Mini-Stories: Volume 14

Roman Mars:
This is 99% Invisible. I’m Roman Mars.

[MUSIC]

At the end of the calendar year and into the new year, the 99pi staff collects a bunch of short, joyful little stories that are fun to produce and make us happy. We call them mini-stories. This is the third and final episode of this batch and the 14th (!) Volume overall and it’s a good one. We have surprisingly architectural sport commentary, Ben Franklin’s role in Daylight Saving Time and the origin story of the firepole. Wake up the kids. Stay with us.

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Story #1: Tour de France

Roman Mars:
So I’m with producer Emmett FitzGerald and Emmett, if the past is precedent, you either have a sports story for us or an environmental story for us.

Emmett FitzGerald:
Yeah.

Roman Mars:
So which is it?

Emmett FitzGerald:
This week it’s sports, Roman.

Roman Mars: Fantastic.
Okay, I am ready.

Emmett FitzGerald:
All right. So as I imagine you might have noticed, I got pretty into biking during the pandemic.

Roman Mars:
I did notice. You would put a little note on Slack that would say, like, “I’m going to be gone for the next hour.” And it would be like… and it was because you were biking.

Emmett FitzGerald:
Yeah, I mean, I had written bikes before COVID hit, but I kind of leveled up during the pandemic. I took that canceled gym membership money and bought a road bike and some of the proper outfits and started riding up and down the East Bay Hills, torturing myself. And then a few months in, you know, to this new hobby, the Tour de France happened, and I had never really watched the Tour de France before, but I figured, you know, I’m into this now, give this a try. And what was immediately clear was that it’s just like a very different spectacle from the other kinds of sports that I was used to watching, you know, things like basketball or soccer.

Roman Mars:
Yeah.

Emmett FitzGerald:
And the biggest difference is really just one of time, like the tour stretches on for several weeks and there’s a stage nearly every day that lasts like four to six hours. And within each stage, you know, there are moments of really intense, exciting action, but there’s also long stretches where there isn’t a whole lot happening, at least to my eyes, as like an unsophisticated newbie. And so, you know, I wasn’t giving it my undivided attention all the time. It kind of became this sort of pleasant morning ritual that I would have on in the background as I, you know, drank my coffee and wrote my morning emails.

Roman Mars:
Yeah, it sounds kind of like slow TV, like watching a train over the course of 12 hours.

Emmett FitzGerald:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. That was… at least that was how I was treating it. Maybe that’s disrespectful to serious cycling fans but, you know, as I was doing this, I started to notice something kind of strange, which was that the cycling announcers, they don’t just talk about cycling. And one of the things that they really talk about a lot is architecture,

PHIL LIGGETT
[…LOOKING DOWN HERE AT THE CHURCH OF ST. JOHN’S. BUILT IN 1862 IN THE SHAPE OF A GREEK CROSS ON THE DEBRIS OF THE OLD PARISH CHURCH OF ST ANGIOS. IT’S GOT A PORCH-TYPE BELL TOWER WITH THE ROOF FRANKED WITH FOR PINNACLES SURMOUNTED BY A SPIRE BURNING A HUGE COCKLE. CAN’T SEE IT FROM THIS ANGLE THOUGH. OH YES, I CAN. THERE IT IS RIGHT ON THE FRONT. WELL, SPOTTED. COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO.]

Roman Mars:
Whoa, I could get into that.

Emmett FitzGerald:
Yeah, yeah. It’s like… it’s an extremely detailed architectural description of, you know, a church or something. And if you watch a lot of this, you notice this all the time, like, the announcers will be talking about, you know, Team Jumbo-Visma tactics and whether Primoz Roglic has what it takes to recover from that crash he suffered earlier in the stage. And then suddenly they’re talking about like an abbey.

PHIL LIGGETT
[THIS IS AN ABBEY BY THE LOOKS OF IT, THE OLD ABBEY LOC DIEU. AND IT WAS AT THIS ABBEY IN 1940 THAT THE MONA LISA WAS MOVED TO ALONG WITH MORE THAN A THOUSAND OTHER PAINTINGS FROM THE LOUVRE TO BE PUT IN STORAGE FOR SAFETY AT THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR. SO IT PLAYED A SIGNIFICANT ROLE IN PROTECTING SOME OF THE GREAT ARTWORK IS NOT JUST OF FRANCE, BUT OF THE WORLD.]

Roman Mars:
Well, I’m really into this! Like, I had no idea that the announcements had so much history and context. That is…. that is really something. I love it.

Emmett FitzGerald:
Yeah, I love it too. And you know, I just find it so… it’s so charming because it’s like, you know, these serious sports announcers have like a sort of nearly encyclopedic knowledge of random buildings and little towns like throughout the French countryside.

PHIL LIGGETT
[THIS IS THE VALLEY WHERE IN 218 BC, HANNIBAL CAME THROUGH HERE WITH 90,000 MEN AND 10,000 HORSEMEN AND 37 ELEPHANTS ON HIS WAY BACK HOME. AND I IMAGINE WHAT THE ROAD CONDITIONS WERE LIKE IN THOSE DAYS, PAUL.]

PAUL SHERWEN
[IT WAS PRETTY TOUGH FOR THE ELEPHANTS, I HAVE TO SAY, ONCE THEY GET OVER THE TOP BECAUSE FORTUNATELY, WITH THEIR LARGE PADS, THEY DIDN’T SLIP TOO MUCH ON THE SNOW.]

PHIL LIGGETT
[WERE THEY INDIAN ELEPHANTS?]

PAUL SHERWEN
[NO, ACTUALLY, THERE WERE AFRICAN ELEPHANTS. VERY UNUSUAL. I’M SURPRISED THEY COULD TRAIN THEM. FOR MINUTES AND 18 SECONDS, 92 KILOMETERS TO GO. NOW HERE’S OUR POOR MAN LEFT ON THE WAY…]

Roman Mars: I don’t even know how to react to that, but it’s, like, it’s is a stunning digression. This is totally new to me. Is this the way it’s always been? Have they always been this, like, Wikipedia of architecture and world history at their fingertips and presented it when they’re announcing the race.

Emmett FitzGerald:
Yeah, I wanted to answer that question. And there’s really one person who I think is best equipped to explain how we got here. And he’s actually one of the announcers who you just heard there talking about African elephants. His name is Phil Liggett. And you know, he’s kind of like the most famous voice in professional cycling. In fact, there’s a documentary about him that came out last year called “Phil Liggett: The Voice of Cycling,” and I talked to Phil on Zoom, and he basically told me that he’s been doing the Tour de France for decades, and in the very beginning, he was really one of the only English speaking cycling commentators in the world.

Phil Liggett:
I work for the BBC, for ITV, CBS and Channel 7 in Australia, CBCC Canada, Television New Zealand and Star Television and in China. I work for everyone!

Emmett FitzGerald:
Phil said, you know, it’s a little hard to pinpoint exactly when the whole Chateau-Church-Abbey commentary got started. But he does remember one moment in particular. He was working with his long term partner. They were a famous duo, the late great Paul Sherwen, and the cameras panned over this dilapidated old abbey.

Phil Liggett:
A little wreck. It was a ruin. And I just jokingly said to Paul Sherwen, I said “Hey Paul, this old abbey here, it needs a bit of renovation,” as a joke. I thought it was probably 14th century. And Paul said, “Oh yeah, he said, Louis the 14th lived there.”

Emmett FitzGerald:
And Phil looked at Paul, just like, how did you know that? Like, how did you know that Louis the 14 lived there? Like, you’re a cycling journalist?

Roman Mars:
And so how did he know it?

Emmett FitzGerald:
Well, Paul had lived in France before when he was a pro cyclist, and I think that in that specific instance, it was just kind of like a fun fact that he had learned along the way. But they started to do more of that. Just offering these like little bits of commentary about the landscape that the bikers were passing through — the buildings and the flora and fauna. And you know, I think part of it at the time was that they were really trying to sell cycling to an American audience who was not as familiar with the sport as people in Europe, but really people from all over the world started writing in to say that they loved it. And pretty soon, the Tour de France itself sort of realized what was happening.

Phil Liggett:
The Tour de France picked up, when they heard what we’re doing, and then they started to sell their country more.

Emmett FitzGerald:
The Tour basically realized that they could use this to their advantage what Phil and Paul were doing. And Phil told me that this was all happening at a time when the race wasn’t doing very well financially and people in France were actually getting kind of annoyed because it would lead to all of these road closures. There was a sense that it was bad for business. And so when the tour organizers picked up on what Phil and Paul were doing, they were like, oh, we can make this work for us and almost reframe the tour as like a three week long advertisement for the country of France.

Roman Mars:
So it’s just, it’s competitive cycling like wrapped in this advertisement for the French Tourism Board.

Emmett FitzGerald:
Yeah, exactly. And so they started telling the camera operators to try and get pretty shots of the beautiful old churches and the bridges and waterfalls. And they encouraged Phil and Paul to talk about that stuff. And for a while, they had to do all the research themselves. But eventually the Tour actually started producing this incredible book for them–

Phil Liggett:
Which they call the “Speaker’s Guide to the Tour de France: Tourist and Historical Information.” And in the book, is every stage and every monument or house or garden or bed in that region that we pass through is pictured in here.

Emmett FitzGerald:
So it’s basically a guidebook to the French countryside, except it’s designed exclusively for Phil and like a handful of other people who are cycling commentators for the Tour.

Roman Mars:
Like exclusively for them, like meaning that they printed it just for them, like it’s not available to the general public at all?

Emmett FitzGerald:
No, no, no. No, like, you can’t even… It’s pretty hard to find a copy, even if you’re searching on eBay and stuff, like they don’t even… even if you’re like a cycling journalist, you can’t get a copy. It’s just like people… It’s like for the handful of people who are on the mic doing the commentating for the various TV stations that are broadcasting the event. Phil showed me his just like through this Zoom. And, you know, it’s basically just like this giant homemade book with like hundreds of hundreds of pages. And he said that it’s really all put together by this one person.

Phil Liggett: And every year, when the Tour route is announced the following year in October, it’s her job to drive every inch of the route, all two and a half to three thousand miles of it–

Emmett FitzGerald:
And basically document all of the points of interest that the cameras might linger on during the race.

Phil Liggett:
Every chateau, every palace, every garden, the mountains, the flora and the fauna — and put it all in this book. And then on the day before the team starts, the organization gives every commentator a copy of the book in English and French.

Emmett FitzGerald:
And each entry just has like a bunch of interesting tidbits and facts about particular buildings or bridges that, you know, the cameras might pass over. But there’s this moment in the broadcast that Phil described to me where it’s like, you have to make sure that you have found the right thing, like what you’re looking at on the cameras is the thing that you’re… you don’t want to read the facts for the wrong chateau. And so he described all of these moments to me where he would just be looking over and seeing his partner, Paul, like frantically trying to find the right building in the book.

Phil Liggett:
And I’m watching Paul savagely rip the book apart to find a picture of this darn chateau. And I’m just dying to laugh. That’s all I want to do but I can’t because I live on-air and I can see the sweat on his brow because he’s desperate. Then all of a sudden, it’ll come in and I’ll say, “What do you think of that, Paul?”

Emmett FitzGerald:
And then Paul, you know, who had in the meantime, had, you know, been, been… had found the right page, would just cooly read off a few interesting facts about the building as if he knew them, you know, right off the top of his head.

PHIL LIGGETT
[WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THAT, PAUL?]

PAUL SHERWEN
[WELL, THIS IS ONE OF THOSE MEDIEVAL VILLAGES I WAS TELLING YOU ABOUT A LITTLE EARLIER. THEY WERE ALL VERY MUCH FORTIFIED, AND THEY’VE GOT A LOT OF VERY NARROW STREETS IN THERE. IT’S SITUATED RIGHT ON THE VALLEY, AND IT WAS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT IN YEARS GONE BY FOR ITS MILITARY AND MILITARY CONTROL. JUST LOOKING THERE’S A PROBLEM THERE AT THE BACK WITH A FLAT TIRE.]

Emmett FitzGerald:
You’d never know he’d been tearing through this book, trying to come up with that, you know, fact about the military might of the Oeuvres Valley or whatever, you know?

Roman Mars:
No, I mean, they’re amazing broadcasters. That’s what you really take away from these clips is just how good they are at their job.

Emmett FitzGerald:
Yeah, they’re really talented. And Phil, you know, he says he gets emails all the time from people who appreciate this detail and want to know, you know, like the exact route from the tour from that past year because they saw this particular village that they thought was beautiful. And, you know, I think and in France too, it also has worked. Like the Tour is thought to be a real showcase for the country now.

Roman Mars:
Yeah.

Emmett FitzGerald:
And towns will actually pay money to have theTour go through their town because it will bring in, you know, the tourist revenue and also that, you know, people from all around the world will kind of get a chance to see their town and maybe hear someone like Phil describe, you know, their chateau–

Roman Mars:
Their 14th century abbey.

Emmett FitzGerald:
Yeah, exactly. And they may want to come visit sometime.

Roman Mars:
Well, that’s amazing. I am really, really impressed by Phil as a broadcaster, and it’s so much fun to listen to him, so… This is so great. Now I’m into it. I’m now going to watch the Tour de France.

Emmett FitzGerald:
Yeah, yeah.

Roman Mars:
I love this idea.

Emmett FitzGerald:
Yeah, put it on in the background, at the very least.

Roman Mars:
That sounds great. Emmett, thank you so much for introducing me to Phil Liggett. I think that’s a gem of a human.

Emmett FitzGerald:
Thank you, Roman.

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Story #2: Daylight Saving Time

Roman Mars:
Okay, I’m here with Chris Berube. Chris, what do you have for us?

Chirs Berube:
Hi, Roman! So over the summer you might remember, we did a story about Daylight Saving Time.

Roman Mars:
Yes! Saving, with no S!

Chris Berube:
Yes. The biggest news-you-can-use I have ever provided on this podcast is that it is daylight saving time. So I have a follow up to that story. And before I get there, just a quick recap of what we talked about with Daylight Saving Time. It was episode 443. We told the story of William Willett. He’s kind of the father of Daylight Saving Time. He was this British architect who campaigned for the idea for years, and then he died. And one year after his death, the British parliament finally tried out Daylight Saving Time. And that’s why we have it today. There’s a commemorative sundial to him in Kent. Beautiful wrap-it-up-with-a-nice-bow type of story.

Roman Mars:
Yes, I remember that part of the story. That’s great.

Chris Berube:
So after I put out that story, I got quite a few emails from listeners who were saying, love the story, great job, but wait a second, I thought Benjamin Franklin invented Daylight Saving Time.

Roman Mars:
Benjamin Franklin, like, yeah, the American founding father, Benjamin Franklin, that guy?

Chris Berube:
Yeah, like Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin.

Roman Mars:
He was responsible for so many things, you know, according to lore.

Chris Berube:
Well, and as soon as I started getting these emails, I was thinking, is he responsible for it? Like, he invented so much other stuff, like it seems entirely plausible, so I decided I have to get to the bottom of this.

Roman Mars:
Okay.

Chris Berube:
So I did a little investigation.

Roman Mars:
All right, let’s hear it.

Chris Berube:
So I called up this guy–

Chris Berube:
“Hello, is this ranger Thomas Daniels?”

Thomas Daniels:
“Yes, it is.”

Chris Berube:
“Should I call you Ranger Daniels? What is the right way to refer to you?”

Thomas Daniels:
“You just call me Tom.”

Chris Berube:
So Park Ranger Tom Daniels works at the Independence National Park in Philadelphia. It includes lots of American landmarks, including the Liberty Bell and also the Benjamin Franklin Museum. And at the park he is their resident Benjamin Franklin nut.

Thomas Daniels:
I would say he’s always been a fascinating character for me. And the more you learn about him, the more you’re amazed by how much he actually accomplished in one lifespan.

Chris Berube:
So we talked for a while about Ben Franklin. I explained the whole thing, you know, William Willett, the angry emails, and I finally asked him the question, “Did Benjamin Franklin invent Daylight Saving TIme?”

Thomas Daniels:
So what’s fascinating about that is, I think this is one of the stories where Benjamin Franklin becomes so famous that he starts getting things attributed to him that are not necessarily attributable to him. And Daylight Savings Time is one of those.

Chris Berube:
And that’s the end of the story. Benjamin Franklin did not invent Daylight Saving Time — no, there’s more!

Roman Mars:
I would expect a little bit more.

Chris Berube:
There’s a little bit more. I know this is a mini-story, but it’s not quite that brief. So there is a funny connection between Benjamin Franklin and Daylight Saving Time. It comes from 1776 after the Declaration of Independence was signed and the Continental Congress was getting ready to go to war with Britain for the independence of the United States. And they wanted French military support to fight the war. So they decided we need to send somebody over there who will win over French hearts and minds. And who better to send than Benjamin Franklin, the world famous inventor and writer. So they sent Benjamin Franklin over to France as a diplomat and–

Thomas Daniels:
His charge is to essentially try and secure a formal alliance with the French. There’s no guarantee that we were going to be capable of winning independence. So this was going to take a lot of convincing. So Franklin really dived into … he really ingratiate himself into French society.

Roman Mars:
What does that mean to ingratiate himself with the French society?

Chris Berube:
It basically means he was going to a lot of parties. So every night Ben Franklin was just staying up really late, hanging out with all these important French people. According to some accounts, he was basically living like a college student. And then one day Benjamin Franklin’s in Paris, and there’s a loud noise outside his window and he wakes up and he looks outside and he sees that the sun is coming up and it’s 6:00 or 7:00 a.m. And this is a revelation for Benjamin Franklin.

Thomas Daniels:
And he writes an essay in the Journal of Paris, and it’s called “An Economical Project.” And he basically gently chastises the citizens of Paris for not getting up with the sun.

Roman Mars:
The gall of that diplomat to go in there and tell them how to do things.

Chris Berube:
Roman. Here, actually, Tom, read me an excerpt from “An Economical Project.”

Thomas Daniels:
He says, “Your readers who with me have never seen any sign of sunshine before noon and seldom regard the astronomical part of the almanac, will be as much astonished as I was when they hear of his rising so early and especially when I assure them that he gives a light as soon as he rises. I am convinced of this. I am certain of my fact. One cannot be more certain of any fact. I saw it with my own eyes.”

Chris Berube:
That is Benjamin Franklin’s great revelation, is that the sun comes up in the morning.

Roman Mars:
Well, you get a little bit from his tone here of, like, what he’s trying to do. He’s overdoing it a little bit in a fun way, actually.

Chris Berube:
Yeah, I mean, Tom called this essay satirical. I think that’s right, and it includes these recommendations at the end that are pretty outlandish.

Thomas Daniels:
One of the regulations says, “Every morning, as soon as the sun rises, let all the bells and every church be set ringing. And if that is not sufficient, let cannon be fired in every street to wake the sluggards effectually and make them open their eyes to see their true interests.”

Roman Mars:
Well, firing a cannon seems pretty extreme, but I kind of dig it.

Chris Berube:
I mean, Roman, what else is going to awaken the sluggards, right?

Roman Mars:
Yeah, to effectually awaken those sluggards.

Chris Berube:
Okay so, in conclusion, Benjamin Franklin did not invent Daylight Saving Time. He did write this funny essay about everyone in Paris waking up to the sounds of cannons being fired, which I guess is why people make that mistake, because it’s also about waking up earlier with the sun. But there’s something bigger going on here, which is that lots of inventions get attributed to Benjamin Franklin that he is not responsible for. And Tom told me this actually happens at his job sometimes.

Thomas Daniels:
I think the most famous one is people think that he invented… they think he invented the light bulb, which of course was Thomas Edison. I think the confusion comes from Franklin’s experiments with electricity.

Chris Berube:
Some other common ones I found on the internet — there are people who believe Benjamin Franklin invented the streetlight. He did not invent the street light. He was involved in improving a certain design of street light.

Roman Mars:
Okay.

Chris Berube:
There is actually a page on the Franklin Institute website dedicated to quotes that are falsely attributed to Ben Franklin. So, would you like to hear an example?

Roman Mars:
I would love to. Yeah.

Chris Berube:
Okay. “Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain. And most fools do.”

Roman Mars:
Oh okay. That sounds very Franklin-y. Or it’s kind of Mark Twain as well. You know what you mean.

Chris Berube:
It’s a little more modern than that. That was actually said by Dale Carnegie, the guy who wrote “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” So someone who’s pretty different.

Roman Mars:
Well, this is so fascinating. Well, so Benjamin Franklin did a lot of amazing things, and not to diminish from Benjamin Franklin, but he did not invent Daylight Saving Time.

Chris Berube:
He didn’t invent Daylight Saving Time. Not to diminish his other accomplishments. Please be careful when you’re reading those articles online that say, “The 10 Amazing Things Created by Ben Franklin.” Please approach those with suspicion.

Roman Mars:
That’s a good warning. Thanks so much, Chris.

Chris Berube:
Thanks, Roman.

[BREAK]

CODA: Fire Poles

Roman Mars:
So I’m here with producer Lasha Madan. Hey, Lasha!

Lasha Madan:
Hey, Roman!

Roman Mars:
So what do you have for us?

Lasha Madan:
Well, I wanted to talk with you about fire poles.

Roman Mars:
Oh, excellent. I was just thinking about fire poles and I didn’t know what they were all about. But you’re talking about the shiny brass poles that firefighters slide down to get from the second floor to the first floor.

Lasha Madan:
Exactly. And sometimes from the third floor to the first floor.

Roman Mars:
Okay.

Lasha Madan:
So the fire pole as an object is pretty symbolic of the firefighting profession, right? But they actually use of the pole has kind of become a thing of the past. If you learned about firefighters as a kid, maybe from your parents or teachers or even a storybook, you were probably told about the pole because at one time it was in nearly every fire station. Any guesses why?

Roman Mars:
Well, my first guess is the obvious one, which is it gets you from one floor to the other. Very, very fast.

Lasha Madan:
Right. Fast was the way to go. Putting out a fire fast meant getting to the fire fast, and for years, fire poles have helped firefighters do that. But the origin story of the pole is actually pretty interesting.

Roman Mars:
Okay, we’ll lay it on me.

Lasha Madan:
I called up retired Chicago Battalion Chief DeKalb Walcott Jr.

Dekalb Walcott Jr.:
My name is Dekalb Walcott Jr. I moved the ranks from fireman, engineer, lieutenant, captain and served four years as a battalion chief. So, Chief Walcott is fine.

Lasha Madan:
Chief Walcott is now a firefighter historian. He’s been archiving Black firefighter history in Chicago, where our fire pole origin story takes place. But Roman, before we get to the poles, let’s talk about the firefighters.

Roman Mars:
Okay.

Lasha Madan:
The first firefighters were the bucket brigade. This was the 1600s before engines and hoses.

Dekalb Walcott Jr.:
They would have a long line of men, women, children, slaves, freedmen, whoever could hold a bucket, probably. And they passed the buckets on until they got to the scene of the fire or the person that was first in line that was dumped in the water.

Lasha Madan:
The bucket brigade was basically a long human chain. Over time, they improve the system of firefighting with the goal of putting fires out as fast as possible. By the 1800s, there were engines being pulled by horses. But one thing didn’t change throughout this whole time period. Each group of firefighters, which were called fire companies, were in furious competition to fight the same fire.

Roman Mars:
Huh? So why were they competing?

Dekalb Walcott Jr.:
Originally volunteer companies were basically at the whim of the insurance carrier. Whoever got to the fire first, put water on the fire first, where the ones who were paid.

Lasha Madan:
“And no one else was paid, even if they got there a little bit later.”

Dekalb Walcott Jr.:
“No.”

Lasha Madan:
Essentially, insurance companies would pay only one fire company, the one that made it to the scene, hooked up to the hydrant and put out the fire first. And with so much competition, things got messy.

Roman Mars:
This seems like a really bad system. It’s a bad setup. And so, tell me more about how it got more messy.

Lasha Madan:
Yeah, I mean, well, so first of all, most firefighters weren’t getting paid much at all. Insurance companies would offer incentives to particular fire stations over others, and so those fire stations sometimes did what they could to slow down their rivals.

Roman Mars:
Ugh.

Lasha Madan:
Dekalb told me there was also a huge culture of drinking among volunteer firefighters. Many firehouses were even outfitted with their own bars. And in Chicago, Dekalb said that taverns would sometimes give alcohol out to firefighters at the scene of a fire to help them get their bravery up. And sometimes that alcohol helped facilitate full on brawls on the street.

Dekalb Walcott Jr.:
And they would get into fights not only with the public but also with the other fire companies they were competing against. There were a lot of complaints by the public also, because here you have a fire company fighting in the street when they should be putting water on the fire.

Roman Mars:
So there’d be like fire consuming a building. And firefighters from different stations would be having a brawl in the street right in front of it.

Lasha Madan:
Yes, exactly.

Roman Mars:
Terrifying image.

Lasha Madan:
And it’s in this competitive atmosphere that a new fire station – Engine Company 21, is formed.

Dekalb Walcott Jr.:
Engine 21 was an all Black fire company.

Lasha Madan:
And actually Engine 21 was the first paid Black fire company in the country.

Dekalb Walcott Jr.:
The approximately eight Black members, many of those members were ex-civil war veterans and also slaves.

Lasha Madan:
So it was 1872, and for the very first time, the mayor of Chicago, Joseph Medill, allowed Black people to join the Chicago Fire Department. As you can imagine, members of the newly formed Engine 21 firehouse felt a particular need to prove themselves. And Engine 21 is credited with coming up with the fire pole.

Roman Mars:
Okay. This is so fascinating. And how did that happen?

Lasha Madan:
Well, Roman, it has to do with horses and staircases and a whole lot of hay.

Roman Mars:
Okay. I have no idea where this is going because I’m pretty sure horses can’t use fire. But I can’t wait to learn more.

Lasha Madan:
Roman, have you ever been inside a fire station?

Roman Mars:
Yeah, I have. I’ve been to them. Yeah, sure. There’s lots of different ones. There’s a cool round one at sort of the Albany-Berkeley junction that I’ve been inside. Yeah.

Lasha Madan:
So the traditional structure of most firehouses of the 1800s, like Engine 21, were built three stories high. The horses were stabled on the first floor, the human sleeping and eating quarters on the second, hay on the third and a set of stairs connecting them. It worked pretty well, except that the horses would often follow the smell of human food and try to climb up the stairs, and the horses can make it up a set of stairs just fine. But when it comes to going down the stairs, they’d often get stuck.

Roman Mars:
Okay, sounds harrowing.

Lasha Madan:
Now, Roman, we’ve never had to remove a spooked horse from the stairway at work, have we?

Roman Mars:
No, no, definitely not. Thank goodness.

Lasha Madan:
But if we did, we’d quickly find a way to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

Roman Mars:
That’s something that happens once.

Lasha Madan:
So to solve for this problem, most fire companies blocked off the old stairs, and they put in one very tight spiral staircase, which was fully horse proof. But this caused a new problem. It took a lot longer for a team of firefighters to get down a tight spiral staircase, and if Engine 21’s firefighters were to slow out the door, they wouldn’t be the first to the fire. And if it happened too often, they couldn’t save lives, couldn’t make a living, and their reputation might suffer too, to the point where maybe they’d stop getting calls altogether.

Roman Mars:
Hmm.

Dekalb Walcott Jr.:
Injured 21s totally existent brought on competition. In order for Engine 21 to survive during that time period, they had to do everything right. They had to be correct. Couldn’t get into altercations on the street with people would be calling them all names. In many instances, where they went into bars or taverns and were not served, even in uniform.

Lasha Madan:
And that’s kind of how it went for a couple of years. And then one night in 1878, Engine 21 firefighter George Reid was in the hayloft on the third floor when the alarm went off. He acted on instinct and instead of running down two flights of spiral stairs to catch up to the group, he just slid down a pole from the third floor all the way down to the first.

Roman Mars:
Wait. Where did the pole come from?

Lasha Madan:
So the pole was a wooden binding pole that was used for securing hay to the wagon during transport. When that poll wasn’t in use, it was stored vertically from the loading area all the way up to the hayloft. So anyway, George was able to get settled in and ready to go way before anyone else who took the winding staircase from the second floor. And people were like, “Where did you come from? How did you get here so fast?” And then later, Engine 21’s captain Captain Kenyon was like, “Let’s install a permanent hole in the floor. Run a three inch round wooden pole through the hole. And why don’t we just slide that instead of taking the stairs?” So they did.

Roman Mars:
Huh. So they get down three stories really, really fast. Does it actually help them get to the fires first.

Lasha Madan:
Well, I should say that Dekalb told me that at first, Engine 21 was the butt of many jokes because of the pole.

Dekalb Walcott Jr.:
They were laughed it, you know, it was a joke to everybody else, but it was… It stopped being a joke when they found out that Engine 21 was putting out their fires, getting in first. And the city, as a matter of fact, and report for April of 1878 stated that sliding poles increase members’ response time. And as a result, sliding poles were being installed throughout Chicago, throughout all the firehouses in Chicago.

Roman Mars:
Hmm. I mean, I can imagine that sliding down a pole instead of going down a tight spiral staircase would shave off a few seconds. But it doesn’t sound like a lot of time. But maybe you know that’s enough of an edge. I mean, maybe that’s the difference between life and death. In some situations, that could mean everything.

Lasha Madan:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. And Engine 21 didn’t just install a pole. They turned that pole into their skill, one that set them apart from all other fire companies because it’s not as easy as it looks to slide efficiently down a thin wooden pole, multiple flights of stairs. But they became very good at their craft.

Dekalb Walcott Jr.:
They would drill in the daytime. They had… their time frame was 12 to 14 seconds, getting out of the door. That’s astounding. We can’t do that today. They would drill regularly doing that though. They would slide the pole, hook the horses up and out the door they went.

Roman Mars:
Wow in 12 to 14 seconds.

Lasha Madan:
Yeah, the fire pole. It revolutionized the way firefighters responded to emergencies and eventually they were installed around the world. Like you said, it saved lives. But the pole also created a new kind of problem for firefighters, a new kind of life or death problem because leaping onto the pole and accelerating, firefighters were sometimes injuring themselves before they even got to the scene.

Dekalb Walcott Jr.:
I’ve heard stories of an intoxicated fireman going to reach to slide the pole, missed the pole and his head was the first thing that hit the concrete.

Lasha Madan:
Sprained ankles, concussions, falls, some inebriated or sleepwalking firefighters have simply wandered over the hole and fallen into it, accidentally falling 20 or 30 feet. And at their most dangerous, the poles have led to deaths. Today fire poles have been phased out of use in a lot of cities.

Roman Mars:
Hmm, so if firefighters aren’t using fire poles, are they back to using spiral staircases?

Lasha Madan:
Well, without horses, there’s no need for horse proof staircases.

Roman Mars:
Right! That makes sense. Yeah, okay.

Lasha Madan:
In multistory firehouses, some have considered installing slides and other straight staircases, although both options are slower than what Engine 21’s response time was with the pole. And most newer fire stations now operate from a single storey if space permits, so they’re on the ground floor already. But all this doesn’t mean that you won’t see a fire pole in your local firehouse anymore, just that over time it’s really just become a symbol.

Roman Mars:
Yeah, I mean, considering that it went through a phase of non-existing, it existed for a while and now it’s being phased out, it really has stuck in the popular imagination. If you ask anyone what they’d find in a firehouse, they would, you know, talk about an engine, maybe a Dalmatian, and then there would be like a pole. Like my kids could tell you about a fire pole, even though they probably weren’t in active use during their lifetimes.

Lasha Madan:
Right. Yeah. I even read an article with an architect who specializes in firehouse design, and he said that in his latest designs, fire poles were specifically requested by city administrators because of what they represented, even though the firefighters these days wouldn’t necessarily use them. These days, it’s just simultaneously an emblem of innovation and of tradition.

Roman Mars:
Well, it’s so cool. I’m so glad I know more about fire poles. This is great, Lasha. Thanks so much.

Lasha Madan: Thank you.

———

CREDITS

99% Invisible was produced this week by Emmett FitzGerald, Lasha Madan and Chris Berube. Mix and tech production by Ameeta Ganatra. Music by our director of sound Swan Real. Delaney Hall is the executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is the digital director. The rest of the team is Christopher Johnson, Vivian Le, Joe Rosenberg, Sofia Klatzker and me, Roman Mars.

Special thanks to Jeyca Maldonado-Medina for production help on the mini-stories this year.

We are part of the Stitcher and SiriusXM podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora Building — in beautiful uptown Oakland, California.

You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet me @romanmars and the show @99piorg. We’re on Instagram and Reddit, too. You can find links to other Stitcher shows I love as well as every past episode of 99pi, including 13 more volumes of mini-stories if you like that sort of thing, at 99pi.org.