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Star Struck · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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