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- Taylor Bailey: Before GPS or anything,
how are people figuring out
where they're going when they're flying these planes?
- Ami Eckard-Lee: That is a great question.
[upbeat music]
[triumphant music]
[cloud poofs] [Sergio coughs]
- Sergio González: Hey, Taylor, what are you doing?
- Hey, Sergio, I'm just writing a little story.
- Ooh, what's it about?
- It's about this airplane pilot in the 1920s.
She's flying around the country, doing all sorts
of cool things during the early days of aviation history.
- Oh, cool, you should make her an airmail pilot.
Did you know there was an airmail route
that went through Wisconsin in the 1920s?
- What are you doing here?
- Ah, Taylor, I'm a huge aviation nerd.
I had to come along for a ride.
Yeah, but one quick question.
How did pilots find their way in the sky in the 1920s?
- I guess we can see the ground,
and we can look out for landmarks and things?
- But Taylor, what if we can't see the ground?
What if there's lots of clouds or it's nighttime?
I think that's an aviation museum.
Do you think we should stop by and ask for some help?
- We could try.
Let's go! - All right; aye, aye, Captain!
- What are you, a pirate?
This is a plane, not a boat.
[airplane motor running]
- Ami: Hey! - Oh, hi there.
- Welcome.
This is the Kelch Aviation Museum.
Our museum here in Brodhead, Wisconsin
focuses 100% on airplanes from between 1918 and 1940.
This was a time when civil aviation,
so aircraft built by companies and people,
was just as advanced in technology as the military.
So we call that the Golden Age of Aviation.
And the classic airplane is a biplane.
- Wisconsin has its own important connection
to this period.
Wisconsin native William "Billy" Mitchell
was a big supporter of a separate aviation department
for the U.S. Armed Forces.
He started advocating for this as early as 1919.
Unfortunately, he faced a lot of pushback.
Most people couldn't see the potential in aviation.
But eventually, time proved Mitchell was right.
And today, Milwaukee's Mitchell Airport
is named after him in honor of his contributions
to the country's military aviation history.
So what is this plane that we're standing in front of here?
- This is our Butler Blackhawk from 1929.
Fun fact about this one, there were only ever 11
of this aircraft built.
Something that happened in the '20s
was aviation got really popular in the United States.
So a lot of companies that were building cars or buildings
and had manufacturing capabilities decided
to start building airplanes because it was popular,
and they thought they could make a lot of money
by selling airplanes.
But then in 1929, we entered the Great Depression,
and suddenly nobody could afford an enormous,
expensive airplane like this.
So a lot of those companies went out of business.
And this is one of those aircraft companies
that had a little peak and then went out of business.
- The years between World War I and II, about 1918 to 1939,
are considered the Golden Era of Aviation.
In a relatively short span of time,
planes went from wood and fabric biplanes to metal monoplanes
used for a variety of purposes, including delivering the mail.
- But many of the big innovations in aviation history
didn't happen in the sky.
They happened on the ground.
A huge effort was made
to guarantee pilots had things like emergency landing strips
and navigation aids to help them on their routes.
- All of this is even more impressive when you consider
that many of these developments were taking place
in the late 1920s and early 1930s,
right during the major economic downturn
known as the Great Depression.
- If this was built in 1929 before GPS
or anything, how are people figuring out
where they're going when they're flying these planes?
- That is a great question.
So in the '20s, yes, we didn't have GPS.
We just had two ways of navigating,
and those are called pilotage and dead reckoning.
Pilotage, you can think of it as the skills a pilot
would have, and it literally is just
as you fly, visual reference to the ground.
So a river, a forest, a city.
That doesn't always work really well
because the ground from above can be kind of confusing.
And back then in the '20s, there weren't as many cities,
there weren't really highways the way we know them now.
So you combine that with dead reckoning,
which is looking at your compass and knowing where north is,
and knowing where you wanna go in relation to that,
and then flying that compass heading.
By the mid '20s, about 1924,
we started wanting to fly mail at night.
So somebody had the brilliant idea
of making this massive dot to dot system across the country,
where we wanted to fly on those routes.
And then every 10 or 20 miles,
they put up a beacon tower with a light on it.
If you'd like to see that, I'd love to show you
what it looks like in real life.
- Oh, yeah, yeah, let's go see it.
- Okay, that way. - Okay.
- This is the beacon tower that would consist
of the beacon tower and also a cement arrow in the ground.
And then also, this little maintenance shack.
- So you said there were lights up there.
What exactly would that look like
with pilots in the air?
- Back then, there were several different kinds
of beacon light signal.
So yes, they would have that rotating beacon
so that you would see that flash and know, there's the beacon.
But they would also have these directional lights
that were pointed more narrowly on the course.
Then you would know you were going right towards the beacon.
And then also, we used colors.
So we used red and green.
If it was a red light,
that beacon tower area didn't have a landing strip.
And then if it was green, yes it did.
That didn't mean you were always gonna land there,
but it was an option.
And it's good to know that ahead of time when you're flying.
- Ooh, beacon spotted, and I can even see an arrow on the ground.
- Oh, and look, it's blinking green.
That means there's an emergency strip if we need to land.
Uh, Taylor, I'm having trouble seeing the next beacon.
- How are we supposed to fly in bad weather like this?
- Yeah, I think we should go back to the Kelch Museum
and ask Ami for some more help.
[television static]
- Oh, you're back.
- Ami, we got a few more questions, sorry.
How would you fly if there was bad weather
or you couldn't see where you were going?
- Well, that's where the next piece of technology comes in,
and that is our first radio navigation system,
and it's audio.
Unlike radios today in an airplane
where you would actually talk to someone
and say, "Here's where I am," and they'd talk back to you,
this is just one-way.
You just tune your radio
in your airplane into it and hear the sounds.
The sounds are coming from a transmitter station,
and there are many transmitter stations on this map,
and they're broadcasting just two sounds.
And those two sounds are Morse code.
- Morse code is a communication system that was developed
during the mid 1800s.
It uses a system of dots and dashes,
technically called dits and dahs,
to represent letters and numerals.
And you can send these signals in a bunch of different ways:
electronic currents, radio waves,
visible light, or sound waves.
This means you can use different senses
like hearing or seeing to receive messages.
Pretty cool.
- This transmitter is broadcasting two sounds
in four sections.
One of those is going to be the letter N in Morse code,
and one of those is the letter A.
The N is a dash and then a dot. [boop bip]
And then the A is the exact opposite.
So it's a dot and then a dash. [bip boop]
So the idea behind the transmitter
and this radio navigation system
is if you're flying in this area,
this field where the N is being broadcast,
you're gonna hear that.
You know you're in this big, wide area.
And if you're flying in one of the A sections,
you're gonna hear the A.
But if you're flying where they overlap,
you're gonna hear one constant sound.
[extended boop]
And that area of overlap is called the beam.
And that is the track on which we would be flying
to get where we want to go.
- These radio beacons had a range of 100 miles
and were spaced 200 miles apart.
By mid 1933,
there were 90 stations covering roughly 18,000 miles
from coast to coast.
- Taylor, we've learned a whole bunch.
I think it's time for us to have some fun.
We gotta get up there. - Let's go!
[group chatting]
- Kacie Lucchini Butcher: There's no way
I was going to let an episode
that mentions the U.S. Postal Service go by
without making an appearance.
I'm their biggest fan.
The U.S. Postal Service played a huge role
in aviation development and technology.
In 1918, they began the first regular airmail service
with a route that stretched from Washington, D.C. to New York,
with a midpoint at Philadelphia.
In those early years of the late 1910s
and early 1920s, flying at night
or in bad weather wasn't really safe or practical.
All that changed with the introduction
of things like light beacons,
as well as regular routes with landing fields.
With these new developments,
flying the mail became way faster than using trains.
By the mid 1920s,
a pilot flying the mail could go from coast to coast
in about 33 hours.
The same trip required over three days by rail.
Soon, there were additional airmail branches
off the main route, including one from Chicago to St. Paul
that passed through several points in Wisconsin.
- Whoa, Taylor, how was that for you?
Flying up in the air?
- It was amazing.
- So do you think you have enough now
to go back and write that story? - I'm ready.
I'm gonna go back and finish the story.
Maybe I'll write you in, maybe not.
Developments in airplanes and navigation aids
helped bring about the Golden Era of Aviation
during the years between the World Wars.
Lighted airway beacons, four-course radio ranges,
and radio communications revolutionized aviation
by the late 1920s and early 1930s.
It's a reminder of how different technologies
can work together to make big changes.
How do you find your way
when you're traveling from place to place?
Try sharing directions in different ways with your friends
and classmates for simple routes.
Think about drawing a map, writing a list of steps,
or giving directions based on the texture of the ground
or different sounds along the way.
You'll be thinking just like the pilots
and engineers of the Golden Era of Aviation.
- We're doing great.
Full steam ahead.
[both laughing] On our boat.
- Producer: How was it? - Good!
It was so much fun!
Oh, my God, felt on top of the world.
[group laughing]
[Sergio whistling] - Nick Hoffman: Hey, Sergio!
- Sergio González: Oh, hey, Nick!
You ready for our camping trip to Devil's Lake?
- Oh, you betcha.
I'm all packed and ready to go.
- Oh, just go get your stuff then.
- All right.
Got this all set and ready to go.
- Uh, Nick, that's an awfully big trunk.
Don't you think a backpack would be better for our trip?
- A backpack? No, this is my camping trunk.
I've got everything I need in here.
- What do you got?
- You know, the key supplies for any camping trip.
I've got my toaster, all right.
Some great comic books; that's critical.
My laptop, just in case we need it.
- Listen, Nick, I think you might not be ready
for a big camping trip to Devil's Lake.
How about we stay a little more local?
We can go to the Wisconsin Historical Society
and we can learn a little bit about the history
of camping in state parks here in our state.
- All right, that's always a great place to go.
I love to learn.
Can I still bring my comic books?
- I guess.
- All right, they're gonna come in handy.
[upbeat music]
[static hissing]
So, Sergio, what is this?
- Well, Nick, it's a trunk, a little bit like yours,
but this one is from an agency
called the Civilian Conservation Corps,
which is an agency that existed
all across the United States in the 1930s.
The Civilian Conservation Corps, known as the CCC,
was one of several programs started
by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal.
The New Deal included programs and laws
to address the major economic crisis of the time:
The Great Depression.
The Great Depression began in 1929,
and by 1933, many people in the U.S.
were facing serious difficulties.
Unemployment was super high, around 25%,
and people were struggling to cover basic needs
like food and housing.
And basically, people needed something to do
to be able to provide for their families.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected into office
with promises of helping to put people back to work.
One of the ways he did that
was to create a bunch of federal agencies.
They were called the alphabet agencies.
- Hold on, why the name "alphabet agencies?"
Well, there were a lot of U.S. federal government agencies
created during Roosevelt's presidency
as part of his New Deal.
This meant a lot of new acronyms to refer to these agencies.
An acronym is usually just a short word
made up of letters from other words.
So, the Civilian Conservation Corps' name
was often shortened to the acronym CCC.
Other well-known agencies from this period
included the WPA, Works Progress Administration,
and the PWA, or Public Works Administration.
With so many letters floating around
to refer to these agencies, they were sometimes
called the alphabet agencies or alphabet soup.
So Sergio, what was life like
for people who worked in the CCC?
- Well, in many ways, the CCC tried to replicate
kind of what army life would be like.
So if you were an enrollee,
first, you'd be sent off to basic training
to kind of learn the ins and outs
of what it would be like to live in a camp.
And then you'd be shipped out to your specific designation,
the camp you'd be working at.
You'd be living in a barracks with a bunch of other guys,
and you'd wake up really early in the morning,
have breakfast together in the mess hall,
and then you'd be sent off to do work,
basically all day, sunup to sundown,
to do this work out in the great outdoors.
You'd come back at the end of the day,
spend time together at the camp, have dinner,
and then lights out,
get ready to do it again the next day.
- About how many Wisconsinites were enlisted?
- Well, you know, there were about 3 million Americans
that served in the CCC all across the United States.
Here in Wisconsin, about 92,000 men
worked in different spaces
doing the work that we've talked about,
whether it was in logging,
whether it was in fire prevention,
whether it was in drought prevention.
Programs like the CCC were ways the federal government
stepped in to help citizens get through this tough time.
Thousands of people were put to work
thanks to these programs.
And not only did they help many people
get through the Great Depression, but work by the CCC
also helped conserve the country's natural resources.
The CCC fought fires,
built dams and structures to prevent soil erosion,
planted billions of trees.
Yes, billions with a B, and more.
- So, what was this trunk for?
- Yeah, well, Nick, you may have filled your trunk
with comic books and different things
you wanna take for fun,
but these trunks were really important
to save everything that a young man might need
when they were living out in a camp.
So, you might of course
pack your extra uniforms inside in here.
You might have books that you would need to read
during your off time.
This is where you'd keep the letters
that you would have back from home.
So, these were really important trunks
to hold everything that you might have.
- Do we know who used this trunk?
- Well, let's take a look at it, Nick.
We get some clues here.
So stenciled across the top is the owner of this trunk.
His name was Werner F. Brunner.
He was a young man from Monticello, Wisconsin.
He was sent out to do work in La Crosse County.
And if we look here at the trunk,
you can actually see the work he was doing.
He was involved in drought relief.
- Nick: Wow. - So, he was making sure
there's enough water for the entire county
during the Great Depression. - That's great, very cool.
Where would we see some of this work today?
- We have examples of it all across the state of Wisconsin,
like Devil's Lake State Park.
So, you can still visit them today and kind of see
all of the work that the CCC men were involved in.
- Nick: Very cool.
I know Chequamegon National Forest
is also a place where they did a lot of work.
- Sergio: Another great example.
The CCC was pretty amazing for its day,
and it did an enormous amount of conservation work.
Planting trees, fighting fires,
building park facilities, and more.
But remember, the CCC wasn't open to anyone.
It was very much a product of its time.
And as this poster shows,
it was only open to young, unmarried men.
In those days, they were expected to be the breadwinners.
That is, the people who earned money for their family.
To reinforce this, most of their monthly pay
had to be sent home to their families.
So, if the total pay was about $30 a month,
$25 of that was sent directly back
to dependents or family members.
- And while Wisconsin and other states
had racially-integrated camps,
many camps in the South had separate Black and white camps.
The South was still highly segregated,
and the CCC in those areas reflected that practice.
All this is to say there are a lot of sides to the CCC.
Being a good historian means trying to learn
about these things and understand them.
So, this is all really neat stuff.
Do you have anything else that you can show us?
- Oh, Nick, we've got so much more.
Do you wanna go check it out? - Yeah, absolutely.
- All right, let's go. - All right.
- Well, here we are, Nick,
in the Wisconsin Historical Society.
What do you think? - Yeah, it's great.
They pulled some really great collections for us to look at,
and we'll see what we can learn.
- Yeah, so we've got some awesome primary sources
that can help us understand the CCC, right?
These are some documents from the past
that gives us a window
into what life was like in these camps.
So tell me a little bit, what do you see here?
- All right, well, we've got some really cool pamphlets.
This one right here looks like it has some instructions.
You know, this is great.
I mean, there's illustrations about safety things,
like how to carry a saw, using the shovel, felling a tree.
I mean, I imagine they're gonna be doing this stuff
all the time in their work.
- Absolutely; super helpful information right there.
- Here's a photograph right here.
- Well, that's amazing.
So that's the inside, that's the barracks.
- Far from spacious, luxury digs,
the CCC barracks were all about utility.
Each member was assigned a cot to sleep on
and a sturdy trunk to store their things,
all just an arm's length away from their neighbor.
Oh, this is pretty fascinating.
It says, "The CCC, a young man's opportunity to work,
"to live, to learn, to build,
and to conserve our national resources."
So, this looks like it's a recruitment poster.
- Yeah, one of the things we have to remember
about these new federal programs
that they had to get people to sign up for them.
So you might imagine this poster would've been plastered
all across the city in which you live.
They're trying to recruit young men to join
and be a part of this conservation effort.
Well, Nick, what'd you think?
- That was a pretty great experience.
To see the trunk, to see the uniform, and the poster.
It really just gives me
some great new perspectives on the past.
Anytime I go to a state park from now on,
I'm gonna be thinking about whether or not
the CCC did work there.
- That's a good point.
New Deal programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps
were super important to helping families survive
the difficult years of the Great Depression.
They also had a huge impact on the country's infrastructure.
Things like bridges and flood control,
and on our natural landscape.
You can still see these impacts today
when you visit many of Wisconsin's state parks.
See if you can learn more
about the state parks in your area.
Do any of them have a connection to the CCC?
Or imagine you were going to work for the CCC.
What kind of things would you wanna keep in your trunk?
I dunno about you,
but I probably want some snacks in there just in case.
- I don't think this is working really great.
- Yeah, I don't know.
We might need a bigger fire.
- Still tastes great. - Nice.
[Nick sighing] Ah, Mother Nature!
- What a great night.
- There's flies everywhere. [laughing]
- Nick: Yeah, I'm watching. - Are you watching them, like?
- Nick: Yep, yep.
So Sergio, what is this?
- It's a box, Nick. [both laughing]
- Cat Phan: Hey, Kacie.
- Kacie: Hey, Cat. - Whatcha doing?
- Well, my watch battery died, and I read somewhere online
that you can use the Sun to tell time.
- Oh, hey, yeah, I've read about that too.
Does it work?
What time is it right now?
- Well, if you take into account the Sun
and the horizon line and daylight savings time
and the vernal equinox, I think it's midnight?
- I'm not so sure about that.
- Wait, I forgot the autumnal equinox.
- Actually, what if we go see a different tool
that people used to use to tell time
before they wore watches?
- Well, this isn't really working, so we might as well.
- Let's do it. - Let's go.
[upbeat music]
[upbeat music continues]
[television static]
- Hi.
- Beth Kowalski: Hello, welcome to the Neville Public Museum
in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
We're so happy to have you here today.
- Thanks for having us.
So we did come with a specific question for you.
My watch battery died today,
and I've been late to all my meetings,
I can't get anywhere on time,
and we thought we would look to the past for an answer.
We heard you might have something historic
that could help me tell the time.
- Love that you wanna look to the past for the present.
So yes, we absolutely do have some things,
specifically, a artifact that we can take a look at
and learn about its story.
So come on, let's take a look.
This is a Le Maire sundial.
It's a combination of both compass and sundial,
and it was meant to be that size,
so it was definitely meant for travel and for your pocket.
- Are you wondering what the heck is a sundial?
We've got you covered.
A sundial is a device that tells you the time of day
when the sunlight is shining on it.
It's made of a flat plate or a base and a gnomon,
which is a part that casts a shadow.
As the Sun moves, the shadow cast by the gnomon also moves,
and that lets you figure out the time.
- Well, there's so many small details on there.
Well, good thing we brought these.
- Oh, yeah, I brought mine. - Same.
Ooh, look at the north, south, east, west on the top there.
It's so cool. - Kacie: Oh, yeah,
that's a part of the compass.
And then all these numbers around the edge,
got all these Roman numerals.
I wonder if people must have just known
how to read Roman numerals back then.
- Yeah, there're Roman numerals
and there're also Arabic numerals.
- Oh, do you see this bird on the side?
- Where?
- Kacie: On the sundial part that pops out, there's a bird.
I mean, I like the artful kind of designs.
It seems like obviously it was an object that was useful,
but it also seems like it was beautiful.
So it looks like it says Le Maire Paris,
so Paris, it must've been made in Paris.
- Instruments like the Le Maire sundial were made
by special craftsmen; in this case,
by a Frenchman named Pierre Le Maire.
How do we know his name?
Well, he put it right on the sundial,
along with the city where he worked, Paris.
It's like old school branding.
This sundial is made of brass, which is an alloy
or mixture of the metals copper and zinc.
That's already pretty fancy,
but we have some sundials that are even more luxurious,
made of materials like silver.
No matter what they were made of,
sundials like this one were of high value,
and not something most people had laying around.
So what can you tell us about the sundial?
- So the interesting part about the sundial,
it's how we kind of came to be here
at the Neville Public Museum.
A gentleman named Frank Duchateau,
who was an early local historian,
early amateur archaeologist, after rainstorms,
he would actually walk fields
and look for things that were left behind by people.
And on one of his explorations, he came across this sundial.
It's not perfectly intact, but it dates back,
way back to the origins of the Green Bay area,
when the influence of the French
and the fur traders were in this area.
- We think this sundial is probably from around the 1750s.
So what's happening in Wisconsin?
Well, this is around a century before Wisconsin became a state.
Native peoples had been living in this area
for thousands of years.
The first Europeans to arrive were French explorers
and fur traders who started coming in the 1600s.
Native nations allowed the French and other Europeans
to establish trading posts on their lands.
Native peoples would hunt
and trap fur-bearing animals like beavers.
They then traded these with Europeans
for items like metal cookware, muskets,
tools, clothes, and other goods.
Throughout the 1600s and 1700s,
the French were very active in the fur trade in Wisconsin.
Lots of early maps of the area are even in French!
- So we're noticing some writing on the back.
What can you tell us about what's on here?
- So one of the most fascinating things,
to me at least,
there's coordinates, it's longitude and latitude,
so very much how we teach kiddos
how to recognize that on a map today.
But one of the specific coordinates
that is on there is La baye,
and that means La baye, Wisconsin
or Green Bay, Wisconsin.
- Sure, oh, yeah, you can read
some of the names back here, like...
Oh, I see the Quebec on there. - Beth: Quebec?
- Cat: Yeah, Quebec, very cool.
And I like looking at the com--
or the top part where there's some,
maybe a fleur-de-lis on the N on there.
Shows the Frenchness.
[television static] [bright music]
- Sundials are important for telling time,
but that's probably not the most important way
this sundial was used.
This sundial also had a magnetic compass,
so you could use it to help you find your way around.
This was probably the most important use for this sundial,
helping its French owner navigate or find his way around
back when the area was much more covered
in forests and plains.
In Paris, where this was made,
navigating with a compass wasn't all that important.
It was a city!
But across the Atlantic in North America,
this was really important.
This sundial even has a list of names and the latitudes
for places in North America, including trading posts,
French forts, and Native settlements.
One of them says La baye 44.15,
and that's present-day Green Bay.
So, I mean, it looks really nice.
Like, this seems like a nice tool.
Do you know who might've owned something like this?
- That's kind of the mystery behind it
because you have to imagine, this was a crossroads
here in northeastern Wisconsin
of different people and different cultures meeting.
- The 1750s is also when France
and Great Britain fought the French and Indian War,
which lasted from 1754 to 1763.
This was a war between France and Britain,
although both sides also had Native allies.
Sundials like this one were given to French army officers,
so there's a good chance that's who owned this one.
So Kacie, what'd you think of that sundial?
- I thought it was so cool.
I mean, first of all, I don't know if I've ever touched
anything that old, but then all the details
and thinking about how people used to find their way
around without cell phones?
- I know. - What a wild experience.
- Yeah, and what I thought was also really cool is
just the "La baye 44.15" written on there.
It just really brings history to Wisconsin,
which I thought was so cool.
- Definitely.
The Le Maire sundial is a reminder
that people have been using different tools to tell time
for hundreds, even thousands of years,
but it's also an example of how technologies can have
different uses in different places.
In Europe, a sundial like this was really important
for telling time, but in North America,
the sundial's compass was probably
its most important feature.
Have you ever used the Sun to tell time?
Try it out.
This can be as simple as placing a stick in the ground
and marking the different shadow positions
at different times of day, no batteries required.
A flat plate or base, and a what?
[participants laughing]
Can't hear it. [laughing]
Bing, bing, blah, hello?
Bing, bing, bing, bing.
? Bing, bing, bing ?
[laughing] [bright music]