Futility Closet - 335-Transporting Obelisks

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 wooden president to a comprehensive flag. This is episode 335. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In the 19th century, France, England, and the United States each set out to bring home an Egyptian obelisk. But each obelisk weighed hundreds of tons, and the techniques of moving them had long been forgotten.

Starting point is 00:00:38 In today's show, we'll follow the struggles of each nation to transport these massive monoliths using the technology of the 1800s. We'll also go on an Australian quest and puzzle over a cooling fire. The obelisks of ancient Egypt were some of the heaviest objects ever moved over land in the pre-industrial age. Creating and raising them was a status symbol reserved to the pharaohs, a sign of enormous wealth and power. The average obelisk is a single piece of granite weighing 250 tons, and the Egyptians moved and erected them using only ropes, inclined planes, and rollers. They left no accounts of how they did this, and engineers still argue over how it was accomplished.

Starting point is 00:01:25 Eventually, the Romans took control of Egypt and, impressed with the obelisks, carried some across the Mediterranean and re-erected them in Rome as trophies of war. They, too, left no records as to how they'd done it, though we know they had several mechanical devices that had been unknown to the Egyptians, such as the pulley, the derrick, and the winch. After the Romans, no one tried to move an obel as the pulley, the derrick, and the winch. After the Romans, no one tried to move an obelisk for more than a thousand years, and by the Middle Ages, the knowledge of how to do it had been lost. In 1585, when one obelisk was moved within Rome to

Starting point is 00:01:55 a new basilica, it was the first time in 1,500 years that anyone had undertaken such a task. That was the state of affairs in 1805, when the Albanian officer Mohamed Ali came to power in Egypt. He was eager to modernize the country and to form ties with Europe. He's the one who sent a giraffe to Paris as a gift to Charles X, a story we told in episode 155. He offered obelisks to both England and France, and the French were the first to pursue the offer. They began designing a ship, the Luxor, to carry an obelisk from the Luxor temple to France. The ship was unique. It had to be shaped to accommodate the length and density of its unusual cargo, it had to sail on shallow rivers, the Nile and the Seine, and it had to be narrow

Starting point is 00:02:40 and low enough to pass under the bridges of the Seine, and it needed to be able to land on a beach so that the obelisk could be loaded into its hold. While the ship was being built, the engineer responsible for bringing the obelisk to Paris, Apollinaire Luba, made his way to Luxor. At the time, this was a small village of fewer than a thousand inhabitants. He hired 400 men, women, and children to help clear a path from the chosen obelisk to the Nile, a task that in the summer heat took four months of 14-hour days. Then, using carpenters and blacksmiths he'd brought from Toulon, Loubas fashioned capstans that would pull the obelisk over a roller, carrying it off its pedestal and into a restraining apparatus. The obelisk itself was surrounded by scaffolding and clad in wood to protect its hieroglyphics.

Starting point is 00:03:25 When the men attached a French tricolor to its top and said, now it belongs to France, Luba responded with a quote from La Fontaine, never sell the bear skin without first killing the bear. On October 23rd, everything was ready. At Luba's signal, 190 Egyptian workers turned their capstans, the ropes went taut, and the obelisk was tilted off its base toward the river. The restraining system slowed its descent, and 15 minutes later, it was resting on a platform that had been built to receive it. The whole operation had taken less than an hour. Luba had hoped now to carry the obelisk on a sled to the river where the ship was waiting, but they had run out of wood. After some thought, the carpenter built a bed of four reusable sections over which the obelisk could be pulled by capstans. After

Starting point is 00:04:10 each advance of 25 feet, the workers carried the rearmost section forward to the front, and by this expedient, the obelisk reached the Luxor by December 19th. The organizers had planned to cut a hole in the hull and winch the obelisk aboard, but now there was no wood with which to close the hole. The solution was to saw off the entire bow of the ship, insert the obelisk, and then reattach the bow. When that had been done, the obelisk was safely aboard the ship, but they had missed the high water mark. The Nile rises and falls once a year, and if they departed now, they risked getting caught on a sandbar. So they decided to wait six months for the river to rise before sailing for Alexandria. To prevent the sun from cracking the hull and masts, the captain packed the ship in mud,

Starting point is 00:04:53 covered the mound with reed mats, and instructed the men to water it daily like a plant. In the interval, some of the party went south to Abu Simbel and other sites little visited by Europeans. When they returned to Luxor, they removed the mud and mats and found the ship in good condition. Toward the end of June, the Nile began to rise, and in August, they began their journey north to the sea, reaching Alexandria on January 1, 1833. From here, the Luxor would have to be towed to France. It could navigate rivers with an obelisk in its hold, but was not able to cross the sea on its own. It could navigate rivers with an obelisk in its hold, but was not able to cross the sea on its own.

Starting point is 00:05:31 So, towed by a steamer called the Sphinx, the obelisk set out on April 1st on its journey to Europe. They put in at Rhodes to take on Cole, then touched at Toulon, and passed through Gibraltar and up the western coast to Cherbourg. At Rouen, the Luxor was dismasted so that it could fit under the bridges of the Seine, and when the water was high enough, it was pulled up the river by 16 horses. On December 23, 1833, it reached Paris. Two years would pass before Lubin tried to set the obelisk on its pedestal. There was a dry dock to build and a carpenter's strike to resolve, and then they had to wait for low water again. But in August 1834, 240 artillerymen turned five capstans to pull the obelisk out of the Luxor and onto a cradle on the banks of the Seine. It remained there for a year while a pedestal was prepared, and on April 16, 1835, the obelisk began a four-month journey to the Place de la Concorde. Lubin had hoped to use a steam engine to pull it up the final ramp, but one of the boilers failed and he had to resort to manpower again. Then, at 1130 a.m. on the morning of October 25th, before a crowd of 200,000 people,

Starting point is 00:06:31 a trumpet blared, 480 soldiers turned to 10 capstans, and the 250-ton monolith rose into the position where it stands today. Conveying the obelisk to Paris had been a huge success. No one was injured and the monolith was undamaged, but the effort had taken four years. England was bothered at the glory that this brought France. They had repeatedly been offered an obelisk of their own, but they hadn't acted. That changed in the summer of 1872, when the brothers John and Waynman Dixon were visiting the two obelisks in Alexandria. On the spot, Waynman came up with a novel plan by which they could transport one of them home. Encase it in an iron cylinder, roll it into the sea, and tow it to England. John sought donors for this unlikely project, and Sir Erasmus Wilson, a surgeon and supporter of medical charities, offered to pay him 10,000 pounds if he could establish the obelisk

Starting point is 00:07:21 safely on the banks of the Thames within two years. John accepted. He engaged the Thames Iron Works to construct a 60-ton iron cylinder, and five months later all the parts had been shipped to Alexandria. Six bulkheads were placed around the obelisk, and then an iron skin was riveted in place around them, forming watertight compartments within the finished cylinder so that if one flooded, the craft would remain afloat. An incline was cleared down to the water, and on August 28, the cylinder, dubbed the Cleopatra, was launched. In dry dock at Alexandria, it was fitted with an emergency mast, three keels, and a steering deck with an iron catwalk. During the journey, a crew would live inside it, led by Captain Henry Carter, an experienced seaman who'd accompanied the parts to Alexandria.

Starting point is 00:08:05 Carter found a British steamer, the Olga, to tow the cylinder to England. He struck a deal with her captain, Captain Booth, and on September 21st, the Olga slowly towed the cylinder into the Mediterranean. Aboard the Olga was Waynman Dixon, and on board the Cleopatra were Captain Carter and a crew of seven who'd had to be paid a bit extra to undertake such an odd voyage. The two craft worked out a system by which to communicate. In calm seas, they'd use a megaphone, and in rough weather, Captain Carter would stand on the steering bridge and write messages on a blackboard. At night, they'd use a system of lights. The first part of the journey went surprisingly well. The Cleopatra was two-thirds submerged under the weight of her 200-ton cargo, but she sailed

Starting point is 00:08:44 capably through the waves. The weather was good, and the seas remained calm. They put in at Malta and again in Algeria and reached Gibraltar on October 7th. Two days later, they'd reached Portugal and headed north into the Atlantic, Cleopatra taking the big ocean waves in stride. Entering the Bay of Biscay north of Spain, they needed only three more days of good weather to reach the English Channel. But on October 15th, their luck failed and a hurricane struck. Cleopatra rode the heavy seas admirably at first, but the wind shifted and began assailing her steering house at right angles. They bore this for a day, but at last were forced to turn into the wind and risk snapping the cable. As Carter was turning the Cleopatra, a huge wave smote the deckhouse,

Starting point is 00:09:24 capsizing the cylinder and shifting the ballast. The crew managed to right it, but a heavy sea again threw them over, and again the ballast shifted. Carter sensed that they wouldn't be able to reposition the ballast and gave the order to abandon ship. The crew lowered their lifeboat, but before they could get into it, a wave sent it into the hull, smashing it. Booth moved Olga closer to Cleopatra and sent

Starting point is 00:09:45 out six men in a boat. They made their way through the turbulence to the cylinder, whose crew were now on deck, clinging to the railings. They threw a line to the boat, but it was pulled out of the sailor's hands. Before they could throw it again, a wave swallowed the boat and it disappeared. Those six men were never seen again. At 1 a.m., Captain Booth threw off the towing cable to keep the ships from colliding, but at dawn, Olga managed to put a line across and sent an unmanned lifeboat over. Cleopatra's crew climbed in and were hauled over to safety. Booth steamed off to look for the missing men, found no one, and returned to the spot, concerned that the Cleopatra would now be a hazard to navigation. But there was now no sign of the 300-ton cylinder. Everyone assumed it had sunk to the bottom. Empty-handed, the Olga headed

Starting point is 00:10:30 for Falmouth and reached it two days later. But when the storm died down, Captain Evans of the Fitzmaurice, sailing from Middlesbrough to Valencia, spotted the cylinder still afloat in the Bay of Biscay. They managed to tie a line to it and towed it to Farrell on the Spanish coast. In Spain, Carter repaired it and hired a deep-sea tug that specialized in towing distressed ships. They waited for fair weather, set out on January 15, and reached Gravesend six days later. By 1 p.m., they were sailing up the Thames, and at sunset, they reached the East India docks. It took two months to prepare a pedestal on the Thames embankment, and a dry dock was prepared at the Adelphi Steps. There, the cylinder was maneuvered into a cradle, which held it out of the water as ironworkers dismantled it. Now, by means of hydraulic jacks, the cylinder was hauled up 30 feet of steps to the embankment,

Starting point is 00:11:16 where it was fitted with an iron sleeve, then raised again through August to a point 50 feet above the ground. From here, it had only to be turned to the vertical, which was accomplished with four winches on September 12th, and the following day, when it was found to be perfectly vertical, it was lowered the final four inches onto the pedestal where it stands today. It bears two plaques. One reads, Through the patriotic zeal of Erasmus Wilson, FRS, this obelisk was brought from Alexandria encased in an iron cylinder. It was abandoned during a storm in the Bay of Biscay, recovered, and erected on this spot by John Dixon, CE, in the 42nd year of the reign of Queen Victoria, 1878. The other plaque on the side facing the

Starting point is 00:11:57 Thames reads, William Askin, Michael Burns, James Gardner, William Donald, Joseph Benbow, William Payton, perished in a bold attempt to succor the crew of the obelisk ship Cleopatra during the storm October 14, 1877. Now America wanted its own obelisk, and in 1879, Sharif Pasha, Egypt's Minister of Foreign Affairs, told E.E. Farman, the U.S. Consul General in Cairo, that the Khedive was disposed to present the second Alexandrian obelisk to the city of New York. The job of transporting it was undertaken by a decorated naval commander named Henry Honeychurch Gorringe. This was a much bigger undertaking than the two earlier projects. It wasn't possible to tow an obelisk all the way

Starting point is 00:12:39 across the Atlantic. Gorringe needed a self-powered ship that could carry a 250-ton object through heavy seas. The obelisk couldn't be lifted onto the ship, as that would require hydraulic cranes that were beyond Gorinj's budget, so he planned to open the hull and slide the obelisk directly into the hold, somewhat as Luba had done 70 years earlier at Luxor. In considering how to move the obelisk to and from the sea, Gorinj studied historical attempts to move massive objects over land, and he chose for a model Russia's effort to move a three-million-pound boulder to St. Petersburg in 1768, a story we told in episode 38. The Russians had moved their stone on copper balls, and Gorinj decided to roll the Egyptian obelisk similarly on cannonballs.

Starting point is 00:13:22 To lower the obelisk from its pedestal in Alexandria, he designed two towers, which would take positions on either side of the obelisk and lift it by an iron belt, whereupon it could be pivoted around its center of gravity. Once it was parallel to the ground, it could be lowered by hydraulic jacks at its ends. All this ironwork could be made in the United States and shipped to Egypt. Afterward, the same machinery could be used to raise the obelisk onto its pedestal in Central Park. To make the iron parts for the turning mechanism, he contracted John A. Roebling's sons. They had admirable credentials, having just finished the Brooklyn Bridge. For a ship, Gorinch bought a decommissioned Egyptian postal steamer

Starting point is 00:13:59 called the Desoug for 5,100 pounds. It was just large enough to accommodate the obelisk below deck. To prevent damage during the transfer, the obelisk was sheathed in wood planks held together by iron barrel hoops. A hundred workers cleared rubble and prepared the site, and the turning mechanism arrived in Alexandria on November 11th. From there, the pieces were carried by cart to the site and assembled on masonry piers that Gorinch had prepared, and according to plan, the obelisk was raised straight up, turned in midair, and lowered by jacks. When it was nearly on the ground, a caisson was constructed to hold it, basically a wooden box 83 feet long, resembling a coffin, and that rolled forward on rows of cannonballs held within iron channel rails. When it reached the water, the

Starting point is 00:14:41 floating caisson was towed to Alexandria's port and rolled into the refitted desugue, which headed to Gibraltar, took on 500 tons of coal, and set out for New York. The journey went relatively well. A crankshaft broke on July 6th, but Gorringe had insisted on bringing a spare, and on July 10th, they were menaced by a 50-foot waterspout that, mercifully, fell back. They sighted New York on July 19th and docked the next day at 23rd Street, where Gorringe opened the ship to visitors, of whom more than 1,700 visited the ship in one day. It would take three months for the obelisk to reach Central Park. The only dry dock charged

Starting point is 00:15:16 an exorbitant rate, so Gorringe unloaded the obelisk at a marine railway at Staten Island, transferred it to a catamaran, and towed that around the southern tip of Manhattan to a landing stage at 96th Street. It took 19 days to cross the park itself, as workers were increasingly dropping out due to exposure to the December cold, but it reached its destination on January 5, 1881, where it was raised using hydraulic jacks and finally turned by the turning mechanism on January 22, before a crowd of 10,000 people. An official welcoming ceremony was held on February 22nd in the newly built Metropolitan Museum of Art. Today, Egypt is much more protective of its heritage and would never permit more obelisks to be sent to foreign shores. Millions of tourists visit the country each year to admire the monoliths

Starting point is 00:16:01 that remain standing there. The Egyptologist Bob Breyer notes that, in an odd way, as technology has advanced, the task of moving an obelisk seems to have become more difficult. The Romans moved dozens of them but seem to have found the accomplishment so unremarkable that they left no real records of how they raised the ones that they took to Rome. Fifteen hundred years later, when the Vatican obelisk was moved 260 yards in 1585, it was regarded as a triumph of engineering. Breyer writes, when we fast forward to the 19th century and the transportation of the Paris, London, and New York obelisks, the achievement and drama seem even greater. This only increases

Starting point is 00:16:36 my admiration for the ancient Egyptian engineers who erected dozens and dozens of obelisks with just rope, wood, and sand. The puzzle in episode 302, and this probably isn't a spoiler, asked how it would be possible for a person to have a marriage certificate that's dated after their death certificate. Several of our listeners had follow-ups for us on that, some of which I covered in episode 308, but Trevor recently sent another one. The died before marriage dates on certificates lateral problem has another possible answer. Two adjoining countries who implemented the Gregorian calendar reform at different times. In this case, the marriage date could be up to 12 days after the death date. So that is definitely another possible and historically quite interesting answer to the puzzle. The Julian calendar, named after Julius Caesar, had been established in 46 BC and then subsequently adopted throughout Europe.

Starting point is 00:17:45 BC and then subsequently adopted throughout Europe. This calendar assumed that a year consisted of 365.25 days, and although this is very close to the true number of 365.2422 days, even a difference this small ends up amounting to an appreciable discrepancy over centuries. By the Middle Ages, this discrepancy had become a considerable problem for people practicing Christianity, as much of Europe was, as the date of Easter was tied to the vernal equinox, which was presumed to fall on March 21st. Local priests were given tables to allow them to calculate the date of Easter for any given year based on this date of March 21st, but it had become apparent that this was no longer the date of the equinox. Concerns over celebrating Easter on the wrong day started prompting considerations of calendar reforms in the 13th century, but such a reform wasn't actually implemented until 1582 by Pope Gregory VIII. The new Gregorian calendar realigned the date of the equinox by dropping 10 days from 1582, so that October 4th was followed by October 15th that year, and then going forward would differ from the Julian

Starting point is 00:18:52 calendar in that century years wouldn't be leap years unless the year was exactly divisible by 400. As Trevor noted, different countries ended up adopting the new calendar at different times, while a few countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Poland adopting the new calendar at different times. While a few countries, such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Poland, adopted the new calendar immediately, other countries were still changing over to it into the 20th century. Early on, countries on the two different calendar systems differed from each other by 10 days, but as the centuries went on, that discrepancy widened to 11 and then 12 days. So as Trevor said, that could lead to a situation involving nearby countries where someone could potentially have a marriage certificate

Starting point is 00:19:30 that was dated as many as 12 days after their death certificate. From what I saw, Greece was the last European country to adopt the Gregorian calendar, finally switching in 1923. According to Wikipedia, Sweden had one of the more complicated adoptions of the new calendar. While most other countries just jumped the date ahead by the necessary number of days when switching to the Gregorian calendar, Sweden planned a more gradual change starting in 1700, as they would make the then 11-day adjustment by skipping the leap days for the next 11 leap years from 1700 to 1740. This would mean that the Swedish calendar would differ from both the Julian and the Gregorian calendars for those 40 years,

Starting point is 00:20:14 with the amount of the discrepancy changing every four years. And if that wasn't confusing enough, the leap days that were supposed to be skipped in 1704 and 1708 actually weren't, which threw off the plan transition, and the whole plan was scrapped, with Sweden reverting to the Julian calendar in 1712, and then adding the unique date of February 30th to that year to realign with the old calendar. Sweden ended up switching to the Gregorian calendar in 1753, in one fell swoop this time, advancing from February 17th to March 1st that year. And I was thinking that it would make a really interesting but almost impossible to guess lateral thinking puzzle to ask why Sweden had a February 30th in one year. I think that's neat. That means everything that

Starting point is 00:20:55 happened on that day is recorded as having happened on February 30th, and that's correctly reckoned at that moment. And it's a totally unique date, right? We have discussed the What3Words location encoding system in several episodes, starting in episode 218, for those who want to find more of an explanation for it. Skye Edwards wrote to us, Recently, some friends and I traveled to the Pinnacles Desert to watch the Geminid meteor shower. Toby, my best friend, was planning a gift for their partner, a fanatic of difficult puzzles, who had a birthday during the trip. Toby bought a meteorite necklace and planned a puzzle to reveal its location. For a suitably obscure coordinate system, I proposed what three words. Toby planned an elaborate series of ciphers and quests within a sci-fi frame narrative to gradually

Starting point is 00:21:41 reveal the three words over the course of several days. Needless to say, the recipient was hugely entertained and perplexed for several days, decoding the three apparently random words, which culminated in a group of people traipsing into the Australian desert in search of a fallen meteorite. Thanks for helping make our holiday a bit more interesting and weird. And Sky let us know that the meteorite was at invaluable.disclaimer.biographer, which the What3Words site tells me is in Western Australia. And I hadn't thought about it before, but that location system would really lend itself to some fun challenges like that. There's something appropriate about that string, invaluable.disclaimer.biographer. I can't quite say why, but it just seems like a good one. A good, yeah. Yeah, some of them just seem to sort of go together and make some sense somehow.

Starting point is 00:22:28 Especially in this application. Skye also said, Unrelated, at a family lunch, I introduced everyone to logic puzzles. I presented them with, A person leaves their house, fires a gun, returns inside, and never sees another sunrise, which they managed to solve. So good for Skye's family for solving that as their first puzzle. I don't think that's a very obvious one. It took me a little

Starting point is 00:22:51 while to solve it, and I'd had some experience. And that puzzle was in episode 25, for those who don't remember it and wanted to hear it again, but I will say that the next topic here will be a good hint for the answer for it. In episodes 262 and 265, I covered the trial of Maurice, a French rooster whose neighbors tried suing over his early morning crowing. A judge ruled in Maurice's favor in September 2019, and the case was seen as symbolizing France's urban versus rural divide, as an example of the conflicts that have been arising from people raised in cities objecting to some of the traditional noises of more rural areas, with these types of cases causing trouble for rural mayors or ending up in the courts.

Starting point is 00:23:34 In episode 311, I discussed some proposed legislation in France that would introduce a new legal concept of sensory heritage, which was designed to classify some sounds and smells, such as roosters crowing and the smell of manure or chickens, as being an intrinsic part of rural life and thus protected from legal actions. Alex Wood sent us some recent follow-ups on this topic. Hi guys, I'm happy to be able to share two bits of loud cockerel news this evening. You've probably already heard about the French Sounds of the Countryside law passing, but I'm delighted to also inform you that a suburb of my very own town has an ongoing court case

Starting point is 00:24:10 about a cockerel which apparently crows over 3,000 times a day. We'll keep you posted if I can find out the judge's decision. Look forward to every Monday. And I hadn't heard about either of these, so thank you very much for sending them, Alex, and for the enormously helpful translation of an article from Dutch to English. The first link that Alex sent was to an article from The Guardian from January entitled, France Passes Sensory Heritage Law After Plight of Maurice the Noisy Rooster. And it seems that various rural noises, such as from chickens, ducks, and geese, or cowbells in early morning tractors, will now have increased protection against complaints and litigation.

Starting point is 00:24:53 As I reported in some of our other discussions on this topic, there have been several court cases in France over recent years about noisy animals, including a seven-year battle over frogs in a backyard pond. So I imagine that the courts might be a bit relieved to have some new laws in place. There's something charming about how those cases wind up in court, about arguing about something like that. So I guess you're right, it's a good thing that they're going to do something about that. Judges have to sit and decide for seven years about frogs. The second story that Alex passed along to us is about a pet Belgian rooster

Starting point is 00:25:22 that is annoying some of its neighbors in Boneheiden. According to an article that Alex translated for us from the Antwerpen Gazette from June 2020, Ben, a two-year-old cockerel, is beloved by all of the family's children, but particularly by their mildly autistic 16-year-old daughter, whose father says it would be a blow to her to lose the cockerel, as when she's upset, she cuddles her chickens the way other children cuddle cats or dogs. However, one of their neighbors has been complaining about Ben's crowing for at least two years and claims that he crows more than 3,000 times in a day, up to 3,318 cock-a-doodle-doos some days by her count.

Starting point is 00:26:01 Ben's owners said that they live in a wooded area and Bonehiden promotes itself as a rural town, and thus they suggest that perhaps the neighbor would be happier in a city if she doesn't like chickens. They also point out that there are at least 10 other roosters living within a 100 meter radius and question how she can know for sure which rooster she's hearing. So an interesting case that is similar to some of the French ones, though I don't know if Belgium is planning on passing any sensory heritage laws to deal with it. If this gets established as precedent, then presumably, you know,

Starting point is 00:26:29 there are sounds and smells that we're all used to today that 100 years from now will disturb some people and maybe they'll be protected. It makes you wonder how that will evolve if this is how we start to conceive these things. As sensory heritage? Yeah. And if anyone comes across a follow-up

Starting point is 00:26:44 as to what happened with Ben's case, please do let us know. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We always appreciate how much we learn from our listeners. If you have anything that you'd like to add, please send that to 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 try to work out what is actually going on by asking yes or no questions. This is from listener Tristan Shepard. Someone lights a fire in an already warm house.

Starting point is 00:27:26 The house then becomes chilly. The fire is extinguished and the house becomes swelteringly hot. Why? Okay. Is the exact location of the fire important? I'll say yes. The fire is inside the house? Yes. And by lighting a fire, do you actually mean that literally rather than figuratively in some way? Yes. Okay. Does it matter what materials they're burning? No. So I'm trying to figure out how lighting a fire in a house would make the house colder.

Starting point is 00:28:01 Does this have something to do with you're changing the airflow because there's a fire somewhere, you're going to be sucking in air from somewhere else? And that's what makes it cold? Yeah. No. Okay. Does it matter where this whole thing takes place?

Starting point is 00:28:20 No. It really doesn't. Okay. You mean geographically? Yeah. No. Or like whether it's in space versus on the surface of the earth or underwater or something. I'd like to say yes to that, but no. Just checking. Okay. So there's a house on the surface of the earth. Yes.

Starting point is 00:28:43 And it doesn't matter where. That's correct. It doesn't have to be up on a mountain or something. Are there any other characteristics of this house that I need to know about? I'll say yes. Is it how many floors it has? No. Does that matter?

Starting point is 00:28:56 Is it the size of the house that's important? No. Anything about like windows or doors or other openings? No. But there is something important about this house. Is it a house or doors or other openings? No. But there is something important about this house. Is it a house I would have heard of? Is it a famous house? No.

Starting point is 00:29:10 I'll say it's Tristan's own house. It's Tristan's own house. If that helps at all. Well, maybe that's famous. Okay. Tristan's own house, but there's some characteristic. Does this matter when the house was built? No.

Starting point is 00:29:24 What the house is made out of? No. The shape of it in any way? No. But there is something important about the house. Does it matter why the house is hot? Yes. Is it like that there's something wrong with the heating system,

Starting point is 00:29:43 and so the heat, for example, is pouring out into the house too much? So you light the fire under the thermostat to make the thermostat think it's hot. I don't know. Is that right? Where did that come from? Yeah, that is right. I was just trying to think. You leap to these things like out of nowhere. I never understand. It always confuses me when you do that. So what was the characteristic of the house that I needed to know? Tristan writes, our house has two heating systems, central air and a fireplace. The central air system normally keeps the house warm, but occasionally we decide to light a fire during the winter. It turns out the thermostat for our central heating is located close to the fireplace in an area that gets warm,

Starting point is 00:30:22 and as a result, the central air switches off and the rest of the house quickly gets cold when the fireplace runs. I bumped the temperature on the thermostat up until the central heating kicked on again to heat parts of the house not near the fireplace. After the fireplace was turned off, the central air kept running at the high temperature, and as a result, the whole of the house got very warm. See, I was actually thinking that something was broken, and they were somehow like using a fire to heat the therm, deliberately heat the thermostat to shut it down or something, but his explanation makes sense too. Yes. Thanks, Justin. Thank you. And if you have a puzzle you'd like to send in for us to try,

Starting point is 00:30:58 please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet would not still be here if it weren't for the support of our incredible listeners. If you'd like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a donate button in the support a section of the website at futilitycloset.com. Or you can join our Patreon campaign, where you'll also get access to outtakes, more discussions on some of the stories, extra lateral thinking puzzles, and what's going on behind the scenes of our show. You can find our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futility closet, or see our website for the link.

Starting point is 00:31:36 At our website, you can graze through Greg's collection of over 11,000 sapid esoterica, browse 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. All our music was written and performed by my amazing brother-in-law, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 335-Transporting Obelisks

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