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This is you, in a plane, in 1922.
You’re probably wondering, “what am I doing in a boat with a lawnmower strapped
on the front,” and, “why if I look at Google Maps in 96 years can I find giant arrows
in places like Shelbyville, Indiana or Potter, Nebraska, or Bunkerville, Nevada.”
It’s the 1920’s.
These “aeroplanes” were just about as safe as eating gas-station sushi but it wasn’t
the racking up medical debt in the hospital for tapeworms kind of unsafe, it was the going
off course, running out of fuel, crash landing, and fighting grizzly bears kind of unsafe.
As tasty as bear meat is, the world was trying to turn itself into a less die-y place which
required fewer pilots getting lost.
Once planes had existed long enough for people to notice that pilots regularly stopped existing
when flying at night, the general consensus shifted to that it probably wasn’t a good
idea to fly at night.
People were happy with that decision but then they weren’t because of airmail.
Here’s a fun fact—on the very first manned ballon flight in the US in 1793 the pilot
carried a letter from George Washington to the owner of whichever property the ballon
happened to land on which made this, the first flight in the US, the first Airmail delivery
in the US.
I just thought you should know that.
I think you should also know that juice has just as much sugar in it as soda.
So, how you make airmail is you take mail and put it on planes and planes go fast while
trains go slow so airmail is fast and people like fast so people liked airmail.
Soon after its introduction, demand took off…
like a… airpla.
How airmail worked in its infancy was essentially that a plane would take off in the morning,
fly as fast as possible as far as possible, then when it got dark, the plane would land,
a train would take the mail as far as possible during the night, then in the morning it would
be loaded up onto a plane again.
Using this system, a letter could get from New York to San Francisco in 79 hours, but
that wasn’t good enough.
After all, the regular train route across the country took only 108 hours and so the
president, Warren G. Harding, threatened to cut the program’s funding.
So airmail needed to get faster which meant planes had to fly at night which required
fewer dead pilots.
The average airmail pilot died after just 900 hours flying largely because of the lack
of good navigational equipment so they needed to find a way to find their way.
First, they considered GPS but then they came to realize that satellites would’t exist
for another 40 years.
You would think they could use maps but aviation maps didn’t exist since, like, two people
flied and the terrible maps they had were even more terrible at night when pilots couldn’t
see anything.
Two-way portable radio also weren’t a thing yet so they came to the more practical conclusion,
building thousands of giant arrows stretched all across the country just pointing the way.
Now, this sounds like a exaggeration but no, they really did build thousands of giant arrows
stretched all across the country just pointing the way.
Along with the arrows were 50-foot lighted towers that could be seen from afar.
These structures were built an average of 10-15 miles apart and then every second or
third tower would have an emergency landing site right next to it.
The government built these all the way from New York to San Francisco which turned airmail
into a 24 hour operation where pilots would, at night, just follow the lights.
Crazily enough, flying more hours per day led to faster delivery times so what was previously
a 79 hour, very deadly trip from New York to San Francisco now became a 35 hour, slightly
less deadly jaunt across the country.
It also cut down on cost.
Sending a letter in those 35 hours across the country then only cost the equivalent
of $3.50.
What a deal, but you know what’s also a good deal…
wait it’s not time yet but here’s a question—is this an airmail pilot or a Japanese teenager
waiting outside the Supreme store in his latest streetwear outfit?
Genuine question.
This whole lighted giant arrow system was so successful that government officials started
to think about building a version across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans using floating
barges.
Eventually though, technologies like radar and GPS made these beacons obsolete and many
were removed during World War Two to prevent enemy bombers from using them to navigate
the US, but all across the country these concrete arrows remain.
In history they pointed east towards safety, towards the destination, but today, the few
crumbled remains of these arrows serve as a reminder pointing away from where no man
or woman should ever step foot—California.
If you want to anger 39.5 million people don’t do it by insulting their state, do it by outsmarting
them.
Let me spell it out for you simply—it starts with an “i” and ends with a “t” and
you know how you know how to spell.
You don’t have the exact combination of letters for every word memorized in your head.
You know how to spell because you intuitively know which letters correspond to which sounds.
Brilliant takes that same concept of intuitive knowledge and applies it to other concept
like physics, number theory, astronomy, and more.
Instead of learning things, you learn how to learn things which leads to learning things
better.
The best part is you can try out Brilliant courses for free and then upgrade to premium
for 20% off only by being one of the first 424 people to sign up at Brilliant.org/HAI.