You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.

Guess what, Mengo, what's that?

Well?

So, did you know that there's a double a baseball team with a name inspired by carousels?

I mean I didn't, but now I'm curious.

Yeah, it's in the title of this that this episode is all about carousels.

So I knew I was going to lead with something related to that.

But the team used to be the Binghamton Mets, but in twenty sixteen it was actually renamed the Binghamton Rumble Ponies.

See Binghamton, New York has given itself the prestigious title of carousel Capital of the World.

Shockingly, no one had claimed that, and this was thanks to its six antique Merrigo rounds.

I love that.

You just need six to make the capital of the world.

So what's the story there?

Well, as usual, it traces back to an eccentric rich guy.

This guy George F.

Johnson, who was a wealthy shoemaker who lived, of course in Binghamton, and he donated not one, not two, but six Merrigo rounds to local parks between the years nineteen nineteen and nineteen thirty four.

Now, these antique hand carved carousels are actually kind of rare nowadays.

They're only about one hundred and fifty in the United States and Canada combined, so having six of them in one town is pretty special.

In fact, all six are on the National Register of Historic Places, and Johnson's original condition when he donated the pieces was that writers wouldn't be charged defeat, which still holds true today.

So that park's pretty cool.

So in twenty sixteen, when the local New York Mets affiliate needed a new name and a new logo, a carousel horse was the perfect muse.

Now, even more specifically, the person who submitted the name suggestion was inspired by a story written by Binghamton University professor Livez Rosenberg, so her children's book The Carousel.

Not surprising it's called The Carousel is about horses on a merry go round who sleep during winter and come alive during the spring.

Oh, much like the sport of baseball.

That's right, Okay, yeah, I think I need a Binghamton Rumble Ponies hat though I was thinking the same thing.

Yeah, it's time for a field trip out there.

But before we hop on a bus to Binghamton.

We have eight more facts about carousels, so let's dive in.

Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius.

I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend Mangesh hot Ticketter and over there in the booth as our PALIN producer Dylan Fagan.

He's trying to see what he was eating, but he's eating a stack of eggo ware.

So many egos in there, and I'm all for Dylan starting the day off right, but that feels excessive.

That is a lot of egoes, But I do love how Dylan always does his research.

Now, egos were invented by this incredible food inventor named Frank Dorsu, who basically took a carousel engine and he made this rotating device.

So what happened is the batter would squeeze out and it would move and settle and be cooked under this rotating hood, all based on a carousel design.

I don't know why this came up with, you know that came from that.

But egos, just for the record, were originally called froffles or frozen waffles, but the ego name was just catchier.

That makes sense.

I love that so will.

One of my favorite memories is of your family coming up to New York and hanging out with my family.

Yeah, when Henry was just I think three, maybe four, we all wandered down to the Jans carousel in Brookenbridge Park and your kids were just these incredible mature carousel and us.

And I remember seeing like, like your younger kid just like smiling and holding balloon and fist pumping and uh.

And you know, your older kid was obviously very comfortable on it, and my son, Henry just had his eyes closed and was screaming and had both his hands over both the ears.

I think this is one of those things where when you were a frustrated parent, you remember the whole incident a little differently.

I love that you describe my kids as as mature carousel enthus their natural they the whole thing just so well behaved.

But that's pretty that's pretty fantastic.

But all right, well, why don't we start at the very beginning with how carousels were invented?

Because I know you spent some time look into this definitely.

So there have been various types of rotating devices and rides, and this is dating back to at least five hundred CE in places all across the world, so this means everywhere from the Islamic Empire, Europe, Latin America, even India.

The word carousels started to be used around the mid seventeenth century, and it referred to a demonstration in which men on horseback performed these synchronized maneuvers on the field.

Now, the term was likely derived from similar words in both Spanish and Italian, which meant little war, and it referred to a game involving rings or clay balls.

But the true direct carousel predecessor was a training tool for knights, and these devices emerged in France it was about sixteen eighty.

They had a pole in the middle that could be rotated by a person or an animal like a horse, and knights sat on these legless wooden horses and they were attached to the pole, and while the carousel was moving around, the men could practice using spears by trying to catch metal rings.

That actually sounds kind of fun.

Yeah, it is, as long as you were the knight and not the person moving the point.

That's a fair point.

I can tell you that the carousels we know and love today really started taking off in the eighteen sixties, when once powered by steam engines actually came onto the scene.

So before that there were plenty of different versions, but they were limitted by the fact that they had to be operated by people or animals like you were describing now.

Also, the mid nineteenth century was when we saw the first rideable horses moving up and down as the carousel went around.

So this so called Golden Age of carousel took place in the United States between the eighteen nineties and the nineteen twenties.

Now, in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, people had more free time and one popular new pastime was visiting the trolley park, which was a park located at the end of a trolley line that often had a carousel.

So during this time the country had up to three thousand hand carved and hand painted merrygo rounds in operation, and the carousels were massive, very intricate compared to the ones that the world had previously seen, and it became this real art form.

So this was also when the merrygo round artisans began expanding into other members of the animal kingdom, so giraffes, tigers, and this was a game changer.

You had goats, you had camels.

I mean, the list goes on and on, and this lures that many more kids to the rides.

There now one fun fact from this golden age.

A young Dwight D.

Eisenhower lived across the street from a factory that made carousels in Abilene, Kansas, and its supposedly as a teenager around the year nineteen oh six, that the future president had a job sanding carousel horses at that factory.

I love that it sounds both whimsical and like something that's so old timey.

Yeah, yeah, definitely definitely quite a summer job.

But not when you come across much these days, because, as we know, all the golden ages must come to an end, and in this case, the golden age of the carousel couldn't keep pace after the invention of, of course, the roller coaster.

Well, now that we've covered some carousel history, it feels like a good time to talk terminology.

And I've always wondered what.

The difference is between a merry go round and a carousel same and it turns out there is none.

Okay, is that end of episode?

You can use either term to refer to the ride, though, of course, carousel can be used more broadly to describe things like luggage carousels and airport.

According to Merriam Webster, the word carousel has been in use since sixteen fifty, while merry go round was introduced in seventeen twenty nine.

That said, there are plenty of words Americans have used to describe carousels over the years.

That includes things like the flying horses, the whirligig, the flying Dutchmen, Kelly's goats, spinning ginny hobby horses, steam circus, and carry as alls.

And that's just in the US and England.

They've also been called roundabouts, tilts, and gallopers.

Okay, that's a lot of names.

Actually, speaking of the British, did you know that there's a pretty significant difference between carousels in England or gallopers as you mentioned, and then the ones we have here in the States.

Yeah.

In England, departs are delivered by lorries to build them, and in the US they're delivered by.

Cross right, it's very very good, Mago, but no.

Traditionally, carousels in England rotate clockwise, and in most other countries they go counterclockwise, which just seems so weird.

Like I don't even know one thing.

If they went in the other direction, I don't know that I could handle it.

Apparently this is because the British take horseback riding very seriously and it's improper for an equestrian to get on a horse from the right side, so by having their carousels face clockwise, riders are less likely to make that mistake.

I had no idea there were rules about getting on a horse, but I do like thinking about international carousels, so here a quick few facts about them.

Paris has beautiful double decker carousels, like the one in montmart with hand painted city scapes.

In Germany you can find carousels with beer steins and pretzels instead of horses, and Japan features ultra modern carousels with anime characters or led light shows.

Fun.

But I looked up, like, what are the absolute all star carousels that you have to go on in the world, and these are a few of them.

So one is the House on the Rock carousel in Wisconsin.

It's the world's largest indoor carousel.

It features two hundred and sixty nine animals, but not a single horse.

WHOA that sounds intentional.

They also have over one hundred and eighty mannequin angels floating from the ceiling.

Of course, you know, it sounds like a fever dream.

And then there's the La Carousel Desmond Marine in Nanta's, France, and this sounds insane because it's a three level mechanical marine carousel.

It's got squids, submarines, deep sea fish, crabs and boats.

It is twenty five meters tall and supposedly it's like riding through Jules Burns's imagination.

And then there's the Banksy be Amusement Park, which was you know, only there in twenty fifteen, but it was a deliberately disturbing carousel.

It had a butcher mannequin, there was a carousel operator asleep at the control.

It was quote a brutal satire of capitalism and fairytale nostalgia.

Wow.

And then my favorite one is the Old Goat Carousel, which is on Goat Island in Oregon, and it features quirky wooden goats with hand knit saddles.

I loved, and the bonus weirdness is that there was a rumor that real goats once powered it.

I love that they were quirky wooden goats, right like just not those normal old wooden goats you sometimes see.

All right, Well, I don't know how many people will go travel to visit these carousels, but they do sound intriguing.

So we'll be back with a few more carousel facts after a quick break, including tales of a giant Panda, Abraham Lincoln's Face, and Catcher and the Rye.

What a trio there, so stay tuned.

Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where today we're taking a spin around the wonderful world of carousels.

Now quick reminder, if you like what you're hearing, be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app, leave us a nice rating, a review, and share the episode with a friend.

We definitely appreciate it, and hope so will they so well.

Something I was thinking about while we were researching this episode was carousels in media, and I remember this part from Jadie Salinger's novel Catcher and the Ride holding Coffield is watching his sister Phoebe on the Merry Go Round and the quote goes quote, Then the carousels started, and I watched her go round and round.

All the kids tried to grab for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she'd fallen off the goddamn horse, but I didn't say or do anything.

I have to admit I have not thought about that book in a very long time, and I do not remember that there was a carousel.

I have not remember that either.

But that quote made me wonder why older carousels had rings and why there aren't anymore.

And I learned that carousels used to have a shoot next to them, which was attached to a kind of arm that dispensed rings, and people riding towards the outside of the carousel could reach over and try to grab a ring as they were moving by.

If they got one, the rig dispenser would refill, allowing the next person to try to grab one.

And most rings were made of a material like steel or iron, but often in the bunch of rings there was one single gold ring or one brass ring, and the lucky person who grabbed that special ring could cash it in for a free pride.

I mean, to be honest, it feels like you'd get so dizzy just trying to win that free ride.

Yeah, it's definitely a young person's game.

Speak of which this brass ring feature actually created jobs.

Carosel operators needed quote ring boys who took all the rings returned to a big barrel after the ride and put them back into the ring feeder.

The problem was people stole the rings and especially the brass ones, so they oftentimes kept them as souvenirs instead of redeeming them for a free ride.

So these ring replacements could cost a Merry Go Round operator thousands of dollars in a single season, and those rise and costs eventually made the rings obsolete.

That is a shame.

And I feel like that kind of happens every once in a while, like stuff gets too expensive and the world becomes a little less fun.

You know what I mean?

Mego, I don't mean to take it down, but no.

It's why we can't have nice runing.

This is very true, all right.

So as a resident of Brooklyn, Mango, you probably know that Brooklyn is the home to the Merrygo Round hotspot, which is, of course Coney Island, which once had a staggering twenty four steam driven carousels.

It even became known for its Coney Island style of Merrygo Round, which meant a ride that was especially ostentatious and bejeweled.

Of course.

Now, one Coney Island carousel, the El Dorado, was forty two feet tall and had three levels of rotating platforms, each moving at a different speed, which would make it just weird to look at.

But today there's only one Merrigo round left in Coney Island, the B and B Carousel, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

It was almost sold back in two thousand and five, but an anonymous buyer stepped in to purchase it and donate it to the city.

It was then sent to Ohio for restoration, which is where a big discovery was actually made.

So tell me what this discovery is.

All right?

So the carousel was built in nineteen oh nine, which was the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birthday and the year the Lincoln penny was first minted.

Now, the carver of the BnB horses, Marcus Charles Iliens, honored the occasion by carving Lincoln's face into the side of one of the horses.

Aliens had been described as the Michelangelo of horse carving.

It's so weird that I never thought of.

Of course, you know, there's a carousel sculptor who is more famous than the others, Yeah, like one who's an artistic genius, the Michelangelo of them.

That's exactly right.

Well, what's interesting is that there are three big schools of carousel design, Like the Philadelphia school is more realistic and naturalistic, the Coney Island school is the more gaudy and festive as you might assume, like gold leaves and jewels, and then there's the country fair style, which is more functional and easy to transport, So not really that ornad I guess.

Anyway, Aliens was a genius and the artist behind ten different Coney Island carousels.

But this horse had been painted over so many times that the carving of Lincoln was completely covered up, so without restoration work and it would have been lost forever.

Now the Lincoln is fully visible, and it's such a rare and unique piece that no rider is actually allowed to sit on the horse, and it's commemorated with a plaque there.

First of all, I love that there's like a Philadelphia style of mery gorounds, which is just amazing.

But I also love that there's one horse you can't ride at Coney Allen because it's there to honor Lincoln.

Lincoln's faces on it.

Yeah, so we have talked a lot about the past, so let's step into the present day and I'm talking about solar powered carousels, which have been around since two thousand and five.

Well known one is the Speedwell Foundation Conservation Carousel.

It's at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, d C.

It was completed in twenty twelve, and thanks to its one hundred and sixty two solar panels, it has a net ero impact on the oo's energy consumption.

But probably my favorite detail about this carousel is that instead of traditional horses, riders can choose from a more eclectic array of animals.

So you can ride on naked mole rat oh nice, a cuttlefish, a blue crab, or a yellowjacket.

Oh.

I love those.

The creators also made a point to feature endangerous fecies like a giant panda, so it's a pretty cool way to enjoy a fun ride while keeping.

The environment in mind.

I love that mix of animals, all right.

Well, from the present day, I'll take it one step further into the future of carousels.

So in two thousand and nine, the Brooklyn Art Combine known as the Madagascar Institute created an experimental jet powered carousel.

It didn't have a platform, It only had two seats.

They kind of dangled from this center pole, so it didn't really look like a normal carousel and it definitely didn't work like one either.

So riders received jet engine packs to wear, and igniting them caused the ride to go around.

Which sounds kind of dangerous.

Well, that is very true.

The Madagascar Institute made this wild contraption for a gadget off festival.

When they tested it out, they put up a sign that read caution, this may kill you.

That's a good warning, you know.

It's good to know that.

It feels like you shouldn't get on.

I wouldn't.

Well, I am going to give you today's trophy for that one.

I never thought you could start a simple episode about carousels and end up on a jet fueled and possibly lethal ride.

This world is full of surprises, Mango.

You should know that by now.

But that's all for today.

We'll be back next week with another brand new episode.

In the meantime, you can find us at part Time Genius on Instagram or Blue Sky, and you can leave us a message on our hotline three O two four oh five five nine two five.

Ask us a question, suggest a topic, give us any feedback.

Whatever it is, we would love to hear from you, but from Dylan Gabe, Mary Mango and me, thank you so much for listening.

Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.

This show is hosted by Will Pearson and Me Mongaysh and research by our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy.

Today's episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang.

The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvel and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey.

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