Futility Closet - 306-The Inventor Who Disappeared

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 11,000 quirky curiosities from a kite-drawn buggy to alternative dice. This is episode 306. I'm Greg Ross.. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1890, French inventor Louis Leprince vanished just as he was preparing to debut his early motion pictures.

Starting point is 00:00:33 He was never seen again. In today's show, we'll consider the possible causes of Leprince's disappearance and his place in the history of cinema. We'll also reflect on a murderous lawyer and puzzle over the vagaries of snake milking. In 1888, the French inventor Louis Leprance shot a brief glimpse of his family milling about in the garden of his father-in-law's house in Roundhay, Leeds, in the north of England.

Starting point is 00:01:04 The footage consists of only 20 frames and lasts less than two seconds. The scene is both utterly mundane and vitally important. It might be the oldest surviving film in existence. I say might be because the early history of film is famously contested. Between 1880 and 1900, many people were struggling on both sides of the Atlantic to create moving pictures. 1900, many people were struggling on both sides of the Atlantic to create moving pictures. Even today, Americans tend to uphold the achievements of Thomas Edison in bringing forth the new medium, while the French point to the Lumiere brothers. Le Prince may have produced moving pictures before either of these claimants, but he never got to show them outside his workshop. In September 1890,

Starting point is 00:01:39 just before he was due to exhibit his films in public for the first time, he boarded a train and was never seen again. Louis Leprince was born in Metz, France in 1841. Through his father, he met Louis Daguerre, the pioneering photographer who gave him early lessons in photography and chemistry. After an education in Belgium, France, and Germany, he moved to Yorkshire in 1866 to work as a draftsman and translator, and then moved his family to New York City in 1882 to pursue a number of business and creative endeavors. He began his experiments with moving pictures in 1885, traveling among the United States, France, and Leeds while his family stayed in New York. There were many setbacks, but in November 1886, he filed a U.S. patent

Starting point is 00:02:20 application for a 16-lens camera and projection system, and two years later he was working on a single-lens camera. In autumn 1888, he made three very short films with this, including the garden scene, a shot of traffic on Leeds Bridge, and a shot of his eldest son, Adolf, playing the melodion. While the shooting was going well, he needed a way to present the resulting films. He tackled this in his workshop in Leeds, and in 1889 he projected the footage of Leeds Bridge for the first time at about 7 frames per second. By switching from gelatine positives to celluloid, he was able to get the rate up to 16 frames per second, and he knew he had cracked the problem. He directed his son to go back to New York and help his wife prepare a venue for

Starting point is 00:02:59 the first public showing of motion pictures. LePron's planned to travel from England to New York with his father-in-law, but first he went briefly to France to clear up some family business with his brother Albert, who lived in Dijon. After that meeting, on September 16th, Albert took Louis to the Dijon station and saw him onto the 242 train to Paris. He was traveling first class and carrying a single black valise. He was never seen again. He had disappeared almost on the eve of unveiling his moving pictures to the world. When the SS Etruria docked in New York on November 3, 1890, Lepron's wife, Lizzie, went to meet it. Her ailing father was aboard, but not Louis himself.

Starting point is 00:03:38 He had not returned to England after visiting Albert in France. Louis hadn't warned Lizzie of any delay. Normally he sent her weekly letters, but these had stopped. Weeks passed with no word from him. She wired his address in Leeds, come immediately, father gravely ill. When this brought no reply, she wrote to her brother, John Whitley, in London. John began a search of his own, but found no trace of Louis in Leeds, Paris, or Dijon. He found that Louis' workshop in Leeds was locked up as it had been since his departure for France, and everything in it was in order. The apparatus stood in its crate, ready for its journey to New York, and his tools, materials, and plans were

Starting point is 00:04:14 untouched. The family went to the police. In London, John Whitley described the situation to Scotland Yard, and in France, Albert Leprance contacted the Missing Persons Bureau. Lizzie wanted to go to Europe to join in the search, but John told her to stay in New York in case Louis eventually turned up there. As the search intensified, John Whitley and Albert Leprance kept in touch with one another and with the detectives. They checked every morgue, asylum, and railway station along Louis' route. They put notices in the French and English newspapers reading, urgent, will Augustin Leprance, last seen at Dijon boarding the train for Paris, please contact his family.

Starting point is 00:04:49 No one answered. They even considered that he might have lost his mind and enlisted in the Foreign Legion, perhaps recalling his time as an officer during the siege of Paris in 1870. When their search produced nothing, John suggested Lizzie check the passenger lists of all steamers arriving in New York from Europe. She and her daughter Marie haunted the shipping offices, but they could find no sign of Louis' name on any ship's register. On November 10th, they found the name Prince on the manifest of the SS Gascoigne, which had just docked, but this turned out to be a 25-year-old merchant

Starting point is 00:05:17 from Germany. Several pages later, they found the name L. Le Prince in steerage. That's Le Prince, one word with no space. He was described as a 27-year-old farmer, L. Le Prince in steerage. That's Le Prince, one word with no space. He was described as a 27-year-old farmer, but Louis Le Prince would occasionally travel incognito in this way to put off competitors who might be following him. But Louis was a U.S. citizen, and if he'd really arrived in New York, his name should have appeared in the barge office register, and it did not. It was possible that he'd arrived but not disembarked, but a search of the ship found nothing. The crew had never heard of him, and they didn't recognize photographs. Conceivably, Louis was being held on board against his will or had been carried ashore surreptitiously in New York. The Gascoigne sailed

Starting point is 00:05:54 the next morning, but when it returned to New York in December, both Lizzie and a detective searched it and found nothing. Louis Leprance was never found. He, his luggage, and his business papers had disappeared entirely. Because there was no body, it could not be shown that he was dead, and that endangered his claim to primacy in the race to invent moving pictures because it prevented the family from advancing his patents on his behalf. Lizzie had a mechanical drawing showing that her husband had perfected a camera in 1888, but without a body, the law required that seven years elapse before Louis could be regarded as deceased. A patent lawyer told Lizzie, in respect of these

Starting point is 00:06:30 patents, this means that you have no legal right to prosecute your husband's interests until that time is up. All this sounds terribly suspicious, but the question as to who invented motion pictures is deeply vexed and tied up in subtle details of engineering and patent law. Louis Leprince may have made a moving picture before anyone else, but he'd failed to accomplish what patent authorities call a reduction to practice. That is, he hadn't put his conception into actual use. And now his secretiveness worked against him. At the time of his disappearance, he hadn't yet patented his single-lens projector,

Starting point is 00:07:01 and the British patent specifications on his single-lens moving picture camera weren't yet detailed enough. This wasn't an oversight. He knew that if he published half-formed technical ideas too early, then unscrupulous competitors who knew the right loopholes might steal and exploit his work. But it left both machines dangerously open to piracy. Thomas Edison hated patents himself and failed to get one for moving pictures until 1897. The Leprance family assumed this meant that when the seven years were up and Louis was declared dead, they would prevail. But in the end, it couldn't be shown that Edison's patent infringed on Leprance. Edison had only occupied the field that Leprance had left open. In a lot of ways, this is the worst possible timing for an inventor. If he had died outright, of course, the family

Starting point is 00:07:42 would be horrified with grief at his loss, but at least they could take up his accomplishments and advance the patents on his behalf. If he just vanished, they couldn't do anything for seven years. Plus, they were stuck in this horrible suspended grief of not knowing what had happened to him. Sounds like the worst possible outcome. And the worst possible timing. It's just the worst thing that could have happened. In the patent wars that ensued, Lepron's son Adolph fought hard for his father's reputation and even had his cameras ready outside the courtroom, but he wasn't allowed to bring them in.

Starting point is 00:08:11 In 1901, the American courts ruled that Thomas Edison was the first and sole inventor of the motion picture camera, and in 1902, they reversed that decision on appeal. In between came another shock to the family. Adolph was found dead with his duck hunting gun at his side near the family's summer cottage on Fire Island. Lizzie feared this was a second murder because Adolf had shown in court that he knew too much,

Starting point is 00:08:33 but no such connection was ever proven. For 36 years, she tried to get the world to acknowledge her husband's achievement, but she never really succeeded. So what did happen to Louis Leprance? Here's a list of possibilities that various people have advanced over the years with varying degrees of luridness. One, perhaps his brother Albert murdered him after a dispute about their mother's will. Their mother had died in 1887, and the will still had not been settled. Under this theory, Albert wanted to be sole executor of the estate.

Starting point is 00:09:01 Louis had pressed for his share of the inheritance. The two had descended into a quarrel and Albert had killed him. Two, it's been suggested that the family had secretly arranged for Louis to disappear because he was gay. There is simply no evidence to support this. Three, perhaps he disappeared voluntarily in order to begin a new life elsewhere. Arguably, that theory is bolstered by the fact that his luggage was never found, but it's not clear why he would have done it, particularly since he just made a breakthrough. Four, there are murky suggestions that LePron's was disappeared because he was about to patent some important pieces of motion picture technology. Specifically, it's been suggested that Thomas Edison arranged for his disappearance. LePron's wife Lizzie favored that theory, though she never made the allegation directly, and it is true that

Starting point is 00:09:42 Edison tended to defend his claims aggressively against other inventors. But Christopher Rawlins, the author who has looked most deeply into Le Prince's story, simply found no evidence to suggest that Edison or anyone else lay behind Le Prince's disappearance. He wrote, there was no smoking gun. Having said that, I do have to mention an item I found in a journal on materials science of all places. It says that in 2008, a graduate student at the University of New York found an old leather-bound notebook among Edison's papers, and an entry in Edison's handwriting, dated September 20, 1890, says, Eric called me today from Dijon. It has been done.

Starting point is 00:10:18 Prince is no more. This is good news, but I flinched when he told me. Murder is not my thing. I'm an inventor, and my inventions for moving images can now move forward. Supposedly, a historian authenticated the journal entry, but I can't corroborate any of this anywhere, and it would have been huge news if it were true, Thomas Edison commissioning a murder. It does seem kind of suspicious that, like, it wasn't found until, what did you say, 2008? Like, that it would have lain dormant with nobody noticing it.

Starting point is 00:10:45 It also seems a little weird that Edison would like specifically use the word murder. Like if you were gonna make a note to yourself, you could just say, it's been done. I feel conflicted about it or something like that. But to like say murder, you know, like that you would do that for posterity. I just, the idea of murder is not my thing

Starting point is 00:11:04 doesn't really ring quite true to me, but what do I know? Related to that is the surprising death of LePron's elder son Adolph in 1898. Adolph had been drawn into the patent wars as a witness for the American Mutoscope Company against Edison. They were trying to stop Edison from claiming he'd invented the movie camera by appealing to LePron's achievements. That case foundered, and Adolf was found dead while duck hunting on Fire Island. This sounds suspicious, but it seems most likely to have been an accident or suicide, and since Edison was on top in the legal fight at that point, it's hard to see why he'd want Adolf dead. Five, maybe Lepron's reached Paris but died in a robbery and the body was hidden.

Starting point is 00:11:42 This theory is favored by his great-great granddaughter, Laurie Snyder. She thinks he arrived in Paris late at night and hailed a handsome cab, whereupon the driver took him to a remote location, hit him over the head, and threw him in the Seine. She writes, there were two articles from this time that suggest that thieves were targeting lone travelers, and Leprince was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She adds, I simply can't believe that a man who loved his family as much as he did, as evidenced by his letters, would either commit suicide or disappear on his own. The idea that his brother murdered him is ludicrous. He came from a very close, loving family, as evidenced from Lizzie's memoirs.

Starting point is 00:12:16 Edison, although he was certainly ruthless, probably had better things to do than order a hit on a competitor. Finally, the theory that his family ordered his disappearance due to his being a homosexual is crazy, since the family spent a lot of time and money trying to find him. Somewhat bolstering the case that he reached Paris is a photograph discovered in 2004 in a French police archive of a man who bears a strong resemblance to Leprince. This man had drowned in the Seine just after Leprince's disappearance. But this photo was put forward by a regionally produced tabloid magazine program on

Starting point is 00:12:45 British television. Cultural sociologist Richard Howells points out politely that, quote, the program was not academically rigorous in its methodology, and that it would be unwise for the scholarly community to accept this as firm evidence without further investigation. Six, rather further afield, perhaps Louis Le Prince was Jack the Ripper and had killed five women in London two years earlier and now found that he needed to disappear to escape the law. You are invited to believe this if you like. I suppose I should point out that Leeds is 200 miles from London, so it would take a rather ambitious effort to pull it off, but I can't prove it didn't happen. That seems like such a fanciful idea. What if it's true, though?

Starting point is 00:13:24 What do we know? Seven, the most likely explanation is the one suggested by Louis' brother Albert. That's a full idea. What if it's true, though? What do we know? Seven. The most likely explanation is the one suggested by Louis' brother, Albert, that he ended his own life after taking steps to make sure that he wouldn't be found. In 1890, he was on the brink of financial ruin. Lizzie's memoirs make repeated reference to the family's money troubles. Possibly this was compounded by perfectionism. He may have set standards that were unrealistically high and couldn't bear not to have met them.

Starting point is 00:13:47 Here, too, it seems odd coming as he was just about to exhibit his new invention publicly. I understand that the money troubles could have led him to that pass, but he'd invested all this effort in this and was just on the point of sort of realizing that. Just on the point of sort of realizing that. Yeah. It seems like it would only make sense to me that he would have actually committed suicide if, like you said, he had really high standards. If for some reason he felt that the performance wasn't going to go off, the public performance wasn't going to go off as well as he wanted to and that he might be ridiculed or seen as a failure. But there doesn't seem to be evidence of that. Right. I mean, you said he had the equipment all packed up in a crate ready to go. It seems like he was planning to do this.

Starting point is 00:14:30 Film producer David Wilkinson points out that LePrance had booked his passage to America two months in advance and had bought a first class ticket, which seems to show he was looking to the future and didn't regard himself as destitute. So I think of all the available possibilities, that still seems like the best one, but it's not perfect even in itself. I don't know. I like the one about the thieves. Yeah. The thieves could have gotten him and they would have taken his luggage and thrown everything into the Seine maybe. That would explain it. That would. Whatever became of Louis Le Prince, even if it was just some simple accident, it seems a terrible

Starting point is 00:15:04 injustice in the history of technology. After years of working in secret, he'd been awarded patents for his achievements, and several people swore under oath that they'd seen his pictures move in private. If he hadn't disappeared, then his film would have been shown in New York in November 1890. The equipment was ready, the venue was prepared, and the family were waiting. was ready, the venue was prepared, and the family were waiting. When he disappeared, Thomas Edison and the Lumiere brothers charged ahead, securing vital patents and acclaim in history as the inventors of cinema. But their technology was not significantly different from his, and he'd made some important breakthroughs ahead of them. By working in secret, he'd obscured his own achievements,

Starting point is 00:15:38 and his disappearance on the eve of a public exhibition doomed him to an obscurity that he doesn't really deserve. His family fought on, though they were hampered by the uncertainty of his death. Both Lizzie and Adolph wrote memoirs and tried to champion his memory, but in the early history of film he remains relatively obscure. Before Christopher Rawlins' book in 1990, the only substantial writing on Le Prince consisted of two articles by an electrical engineer named E. Kilburn Scott in 1923 and 1931. That's a shame. The mechanism of cinema might not have differed greatly if Louis Leprince had reached New York in 1890, but he deserves a greater share of credit for its invention.

Starting point is 00:16:29 If you enjoy hearing these forgotten stories from the pages of history, please consider becoming a patron to help support the show. You can check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the link in our show notes. And thanks so much to all of our supporters who help us to be able to tell these stories. our supporters who help us to be able to tell these stories. The puzzle in episode 300, and this will contain a spoiler, was about how a person watching some movies doesn't understand one of them when he first attempts to watch it, but on starting the movie over again finds that he is now easily able to understand it, with the answer being that he was originally trying to watch the movie in his second language, but that on the second viewing,

Starting point is 00:17:09 he turned the subtitles on for his first language. John Kelly wrote, Greg and Sharon, my family and I enjoyed your podcast number 300. Regarding the puzzle about a DVD film being confusing the first time it is viewed but understood the next time, we were certain that the solution was that a year passed between the first and second viewings, during which time the viewer learned the language the film was in. At least we guessed right about the language being the issue. And I guess that's fair, a slightly more complicated way to try to understand a movie, but that should work. And I guess if the movie doesn't have subtitles, that's what you'd have to do, huh? And it's lateral. I mean, that's a good answer. I like that.

Starting point is 00:17:47 And Alan Ricks told us, I have an alternative explanation for the not understanding the third movie that happened to me in real life. I sat down on a Saturday and watched a series of movies, the first couple I understood with no problem. But when I put in Horror Express 1972, starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Telly Savalas, and started watching it, characters seemed to refer to events that I hadn't seen, like a murder. After watching for about 20 minutes and getting confused, I decided I must have missed some part of the movie somehow. I chapter skipped back to 0 colon 00 and started again, and it was the same place I had started before. Then I rewound the DVD to negative 18 minutes or so

Starting point is 00:18:26 and found the beginning of the movie. Whoever authored the DVD release had done it incorrectly so that when you press play, it would start about 18 minutes in and call it zero. After figuring all that out, I watched and greatly enjoyed the film. It's on Blu-ray now in a wonderfully cleaned up version so next time I watch it, it will be that way.

Starting point is 00:18:44 So that's funny that the puzzle actually happened to Alan. And I'm not sure that I would have thought of trying what Alan did and trying to rewind past the zero minutes mark. So I probably would have just thought the movie was too confusing and given up. That must have confused every single person who watched. Oh, I hadn't thought about that. So yeah, so there's a lot of people that the puzzle actually happened to. And they wouldn't think of it. I mean, you're right. I wouldn't have thought to even try that. And speaking of lateral thinking puzzles, we received a delightful present from John Jerome, a book of puzzles compiled by Agnes Rogers in 1953, titled How Come? A Book of Riddles. John wrote to us, Hi, Greg and Sharon. I suddenly realized I have an old book

Starting point is 00:19:25 containing 50 lateral thinking puzzles with solutions. The book calls them riddles and intends them as a party game, but they're essentially the same thing. And Rogers says in her introduction to this rather quaint book, A while back, I don't know exactly when, a new kind of puzzle showed up in indoor game circles. Any number could play and no equipment was needed. One person told a little story, leaving out the essential steps that would make sense or some kind of sense, however zany. And the others tried to discover by asking questions the missing parts of the story. Any number of questions were permitted, but they had to be so framed that they could be answered by a simple yes or no or immaterial. Who invented this form of puzzle? I have not been able to discover.

Starting point is 00:20:10 So clearly the idea of these kinds of puzzles goes back much farther than I had realized. In her book, Rogers refers to them mostly as how comes, but also uses terms such as puzzles, problems, and riddles, and notably doesn't use the term lateral thinking. So curious about that, I found that Wikipedia says that that term was actually introduced in 1967 in Edward de Bono's book, The Use of Lateral Thinking. It seems that de Bono, who earned degrees in psychology, philosophy, and medicine, spent most of his professional life promoting the use of lateral thinking to overcome our human tendency to get stuck in certain patterns of thought and to encourage more creative problem solving. While I had definitely heard these kinds of puzzles earlier in my life, I had the idea that

Starting point is 00:20:54 I had maybe first heard the specific term lateral thinking puzzle in the early 90s. And Wikipedia seconds me on that, saying that that term was popularized by Paul Sloan in his 1991 book, Lateral Thinking Puzzlers, which we happen to own. And in the introduction to which Sloan also credits de Bono for the term, lateral thinking. It was interesting to me that these kinds of puzzles so predate the conception of them as lateral thinking, which is what they usually are very good examples of. I never somehow thought about this before, like when they started. You could imagine people could have been doing these in the Middle Ages for all we know. Right. I had no idea. I mean, so I mean, they way predate even 1953 when Rogers wrote her book and saying that

Starting point is 00:21:35 they had been out for a while. So you're right. But yeah, sure. People could have been doing them in the 1800s easily. I wonder who first came up with them. Yeah. And one thing that I remembered from most of the classic puzzles that I had heard when I was younger was that they really did tend to be fatal. And Rogers says in her introduction that the explanation to a puzzle may turn out to be long and involved, a gradual unfolding of a pretty complicated series of events where in other cases it is short and simple. Not sweet, for it so happens that violence and sudden death are almost integral parts of how comes. They aren't all of them grisly, but most of them are, so be prepared. And there's no inherent reason why that should be. I mean, that's definitely true.

Starting point is 00:22:18 It just makes them more dramatic, I suppose. Yeah, I guess so. John also said to us, For a little extra amusement, the book contains occasional penciled criticisms by a previous owner. One in particular is amusing in that it labels something possible but unlikely,

Starting point is 00:22:33 which was probably true when it was published in 1953, but is certainly not true now. And this puzzle that this comment was on was one of a few in the book that I recognized as having heard before and that I think are kind of classics for these kinds of puzzles. The puzzle as presented in the book is a doctor and a lawyer were lunching together in a restaurant. This was not the first time they had done so. Their favorite table was by the window and it was there that they were sitting when there

Starting point is 00:22:58 was a loud crash in the street. It sounded like a bad traffic accident and the doctor leapt from his chair and rushed to the window. Good heavens, he cried, my wife has been killed. On hearing this, the lawyer drew a revolver and killed the doctor forthwith. How come? So a very fatal one. The answer is given in the book is, the lawyer was a woman. She had been receiving market attentions from the doctor and was harboring the delusion that he intended matrimony. The hateful news that he had been deceiving her inflamed her to the point of committing this rash act. And there are a few variations on this theme in which the hopefully outdated twist to this puzzle is that a professional person would be assumed to be a man, but in the puzzle is actually a woman. And there are some versions of this, for example,

Starting point is 00:23:43 where it's like a surgeon that is supposed to be presumed to be a man. I thought that the previous owner's comment of possible but unlikely that the lawyer was a woman does make a lot more sense for 1953 than for today, and I also thought this was a good example of a puzzle that was more fatal than it needed to be. It seemed to me to be more possible but unlikely that someone would have that intensely violent of a reaction to learning that their love interest was married. But I guess it does make a less dramatic puzzle to say that the lawyer stormed out or shouted obscenities at the doctor. That's true. One other aspect of the book that was kind of amusing is that for some of the puzzles,

Starting point is 00:24:21 several possible answers are suggested with the implicit understanding that none of them will be correct. So for one of those, the puzzle was, Phoebe, in the course of the occupation in which she earned a living, felt tired. She looked around for a chair, but didn't find any. A very short time later, she met a gory death. How come? That's the puzzle?

Starting point is 00:24:41 That's the puzzle. And the possible answers suggested were, was she a sponge diver who fell overboard and was eaten by a shark? Did she operate a shooting gallery? Did she bleed to death from a splinter she picked up as a result of sitting on the floor? Did she sit on a windowsill and fall out of the window? And that last one was the only one that made any real sense to me, given the puzzle. But the actual answer, which seemed a bit strange to me, was, the intrepid girl was a lion tamer, and the chair, as all circus goers know,

Starting point is 00:25:12 is part of the animal trainer's standard equipment. We admit to a small red herring in mentioning that she felt tired, but lion tamers must occasionally feel tired, wouldn't you think? All right, fair enough. So thanks so much to John for the delightful book, and hopefully some more of its puzzles will be making their way onto the show in our usual puzzle section. And thanks as always to everyone who writes to us. Please keep sending your comments, feedback, and updates to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:25:42 at podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange sounding situation and I have to work out what's going on, asking yes or no questions. This is from listener Eric Reidenauer. He writes, a friend and I were talking about staycation ideas to scratch that itch to travel during this holdup summer of COVID-19. He mentioned that he and his family He writes, snake venom is extracted and legally sold. My friend said that on the tour, he and his family learned that on days when the snakes are to be milked, they check the weather forecast.

Starting point is 00:26:29 Can you guess why? Okay. Huh. So, do snakes behave differently during certain types of weather conditions? Let's say no. Okay, so the snakes aren't behaving differently. Right. Is something else about snakes different?

Starting point is 00:26:51 I mean, like they're cold-blooded, so the temperature might affect something about them? No? I mean, yes, that probably is true, but that's not the answer to the puzzle. That's not the answer to the puzzle. So it's not like snakes are easier to find or easier to handle or in some way being different because of different weather conditions. Correct. That's not what we're going for.

Starting point is 00:27:16 Are the people involved different for some reason during different weather conditions? No. No. Okay. I don't know a lot about milking a snake, but I'm assuming a human does something to a snake. Is there other equipment involved that I need to be worried about? No. So we could talk about one human being and one snake. Yes. And this would all obtain.

Starting point is 00:27:41 Yes. So the human being checks the weather forecast. Well, the snake's not going to check the weather forecast. Maybe he does. I don't know. So the human being checks the weather forecast before going and milking the snake? Yes. And why would the human being want to know what the weather is?

Starting point is 00:27:58 Depending on what the weather forecast is, would the human being decide not to milk the snake? Yes. Huh. And you're saying the snake's behavior doesn't milk the snake? Yes. Huh. And you're saying the snake's behavior doesn't change. That's right. Or some other physical characteristic of the snake that changes. Right. Not in a way that we're interested in.

Starting point is 00:28:14 Does the behavior of other animals change that's somehow germane? No. Hmm. And these are snakes that are living outside? I don't know. Or it doesn't matter where the snakes are living outside? I don't know. Or it doesn't matter where the snakes are living? Doesn't matter. Wow.

Starting point is 00:28:27 So the weather forecast wouldn't matter even if the snakes were living inside? Correct. Okay. When they're checking the weather forecast, are they actually checking the weather? Something about the weather. Because, I mean, there's other things you can check in the weather forecast, like sunrise and sunset. Oh, I see.

Starting point is 00:28:43 And other conditions that are sometimes told in the weather forecast? Yes, I'd say the weather. So it in the weather forecast like sunrise and sunset and other conditions that are sometimes told in the weather forecast? Yes, I'd say the weather. So it's the weather specifically? Yes. Okay. Should I guess what kind of weather they're checking for? Yes, that would help. Are they checking for rain or some form of precipitation? No. Are they checking for temperature? No. Something about the temperature? Humidity? No. Barometric pressure? No. Wind? Yes. They are checking the wind.

Starting point is 00:29:15 Is it because when you milk the snake, the stuff would go all over the place if it was too windy out? No. No. So they're checking the wind, specifically the wind speed? Yes. Not the wind direction? Yes. Not the wind direction. Correct. The wind speed.

Starting point is 00:29:31 And if the wind speed is too high, they would choose not to milk the snakes? That's right. Okay. And we're not talking like hurricane level high, right? Right. Just high winds. And these could be snakes that are inside a building. Yes. Even so, if it's windy outside,

Starting point is 00:29:46 I was going to say, the snakes hear the wind or they hear something else to do with the wind? No, I'm trying to think of a clue. So even if it's windy outside and the snake is inside the building, somehow higher wind speeds are going to affect this whole process.

Starting point is 00:30:01 Yes. But you say that it's not so much that it affects the snake, like the snake isn't changed in some way. That's right. I'd say this is for. Yes. But you say it's not so much that it affects the snake. Like the snake isn't changed in some way. That's right. I'd say this is for safety reasons. They would call it off. Are snakes freaked out by high winds?

Starting point is 00:30:15 No. What's the worst case scenario when you're milking a snake? That it bites you. Yes. And they're more likely to bite you if it's windy out. No. What would happen if one of these snakes bit you?

Starting point is 00:30:30 Oh, you'd maybe need to be helicoptered out and the helicopters can't come in if it's too windy. Seriously. That's it, Eric. Oh, my. According to what my friend was told on the tour, they do this in case there is a need for a life flight helicopter to the nearest hospital. If the winds are forecast to be too strong, it might interfere with the medical rescue. Oh, wow. Thanks, Erin.

Starting point is 00:30:50 Thank you. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, you can send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet would not still be here today without the support of our listeners. If you'd like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, please check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. While you're at the site, you can also browse through Greg's collection of over 11,000 bite-sized distractions.

Starting point is 00:31:23 Check out the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the podcast, with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was all written and performed by Greg's amazing brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 306-The Inventor Who Disappeared

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