Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Bogle bomb here. World War One wasn't
Speaker 1: just ground combat. The submarine surreptitiously navigated under water, and
Speaker 1: the skies buzzed with planes from which soldiers fired guns
Speaker 1: and dropped bombs. Another airborne war machine was developed at
Speaker 1: this time too, but has since vanished from contemporary combat.
Speaker 1: Zeppelin Zeppelin's were intimidating to behold. These massive cylindrical balloons
Speaker 1: were built with metal skeletons and filled with hydrogen to
Speaker 1: stay aloft. Their skeletons and rudders allowed them to be
Speaker 1: steered into and out of enemy territory, and they crept
Speaker 1: along in night skies, their heavy hum announcing the presence
Speaker 1: of oncoming bomb raids. Germany was confident that zeppelin lead
Speaker 1: raids would give them an advantage in the war. This
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly the case, though. There wasn't much precision in
Speaker 1: airstrike efforts this early on in flight history, and Zeppelins
Speaker 1: were more effective in their fright factor. They were hugely menacing,
Speaker 1: but where they really helped was in supply and soldier transport. Additionally,
Speaker 1: their elevated vantage point aided submarine detection and allowed them
Speaker 1: to act as an overhead bodyguard for troops moving along
Speaker 1: the ground. Throughout World War One, Germany's a hundred and
Speaker 1: forty Zeppelins or responsible for just one thousand, five hundred deaths.
Speaker 1: You could argue that they wreaked more havoc in the
Speaker 1: kitchen than in the skies. Early Zeppelins were constructed internally
Speaker 1: from rubber, but engineers soon discovered that the most effective
Speaker 1: material for encase in hydrogen was gold beaters skin. That
Speaker 1: is to say, that's here's some insight into this unique material.
Speaker 1: The cows and pestons sourced from butchers in Germany and
Speaker 1: German occupied territories like Austria, Poland and northern France, were
Speaker 1: washed and skinned of their external membranes. Then they were
Speaker 1: bathed in galine mixture and stretched to dry. The resulting
Speaker 1: product was called gold beaters skin, named so because it
Speaker 1: was originally used by jewelers in hammering out a piece
Speaker 1: of gold into super thin gold leaf. They would sandwich
Speaker 1: a sheet of gold in the pliable but sturdy material
Speaker 1: and hammer away. But zeppelin engineers found another use for it.
Speaker 1: If the skin was moistened again and the pieces were
Speaker 1: patchworked together into large sheets. They would dry with air
Speaker 1: tight seals. No other material of the time, including the
Speaker 1: rubber of the day, could be so tightly sealed, and
Speaker 1: that tight seal was imperative. Hydrogen is the most lightweight
Speaker 1: element and can easily escape containment. The gold beater skin
Speaker 1: was worked into a bag shape and filled with hydrogen.
Speaker 1: Those bags allowed zeppelin's to float weightlessly in the sky.
Speaker 1: If you're thinking that you'd need a ton of guts
Speaker 1: to make a big enough skin bag to fill a
Speaker 1: zeppelin's mighty frame, you'd be absolutely right. On average, it
Speaker 1: took two d and housing cows intestines to create a
Speaker 1: single zeppelin. That's why kitchens suffered Germany, known as the
Speaker 1: Land of Beer and Brockworst, banned sausage making during World
Speaker 1: War One to preserve all of the cow intestines that
Speaker 1: would have been used for sausage casings. The Kaiser's agents
Speaker 1: monitored butchers to ensure that they were handing over all
Speaker 1: of their cow intestines for zeppelin construction, leaving behind nothing
Speaker 1: to use a sausage casing. While Germans and those living
Speaker 1: in German occupied territories brewed their sausage. The opposing forces
Speaker 1: rapped their brains over how to bring down the airships.
Speaker 1: In a documentary titled Attack of the Zeppelin's, University of
Speaker 1: Cambridge engineer Dr Hugh Hunt explains that there's not much
Speaker 1: surviving information on how zeppelins were constructed or how they
Speaker 1: were deconstructed, that is, shot down. It wasn't exactly like
Speaker 1: popping a balloon. A bullet could produce a hole in
Speaker 1: the zeppelin, but that wouldn't sink the ship. Towards the
Speaker 1: end of the war, the British devised a method of
Speaker 1: spraying the Zeppelins with bullets and then firing phosphorus containing
Speaker 1: incendiary bullets that, in contact with the hydrogen within, created
Speaker 1: an explosion. The hearth always suffers as much as the
Speaker 1: home front in wartime. But why deprived countrymen of their sausage?
Speaker 1: Why single out cow intestines for a zeppelin construction. We
Speaker 1: spoke with Taylor Hudnall and Alexandria, Virginia based butcher and chef,
Speaker 1: who explains that cows cuts are bigger than other animals
Speaker 1: and testines. A standard sausage sold in a Northern Virginia
Speaker 1: butcher shop measures one point five inches that's about four
Speaker 1: centimeters in diameter, and is encased by pig intestines, which
Speaker 1: are truer to that dimension. Hudnall explains that butchers prepare
Speaker 1: intestines for use by cleaning them of debris and packing
Speaker 1: them in salt water or dry salt, then flushing them
Speaker 1: with cold, clear water before they're stuffed with seasoned ground
Speaker 1: meat to make sausages. These days, there are artificial casings
Speaker 1: made of collagen or cellulose so that you can enjoy
Speaker 1: sausages without employing into Austin's. And of course you can
Speaker 1: just make the seasoned ground meat without stuffing it into
Speaker 1: any casing. And furthermore, modern manufacturing technology allows for the
Speaker 1: creation of products like some hot dogs that are molded
Speaker 1: and don't have any casing at all on the final product.
Speaker 1: But casings, and particularly natural casings made from intestines, provide
Speaker 1: product stability if you're going to save smoke or age
Speaker 1: the sausage, plus a pleasurable bite. If you've ever had
Speaker 1: a sausage with a really good snap when you bite
Speaker 1: into it, that's from the casing. None of these types
Speaker 1: of casings add much, if any, flavor to the sausage.
Speaker 1: It's more of a texture thing. Hudnall explained that as
Speaker 1: a butchery practice, quote, casing is a good way to
Speaker 1: use up a wasted part. Anytime you're using organs, you're
Speaker 1: doing the animal a good service. There's less waste. So
Speaker 1: we asked, are there other good uses for intestines. Hudnall said, well,
Speaker 1: they're hermetically sealed containers and make good water balloons, which
Speaker 1: was precisely the logict that influenced Zeppelin construction. Today's episode
Speaker 1: was written by Candice Gibson and produced by Tyler Clang.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other buoyant topics,
Speaker 1: visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is a
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