him realize that he
Speaker 1: needed to expand. New York was so different from harl
Speaker 1: It was big, it was bustling, and it was growing fast.
Speaker 1: Roland moved there in eighteen fifty eight and opened a
Speaker 1: new dry goods store on Sixth Avenue and fourteen streets.
Speaker 1: This one, however, was different than his previous businesses, as
Speaker 1: it featured a unique logo. He wanted something big, something
Speaker 1: people could look at as a beacon among all the
Speaker 1: other shops on the street, and it worked. Roland Store
Speaker 1: continued to grow over the next twenty years. It went
Speaker 1: from one employee to fifteen two hundreds. During the holidays,
Speaker 1: he started a trend by employing a store Santa Claus,
Speaker 1: to draw families inside. He also set up elaborate window
Speaker 1: displays with and themed scenes. Roland's shop went from one
Speaker 1: storefront to several, gobbling up neighboring properties, until it eventually
Speaker 1: outgrew the block in nineteen o two, twenty five years
Speaker 1: after his death. In eighteen seventy seven, the new owners
Speaker 1: of the store, Brothers Is a Door and Nathan Strauss,
Speaker 1: moved the shop to a much larger and visible spot
Speaker 1: in Harold Square. Emblazing across the front of the building
Speaker 1: was the symbol that had been inked onto Roland's own arm,
Speaker 1: a representation of the light that had guided him home
Speaker 1: from the sea and all the way to New York City,
Speaker 1: a red star, and underneath it the surname of the
Speaker 1: man who had built the biggest department store in the world,
Speaker 1: a true miracle on thirty four Street. Roland's last name Macy.
Speaker 1: John Castle was fury us someone had ripped off his
Speaker 1: invention and they were selling their knockoff in the store too.
Speaker 1: All his advertising was going to waste. His customers were
Speaker 1: buying his invention from someone else, Mr Samuel Boyd. You see,
Speaker 1: John Castle was a printer and merchant in London, and
Speaker 1: Samuel Boyd well, he was a druggist in Dublin. Somehow
Speaker 1: Mr Boyd had gotten John's recipe for a new lamp oil.
Speaker 1: After all, John had advertised the oil far and wide.
Speaker 1: That was the printer side of his business, and as
Speaker 1: creative as he was at inventing new things, it was
Speaker 1: his new ideas for printing that were really paying off
Speaker 1: for him. He would go on to pioneer the serial novel.
Speaker 1: The printed word would take over his life. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: because in the early eighteen sixties John would learn a
Speaker 1: hard lesson about the power of words. That's when he
Speaker 1: started selling his new lamp oil and advertising it in
Speaker 1: all the papers he could find. A safe, pleasant, economical,
Speaker 1: and most brilliant illuminating agent. He wrote with perfect safety
Speaker 1: from day of explosion and free from any objectionable smell.
Speaker 1: Sold by dealers throughout the Kingdom. John wanted everyone to
Speaker 1: know that his lamp oil was equally suitable for use
Speaker 1: in drawing rooms, parlors and cottages. Of course, the process
Speaker 1: for refining the new oil wasn't completely John's invention. He
Speaker 1: had learned part of it from a French chemist and
Speaker 1: acquired a new resource from America Petroleum, also known at
Speaker 1: the time as American crude. But if there was something
Speaker 1: that John knew well, it was bringing in goods from
Speaker 1: far off places and selling them to British buyers. After all,
Speaker 1: most of his work as a merchant had been convincing
Speaker 1: people to drink coffee and tea instead of liquor. American
Speaker 1: crude was only the latest product from the edges of
Speaker 1: the British Empire that was going like gangbusters when it
Speaker 1: got to London, and once John had put American crude
Speaker 1: through the French refining process, it caught on soon. He
Speaker 1: had orders flying in from all over Britain and Ireland,
Speaker 1: and especially in Ireland, the number of orders was growing
Speaker 1: and growing like he had never seen before his previous
Speaker 1: tea and coffee business had been good, but never this good.
Speaker 1: It seemed that the new lamp oil was going to
Speaker 1: keep him afloat until he would later say, those orders
Speaker 1: from Ireland fell off to a considerable degree, so fast,
Speaker 1: in fact, that it surprised John and made him suspicious too.
Speaker 1: So he started asking questions, and that's when he learned
Speaker 1: about Samuel Boyd. John learned that, along with a few
Speaker 1: other oil merchants, Samuel Boyd had begun selling what John
Speaker 1: called a spurious article, but his customers thought they were
Speaker 1: buying the original product because Samuel was using the name
Speaker 1: that John had invented for the new oil. So Irish
Speaker 1: customers had stopped ordering from John and started buying from
Speaker 1: Samuel instead. After all, they thought they were getting the
Speaker 1: authentic fuel, so why shouldn't they. So John sprang into action.
Speaker 1: He wrote a letter to Mr Boyd to set things straight,
Speaker 1: stopped selling his lamp oil and using the name that
Speaker 1: he invented, But no answer ever arrived. That wasn't going
Speaker 1: to stop John. He set sail for Dublin and headed
Speaker 1: for Mary Street, where he found the shop of Samuel Boyd.
Speaker 1: When he stepped inside, he found exactly what he expected.
Speaker 1: He asked a shop assistant for the oil, and they
Speaker 1: were only too happy to hand him a bottle. John
Speaker 1: looked down and saw that his original name for the
Speaker 1: product was printed right there on the label. But there
Speaker 1: was something else. Someone had used a pen to turn
Speaker 1: the sea on each bottle into a g As if
Speaker 1: that solved the branding problem, John Castle wasn't having it.
Speaker 1: He took Samuel Boyd to court. What followed would make
Speaker 1: any printer and inventor blow his lid. The first thing
Speaker 1: Boyd said to the accusations was that he had never
Speaker 1: sold any lamp oil with John's name on it. Then
Speaker 1: he said that he had ordered labels from a Manchester
Speaker 1: printer and they simply got it wrong. And finally Samuel
Speaker 1: said that he was the one who had been inspired
Speaker 1: by a French invention, a product that he said was
Speaker 1: called Gaza jene. It was all preposterous, and John won
Speaker 1: his day in court. The magistrate scolded Samuel Boyd. Where
Speaker 1: John Castle had fab bricaded a new and useful product,
Speaker 1: Samuel Boyd had fabricated a web of lies to cover
Speaker 1: for ripping it off. The magistrates condemned the practice of
Speaker 1: counterfeiting trademarks. In fact, he said it made the whole
Speaker 1: city of Dublin look bad. But if James Castle won
Speaker 1: his day in court, it didn't stop the counterfeit name
Speaker 1: of the new lamp oil from catching on. Samuel Boyd's
Speaker 1: knockoff name starting with a G would win out. Soon enough,
Speaker 1: lamps around the world would burn the oil. In England
Speaker 1: and then throughout Europe. It would eventually be called by
Speaker 1: a different brand name altogether coined in eight seventy petrol
Speaker 1: ironically patented by a man named Eugene Carlos in the
Speaker 1: United States, John Castle's lamp oil fueled car culture in
Speaker 1: the most confusing way because that liquid oil would eventually
Speaker 1: be called gas slang for the knockoff name of the
Speaker 1: knockoff oil. That's because the lamp oil that James Castle
Speaker 1: had invented was named after him castline and hopefully now
Speaker 1: at every time you buy gas, it's a little reminder
Speaker 1: of the time that John Castle won in court but
Speaker 1: lost the name to his new invention, gasoline. I hope
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me, Aaron Manky in partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,