Speaker 1: You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Guess what mango was that gave.
Speaker 3: So you probably had this marked in your calendar already,
Speaker 3: but last week was actually the one hundred and second
Speaker 3: birthday of commercial skywriting in America. I did not have
Speaker 3: that on my calendar for some odd reason. But I
Speaker 3: really am surprised we can pin down an exact start
Speaker 3: date for such an old medium, Like I know, there
Speaker 3: are so many candidates for like the first newspaper ad
Speaker 3: or the first billboard, and there's a lot of confusion there,
Speaker 3: that's true, but it's a little different when the ad
Speaker 3: appears out of thin air ten thousand feet above times square,
Speaker 3: somebody's going to keep track of that. And that's exactly
Speaker 3: what happened on November twenty eighth, nineteen twenty two, when
Speaker 3: British pilot Captain Cyril Turner took to the skies above
Speaker 3: New York City using a specially designed exhaust system spelled
Speaker 3: out Hello USA, Carl Vanderbilt seventy two hundred. It was
Speaker 3: the first time skywriting had been used to promote something
Speaker 3: in the US, and even though it wasn't clear what
Speaker 3: was being promoted, the ad still worked like a charm.
Speaker 3: Within a couple hours, roughly forty seven thousand people had
Speaker 3: called that not in the mystery behind the message had
Speaker 3: pequed people's interest, proving the effectiveness of skywriting and securing
Speaker 3: its place as a new, eye catching way to promote
Speaker 3: a product.
Speaker 1: That is such a bizarre slogan like Hello USA called
Speaker 1: Vanderbilts and in two hundred like what is that even advertising?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's the thing. It was actually an ad
Speaker 3: for skywriting itself. While Captain Turner was painstakingly writing the
Speaker 3: message overhead, his partner, Major John Jack Savage was watching
Speaker 3: from the ground with a very special guest, George Hill,
Speaker 3: the then president of the American Tobacco Company. So the
Speaker 3: real purpose of the stunt was to persuade Hill to
Speaker 3: advertise his cigarettes via skywriting, but Hill was skeptical since
Speaker 3: the average message only lingered for about ten minutes in
Speaker 3: a light wind, which didn't give people much time to
Speaker 3: see it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it certainly gave enough people at the time
Speaker 1: to like call that phone number, But I guess that's
Speaker 1: where the phone number idea came in here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: It was the number of the hotel where George Hill
Speaker 3: was staying, Hotel Vanderbilt, and the resulting flood of phone
Speaker 3: calls convinced Hill to take a chance on skywriting. So
Speaker 3: the following year, the American Tobacco Company used skywriting in
Speaker 3: a successful campaign for Lucky Strike cigarettes, and in the
Speaker 3: decades that followed, skywriting became a popular form of advertising.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is pretty fitting that the first client
Speaker 1: of smoke based advertising would be a cigarette company, right,
Speaker 1: That's pretty perfect. But that is just the first of
Speaker 1: nine high flying facts we've got about skywriting. We've got
Speaker 1: so much more to cover, so let's strap in and
Speaker 1: take off. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to part time Genius.
Speaker 1: I'm Monga's tritiguler and on the other side of that
Speaker 1: soundproof glass arranging cotton balls on his desk to spell
Speaker 1: out PTG, which is a very sweet tribute. That is
Speaker 1: our friend and producer, Dylan Fagan. It's probably not as
Speaker 1: effective as real skywriting, but we will take what we
Speaker 1: can get.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Dylan.
Speaker 1: Also, Will is not here today. He's off on a
Speaker 1: business trip doing business. But joining me today is our
Speaker 1: old research pal Gabe and our friend and super producer
Speaker 1: Mary Philip Sandy Gabe, you came up with idea for
Speaker 1: this Nine Things?
Speaker 2: Why skywriting?
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's probably the most whimsical form of
Speaker 3: advertising that we have, and I've heard a lot about
Speaker 3: how it's kind of a dying art form and that
Speaker 3: was really interesting to me. And I also don't think
Speaker 3: I've ever seen it in person myself, so I'm really
Speaker 3: hoping to get the chance before it kind of, you know,
Speaker 3: goes by the wayside. Wait, you've never seen skywriting? No,
Speaker 3: not really. I've been to air shows, so I've seen
Speaker 3: like streaks of smoke behind jet planes or something like that.
Speaker 3: But for the most part, I feel like I've only
Speaker 3: seen like the budget form of skywriting, which is like
Speaker 3: those long banners that trail behind planes, like at the
Speaker 3: beach or something telling me to go to a pizza place.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've never seen skywriting of you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. Where are you going.
Speaker 4: Where there's skywriting?
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've seen it a few times
Speaker 1: at the beach. What beach, I don't know, Provincetown they
Speaker 1: had Okay, well.
Speaker 2: It be a fancy beach.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not the kind of beach I go to.
Speaker 1: Well, I go to not fancy teaches too. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying I've seen it at the beach. I know that
Speaker 1: is where I've seen to play in skywriting.
Speaker 3: We'll take your word for it.
Speaker 4: Ye know. Every just everyone go to a fancy beach
Speaker 4: and you might see some skywriting.
Speaker 3: Cross your fingers.
Speaker 2: But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've lived like more than forty years. I feel like
Speaker 1: I supposed I have seen something like that.
Speaker 2: He feels really attacked right now.
Speaker 4: It's okay, we're not shouting.
Speaker 2: You for skywriting jealous.
Speaker 3: I'm happy for you.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So Mary Gabe got it started with the intro. Why
Speaker 1: don't we throw to you for the first five Okay.
Speaker 4: As someone who has never seen skywriting, I had to
Speaker 4: do some research. But one thing I learned this week
Speaker 4: is that part of the reason we've had so few
Speaker 4: encounters with skywriting is because the medium really took a
Speaker 4: nose dive after its heyday in the early twentieth century.
Speaker 4: And that's partially because of the popularity of television and
Speaker 4: then eventually the Internet, which are much easier mediums for
Speaker 4: getting the word out, but concerns about public safety also
Speaker 4: played a big role. After nine to eleven, the airspace
Speaker 4: around major cities became much more tightly restricted, and the
Speaker 4: kind of erratic movements that are involved with skywriting began
Speaker 4: to make people nervous. So while skywriting remains a draw
Speaker 4: at air shows and sports events and music festivals, it's
Speaker 4: just become a lot less common in everyday life.
Speaker 2: It's also, I imagine, like pretty expensive, right.
Speaker 4: Yes, most skywriters charge a few thousand dollars for just
Speaker 4: ten letters, and if you want a longer message, or
Speaker 4: you want it repeated multiple times, then it could set
Speaker 4: you back more than ten thousand dollars easily. And that's
Speaker 4: not even counting the transportation costs, because in most cases,
Speaker 4: the pilot's plane has to be shipped to the location
Speaker 4: where they actually want the skywriting to appear.
Speaker 2: Ye, the plane. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: It also sounds like a pretty big hidden cost, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I don't know how much it costs to ship
Speaker 4: a plane, but I would imagine it's not cheap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is interesting.
Speaker 1: Well, one thing I learned this week is that skywriting
Speaker 1: was actually invented for military use. The practice was developed
Speaker 1: at the beginning of World War One, and this was
Speaker 1: back when British pilots in the Royal Air Force discovered
Speaker 1: that they could create white smoke that hung in the
Speaker 1: air by running paraffin oil through the plane's exhaust pipes. Right,
Speaker 1: And at first they just used the smoke to play
Speaker 1: around during air drills, but pilots quickly realized that it
Speaker 1: could actually be used to create smoke screens to obscure
Speaker 1: the movements and confuse enemy pilots. It's a really fascinating use.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until after the war that those British
Speaker 1: officers started working on a way to use skywriting in advertising.
Speaker 4: This was England that gave us the idea of commercial skywriting.
Speaker 1: That's right, And so in nineteen twenty one, Major Savage
Speaker 1: developed a more sophisticated method for generating smoke and controlling
Speaker 1: its release, and in May of the following year, Captain
Speaker 1: Turner tested the device in England by skywriting the word castrol,
Speaker 1: which you've probably heard of as a kind of engine
Speaker 1: lubricant used in both cars, and playing sure castro yeah,
Speaker 1: or if you've seen Cars movie, that's in it. Now
Speaker 1: you're speaking my language, now, okay, yeah, skywriting Cars movie.
Speaker 1: I've seen everything, but the pair's first attempt at aerial
Speaker 1: advertising didn't draw much notice. They actually decided to try
Speaker 1: one week later, and for that flight they found a
Speaker 1: paying customer. So the men were contracted by the Daily Mail,
Speaker 1: you know, the newspaper, to spell out the paper's name
Speaker 1: over Epsom Downs during the Derby Steaks horse race.
Speaker 4: So people did they pay attention then?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Of course, I mean, and it wasn't just Derby fans.
Speaker 1: The message could actually be seen for miles in all directions,
Speaker 1: including by people who did not know it had been
Speaker 1: written by a plane, which is crazy, right, Like if
Speaker 1: you think about the phenomena, there were kids at a
Speaker 1: nearby school who saw the message outside the classroom window
Speaker 1: and they assumed it had been written in the clouds
Speaker 1: by an angel.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's so.
Speaker 1: Incredible, like it's this message from heaven and that it's
Speaker 1: just an ad telling you to get a newspaper.
Speaker 4: Yeah, especially the Daily Mail. I don't know that the
Speaker 4: angels read the Daily Mail.
Speaker 1: Which right, Heaven's paper is the tagline.
Speaker 3: But well, to be fair to those kids, there is
Speaker 3: something vaguely supernatural about floating letters in the sky, and
Speaker 3: while expert skyriders can make the job look easy, it's
Speaker 3: actually an extremely demanding profession, like pilots have to map
Speaker 3: out there every move before takeoff, every turn, roll dive,
Speaker 3: and every flip of that smoke switch, and then they
Speaker 3: have to execute those maneuvers from memory while going one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty miles per hour at ten thousand feet
Speaker 3: in the air. It's kind of like performing a choreographed
Speaker 3: dance while also painting a mairal is insane.
Speaker 4: I actually would have assumed that there's like, you know,
Speaker 4: a digital technological assistance here right, like a flight path,
Speaker 4: you know, like when they're actually using the plane to
Speaker 4: fly places. But it sounds like you're saying they just have.
Speaker 2: To know what to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they have to just be like dead on precise,
Speaker 3: and there's not much room for error either, Like the
Speaker 3: smallest slip up could ruin the look of the entire message.
Speaker 3: For instance, if a pilot doesn't open or close the
Speaker 3: flow of smoke it's just the right moment, then two
Speaker 3: letters might bleed together, or one letter might end up
Speaker 3: taller or shorter than the rest. Plus all the letters
Speaker 3: have to run along the same straight line to spell
Speaker 3: out the word, and they have to be spaced apart evenly.
Speaker 3: It is so much to keep track of But probably
Speaker 3: the hardest part is that the message has to be
Speaker 3: written backwards and upside down, like it's something I never
Speaker 3: thought of before. But because the pilots are writing parallel
Speaker 3: to the ground, they have to spell out the letters
Speaker 3: in reverse so that the message appears correctly when viewed
Speaker 3: from below. And some letters are particularly hard like skywriters
Speaker 3: often say, oh is the hardest because you have to
Speaker 3: maintain a constant angle of bank during the turn. But
Speaker 3: the straight parts of a letter are a different kind
Speaker 3: of challenge, and that's because you have to keep them
Speaker 3: roughly the same height, and pilots have all kinds of
Speaker 3: tricks for getting the timing just right. Some count Mississippis,
Speaker 3: and at least one of them, a pilot named Nathan Hammond,
Speaker 3: sings the Scooby Doo scene song to help him stay
Speaker 3: in the right rhythm. Whatever works right, whatever works.
Speaker 4: But speaking of music, one of the most famous instances
Speaker 4: of skywriting was a holiday message that John Lennon and
Speaker 4: Yoko Ono commissioned over the city of Toronto in December
Speaker 4: of nineteen sixty nine. They hired the legendary skywriter Wayne
Speaker 4: Mansfield to spell out the message quote war is over
Speaker 4: if you want it. Happy ex miss from John and Yoko.
Speaker 1: I love that there's a legendary sky writer, ye Mansfield.
Speaker 3: Oh you haven't heard Wayne Mansfield.
Speaker 2: Look, I've only seen skywriting.
Speaker 1: I don't know who it could have been him, but
Speaker 1: obviously that message is so much longer than ten letters.
Speaker 4: It's actually forty four letters to be exact, which makes
Speaker 4: it one of the longest skywritten messages of all time.
Speaker 4: It was so long, in fact, that Mansfield had to
Speaker 4: make special preparations ahead of the flight. So for reference,
Speaker 4: a pilot will typically take up about thirty gallons of
Speaker 4: skywriting flu which is enough to write about a dozen letters,
Speaker 4: but for John and Yoko's message, Mansfield had to haul
Speaker 4: four times that amount. But all that extra effort earned
Speaker 4: him some repeat business from the couple, because eleven years later,
Speaker 4: Yoko hired Mansfield again, this time to deliver a birthday
Speaker 4: greeting to her husband and their son Sean. The second
Speaker 4: message was written over the skies of Manhattan, and although
Speaker 4: it was a little bit shorter than the last one,
Speaker 4: it just said happy Birthday, John and Sean Love Yoko.
Speaker 4: Mansfield still had to bring plenty of fluid. Yoko wanted
Speaker 4: him to write it out nine times.
Speaker 2: Nine times feels successful by nine.
Speaker 4: Both John and Sean were born on October ninth, so
Speaker 4: I don't know, maybe that's why. But the number also
Speaker 4: held some special significance for Lenin throughout his life. The
Speaker 4: numbers on the school bus that he wrote as a
Speaker 4: child added up to nine. The first house he lived
Speaker 4: in was at nine Newcastle Road, and the Beatles' first
Speaker 4: appearance at the Cavern Club was on the ninth of
Speaker 4: February in nineteen sixty one. And as John Lennon himself
Speaker 4: once said, it's just a number that follows me around.
Speaker 4: But numerological apparently I'm a number six or three or something.
Speaker 4: But it's all part of nine.
Speaker 2: That is just math there. That's math.
Speaker 1: But you know, as long as we're talking pop culture,
Speaker 1: I do want to share the inside scoop on what's
Speaker 1: probably the most well known skywriting scene in movie history,
Speaker 1: and that is, of course, the surrender Dorothy sequence from
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirty nine film The Wizard of Oz. Does
Speaker 1: the Wizard of Oz hold a special place in either
Speaker 1: of your lives?
Speaker 3: I've never heard of it.
Speaker 4: I had a Scottish Terrier because of that movie. Really
Speaker 4: her name was Toto's Tama Shanter. In fact, Oh wow, yeah,
Speaker 4: perfectly called her Danny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very very So you are definitely familiar with
Speaker 1: this scene, and it is a scene that takes a
Speaker 1: place a little over halfway through the movie, shortly after
Speaker 1: Dorothy and her entourage arrive at the Emerald City. They're
Speaker 1: on their way to meet the Wizard when all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, the Wicked Witch of the West appears in
Speaker 1: the sky. On her broomstick, skywrites the words surrender Dorothy.
Speaker 3: Okay, so I was kidding. I have seen The Wizard
Speaker 3: of Oz and that part you're talking about. It always
Speaker 3: baffled me as a kid, Like I knew she wasn't
Speaker 3: really flying, but I could not figure out how they
Speaker 3: made it look so convinced.
Speaker 4: Well, this would have been like way before digital effects
Speaker 4: were a thing, Right, So I'm guessing if I had
Speaker 4: to guess, I would say they took footage of a
Speaker 4: real skywriter and then they just superposed like a little
Speaker 4: broomstick over the plane part.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I mean that's what I thought too. But
Speaker 1: according to the special effects artists who actually handle the sequence,
Speaker 1: and this is a genius named Jack McMaster. There's actually
Speaker 1: no skywriting in the movie. In fact, the sky that
Speaker 1: we see is just the bottom of a glass tank
Speaker 1: filled with tinted water. And as for the witch's broomstick, well,
Speaker 1: let me tell you how McMaster explained it. Quote, the
Speaker 1: bottom of the tank was covered with an inch and
Speaker 1: a half of water mixed with cala oil, and that
Speaker 1: was supposed to be the sky. The camera was beneath
Speaker 1: the tank shooting up. The miniature which who did the skywriting,
Speaker 1: was three three eighths of an inch high, and the
Speaker 1: broom she was writing was a hypodermic needle filled with
Speaker 1: a combination of canned milk and black dye. I wrote
Speaker 1: the message upside down and backwards in the fluid in
Speaker 1: the tank, using the needle in place of a pen.
Speaker 1: I practiced for two months before I did it. Isn't
Speaker 1: that incredible?
Speaker 4: That is so elaborate. I've seen that movie dozens of times.
Speaker 4: I never would have guessed that's how they did it.
Speaker 4: But I do like that even though it wasn't real skywriting,
Speaker 4: he still had to master the art of writing upside
Speaker 4: down and backwards.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that dificultly carried over. But Apparently the
Speaker 1: message he wrote was even a little longer. In the
Speaker 1: original cut of the movie, it actually read surrendered Dorothy
Speaker 1: or die, and it was signed with the Witch's initials WWW,
Speaker 1: which is the faz thing.
Speaker 3: She's like not claying around. So why they shorten it?
Speaker 1: Well, according to The New York Post, it was because
Speaker 1: the Wicked Witch was deemed too scary by test audiences,
Speaker 1: so the producers went back and they toned her down
Speaker 1: a little bit, including by cutting out the death threat.
Speaker 3: It's probably a good call, is She's still plenty scary
Speaker 3: if you ask me. But it is interesting that they
Speaker 3: went with black smoke for the scene. You know, it's
Speaker 3: suitably witchy and stands out against the blue backdrop. But
Speaker 3: you'd be hard pressed to find anything but white smoke
Speaker 3: in real skyriding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why is that?
Speaker 4: Actually I've seen colored smoke, like you know, at air shows,
Speaker 4: and the technology.
Speaker 3: Exists, no, absolutely, but white smoke is the default because
Speaker 3: that's the natural color produced when paraffine oil is vaporized.
Speaker 3: And in the case of black smoke, I mean, if
Speaker 3: you saw that pouring out of the back of a plane,
Speaker 3: you'd probably assume something was wrong with the engine and
Speaker 3: maybe take cover. But as for the multicolored smoke trails
Speaker 3: that you often see at an air show, those are
Speaker 3: possible because the planes are flying at much lower altitudes.
Speaker 3: Skyriders tend to work much higher up, and it's hard
Speaker 3: to produce a consistent, legible colored smoke at that height
Speaker 3: because of atmospheric conditions. And that doesn't mean it can't
Speaker 3: be done, but the main reason it's never caught on
Speaker 3: is that colored smoke requires some heavy duty dies to achieve,
Speaker 3: you know, the different hues, and they tend to stain
Speaker 3: everything they touch. That's not a huge deal when the
Speaker 3: smoke is just trailing behind you in a straight line,
Speaker 3: but a skywriter has to swoop and dive and curl
Speaker 3: to spell out a message, so there's bound to be
Speaker 3: some blowback. And for most skywriters, colored smoke just isn't
Speaker 3: worth the extra effort of, you know, scrubbing it off
Speaker 3: the plane's exterior after every job.
Speaker 1: That's interesting that it just causes such a mess that
Speaker 1: they don't want to.
Speaker 2: Deal with it.
Speaker 1: Well, I know, we've got a couple more facts to
Speaker 1: go before we crown a winner here, but first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick ad break. Welcome back to part time
Speaker 1: genius where we're talking all things skywriting. So Mary, I think,
Speaker 1: as far as the order goes, you are up next.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 4: So one thing I was curious about is why skywriting
Speaker 4: smoke is necessary in the first place. I mean, we've
Speaker 4: all seen the white streaks or contrails that jet planes produce,
Speaker 4: and those aren't the results of purposely adding something to
Speaker 4: the exhaust like with skywriting. I mean, it's just the
Speaker 4: results of jet fuel combustion at high altitudes. It just
Speaker 4: happens when the fuel is burned, carbon dioxide and water
Speaker 4: vapor are expelled from the jet's exhaust pipe, and when
Speaker 4: that hits the cold air of the upper atmosphere, the
Speaker 4: water vapor condenses and then it freezes along with the
Speaker 4: other particles, and it creates that visible cloud that you
Speaker 4: can see from the ground.
Speaker 1: So why do skywriders actually bother with smoke? Then if
Speaker 1: they could just use the contrails, well.
Speaker 4: Actually they can't. It turns out they cannot use the contrails,
Speaker 4: so that's why it's not possible. Skywriters have to fly
Speaker 4: at a much lower altitude for their messages to be
Speaker 4: visible from the ground, so the air is not consistently
Speaker 4: cold enough to produce those contrails. And not only that,
Speaker 4: most skywriters are using smaller propeller driven planes. A jet
Speaker 4: is not maneuverable enough to make those tight turns that
Speaker 4: you need to do to form letters, and so without
Speaker 4: the water vapor from jet fuel combustion, contrails wouldn't form
Speaker 4: even if the air was cold enough. But that said,
Speaker 4: there is one way for skywriters to produce clouds, and
Speaker 4: that is to draw them using smoke.
Speaker 3: That's a real thing, Like people say, skyriders thousands of
Speaker 3: dollars to just draw a fake cloud.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't say it's a regular occurrence, but it has
Speaker 4: happened on at least one occasion, and this was back
Speaker 4: in two thousand and one. It was part of a
Speaker 4: public exhibit by Brazilian artist Vik Munis. He's a photographer
Speaker 4: first and foremost, and a lot of his work deals
Speaker 4: with the relationship between illusion and perception. But for his
Speaker 4: first large scale project, he decided to explore that theme
Speaker 4: through a different medium, skywriting. But to be clear, he
Speaker 4: was not the one actually doing the flying. He just
Speaker 4: designed a series of cloud shapes and then he hired
Speaker 4: a pilot to draw them in smoke. All over the
Speaker 4: Manhattan skyline, and they did this about four times over
Speaker 4: the course of one week in February. And although the
Speaker 4: cloud outlines only lasted a short time before being blown away,
Speaker 4: there were still all these reports of people on the
Speaker 4: streets and in office buildings just being completely trans fixed,
Speaker 4: you know, standing there waiting to see what the plane
Speaker 4: was drawing.
Speaker 3: So there was like no message or anything being advertised.
Speaker 2: It was art.
Speaker 4: It was art. It was just clouds. It was It
Speaker 4: was more of a like an ephemeral exhibit, right, like
Speaker 4: a sand sculpture. It's there and then it isn't. But
Speaker 4: full disclosure, the cloud stunt was meant to coincide with
Speaker 4: a show of his photography at the Whitney Museum, So
Speaker 4: I guess in a way you could say it was
Speaker 4: an advertisement or self promotion, but no one on the
Speaker 4: ground would have known that or made that connection in
Speaker 4: the moment, So for most people it was just this
Speaker 4: like fun, weird thing that happened randomly in the middle
Speaker 4: of org day.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is interesting that like something that I
Speaker 1: can command people's attention just because it's happening in the sky, right, Like,
Speaker 1: think about how many sculptures and murals New Yorkers walk
Speaker 1: past on a daily basis, and we don't even glance
Speaker 1: at them, right, But if you draw a few clouds
Speaker 1: in the sky, it's the type of thing that you
Speaker 1: can look away from.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think I think that's what makes sky
Speaker 4: writing such a powerful tool, right, because it makes use
Speaker 4: of a space that is visible to everyone, but that
Speaker 4: most people don't have a way of interacting with.
Speaker 2: And while a lot of.
Speaker 4: Us have tried to draw a meaning from the sky
Speaker 4: in one way or another, like using the stars navigate
Speaker 4: or making a podcast about astrology or analyzing clouds to
Speaker 4: predict the weather, you don't usually look up and just
Speaker 4: find a clear cut message or a work of art.
Speaker 4: So people tend to take notice when it happens.
Speaker 1: Well, we are definitely giving skywriting our full attention today,
Speaker 1: and we're not the only ones to reassess the concept.
Speaker 1: In recent years, thanks to smartphones and social media, it
Speaker 1: is easier than ever to capture and share a skywriting message,
Speaker 1: which makes the medium's temporary nature much less of a
Speaker 1: drawback than it used to be. It is worth noting, though,
Speaker 1: that so far we've only talked about traditional skywriting, which
Speaker 1: isn't the technique used for most modern skywriting messages.
Speaker 3: What wait, you're going to spring that on us in
Speaker 3: the night set That there's this whole other form of skywriting.
Speaker 4: It's all been a lie.
Speaker 1: Most of what you'll see in the skies or on
Speaker 1: Instagram are examples of a more recent, more autumn techniques
Speaker 1: called sky typing. Now, both methods use paraffine oil. They
Speaker 1: send it through the plane's exhaust to create a trail
Speaker 1: of white smoke, but only traditional skywriting requires the pilot
Speaker 1: to control the release of the oil and by extension,
Speaker 1: the smoke using controls in the cockpit. But for sky typing,
Speaker 1: it's more like what Mary imagined earlier. Right, Like, the
Speaker 1: release of the oil is controlled by an onboard computer.
Speaker 1: The pilot enters the message they want to type, and
Speaker 1: the computer kind of plots a course, pumping out dots
Speaker 1: of smoke to form each letter along the way. Now,
Speaker 1: this is actually the type of skywriting I saw over
Speaker 1: the summer. But another difference is that sky typing pilots
Speaker 1: don't fly their planes in the shape of each letter. Instead,
Speaker 1: a series of pilots work in tandem, flying across the
Speaker 1: same patch of sky in parallel lines. While releasing the
Speaker 1: dots to form this message. That seems a little less fun.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I guess it's kind of like an
Speaker 1: old dot matrix printer, right, Yeah, especially up close, right,
Speaker 1: it's just a bunch of broken dots, But when you
Speaker 1: view it from far enough away, it looks.
Speaker 2: Like solid letters.
Speaker 1: And the process is faster, cheaper, It's easier than traditional skywriting,
Speaker 1: but as old school skywriters will tell you, it is
Speaker 1: also less artful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it sounds like it. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 4: think Gabe was saying earlier, it's like skywriting is like
Speaker 4: painting a mural, and this just sounds kind of more
Speaker 4: like paint by numbers, right, Like you just kind of
Speaker 4: follow the pattern. There's less skill involved.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, you don't have to warn for traditional skywriting just yet,
Speaker 1: because while it is much rareer these days, there are
Speaker 1: still a handful of pilots out there who fly the
Speaker 1: old fashioned way, and they are teaching their skills to
Speaker 1: the next generation. And since the old method doesn't require
Speaker 1: all the equipment and manpower for skytyping, it's still the
Speaker 1: most accessible way for solo flyers who you know, want
Speaker 1: to paint on the world's biggest canvas.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know how you pulled it off, but
Speaker 3: now you've got me feeling sentimental about what are essentially
Speaker 3: big smoky billboards. So Mary, what do you say we
Speaker 3: give them the trophy this week? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I liked his Wizard of Oz fact too, and
Speaker 4: you know he's actually seen skywriting, so I think he's
Speaker 4: earned it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you just pick on me for the first part,
Speaker 1: you give me a trophy and send me off in
Speaker 1: the end.
Speaker 2: But I'm gonna take this trophy and you guys can
Speaker 2: live with your decisions. We will.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm afraid that's all the time we have for
Speaker 1: today's Part Time Genius from Mary, Gabe, Dylan, Will and myself.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening. And while we have
Speaker 1: the show, don't have enough money for skywriting, we do
Speaker 1: have an Instagram account. Just drop us a line at
Speaker 1: part Time Genius and we'll be back with more soon.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is
Speaker 1: a production of Kaleidoscope and I Heart Radio. This show
Speaker 1: is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongais Chatikler and
Speaker 1: research by our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy.
Speaker 2: Today's episode was.
Speaker 1: Engineered and produced by the Wonderful Dylan Fagan, with support
Speaker 1: from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart
Speaker 1: by Katrina Norvel and Ali Perry, with social media support
Speaker 1: from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and buy Any Shorey.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.