Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - The Ferris Wheel

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why Ferris wheels are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.Hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5Hear Alex's new "explainer podcast" about all things MaxFun: https://youtu.be/6kNplapKs-w (It's uploaded to YouTube because he filmed his face while he taped it.)

Ferris wheels. Known for being tall. Famous for being slow. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Ferris wheels are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden. Katie, hello. Hello. Wheels, wheels, wheels, wheels, wheels. We're doing it. We have been chanting wheels. Big wheels. Yes. Over email and verbally in the entire run up to this exact moment. It's great. Yes. I am very excited for big wheels, not little wheels, not tiny wheels, big wheels. And speaking of big things, perfect segue as always. Today, this comes out March 13th and one week is the start of the Maximum Fun Drive, which is a very fun membership drive for Maximum Fun. It's the first one we've done as part of that network. If you're a longtime supporter of the show, you might remember past membership drives I did other ways.

If you're a longtime supporter of the show, you might remember past membership drives I did other ways. This is sort of like that. And the main fun thing for you right up front is that the next several weeks, we're going to have a bunch of extra guests joining me and Katie on the shows. I'm very excited about it. And you know what? You can't drive without wheels. It all fits together. That's right. That's right.

fits together. That's right. That's right. We're going to drive into the drive with giant rideable wheels. It's like a car with four Ferris wheels for the wheels. And then there's, I don't know, mice or bugs or something riding in it. Something small. Aw, cute. Yeah. It's just really good. Just a car with a bunch of mice and bugs in it. Yeah, I'm going to go write a children's book about it later. I'm going to make a bajillion kids happy and also money. Wow. I don't think there are that many children.

Oh, no. My plan. Unless you include the young at heart. Oh, there we go. But yeah, so we're going to be joined by a lot of people. I feel like it's fun to just tell people. Next week's show, we're joined by Elliot Kalin of The Flophouse and the new show Be Potting You. Then following week, we're joined by Jesse Thorne and by Jordan Morris from Jordan, Jesse Go and from other shows they do and Jordan's graphic novel Bubble.

And then Ellen and Christian Weatherford of Just the Zoo of Us join us after that. And then after after that, Jason Pargin, guests on the show, join in me and Katie. So it's going to be very fun. We want to do like a block of special guests for this special drive. Do I get to go? Do I get to come? Oh, yeah, you're here to. Yeah. Yeah. You're here weekly. It's incredible. It's going so good. So excited. Just want to make sure. Just wanted to check. It's good. People, and I made like an FAQ thing for people, and I've been talking to people that everybody has questions about all sorts of things and happy to tell people, you know, it's a good

thing. Yeah. And back to the carnival ride. Katie, what is your relationship to Ferris wheels or opinion of them? How do you feel about them? Well, I've never been on one, but I like them. They are large wheels that you can ride on, which I think is cool. I have not been on one. It's not by like avoidance. I have not been able to find myself in a position to be able to get on a Ferris wheel. It's just never, the stars have

never quite aligned. I guess my only hesitation is I think of like, you get at the top and then they stop the Ferris wheel, but what if you have to go to the potty? What do you do? The trapped on a ski lift situation. Yes. But with a ski lift, the answer's obvious. You pee on the slope, you wait for nobody to go by or just think it's a strange rain. With a Ferris wheel, there's no hiding it. Yeah, everybody knows. Right. That's interesting. I've only been on a couple of them, and I think it's a similar thing. Like, they're great to look at. And then I'm not afraid of the Heights necessarily. I was more afraid of Heights as a kid, but yeah, I don't totally seek it out. I think the most impressive one I've been on is the London Eye. I've been on

the London Eye one time. Yeah. That's the, that's the super famous one with the pods. Yeah. Very fancy pods. Well, especially in the bonus talk about that in particular, that that structure, but like that or like a carnival type, I just have not been on very often. I think I'm glad they're out there and I don't seek it out. Yeah, I agree. I don't fear them. But I'm also I guess if I would go on it, I would want to go on it for the view. Every time that there was one, it was at like the Del Mar Fair in my hometown of San Diego. And I don't recall ever feeling the need to see more of San Diego. You know, you're a kid and it's like, what do I do? Go on a Ferris wheel or stare at this pig that's pooping while I'm eating cotton candy? The latter. Thank you.

Yeah. And sometimes they're weird about food too, right? Like even a very gentle ride like a Ferris wheel, they're like, it's still a safety issue. You can't have any food or fun. It's like, well, I don't know. That stinks. They don't want you horking up a corn dog on the top of the Ferris wheel. But I do love the trope in movies where the Ferris wheel comes unhooked from its axle and just starts rolling down the town, crushing buildings and people

screaming. I've always thought that maybe one of these days that I would get to see a Ferris wheel going off the trail, off the racks. But no, I don't think that disaster has ever actually happened, but I would like to learn. post 9-11, a lot of movies got into disasters. Ferris wheel seems like one of the low level total city disaster things that can happen to a city in a movie. It's not the Starship Enterprise destroying San Francisco or something. No. And it's a little funny. Like it's a funny disaster, I guess, to have city hall trampled by a Ferris wheel. Right. There's probably a clown riding or something like, oh, look at that. Right. Exactly. Yeah. They are. They're such a I guess I mainly treat them as an interesting building, which is the thing we'll talk about. Like, oh, look at that thing I can look at from the ground and just appreciate. So that's cool. Yeah. Yeah, it is cool. The I get a sort of I guess Frisian. It's that thing like where you get kind of goosebumps when I see a really huge thing in motion. So like seeing windmills or Ferris wheels that are particularly large and seeing them moving and seeing how massive this thing is that's moving, I get goosebumps. It's like, wow, I'm sort of in awe of this thing, this big moving thing. Yeah. And that leads us into this episode does not begin with stats and

numbers because we have a couple of astounding takeaway stories to kick it all off. And in particular about the single first Ferris wheel built by a guy named Ferris. Oh, that's why it's called that. Because I thought it was sort of a facile thing for me to believe. It's like, ah, it was invented by Ferris Bueller. Ha ha, jokes. So it was actually a guy named Ferris. Yeah, last name Ferris, but Ferris Bueller is way more famous. I definitely kept thinking about him as I put this together.

Because he's starting here with takeaway number one. The first famous Ferris wheel got designed and built by a guy named Ferris in order to help America defeat the Eiffel Tower. Oh, wow. We took on the Eiffel Tower and beat it in a contest of famousness and importance of things. In a sort of giant robot situation where we're piloting the Ferris wheel and the French are piloting the Eiffel Tower and they're sort of doing combat. Yeah, Atlantic Rim. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah, this is that we'll talk about how this came from a like especially turn of the century and late 1800s culture of world's fairs, which we don't totally have now. Yeah, it's too bad. But this was this was built for the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which was a World's Fair.

So 1893 is the start of this famous, huge kind of Ferris wheel. And this summer is the 130th anniversary. So did we have a smaller version of the Ferris wheel before we made the really big ones? Or did we just start with the big one? It's kind of both. And yeah, we'll, especially in the numbers later, we'll talk about forerunners. But this first wheel, it was built by George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. That's a lot of names. It's a lot of names and partly George Washington's name,

so it's hard to follow. But his last name is Ferris, George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. He's named after George Washington and also named after the founders of Galesburg, Illinois, a town in Illinois. Shout out, Illinois. Good thing they realized they needed to shorten it so we don't have to call it a George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. wheel every time. This is why I've never been able to ride one. I have a terrible memory for names.

Yeah, and he came up with a scale and also a steel version that was pretty unprecedented. There were other people who'd built like kind of tiny wooden ones. He didn't invent the observation wheel is the more general name, but he really deserves a lot of credit for making this a thing and making it what we picture, that big metal wheel. Right, right. I do feel like you'd get a lot more sick on a smaller wheel, because more rotations, tighter turn, more likely you're going to hork up your corn dog. So I think the bigness, and then you're not even getting a great view. So you're just getting spun around like laundry. I think the bigness of the Ferris wheel is pretty

important to the impressiveness of it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You really, you really want the view of everything and the scale of everything. And this first one particularly benefited from being built at a fair. The key source for this takeaway is the book called The Devil in the White City by Eric Larson. Ooh, yes. And that's about H.H. Holmes, is it not? Yeah, there's two main stories, which is the organizers of the fair in particular, an architect named Daniel Burnham, doing a bunch of hard work and basically gambling to try to make the fair come together. And then the second story of serial murderer H.H. Holmes luring and killing people throughout this fair throughout the whole time. Oops, that's not festive. Yeah. Hey, wait a

minute. That's not joyous. That's not a carnival spirit. and that's kind of what everyone said a year or two after the fair when they found out about this guy yeah they were like oh well the fair is a little less fun now there was a serial murderer running a hotel next to it okay read the room or read the fairgrounds mister murder house yeah that's not that's not fun mean, it's like if you're just gonna wear a spooky mask and jump out at people, okay, but if you actually kill them, and then sell their bones, that's not so cool. Yeah. And so people didn't know that. But they did know that there's like, oh, there's this amazing wheel. And also I'm getting a view of what was known triumphantly as the White City, which was this sort of miraculous all-white fairground and structures that they built.

So they had this view of, oh, look at this glittering painted White City and then Chicago and then Lake Michigan. And it was unlike your Ferris wheel in San Diego, which you've seen before. It's like, oh, look at this place I can also view from the top of this. Yeah, that's really interesting. Although I guess people were distracted by the Ferris wheel and all the pretty sights to notice all the murder houses going on. Kind of, yeah. Like it was Chicago already had a huge murder problem. And then also all this fair was happening. And that was part of how Holmes got away with it for a long time. According to Larson, a lot of the reaction was, yeah, people disappear all the time. I don't know, which is not great. No, no.

With Larson's book, he really focuses on the organizers and Holmes sort of back and forth. And this wheel story really comes from the organizers. the organizers. One of the things I like about this Ferris wheel story is that it was surprisingly crucial to the entire fair and Chicago's reputation and the United States' reputation in the 1890s. It all hinged on this wheel being cool and being exciting to people. It was like the mayor was like, this better go wheelie well. Not those words, but yes. Like the mayor of Chicago is in the book a lot. And he's like, look, a lot's riding on this. You got to, you got to get it.

You got to nail it. I know we got a lot of people on it. No, I mean, I mean, a lot's riding on this wheel. Yes, the people. I've wheelie got to speak more clearly. I mean, wheelie. I mean, I give up. But the fair was ultimately a success. It was visited by 27.5 million people. That's a lot. That's 27.5 million visitors. And a

lot were international, but that's a time when the U.S. population was 65 million. So people really moved heaven and earth to take the train or boats to come and go. That's more than a third. Yeah. Yeah. It's like if the US had an event where, I don't know, 140 million people went today. Jeez. That feels impossible for the continent to handle. So how long was the fair to accommodate so many people? I would imagine it was more than like a week.

Yeah, it was about half the year. It was May to like October. Still. And that's how these worked. There was like a culture of World's Fairs. It really kicked off in 1851. In 1851, London put on a World's Fair. In 1851, London put on a World Fair. Today, we mostly count on stuff like theme parks, especially Epcot, and world sports like the Olympics to the fair, the center of it is one structure

that has never been built by man. It's never been a thing. The 1851 London Fair was centered on what was called the Crystal Palace, which was a giant exhibition hall with more glass in it than any structure it ever had. That's still there, right? Because the Eiffel Tower was a World Fair exhibition

and they kept it because it was so popular. But then that was controversial. A lot of people hated it and wanted them to get rid of it. But then eventually everyone loved it. And wasn't the Space Needle was also Seattle's Space Needle was World Fair, right? Yeah, that's right. These structures, they try to keep them going and the Crystal Palace burned down in the 1930s. Otherwise, it would still be there. And other ones, they just keep going. And like you say, the Eiffel Tower was a World's Fair project. It was the center of the 1889 Paris World's Fair. And that fair was considered to be the best ever and possibly unbeatable. People were like, no one will ever top the 1889 Paris World's Fair. And this tower built by Alexandre Gustave Eiffel.

I'm going to keep pronouncing it Eiffel Tower because of my American accent, but Eiffel designed and built this temporary tower that they kept. Yeah, that's amazing. I feel like we should get rid of the, I mean, not get rid of the Olympics entirely, but have the Olympics always in one place because it's apparently an infrastructure nightmare and keep it, I don't know, keep it in Greece. That would be, that'd be cool. That's sort of where it originated, have it in Greece and then start doing world fairs again. And so that it's instead of building temporary stuff that people don't really need, you could use the fair as an excuse to build amazing structures that last and become cultural icons and stuff.

That would be me if I was queen of the world. That's what I do. Yeah, I a thousand percent agree. These events bankrupt places because they keep doing a whole new one at a whole different place. Like just do it one thing or make cool towers that we like forever. Yeah. Yeah. Eric Larson says that in the late 1800s, America was feeling inferior to France because of stuff like the Eiffel Tower. France.

France. And there was a rivalry. The Eiffel Tower passed the Washington Monument to become the new tallest building in the world. At one point, the Washington Monument was also the world's tallest building. And we were like, see, we really did it for George Washington because we built the tallest building. But then they beat it, the French. Man, I could make a comment on these sort of phallic structures and the competition about height with them, but I won't. I'm classy. Yeah, it all seems normal.

Yeah. And then also the Eiffel Tower opened just six years after the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, and some Americans felt like the Brooklyn Bridge was the most impressive engineering accomplishment in the world. But now the Eiffel Tower had beaten that, you know, like, nuts. Yeah, with their flaunting their towers and their bread and their amazing pastries. Gosh, darn those French people. They also gave us the Stat of liberty and i think also helped us win the revolutionary war so you know i don't understand the anti-french attitude in the

u.s yeah also the statue of liberty was less than 10 years like before the eiffel tower and so it was also seen as like oh they're even sticking a statue in our harbor like they're i'm like no joke they were like this is another sign of the French outdoing America. This stinks. We can't. We're so ungracious. We can't even accept a gift from the French people. And we're just like, we're going to start calling them freedom poodles, you French weirdos.

It's like Homer Simpson, Ned Flanders stuff. Yeah, that's exactly it. I can't believe you're letting me borrow your lawnmower. So then this 1889 fair, everybody's like, well, the French are the best in the world. And then America says no. And so immediately the United States begins planning what they hope will be an 1892 World's Fair, because 1892 is 400 years after Columbus, who was considered good at the time. They were like, great, we'll celebrate this guy. And they end up dedicating the Chicago Fair in 1892, but it really gets going summer of 1893. Yeah, so instead of the focal point being one murder,

it was a different murder. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of, we just lionized those guys, I guess. It's not great. Just like, hey, he didn't really discover it because people were here. Also, he did a lot of murders. Anyways, sounds good.

Yeah, but there's a boat trip, so it's interesting. You know, that was, I guess, the take. But he was on a boat. Yeah. It's maritime law. Genocide and murder doesn't count if you were ever on a boat, legally speaking. And we learned it from colonizers like France. Ah, France, they beat us again.

France. it from colonizers like France. Ah, France, they beat us again. And the people organizing this, it was a few pressures at once because America wanted to impress the world. Also, there was a contest for proposals from various U.S. cities and Chicago somewhat surprisingly won. It seemed like New York or D.C. was going to win. But so then Chicago needed to impress the rest of the country. And then either way, the organizers were planning all sorts of things. The lead organizer, architect Daniel Burnham, had a sort of catchphrase, which was, quote, make no little plans, right? Like, we need a landscape architect, we're getting Frederick Law Olmsted, the inventor of landscape architecture. We need samples of the world. We

are shipping in entire towns of people from around the world. It was a really going all out kind of project. And so Ferris was like, what about a small wheel? No, Ferris, I don't think you heard me. A medium sized wheel. No. Better. Ferris. Better. Going. It's like that at the time of a structure no one has ever achieved before that blows the entire world's mind. And so they said, no matter how many concessions and white cities and stuff we build, this is pointless if we don't have a tower. We need a tower that'll knock everybody out, some kind of tower or other building. They left a large space on the fairgrounds open in the plans. It was

essentially TBD tower. We'll just have a, we'll just have a thing that blows the whole world's mind. Anyway, let's organize everything else. And then they didn't have enough ideas on the team. So Daniel Burnham put out a call for pitches. The idea was to quote out Eiffel Eiffel. Wow. It was like, this is the guy we are specifically rivals with. We're going to beat his tower. Something, please come up with something. The Chicago Tribune offered a prize for proposals.

That's a newspaper, the Tribune. And then we're going to do a takeaway within the takeaway here because takeaway number two, the Eiffel Tower drove 1890s Americans out of their minds. We're going to just within this, there's a whole set of bonkers pitches that the Chicago organizers received for a world changing building. I'm so excited. Maybe something's a giant square instead of a giant circle. Because at this early stage, they weren't even thinking wheels. They were thinking like, we're trying to beat a tower, so what's a better tower?

And it's all nutty tower pitches was where they started. The Eiffel Tower, but upside down. So the skinniest part is on the ground and the thickest part is in the air. Honestly, a better idea than most of these. There's sort of a thing in Hudson Yards in New York that is almost that. It's called the, I forget the name, I'll link it. But anyway, yeah. And then H.H. Holmes submits his idea and it is, Then H.H. Holmes submits his idea and it is a tower, but you murder people in it.

And it's very tall, so you get more murders in it. Thank you for initially giving him a Dracula voice. That is how I think he talks. That's correct. Yeah. He's from Eastern Europe, even though he's American. But bonkers pitches. So the entire United States, guys are just sending in ideas to the Tribune and to Burnham. There's four particularly nutty ones.

The first one is a guy in Connecticut said, hey, we should build a nested set of three towers. So you have like one big wide tower and then a tower inside that and a tower inside that. Like Synecdoche, New York kind of deal? Or just walls around a tower? It's weirder. Yeah, it's... Think of a telescope, right?

Like how a telescope, you can unfold the parts. His idea was you have three towers that are linked with a system of hydraulic tubes and pumps. And then at the start of each day, the whole thing telescopes slowly upward. Whoa. So it's a moving giant. I also think of tears sort of like a ziggurat or like Rockefeller Center, like it's a stacked set of stairs kind of looking thing. But the idea was that over the course of a day, this triple tower would telescope upward

for several hours and then sink slowly back to the ground. That's fun, unless you're inside it, because I imagine you might get a little bit squashed. Yeah. Yeah. I kept thinking of like when an elevator breaks and it's halfway between floors. I think you're in the building all day until it comes back down. So. Right. How do you because if you could pull that off without trapping people in a moving building, that'd be fun. That would that would be better. But yeah, this guy was like, you want a different tower. This tower is constantly shifting and moving up and down into the air. How about the stability and security of a building except none of that?

Yeah, perfect idea. They didn't do it. And then here's the second pitch. And this was a guy in Chicago. And he started a whole company around this. And the name involves both the concept of buildings and the concept of toboggans, like the sleds. Because here's his idea. He wanted to build a tower that would stand nearly 9,000 feet tall. Okay. So far, so good. And the height of that, it was 8,947 feet, which is over 2,700 meters. The height would be almost as tall as nine Eiffel Towers stacked on top of each other. Sure.

Sure. Yeah, why not? Let's just get it real tall. And humans have never built something that tall to this day. It's never happened. Not even close. And so what would happen is you'd build this mega structure, and then you would build elevated rail lines running down from the top of it all the way to New York, Boston, Baltimore, the eastern seaboard of the United States. Oh, that's fantastic. Just a giant, very structurally stable system of monorails or long roller coasters.

Yeah. I can see no problems with that. And so bold to be like, oh, you have a design competition in Chicago. Great. First we build it through Indiana. Then we build it through Ohio. I'm sure Pennsylvania will be cool with this. Yeah. And rail tracks in the sky, as we know in the U.S., we have no problems keeping our infrastructure of railroads safe, and having one in the sky would be great. Right. No potential problems. No, no. And I think it's sort of a one-way thing, too, because he figured this is a perfect idea for the Chicago World's Fair because a bunch of people from the East Coast are going to come

to Chicago and then they can conclude their visit with a giant train ride, like sort of sledding down these tracks back to their home cities on the East Coast. Yeah, I mean, it's the pitch. I love trains. I love planes. Combining the two, it seems not good. Yeah, it just is obviously not. Did he at least throw in a couple of loop-de-loops? Oh, man, if only Hot Wheels existed, he could have been inspired. Because also, apparently the last part of his proposal this is this is the quote from it quote as the cost of the tower and its slides is of secondary importance i do not

mention it here but we'll furnish figures upon application yeah like it's silly you would ask me and we'll figure it out as we do my great idea, you know? Like, come on. Yeah. Because, again, like the tower was supposed to be approaching 9000 feet tall. Like the current world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, is about 2700 feet tall. Yeah. So he wanted to do like three Burj Khalifas and then some in 1893. You would start running out of breathable air at a certain point.

Yeah, that's true. I think they also did not understand like space. Yeah. In this way, like being up there, you know? So yeah, that was probably an issue. Yeah. They just start building up and then floating off. It's like, what's going on here?

All the bricks are floating. They're also fundamentalist 1800s Christians, so they're like, oh, it's sending people to heaven. That's fantastic. Good. They love it. They're just going right up. They're so stoked.

Yeah, yeah. But wouldn't they think that it would annoy God maybe if they were fundamentalists? Because then you're basically kind of encroaching on his space. That's true. Didn't he strike down the Tower of Babel because it got too tall? Wasn't that a thing? I'm not religious, so I don't know.

But I think he was like, he was annoyed. He saw humans as sort of the France to his heaven. And when he saw us building the Tower of Babel, he was like, no, stop it. That's true. The Bible is pretty specific about this. So never mind. Must be this less than this tall to get into heaven. Yeah. But like bringing down to a more appropriate height, the third proposal here, this is for a tower that would merely be 4,000 feet tall. Oh, that's nothing. So about one and a half Burj Khalifas, 4,000 feet tall.

Come on. Nothing. Easy. This proposal said, hey, we're going to make like a 4,-foot-tall building, but it also needs to be entertaining. It needs to be fun, right? Sure, yeah, of course. I want my buildings fun. And so what we do is, 4,000-foot-tall building, we also build a 2,000-foot-long rubber cable.

Right? That's exciting. Okay. And then we attach the top of the cable to the top of the building. And then we make like a fun passenger car seating about 200 people. And put that on the other end of the cable. And then do like bungee jump drop kind of stuff to the car. No.

With all the people in it. Oh, wow. That's fun, right? it. Oh, wow. That's right. Great. Oh, yeah. It's super fun to become basically a giant bouncing pendulous wrecking ball. Yeah. And he was just pitching this like not only the tallest building ever built by a lot and it for a hundred years plus also it'll be this basically train car on a rubber rope i'm gonna guess that these people weren't engineers or architects of any kind yeah all amateurs or or like really wound up because because also this guy said that as a precaution the ground below should quote be covered with eight feet of feather bedding. Oh, that'll, yeah, no, okay. Eight feet of mattresses.

Great. I mean, Alex, he thought of everything. Yeah, it'll catch it. You know, it's cool. He thought of every possible contingency. And it's all like these people were just like, the Eiffel Tower has broken my brain. How do I, a patriotic American, defeat it? And then they just went wild and sent a bunch of spam to the Chicago people.

It's a tower, but it's as tall as the sun and it has legs that move. Yeah, because then at last proposal here, proposal for this was for a tower merely 500 feet taller than the Eiffel Tower. So now we're talking like that's a bigger, like bigger in a way that makes some sense. I'd bungee jump off that one. Yeah. Once again, he wanted to do the bungee jumping with a train car full of 200 people. Like bungee jumping, you want one person to strap to each other's backs, maybe? Why not 200, though, at the same time?

In a capsule. Right. A hard capsule. Yeah. So this fourth proposal, a tower 500 feet taller than the Eiffel Tower. So, right, you beat the Eiffel Tower. You don't try to beat all of gravity and science and everything. Right. You don't try to poke God in the eye.

Yeah, yeah. And then the thing is, they said, hey, we're not just going to be taller than the Eiffel Tower, we're going to be more American. And nothing is more American than the frontier and the log cabin. Beef. Oh, OK. I was going to say, did they make it entirely out of beef? Sort of. Like, spiritually, yes. They wanted to build the whole thing out of logs. Like, wooden log tower. Okay.

And then the top observation area would be a log cabin, like the frontier. Huh. You know. And then next to it is the booth of, like, Timothy's terrific trained termites. Oh no, they've escaped. That truly, I feel like if I go Google termite concessions 1800s, it'll be endless.

It'll be like, this was huge. Fleas later. It was all termites, baby. Yeah. You're watching me. They look so happy, you know? Yeah. So, yeah.

So these kinds of pitches were coming to the Chicago organizers. There was also a uniquely frustrating pitch from Alexandre Gustave Eiffel because he got in touch. Oh, that troll. And like he seems to have just earnestly said, hey, I heard you're looking for towers. Would you like a pitch? And what the fair organizers did is said, yes, pitch us. But then also word got out,

and all of America's architects and engineers flooded them with criticism and protest about this. They were like, you can't let the French build it. That would be terrible. We're just mad. And then also, like, they had already told Eiffel he could pitch. And when Eiffel sent a pitch in, it was just like a slightly scaled up Eiffel Tower. It was the same idea again, but just a little bit bigger.

And they were like, oh, no, well, that's not it. Then we're just repeating you and paying you. Oh, Ethel, he knew what he was doing. He knew what he was doing. It's a pretty good troll if that was the move. Yeah. You want to compete with my tower? What about my tower?

But it is bigger. Yeah. And so that's the takeaway within a takeaway. And the upshot is the organizers, especially Daniel Burnham, said, let's think beyond towers. Like, what if we built something cool that was just new,

and that can be our approach? We're not going to beat the Eiffel Tower in the tower field. We're not going to do it.iffel Tower in the tower field. We're not going to do it. A big hole. A giant hole. It goes in the opposite direction. And just a sign that says, like, China at a down arrow.

Like, you guys, that's not how it works. You know that, right? Come on. Well, don't worry. We're going to fill the bottom of the hole with down comforters so when people fall in it they're fine yeah and so they they proceed to just keep organizing the fair and panic because they're like we'll have all these booths and landscape architecture but no thing and then burnham managed to get a pitch from a member of the existing engineering team

for the fair. Because they finally whittled it down to like engineers and architects who knew how to build things. Cool. Yeah, they accidentally had a guy on hand who was kind of perfect for doing something new. It was George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. Ah, yeah. The inventor of the George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. wheel. That's right. Of course. We all know this. And he was from Illinois, but based in Pittsburgh. And he and his company were the leading steel inspectors in U.S. construction.

And so the fair got all the best people. They had already given him a contract to inspect their steel in their building. I feel safe knowing that the person who invented the Ferris wheel also felt it was important to make sure the steel was good. Yeah. Like, really looked at that steel and was like, see this steel? It's all bendy

and it's got a bunch of holes in it. Don't want that. Yeah. Like, as much of a death vibe as there is, thinking about H.H. Holmes and Columbus and stuff, the construction of the fair

did have construction worker deaths, but this wheel held together. Like, there wasn't a situation where it all fell down and all the passengers died or something like they, they had a guy who was a specialist in steel engineering safety, designed it and build it. And then that worked out. Hey, you know, for once in our history, thinking about safety when building a big thing. history thinking about safety when building a big thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he and he was like, less fixated on beating Eiffel than I think other people were that he had, but he was on the team and always heard about this idea, we have to out Eiffel Eiffel and then figure it out. Right. And initially, his pitch was bonkers in its scale. He wanted to build a pair of steel wheels taller than the crown of the

Statue of Liberty. Wow. And he wanted 36 cars. Each car could hold 60 people and a lunch counter. Amazing. What about a potty? What about a potty? Did he include potties? Not mentioned, so probably not. They were probably like, go before. Yeah, I think they had some real suburban dad leading your road trip energy. Like, everybody's got to go before we leave. I have one gas station picked out that I like, and that's where we're stopping. But yeah, and so like this, this pitch was initially rejected partly because, again, it's like too big. Apparently the initially planned axle for the wheel, like the axle it all spins on, would have been heavier than any object that had ever been lifted by human technology.

Oh, well. Because it's just a solid steel bar that's an axle. But it was too big yeah first time for everything that's basically what they ended up saying because burnham rejected the idea he called it too fragile but no better ideas came in and the organizers also held an october 1892 dedication day to like give them to like officially start on the anniversary, but give themselves more time. And they were embarrassed to have no plan on that date for the structure. They were like, we simply don't know what's going to go in this spot. Yeah, deadlines are sort of the thing that will turn a bad idea into this is the perfect idea. Let's do it right now. Let's do it right now.

Exactly. And Ferris also helped because Ferris repitched the idea and also was willing to scale it down and had like actual engineer training and thoughtfulness. And so then they approved a scaled down Ferris wheel in December 1892, less than five months before the fair was supposed to open. I mean, that's cool. to open. I mean, that's cool, but I do like the idea of two imposingly giant wheels just spinning recklessly in murder town. Right. The death vibe, he really would have foreshadowed it. Would have been like, oh no. Right. But he, and luckily Ferris was uniquely perfect for this. Since he was the leading steel inspection

company guy, he knew most of the steel company executives and he could get a humongous amount of steel right away. He had extensive experience with bridge building in Pittsburgh and with making this kind of lattice structure safe. And then he scaled down the plans so far that they got a wheel that was 264 feet tall. And at the time, that was as tall as the tallest skyscraper in Chicago. So even though they shrank it down, it was still impressive. It was as good of a view as you could get in Chicago. Yeah, that seems like plenty. That's truly what they had to finally figure out. Like, what would be plenty to, like, let's get out of

our heads about how cool the Eiffel Tower is and just think of something nice. And that was how the Ferris wheel came about. Yeah, when you let the rage about France having a cool tower kind of subside, you realize you don't have to build a wheel the size of the sun in order to have a cool thing. Right. But I get it. Like when I visited Paris for the first time this year and I had one of their croissants and it was the best croissant I'd ever had. And it did fill me with a blind rage.

And I was like, well, I'm just going to build a croissant the size of a house. You just went back and started demolishing Turin. Like, I need room for my mega croissant. I need room. They're like, no, no, no, no, I got it. One stick of butter. Like, let's just keep an even keel. But what about 2,000?

2,000 sticks of butter. But what about 2000? 2000 sticks of butter. Yeah, and they finally just figured out a sturdy, workable plan. And it really wowed people. They, in June 1893, did a first test with no carriages attached. They spent a few weeks attaching the cars for people. Just the view of it and what it looked like was so exciting that as they were finishing attaching cars, they had to hire a bunch of extra guards because fairgoers were trying to hop on before it was done. Alex, I think in the late 1800s, they were called goons.

They had to hire a bunch of extra goons. Just a big official record of big lugs um palookas yeah yeah yeah you ain't getting anywhere close to this wheel i tell you your accent's perfect you're hired get out there all three things here's a big club yeah and they and this this wheel like ferris worked around the clock on it for many months ironically also a wheel the clock oh right in the fakey movie of this he's just inspired by the clock like a spinning object but that's not true at all just everything everything. He's got a hamster wheel and he's studying it. And then the classical violin music kicks in and you know his brain is at work. Yeah.

And this just blew people's minds. It's part of why 27.5 million people attended. Apparently the ticket sales driven by the wheel prevented the financial ruin of the entire fair. Good. And Larson says that this really hooked people because it was mind-boggling from the ground, right? You're amazed it can even stand up and hold up. And then also, it gave them a new experience of riding. Like, riding was a new physical sensation to everybody. They'd never been on a thing like that before. was a new physical sensation to everybody.

They'd never been on a thing like that before. I mean, I'm looking at a picture of it and it really does dwarf the other buildings. It is very impressive to look at. And it is just, I mean, I guess like it's easy to take for granted a Ferris wheel now because most people have seen one or are at least familiar with it.

But to just have a giant wheel. I mean, imagine if, you know, we created like a giant floating sphere in a city through some kind of like huge magnet or something. That would be shocking and cool. Yeah, true. It's just a new, almost cartoon idea. Like, wow, a wheel is a building.

Right. Yeah. And so they really, because this was not a common thing, right? Like Ferris wheels, well, obviously before Ferris, it wouldn't be called that, but these like a rideable wheel like this was not, maybe like some smaller version of it existed somehow, not maybe like some smaller version of it existed somehow, but it really was not like a thing before this one. That's right. And that is a perfect segue into our next takeaways and numbers here. And before that, we are going to take a short break to rest up and take a ride, and then we'll get into the wheelie world that Mr. Ferris built.

A wheelie short break. Perfect. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR.

Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory.

The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Folks, our next fascinating thing about this topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And this week, that is in a segment called. They hear me quoting the numbers. They're listening for stats from Alex and Katie. Means and modes from Alex and Katie.

Averages from Alex and Katie. Sanko sign from Alex and Katie. Sokotoa from Alex and Katie. My impeccable beatboxing skills, which is just one thing that I can do. Yeah, folks, I asked Katie to do that two seconds ago. That was very fun. She did a good job because that name was submitted by Cleomancer on the Discord. Thank you, Cleo. We have a new name for this every week. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit your own through the Discord or to sifpot at gmail.com. Folks, there's one more takeaway mixed in here, but the rest of it is stats and numbers. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit your own through the Discord or to sifpot at gmail.com.

Folks, there's one more takeaway mixed in here, but the rest of it is stats and numbers, because the next number is 1891. So two years before the Chicago World's Fair opened, 1891. That is when inventor William Summers built a large wooden observation wheel in Atlantic City, New Jersey. I see. So there was a pre-wheel. Yeah, because the other takeaway here is takeaway number three. The guy named Ferris did not build the first observation wheel of that general type, like the very general experience of this rotating forwards wheel with people sitting in it and rising up and then rising down. That did exist. I see. So he plagiarized this guy, right? We should cancel him.

This guy took him to court and claimed that. Yeah. Wow. We actually sued him. But I'll have linked one of his patents because Summers was an inventor in New Jersey. He built a few of these small wooden observation wheels. The biggest was about 50 feet tall, so less than a fifth of the size of the wheel by Ferris. But Summers sued for copyright infringement and I couldn't find great sourcing on this, but allegedly Ferris was forced to admit that he had ridden on a Summers wheel before. But Ferris successfully, and I would say fairly argued that the Ferris wheel is just much bigger, more complex, more

advanced. Like it's such a leap beyond what Summers did that he didn't know him anything. I wish I could have seen that court case, though. It's like, and do you remember the night of December 27th when you were riding on the summer's wheel and you had a corn dog in one hand and a date in the other hand and you did remark to your date, I like being in this wheel and eating this corn dog. And the cotton candy was what flavor? It was pink.

It was the pink flavor, whatever that is. I don't know what to call it. It's just cotton candy flavor. That's fair. Yeah, I don't know. It was strawberry. I would move to strike that from the record. And then they're tasting it, like, all by the bench.

Like, approach the bench with the cotton candy. match with the cotton candy. But yeah, and also the other reason Summers didn't really have a great case was that other people did even earlier versions of this. There's just sort of weird pictures of it online. But in the 1800s and 1700s, people built something called pleasure wheels, which was a very small rig of a few seats, usually like four spokes with eight seats. And then humans just physically turned that on a big hinge. And then later people came up with a steam powered version, usually fueled by coal, which was what Summers did. And then the steam powered Ferris wheel was the big one. I feel like there must have been an intermediate version, which was a big wheel powered by a bear like the bear is the hamster.

And the bear's like, you guys have heard of horses, right? It's like, no, we need a spectacle. You're a bear. It's thrilling. The bearish wheel. But so that's like that's the origins origins of this like it really took off with steam power was really the technology that made the the fueling of spinning this kind of wheel possible i really think ferris deserves credit even though he did not invent the basic basic basic version of

this experience but he he leveled it up and he also did it under kind of the most attention anyone has ever experienced building an amusement ride. Like the entire world was watching him build this in Chicago. Yeah. That's a lot of pressure. You don't want to mess up your giant wheel project under that much pressure. The next number here involves, well, the next few numbers here involve death because pressure was involved. Oh, no. The next number is 1896. That is when George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. died. Oh, that's shortly after. The wheel goes up summer of 1893, before and after Ferris experiences humongous stress because he was hustling to build this.

He also ended up in litigation with the fair organizers over profits. Oh, boy. And then also they kept the wheel going after the fair, but the business eventually dried up. And then also Ferris and his wife separated. And then when he was living alone in a hotel in Pittsburgh, he contracted typhoid fever and died in his 30s. Oh, that's so sad. Yeah. So he got to see the wheel succeed in Chicago, but then he didn't get to see it continue to be a thing to this day. You know, that was kind of it. But the wheel took everything from him. Yeah, it was a tough break there. Yeah. And a lot of people involved in this fair died.

Like it's kind of not just the H.H. Holmes part. The mayor of Chicago was assassinated while the fair was winding down. There were a lot of construction worker deaths. Burnham's architecture partner died of natural causes. It's sort of a... Natural, you say? Yeah, it was Holmes. No, it was not. But this fair and really the whole late 1800s, it has kind of an unsafe vibe to it. And that's part of its complicated legacy. When I think about deaths at a fair, it's like, ah, the Ferris wheel, it fell over or it rolled over everyone or a hot dog cart got on the loose. But now it seems like, I mean, it sounds like there were construction deaths, but also just like somewhat unrelated murders and then also people getting stressed out to death. Exactly. Yeah, it was all that combo. And so this brought a lot of people joy and fundamentally changed American culture going forward. But also there was this thing going on behind the scenes. And, you know, big world events today still often have that vibe, especially the most recent men's soccer World Cup in Qatar, where so many construction workers died. Like it's sort of part and parcel of these big events. so many construction workers died. It's sort of part and parcel of these big events.

Yeah, that's a bit of a problem. Gotta unionize big wheel. Truly, that would fix a lot of it. The cutter workers especially kind of had no rights. And the workers on the Chicago Fair did not have a great time. Yes. And as far as the business of the wheel, the next number is 1904. So, you know, about a decade later, 1904, that is the year of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, a New World's Fair in St. Louis. And the organizers of that fair acquired and relocated the Ferris wheel. They just put it back up. Huh. I imagine they just rolled it on over to Missouri.

And dad's in the front like, we're not stopping. All right. Everybody use the bathroom in Chicago. I don't like the BP in Clinton, Illinois. It's okay. We stopped there a lot when we're taking Alex to band trips. Now we're talking about me going to summer band camp. But anyway, the point is. Dads don't understand the diuretic power of a full bottle of Sprite. There, I said it. The perfect road trip drink when you're a kid. Exactly. We're both on the same page.

Good. But they, yeah, the Ferris wheel, they had kept it going in Chicago for a while and they tried it on the north side of Chicago after the fair. The fair was more on the south side. But eventually the business dried up. People were like, I've seen Chicago this way now. Like the novelty has worn off. But, you know, Ferris sold it, passed away, but then new ownership relocated it. And it turns out it was a hit at the St. Louis Fair for a while.

People were like, oh, look at this. Fun. and it turns out it was a hit at the St. Louis Fair for a while. People were like, oh, look at this, fun. But by 1906, it wasn't a hit, and a wrecking crew dynamited the wheel. And so that's the final end of the Ferris wheel, the original wheel. Didn't just roll it off a cliff or something. Oh, filming Louise stuff? Yeah, no. Yeah, that would have been, I feel like that would have been a cooler end. Although I guess dynamite is fun too when destroying a big wheel. Yeah, because then like the other, other thing going on that to this day, local residents of Forest Park, Missouri near St. Louis, which is near Southern Illinois too, but they are using tools like metal detectors to look for Ferris wheel scrap.

They are using tools like metal detectors to look for Ferris wheel scrap. They want to find pieces of the old wheel because it wasn't totally disposed of successfully after it was dynamited. Like some of it was just kind of left wrecked. Huh. And what are they going to do, like put it back together? You know, I think it's more of an artifact thing, but the big white whale of this search is the axle. Because that's a huge, completely solid steel bar. And there's a guy who claims he found it underneath a local road because he can find a 45-foot long shaped thing underneath the road.

Wait. Okay, so he claimed that. Did he dig up the road or he's just, what? They won't let him dig up the road. It's a city road. So there's just a- So then how does he know it's down there? He's using like a metal detector?

Yeah, he says his metal detector tells him to stand there. Yeah, and he might be right. Like, I don't know either way, yeah. Right, but they're not going to let him dig up the road. Yeah, because they're like, you don't need to pull up the huge heavy axle of the Ferris wheel. You don't need that, which is fair. Oh, I think he needs that.

I think we all need that. Yeah, like it's the metal of this unique wheel is sort of an artifact. It's just going on. Yeah, you know, I feel like future people are going to dig up this axle like 100,000 years from now, if we last that long. And they'll probably come up with some fun idea. Like, this must have been used as a ritualistic bonking tool to punish. Right.

This was how they disciplined bears. It's like, keep turning bear. Man, I was really raised on Looney Tunes, huh? That's a thing. Animals developing immediate lumps when they're hit in the head. That's a... Oh yeah. Yeah. The lump and then the birds around the lump. Well, and then there's one final number here for the main show. And this brings us into other modern wheels. And if people hear the bonus, it's all about modern wheels. But the number is the year 2003. And 2003 is when an observation wheel in Birmingham, England, accidentally gave its riders a tour of Paris.

Oh. Once again, Paris is a jerk that everyone is jealous of. accidentally gave its riders a tour of Paris. Oh, what? Once again, Paris is a jerk that everyone is jealous of. But what happened is, you know, people know that carnivals will sort of set up and take down wheels all over the place. We just talked about the original wheel getting relocated, reset up. They're flexible that way. And The Guardian covered this. Writer Stuart Jeffries says that Birmingham hired out a company called World Tourist Attractions to put up a tall Ferris wheel at the center of Birmingham, which is the second biggest city in England. Very significant thing. The company built that, but it was not a new wheel.

It was a relocated, repurposed wheel that they'd previously built in Place de la Concorde in Paris. And unfortunately, they had not altered the cabin speaker systems or the like taped French language guide to the sites of Paris. OK, so it's not that the wheel got loose and then went like across the water and into Paris. It's okay. All right. Okay. Yeah.

Like, although that's fun, it's like trying to go home, but no, it just, people in Birmingham were like, we finally have a wheel. Let's go on the Birmingham wheel. And then as they rode, a French narrator told them about like, now you can see the Eiffel Tower and now you can see Notre Dame and now you can see the Arc de Triomphe. That was the guide. France. And a Birmingham council spokesman told the press, quote,

it's disappointing as there are so many great things to say about our city. So France is still making everybody jealous. Poor Birmingham. Poor Birmingham. They don't, you know, they've probably got cool things like. Yeah. I learned I've never been there. I learned from the article that it is nicknamed the Venice of the North because it has a lot of canals.

And that sounds nice. OK, yes. The famous Birmingham canals. That's what I was reaching for. You can see them from the wheel, and it'll tell you about France. Hey, folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the first famous Ferris wheel got designed and built by a guy named Ferris in order to help America defeat

the Eiffel Tower. Takeaway number two, the Eiffel Tower drove 1890s Americans to such intense jealousy they went out of their minds. And takeaway number three, the guy named Ferris did not build the first observation wheel of that general type. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members, get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the London Eye and how that sparked a 21st century boom in luxurious and strange observation wheels. Visit SIFPod.fun

for that bonus show, for a library of more than 11 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of Maximum Fun bonus shows. It is special audio just for members. Thank you for being somebody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun thing, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include the book The Devil in the White City by writer Eric Larson, digital resources from the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, Missouri, and a piece for Smithsonian by University of South Carolina historian Grant Wong. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this on the

traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Katie taped this in the country of Italy. Also, the original Ferris wheel was located on the traditional land of the Kaskaskia, Miami, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, and Peoria peoples. Because in my location and the Ferris wheel's old location and many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. Also, you can join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. And hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Well, here's something randomly incredibly fascinating. I ran all our past episodes through a random number generator.

Randomly incredibly fascinating. I ran all our past episodes through a random number generator. This week's tip is episode 87. Episode 87 is about the color orange. Turns out we got that word orange for the color from a Dutch revolution and from a French village with a totally coincidental connection. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animal science and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode.

Extra, extra special thanks go to our members, and thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.