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Ugly Duckling · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
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  Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
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  Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. As the old saying goes, history is written
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  Speaker 1: by the winners, and the history of aviation was predominantly
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  Speaker 1: written by Orville and Wilbur Wright, who changed the world
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  Speaker 1: on December seventeenth, nineteen o three with their first successful
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  Speaker 1: powered flight at Kittie Hawk, and not just powered, but
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  Speaker 1: power controlled. Following the record setting event, the Right brothers
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  Speaker 1: got to work building an entire industry around the concept
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  Speaker 1: of putting man in the sky, and one way they
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  Speaker 1: did that was through the use of patents. For example,
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  Speaker 1: the Rights were issued a patent in nineteen o six
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  Speaker 1: for their unique method of steering and aircraft called lateral control.
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  Speaker 1: Lateral control was a way of maneuvering an airplane by
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  Speaker 1: tipping one wing down and raising the opposite wing to
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  Speaker 1: turn the aircraft in a different direction. The Rights achieved
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  Speaker 1: this by using something called wing warping. By twisting the
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  Speaker 1: wing a little, they could get the plane to bank
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  Speaker 1: while also countering opposing wind gusts. Hearing it described in
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  Speaker 1: words makes it sound like a technological marvel that nobody
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  Speaker 1: had ever thought of before. But there really was no
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  Speaker 1: other way to get an aircraft to turn back. Then,
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  Speaker 1: to those in the industry who understood the mechanics of
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  Speaker 1: it all, it was a fairly obvious feature. At least
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  Speaker 1: that's what Glenn Curtis thought. Curtis had made his name
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  Speaker 1: in bicycles and motorcycles, racing them, building them, and setting
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  Speaker 1: world records with them, and he pivoted to the aviation
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  Speaker 1: industry one year after the Wright Brothers made their historic event.
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  Speaker 1: His prowess with engine architecture made him quite popular with
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  Speaker 1: other aviators entering the business. Even Alexander Graham Bell asked
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  Speaker 1: him for help with his own flight experiments later on.
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  Speaker 1: But Curtis had a problem with the Wright Brothers lateral
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  Speaker 1: control patent, namely that it required anyone building an aircraft
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  Speaker 1: to pay a royalty for its use. Since there was
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  Speaker 1: no way to build a plane without the lateral control
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  Speaker 1: system outlined in the patent, the rights essentially had a
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  Speaker 1: monopoly on the entire airplane manufacturing industry, so Curtis found
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  Speaker 1: a different way to turn his aircraft. He used ailerons.
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  Speaker 1: Ailerons were hinged flaps on the edges of the wings
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  Speaker 1: that could tilt up or down to change the plane's
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  Speaker 1: direction during flight. Almost all planes, from small fighter jets
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  Speaker 1: to massive seven forty seven's used them today. Unfortunately, despite
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  Speaker 1: his ingenuity, the Rights still sued him for infringement, kicking
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  Speaker 1: off a year's long patent war between the two parties.
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  Speaker 1: To fight the siblings, Curtis had to find another way
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  Speaker 1: to prove that dateral control predated the Rights patent, thus
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  Speaker 1: rendering its invalid. To do that, he went back in time, well,
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  Speaker 1: not literally silly, He simply did his research and discovered
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  Speaker 1: an aircraft by a French designer named Alexandra Goupil, who
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  Speaker 1: used lateral control before the Rights were even eighteen. Goupil
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  Speaker 1: had made significant strides and aircraft designs in the late
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  Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, having developed a unique monoplane that looked like
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  Speaker 1: a cross between a da Vinci or an athopter and
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  Speaker 1: a bird, hence its name, the Duck. It was meant
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  Speaker 1: to have been powered by Goupil's equally impressive steam engine,
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  Speaker 1: but the engine weighed a thousand pounds and was obviously
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  Speaker 1: too heavy to install. He did build an unpowered version
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  Speaker 1: that flew a few times and even managed to lift
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  Speaker 1: two pilots along with it. What set the duck apart
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  Speaker 1: from other aircraft was its bird like design, with a
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  Speaker 1: single wing boat upward on each side as though being
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  Speaker 1: pushed from underneath. Its tail was oriented horizontally, and the
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  Speaker 1: bulbous fuselage rested on skids as well as wheels. It
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  Speaker 1: flew with the help of a single tractor propeller. Not
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  Speaker 1: only had Curtis realized Goupil's original dream, he'd also called
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  Speaker 1: it an airplane, one of the first official uses of
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  Speaker 1: the term to describe such a vehicle. The Curtis Goupil
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  Speaker 1: Duck had its maiden flight on January nineteenth of nineteen seventeen,
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  Speaker 1: just over thirty years after Goupil's original glider. Curtis flew
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  Speaker 1: it in a straight line before completing a circle with it,
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  Speaker 1: demonstrating the lateral control concept that should have never been
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  Speaker 1: patented in the first place. Sadly, though it wasn't enough,
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  Speaker 1: Curtis didn't win the case although he didn't lose it either.
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  Speaker 1: As it turned out, airplanes were becoming increasingly necessary during
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  Speaker 1: World War One, and those pesky patents were making production
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  Speaker 1: prohibitively pricey. To combat corporate greed, the United States government
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  Speaker 1: created a patent pool and required all aeronautic companies to participate.
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  Speaker 1: The patents were lumped together under one program, and everyone
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  Speaker 1: was charged a nominal fee to use them. Eventually, the
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  Speaker 1: war ended, or should I say wars, because after the
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  Speaker 1: close of World War One, the aviation patent war also
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  Speaker 1: fizzled out. The Right Brothers wound up releasing the lateral
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  Speaker 1: control patent anyway, making Curtis's duck plane pointless. But Glenn
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  Speaker 1: Curtis was right about one thing. The Right Brothers were greedy.
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  Speaker 1: Their lawsuits in the face of impending war earned them
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  Speaker 1: some bad press for a while. Curtis had seen them
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  Speaker 1: for who they really were from the very beginning. After all,
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  Speaker 1: if it walks like a duck and it quacks like
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  Speaker 1: a duck, well, at the very least, it's something curious.
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  Speaker 1: It can be a blessing or a curse to be
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  Speaker 1: defined by one thing. Actors can get pigeon holed into
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  Speaker 1: certain types of roles for their entire careers. Average people
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  Speaker 1: can suddenly find themselves the subject of viral videos that
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  Speaker 1: will haunt them forever, and on a smaller scale, the
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  Speaker 1: gadget whiz in the family will forever be everyone's tech
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  Speaker 1: support for as long as they live, but at least
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  Speaker 1: they won't be Stein used to be, who these days,
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  Speaker 1: is remembered for one unfortunate incident. He used to be
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  Speaker 1: had endured a terrible upbringing. You see, his father had
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  Speaker 1: been abusive and had been arrested numerous times over the years.
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  Speaker 1: He'd even gone to prison for a variety of violent crimes,
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  Speaker 1: including one occurrence where he'd held a taxi driver at gunpoint.
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  Speaker 1: As a result of that rough childhood, Stein had developed
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  Speaker 1: a dependency on alcohol and underwent to stay in an institution.
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  Speaker 1: He was eventually released and allowed to attend high school
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  Speaker 1: to obtain his degree. Sadly, despite staying clean for two years,
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  Speaker 1: Stein found his way back to the bottle, which took
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  Speaker 1: him down a darker path than even he had probably expected.
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  Speaker 1: On June twenty i Ve, the day after his graduation,
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  Speaker 1: Stein put on a nice suit and a pair of
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  Speaker 1: sunglasses and boarded flight one thirty nine from Tronheim, Norway,
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  Speaker 1: to the capital city of Oslo. It was supposed to
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  Speaker 1: be a short trip. He sat toward the back of
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  Speaker 1: the plane and waited for the other one fifteen passengers
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  Speaker 1: to buckle in. Little did they know that they were
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  Speaker 1: about to go for a bumpy ride. Once the plane
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  Speaker 1: was airborne, Stein reached into his luggage and pulled out
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  Speaker 1: a small pistol, which he pointed at a flight attendant
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  Speaker 1: and instructed her to inform the pilot that he was
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  Speaker 1: taking over the plane. They were to land as scheduled,
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  Speaker 1: at which point he would give the authorities his demands.
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  Speaker 1: Flight one thirty nine landed fifteen minutes passed its original
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  Speaker 1: e t A, but by the time it touchdown police
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  Speaker 1: had already arrived on the scene. They surrounded the plane
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  Speaker 1: and had all other flights en route directed to another
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  Speaker 1: nearby airports. No other passengers knew what was going on
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  Speaker 1: until after they had landed. Stein had apparently been quiet
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  Speaker 1: and calm the entire time. Now that the police were
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  Speaker 1: just outside, though the time for decorum had come to
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  Speaker 1: an end, he announced that there were explosives in the bathrooms.
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  Speaker 1: To keep everyone in their seats and assured them that
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  Speaker 1: no one was going to get hurt as long as
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  Speaker 1: they all stayed put. Then as for his demands, well,
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  Speaker 1: apparently Stein had a bone to pick with the Norwegian authorities.
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  Speaker 1: He claimed that he had been mistreated after being released
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  Speaker 1: from prison, and he wanted to speak to the Prime
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  Speaker 1: Minister and Justice Minister about his financial security now that
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  Speaker 1: he was out. Neither party, however, agreed to talk to him.
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  Speaker 1: After a few hours of discussions, he released the one
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  Speaker 1: fifteen other passengers, but the pilot and crew were forced
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  Speaker 1: to stay behind. Stein perched himself in one of the
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  Speaker 1: bathrooms and kept an eye on the flight crew as
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  Speaker 1: he made a more reasonable request bring me beer. Despite
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  Speaker 1: most likely being inebriated when he first boarded, he wanted
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  Speaker 1: to keep things going and drained the flight of its
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  Speaker 1: entire stock of liquid gold. When that ran out, the
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  Speaker 1: police brought in more, and Stein kept on drinking. So
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  Speaker 1: it was about an hour later when one of the
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  Speaker 1: officers decided to try his luck. The hijacker had run
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  Speaker 1: out of beer again and had demanded a refill, so
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  Speaker 1: the officer refused to comply until Stein handed over his gun,
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  Speaker 1: which he did. He thought he was making a trade
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  Speaker 1: when in reality, he had just given over his only
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  Speaker 1: bargaining chip, and it hadn't even been a real gun
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  Speaker 1: at all. It was just an air pistol, a toy
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  Speaker 1: that he had purchased while in Trondheim. It's a funny
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  Speaker 1: story on the surface, a hijacker who gave up his
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  Speaker 1: only weapon for some beer. But look deeper and there's
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  Speaker 1: a real tragedy there. He needed help, and he thought
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  Speaker 1: the only way that he could get it was by
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  Speaker 1: commandeering a plane and speaking to the leader of his country.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps the real crime was in how the system had
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  Speaker 1: failed him. Well, that's and hijacking, obviously. I hope you've
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
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  Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
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  Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
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  Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
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  Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
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  Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah h