Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So, Tracy,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you have heard of a jacket being called
Speaker 1: a Macintosh, and these days lots of jackets are called
Speaker 1: that became kind of a generic. Always correctly, it really
Speaker 1: means a raincoat, and if you want to get granular,
Speaker 1: it means a specific kind and brand of raincoat. And
Speaker 1: that's because it's actually named for the man who is
Speaker 1: usually credited with inventing the modern raincoat, and that was
Speaker 1: Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh. But as with just about any invention,
Speaker 1: it is not as though he came up with the
Speaker 1: idea out of thin air. Humans have worked on ways
Speaker 1: to make garments water resistant almost since they started wearing them.
Speaker 1: Whale intestines, woven grass and leaves, animal first, tightly woven
Speaker 1: woolf fibers, and even oiled and waxed fabrics have been
Speaker 1: used around the world by various people to try to
Speaker 1: keep the rain and moisture at bay. But figuring out
Speaker 1: how to manufacture clothes with rubber was a really big breakthrough.
Speaker 1: That took actually kind of centuries. People really wanted to
Speaker 1: figure out the rubber puzzle. I really love looking at
Speaker 1: pictures of the various kinds of rainwear that different cultures
Speaker 1: have developed around the world. Some of them are just
Speaker 1: so fascinating to me. Uh. In terms of what we're
Speaker 1: talking about today, there are accounts that indicate that indigenous
Speaker 1: peoples in the America's used the natural rubber from trees
Speaker 1: in a lot of different ways, and we're applying rubber
Speaker 1: to their clothing as a waterproofing tool well before Europeans
Speaker 1: arrived in the Americas. Then Europeans, particularly Spanish and Portuguese explorers,
Speaker 1: adopted this same practice, it was not something that they
Speaker 1: brought back home with them to Europe. Though, rubber did
Speaker 1: not really become something that Europeans paid a lot of
Speaker 1: attention to until the mid eighteenth century, when French botanist
Speaker 1: friends with fred No Deda Gattoier started writing about it
Speaker 1: after spending time studying the plants in French Guiana for
Speaker 1: a note actually wrote about the possibility of combining rubber
Speaker 1: with textiles to create waterproof clothing as early as seventeen
Speaker 1: forty nine. But though for No and other Europeans who
Speaker 1: had visited the Americas had seen this application and had
Speaker 1: even used it themselves. You would think, of course they
Speaker 1: would want to bring that back to Europe, but the
Speaker 1: problem was transport. Although the scientific community of Europe was
Speaker 1: really eager to experiment with cow shook as it was
Speaker 1: known in for No's writing and often for a long time,
Speaker 1: it couldn't really be stabilized for transport, and so reportedly
Speaker 1: that raw material would coagulate eight on the voyage across
Speaker 1: the Atlantic. For No thought that rubber could be combined
Speaker 1: with turpentine as a solvent, but that actually caused it
Speaker 1: to break down, and it introduced oxygen into the mix,
Speaker 1: and it just further degraded it. So enter a repeat
Speaker 1: character from the podcast, that is Jacques de Valcantin of
Speaker 1: the pooping robot duck Automata fame. He was really fascinated
Speaker 1: with rubber, and he's often credited with creating the first
Speaker 1: rubber tube, which he used in that duck. He was
Speaker 1: one of the more prominent scientists of the seventeen hundreds
Speaker 1: who was talking to colleagues about the potential of using
Speaker 1: rubber in a variety of applications that certainly increased its
Speaker 1: profile as a subject of interest. He also communicated the
Speaker 1: importance of this line of scientific research in the early
Speaker 1: seventeen sixties. He did that when talking to Are Leonard
Speaker 1: Jean Baptiste Berta, who at the time was King Louis
Speaker 1: the fifteenth of France's finance minister. Are. Yeah, he was like,
Speaker 1: we should really put some money behind this research, shouldn't we.
Speaker 1: It's very cool, um. But it took several more years
Speaker 1: for the next link in the chain, meaning another scientist,
Speaker 1: to propose another solvent that would make rubber into a
Speaker 1: substance that could be used for a wide range of
Speaker 1: practical applications. That was the work of French chemist Pierre
Speaker 1: Joseph Macaire. Despite being very busy in the seventeen sixties
Speaker 1: writing the historically significant Dictionary of Chemistry, he also wanted
Speaker 1: to crack the problem of a solvent for rubber, and
Speaker 1: he proposed ether as another solvent option, and presented his
Speaker 1: work to the Academy Deciance in seventeen sixty eight, but
Speaker 1: ether was far too expensive to really ever do anything
Speaker 1: at a large scale. In seventeen seventy nine, an Italian
Speaker 1: botanist and chemist named Giovanni Valentino Mattia Fabroni of Florence
Speaker 1: picked up this effort. As a young scientist, Fabroni had
Speaker 1: traveled to Paris and London at the behest of Tuscany nobility,
Speaker 1: and had collected instruments for a new laboratory. That laboratory
Speaker 1: evolved into the Science Museum of Florence. During these trips,
Speaker 1: Fabbroni of course met other scientists, and it's believed that
Speaker 1: that's when he became interested in rubber. It was a
Speaker 1: few years after that initial supply run that Fabroni was
Speaker 1: back in London and through experimentation he identified petroleum distillate
Speaker 1: or naptha as a solvent for rubber. Fabroni did see
Speaker 1: some textile applications for this and prepared some samples of
Speaker 1: fabrics that were coated with rubber. He published his findings
Speaker 1: in France and Italy in the seventeen nineties, with the
Speaker 1: most detailed write ups about it appearing in Italy in
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety six. So here it is this is the
Speaker 1: first rain waar no actually not petroleum distill It was
Speaker 1: difficult to produce in large quantities. The next step was
Speaker 1: scientists figuring out how to actually make these discoveries viable
Speaker 1: for more than just these little one off samples. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and these were like not as though he was even
Speaker 1: making clothes with the samples. It was like, here is
Speaker 1: your sample of a an eight by eight inch, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's a swatch. At that point, other scientists continued to
Speaker 1: work on how to make rubber work practically. But before garments,
Speaker 1: there was another use for rubber coated fabric, and that
Speaker 1: was balloons. But here's the thing, we actually don't know
Speaker 1: a whole lot about this use. It does brush up
Speaker 1: against two previous episodes, though, And what we have is
Speaker 1: correspondence between Faujeue de Saint Fonde, one of the people
Speaker 1: who wrote about the Mongolfier brothers and their early ballooning efforts,
Speaker 1: and another pair of brothers, the Robets. That correspondence is
Speaker 1: kind of on the bickery side. It seems that each
Speaker 1: side of the communication believed that they had had the
Speaker 1: idea to try waterproofing balloon fabric first. And there are
Speaker 1: also some references years later to something called Blanchard's solution,
Speaker 1: again referencing Sophie Blanchard. Uh that would suggest that that
Speaker 1: was a rubber and turpentine solution that she used on
Speaker 1: her balloon, but there aren't really any specifics about where
Speaker 1: that solution came from, if it had been used successfully, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Across the Atlantic Ocean, Spanish scientists working in Mexico were
Speaker 1: also working on rubber. At the end of the eighteenth century.
Speaker 1: Diaz de la Vega had been one of several men
Speaker 1: who had traveled to the America's to learn more about
Speaker 1: the plant known as Castilloa elastica, after other Europeans had
Speaker 1: returned home excited about it. In this case, the effort
Speaker 1: was funded by the Spanish colonial government, and de la
Speaker 1: Vega was an employee of that government. He created not
Speaker 1: clothing but containers. He did that by layering textiles with
Speaker 1: natural latex and then shaping the layered result into something
Speaker 1: that could hold mercury. We don't really have specifics on
Speaker 1: the dimensions or the shape of those containers, but it
Speaker 1: seems like the whole project kind of faded off. It
Speaker 1: was not really pursued later. I would love to see
Speaker 1: those um But then in the late seventeen hundreds, in
Speaker 1: early eighteen hundreds, a British surgeon named James Howison, living
Speaker 1: in Asia did start applying rubber to clothing to make
Speaker 1: waterproof gear, and he wrote about all of this in
Speaker 1: a paper titled Some account of the Elastic Gum Vine
Speaker 1: of Prince Wales Island, and of Experiments made on the
Speaker 1: milky juice which it produces, with respecting the useful purposes
Speaker 1: to which it may be applied the Prince Wales Island
Speaker 1: and the title is the Malaysian island of Penang. And
Speaker 1: Howison is credited with identifying a rubber producing plant called
Speaker 1: Ursiola elastica, and in his paper, Howison stated that older
Speaker 1: vines of that plant produced the best couch shook and
Speaker 1: describe it as being similar to a thick cream. He
Speaker 1: also described making wax molds of items like gloves and
Speaker 1: boots and then dipping them into his rubber solution to
Speaker 1: make completely rubber items, and using a ruler to spread
Speaker 1: liquefied rubber onto clothing, making himself an entire set of
Speaker 1: waterproof clothes. The next person in Europe to work on
Speaker 1: waterproofing with rubber was really young when he figured some
Speaker 1: advances out. He was just eighteen. His name was James
Speaker 1: Sime and he was a medical student in Scotland. His
Speaker 1: story is interesting because it butts right up against that
Speaker 1: of Charles McIntosh, he was credited with inventing the raincoat.
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighteen, Sime wrote up his findings that mineral
Speaker 1: naptha was the best thing to thin rubber into a
Speaker 1: usable liquid form, and like those before him, he worked
Speaker 1: on waterproofing clothes by spreading this liquid rubber on them.
Speaker 1: Other scientists we're working with rubber and writing about the
Speaker 1: various qualities they observed in it during all of this.
Speaker 1: Dutch physiologist Jahn Ingenhouse wrote about rubber stickiness in seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, writing quote, this wonderful substance possesses a strong
Speaker 1: power of attraction for itself, so that two pieces cut
Speaker 1: with a sharp instrument will adhere strongly together if joined
Speaker 1: before the cut and smooth edges have been touched by
Speaker 1: the fingers. A French scientist named Grossar built on that
Speaker 1: stickiness idea in his work developing a method of joining
Speaker 1: rubber together for his work on rubber tubing. And building
Speaker 1: on that was Thomas Hancock who developed a device called
Speaker 1: a masticator in the early eighteen hundreds that processed rubber
Speaker 1: to a desired viscosity for use in a variety of applications,
Speaker 1: including the types of hoses that Grossar had developed. Hancock's
Speaker 1: masticator was a cylinder with spikes that rotated and rubber
Speaker 1: material was passed through one end and was warmed and
Speaker 1: cut by the spikes over and over before being extruded
Speaker 1: from the other end, as what was called by one
Speaker 1: writer quote a united plastic compound. But unlike his predecessors
Speaker 1: and their experiments with rubber, Hancock did not immediately published
Speaker 1: all of his findings. He recognized the possible commercial benefit
Speaker 1: of keeping the mast carters working secret, and he ended
Speaker 1: up working with Charles McIntosh. So we'll be talking about
Speaker 1: the man whose name, with a different spelling is still
Speaker 1: associated with raincoats. In just a moment, before we get
Speaker 1: into Charles McIntosh's story, we're going to pause for a
Speaker 1: sponsor break. Charles McIntosh, that's spelled M A C. There's
Speaker 1: no K in his proper name spelling. Was born in Glasgow, Scotland,
Speaker 1: on December Perhaps almost all accounts of his life list
Speaker 1: as his date of birth. But the dissenter in information
Speaker 1: on this particular note is a pretty significant one. It's
Speaker 1: the National Records of Scotland website which lists his birth
Speaker 1: date as November twenty nine, and there is a photo
Speaker 1: of the birth and baptism entry for Charles Macintosh. It
Speaker 1: is easy to make out the n O V. November
Speaker 1: on the entry, as well as the Macintosh spelled differently
Speaker 1: than he spelled it in his lifetime uh, and the
Speaker 1: name Charles, but the rest of the words are a
Speaker 1: little bit tricky to make out there in handwritten script,
Speaker 1: which you know anyone's handwriting is tricky, and sometimes that
Speaker 1: very elegant but very fancy looking UH script that you'll
Speaker 1: see an old documents is very hard to discern. The
Speaker 1: December date, though, is what is given, for example, in
Speaker 1: the biography of Macintosh that was written by his son,
Speaker 1: so that date is what the immediate family used. Charles's
Speaker 1: parents were George McIntosh and Mary Moore McIntosh. George had
Speaker 1: a factory where d was produced, and his intention was
Speaker 1: that his son would one day take over this business.
Speaker 1: As a boy, Charles attended grammar school and was recognized
Speaker 1: early on for an aptitude in Latin language, in particular.
Speaker 1: After grammar school, he attended Catterick Bridge School in Yorkshire.
Speaker 1: After studying in England for several years. Charles went back
Speaker 1: to Scotland and started working at the counting house of
Speaker 1: another merchant in Glasgow that was a Mr. Glass Bird,
Speaker 1: and the goal was this position would further develop Charles's
Speaker 1: knowledge of business, and in his biography this reads sort
Speaker 1: of like an apprenticeship, but sometimes it's characterized more as
Speaker 1: McIntosh just getting a job as a clerk. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems like there was a more clear career goal. I
Speaker 1: read a few that were like, after being tired of
Speaker 1: being a clerk, he became an inventor, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's not really right. But regardless of how that position began,
Speaker 1: the glass Words and the macintosh Is were friendly and
Speaker 1: eventually both fathers and sons o foreman total all became
Speaker 1: business partners. And by this point McIntosh was already very
Speaker 1: interested in the latest advancements in chemistry. He exchanged letters
Speaker 1: with a lot of scientists about new discoveries and theories
Speaker 1: on the matter. He was also a member of the
Speaker 1: Commercial Society of Glasgow, which existed from seven to eighteen
Speaker 1: o three. This group was formed so that merchants and
Speaker 1: businessmen in the area could discuss and debate social and
Speaker 1: political issues that impacted the economy. During this time, Charles
Speaker 1: McIntosh wrote essays on various happenings of the day, including
Speaker 1: the late eighteenth century friction between Britain and Ireland. This
Speaker 1: has a decidedly pro British slant. He also wrote essays
Speaker 1: for the Society about European trade, agriculture, the iron trade,
Speaker 1: and the manufacturer of textiles, specifically wool. In his essay
Speaker 1: on wool, he wrote quote, this essay commences with expres
Speaker 1: sctions of regret that the woolen manufacturer should not have
Speaker 1: been introduced on a scale of any extent in Scotland,
Speaker 1: seeing that the country is in many respects well calculated
Speaker 1: for it. And these essays were written when McIntosh was
Speaker 1: still very young. They were all written before he was
Speaker 1: even twenty one, and during that time he was also
Speaker 1: busy working on starting his own business enterprise. He started
Speaker 1: a company in partnership with his father and another investor
Speaker 1: named William Cooper, to manufacture ammonium chloride, which at the
Speaker 1: time was called sal ammoniac. This was not a glamorous enterprise.
Speaker 1: McIntosh's primary sources that he used for extraction of ammonium
Speaker 1: chloride were soot and urine, and it was difficult to
Speaker 1: process in the late seventeen hundreds, but then it could
Speaker 1: be sold to metal smith's and pharmacies. This business only
Speaker 1: lasted about six years, but during it Charles was often
Speaker 1: corresponding with experts in production to refine his process and
Speaker 1: to use the resources he had available through this venture
Speaker 1: to perform some additional experiments of his own and expand
Speaker 1: the company's offerings. Not long after the company formed, Charles
Speaker 1: started traveling around Europe to make sales. Deals involves having
Speaker 1: a lot of pluck for a man in his early twenties,
Speaker 1: but to be clear, he had a lot of help
Speaker 1: from his father and his father's business associates, all of
Speaker 1: whom made introductions for him and encouraged their various contacts
Speaker 1: to consider doing business with him. When McIntosh returned to Scotland,
Speaker 1: he brought back some knowledge as well, including of new
Speaker 1: innovations in chemistry. According to an early nineteenth century Scotland
Speaker 1: statistics report, it was Charles McIntosh who introduced the production
Speaker 1: of ascetate of lead and ascetate of alumina into Britain.
Speaker 1: McIntosh wrote about this in a letter to a business
Speaker 1: associate several years later in eighteen hundred quote, when in Holland,
Speaker 1: I was admitted to see a sugar of lead work,
Speaker 1: and was struck with the circumstance ants of both the
Speaker 1: lead and coal, and frequently the malt used in making
Speaker 1: the vinegar employed in it being imported into Holland from Britain,
Speaker 1: and that the manufactured article, when sent back to US,
Speaker 1: should become loaded upon its arrival with a duty of
Speaker 1: threepence per pound. On my return to Glasgow, I attempted
Speaker 1: to make sugar of lead and was successful in making
Speaker 1: as salt equal in quality to the Dutch. I established
Speaker 1: a manufactory of it in the year seventy six, which
Speaker 1: as you know, has been going on pretty successfully ever since.
Speaker 1: So he had realized that he could circumvent that process
Speaker 1: of exporting raw material that was used in making lead
Speaker 1: and then importing the ascetate and paying an import tax
Speaker 1: for it. This would have been something of significant interest
Speaker 1: to Macintosh because lead acetate, as it is more commonly
Speaker 1: known today, is a die fixative that's used in the
Speaker 1: textile industry, so it would have really benefited the family
Speaker 1: business to produce it right there in Glasgow instead of
Speaker 1: dealing with all these imports and exports. This actually led
Speaker 1: to Britain's supplanting the Netherlands as the main exporter in
Speaker 1: Europe of lead acetate. McIntosh had not patented his process though,
Speaker 1: so a lot of other manufacturers jumped into production as well.
Speaker 1: McIntosh got married to Mary Fisher in se They most
Speaker 1: likely met through one of McIntosh's business contacts. It seems
Speaker 1: like all of his life was kind of set up
Speaker 1: through his and his father's business contracts because her father
Speaker 1: was also a Glasgow merchant. McIntosh was involved in a
Speaker 1: lot of businesses in his early years. He made advancements
Speaker 1: in die production, particularly with the color known as Prussian Blue.
Speaker 1: He also opened Scotland's first album works. One of the
Speaker 1: advertisements that ran for one of his products read quote
Speaker 1: Charles McIntosh and Companies refined malt vinegar for the use
Speaker 1: of families and for pickling at cetera. Vinegar of the
Speaker 1: most superior quality for the above purposes. Larranted and perfectly
Speaker 1: pure vegetable acid in which the most delicate tests can
Speaker 1: detect no adulteration of any kind, and which will never
Speaker 1: spoil from keeping nor deposit any slimy gelatinous substance. This
Speaker 1: vinegar will be found equal in strength and flavor to
Speaker 1: the strongest French white wine vinegar, over which it possesses
Speaker 1: many advantages. I can't imagine a modern ad for any
Speaker 1: kind of food products invoking slimy, gelatinous substances. That's why
Speaker 1: that cracked me up. So if you read most versions
Speaker 1: of the raincoat creation story, they state that in McIntosh
Speaker 1: was kind of working on a sustainability project. He wanted
Speaker 1: to find uses for the cold tar naptha that was
Speaker 1: produced in gas works. So naptha is an oily liquid
Speaker 1: that's produced when natural gas condons eights and coal tar
Speaker 1: used in production distills into the desired gas and that condensation.
Speaker 1: This often reads as though it was kind of a
Speaker 1: Eureka moment where he goes, oh, I could use this.
Speaker 1: But as we've discussed, a lot of scientists were working
Speaker 1: to get to a way to work with rubber, and
Speaker 1: naptha had already been arrived at as a really viable
Speaker 1: option in that quest. McIntosh was interested in chemistry and
Speaker 1: would have absolutely had to read about the work of
Speaker 1: his predecessors. This was such a popular topic that it
Speaker 1: would have been really hard to avoid reading about it,
Speaker 1: and several years before he got to his part in
Speaker 1: the rubber story. In eighteen nineteen, McIntosh made an agreement
Speaker 1: with the Glasgow Gas Works to buy the waste products
Speaker 1: that were left after using coal to make gas. Those
Speaker 1: products where tar and ammonaica liquor. Some of these waste
Speaker 1: products were used in the various die processes that McIntosh
Speaker 1: worked on, but he also put them to use in
Speaker 1: other textile experiments, including with rubber. So the actual invention
Speaker 1: and I feel like we should air quote that, since
Speaker 1: he's kind of acting on many other ideas that people
Speaker 1: have had, is described as follows in an account written
Speaker 1: by Thomas Hancock. He's the one that invented that mast
Speaker 1: cator machine. Quote. After the separation of the ammonia in
Speaker 1: the conversion of tar into pitch to suit the purposes
Speaker 1: of consumers, the essential oil termed naptha is produced, and
Speaker 1: the thought occurred to him of its being possible to
Speaker 1: render this also useful from its powers as a solvent
Speaker 1: of couch shook or India rubber. By exposure to the
Speaker 1: action of the volatile oil termed naptha obtained from the
Speaker 1: coal tar. He converted this substance into a water proof varnish,
Speaker 1: the thickness and consistency of which he could vary according
Speaker 1: to the quantity of naptha which he employed in the process.
Speaker 1: So McIntosh realized or maybe confirmed for himself, that naptha
Speaker 1: could break down India rubber into a dissolved form. India
Speaker 1: rubber is the naturally occurring rubber that can be extracted
Speaker 1: from various tropical plants. Incidentally, it went from being called kawchuk,
Speaker 1: which was a term taken from indigenous languages in the
Speaker 1: America's to being called India rubber when English speaking scientists
Speaker 1: realized it could be used to rub out unwanted writing
Speaker 1: or drawing marks from a pencil. The India is a
Speaker 1: reference to the West Indies, not the Indian subcontinent. Yes,
Speaker 1: in that way that many European names for things don't
Speaker 1: actually make sense of them. Uh, just though we would
Speaker 1: make clear on that. So, once macintosh had a fluid
Speaker 1: stable rubber to work with, he started experimenting with it
Speaker 1: on fabric and eventually he spread some onto a piece
Speaker 1: of wool. And then he did a thing that other
Speaker 1: people had not. He layered another piece of wool on
Speaker 1: top of that sort of gluing them together and creating
Speaker 1: a waterproof fabric. Once McIntosh had his fabric tested and
Speaker 1: a method developed for large scale production, he went right
Speaker 1: into manufacture. He received a patent for his method of
Speaker 1: waterproofing fabric on June seventy three. It was the fourth
Speaker 1: British patent for an invention that utilized rubber, and by
Speaker 1: the following year he was in full production of Macintosh Fabric.
Speaker 1: He had added that extra K into the name as
Speaker 1: part of his trademark for this. I was never able
Speaker 1: to ferret out exactly why, but I suspect it was
Speaker 1: to keep this separate from his other companies that had
Speaker 1: the Macintosh name attached. We'll talk about some of the
Speaker 1: problems with the early raincoats made from this material right
Speaker 1: after we hear from some of the sponsors that keep
Speaker 1: stuffy miss in history class going. So, this invention of
Speaker 1: waterproof fabric was a really huge moment in clothing technology.
Speaker 1: The first synthetic fabrics, so the things that are so
Speaker 1: crucial to our rain gear today, for example, would not
Speaker 1: be invented for more than a century. People had wanted
Speaker 1: waterproof clothing for a long time and This was a
Speaker 1: big step forward, but it was not perfect. There were
Speaker 1: a lot of issues right out of the gate. For one,
Speaker 1: that fabric was hot, blazingly hot. Two layers of wool
Speaker 1: plus a rubber layer that did not breathe in between
Speaker 1: them meant that garments made with McIntosh is fabric could
Speaker 1: really only be worn comfortably in the coldest weather. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't only rain when it's called. Additionally, sometimes the
Speaker 1: rubber eyed adhesive that McIntosh had created would become viscous
Speaker 1: in warm weather, and the fabric would become sticky as
Speaker 1: it kind of oozed out through the weave. For another,
Speaker 1: that combination of wool and rubber had some other longevity issues.
Speaker 1: Wool contains oil. Even after it's been washed, it retains
Speaker 1: some of the oils that it naturally has as a
Speaker 1: product that grows out of an animal, and oil can
Speaker 1: break down a lot of sticky substances. This is our
Speaker 1: hot tip moment. UH. If you're ever having trouble removing
Speaker 1: a bandage that's adhered to your skin, just break out
Speaker 1: a little lotion or baby oil. It works better than
Speaker 1: soap and water and better than any harsher things you
Speaker 1: might use. And that is the action that was in
Speaker 1: play here. So in this case, the woolves oil started
Speaker 1: to break down the rubber coating that Macintosh had created,
Speaker 1: so the garment's waterproof layer became less and less reliable
Speaker 1: over time. And then here's the thing. Just sowing the
Speaker 1: garment together meant that every stitch made a tiny hole
Speaker 1: in the rubber layer. That doesn't sound too bad, but
Speaker 1: then when you consider that each seam essentially was a
Speaker 1: line of tiny perforations, and that water could soak through
Speaker 1: all of those, you can see how it's a problem.
Speaker 1: Those are all issue with this garment's functionality, but there
Speaker 1: was also an issue of just general wearability in the
Speaker 1: early raincoats. They were very stiff, so moving around in
Speaker 1: them was pretty cumbersome. They couldn't really be tailored, so
Speaker 1: the fit was sort of like wearing a tent. And
Speaker 1: while it probably wasn't a huge concern for most people
Speaker 1: who were just happy to have a garment that would
Speaker 1: keep them mostly dry, they were not esthetically very great.
Speaker 1: The only color they came in was a drab green,
Speaker 1: and top things off, they smelled pretty bad, and this
Speaker 1: was such an issue. They smelled so bad that they
Speaker 1: were banned on public transportation. In some cities you cannot
Speaker 1: get on the trolley if you're wearing a raincoat, which
Speaker 1: I guess means you have to walk. So a number
Speaker 1: of the flaws of these early garments made with macintosh fabric,
Speaker 1: like the stitching lines creating a perforation, came about because
Speaker 1: McIntosh was making fabric, and then he was selling that
Speaker 1: fabric to garment makers. But Taylor's didn't really know how
Speaker 1: to work with it. How could they No one had
Speaker 1: ever sewn rubberized fabrics before, and McIntosh had told them
Speaker 1: that they need to glue the seams rather than just stitching.
Speaker 1: But garment makers were kind of wary of taking sewing
Speaker 1: advice from a chemist who did not know how to sew. Uh.
Speaker 1: So after a bit of frustration over this problem, McIntosh
Speaker 1: just started production on garments in his own factory. This
Speaker 1: is a really significant moment in clothing history for a
Speaker 1: reason other than waterproofing. Charles McIntosh was one of the
Speaker 1: first garment manufacturers to create clothing in mass production. Most
Speaker 1: clothing in the eighteen twenties was still bespoke. You didn't
Speaker 1: go into a shop and buy ready made dresses, their
Speaker 1: suits off the rack. The idea of a clothing factory
Speaker 1: was not really something that existed. The creation of an
Speaker 1: assembly line is usually credited to Ransom Olds or Henry
Speaker 1: Ford in the early nineteen hundreds, but McIntosh was eighty
Speaker 1: or ninety years ahead of them. With a garment assembly line,
Speaker 1: workers would be assigned to a particular part of the
Speaker 1: garment and then the pieces would move on to the
Speaker 1: next station and another part of the factory. Completely different
Speaker 1: from the idea of going to a tailor and having
Speaker 1: a garment made and they do the whole thing, yeah,
Speaker 1: or making your own garment at home. Yeah. The ready
Speaker 1: availability of the macintosh raincoat once all of this was
Speaker 1: up and running, actually heard its reputation a little for
Speaker 1: a while. In a world where clothes were usually custom
Speaker 1: made for the wearer, the idea that a businessman and
Speaker 1: a member of his household staff would wear the same
Speaker 1: rain gear kind of made it seem less special. But
Speaker 1: some of the hallmarks of the early Macintosh coats, including
Speaker 1: a tartan lining to reference its inventors Scottish heritage, have
Speaker 1: persisted and today they're seen as marks of quality. Initially,
Speaker 1: the target market for McIntosh's rain consisted of sportsmen and
Speaker 1: domestic workers like coachman and footman. This sounds pretty specific,
Speaker 1: but it covered the basis for a lot of social strata.
Speaker 1: While somebody who worked as a member of a household
Speaker 1: staff would benefit from having a waterproof coat for performing
Speaker 1: duties that took them outside or walking to and from work,
Speaker 1: wealthy people would of course want to have one in
Speaker 1: case they wanted to go yachting or hunting, and for
Speaker 1: the most part this gear was really geared towards men
Speaker 1: until women's Macintoshes were introduced. Macintosh worked on improvements to
Speaker 1: the design of the raincoat on an ongoing basis to
Speaker 1: try to address the various issues and to expand the
Speaker 1: company's offerings continuously. His Glasgow factory setup was initially very
Speaker 1: labor intensive. The rubber solution had to be hand brushed
Speaker 1: onto the wool and then once applied, it was smoothed
Speaker 1: out again by hand with a spatula to make the
Speaker 1: application even, and this was done to both sides of
Speaker 1: the wool fabric, and then those two rubber eyed pieces
Speaker 1: of fabric would pass through a roller that pressed them
Speaker 1: together and that resulting fabric was then tested by hand
Speaker 1: by applying water and seeing if any passed through. In
Speaker 1: eight he started collaborating with Thomas Hancock, and McIntosh soon
Speaker 1: realized that Hancock's masticator could really speed up production and
Speaker 1: save money because it made it a lot easier to
Speaker 1: dissolve rubber using less solvent. In eighteen thirty, a factory
Speaker 1: in Manchester was established to make McIntosh rain wear, and
Speaker 1: Hancock's masticators were part of that production line. There were
Speaker 1: other updates to the process in the Manchester factory, including
Speaker 1: spreading the waterproofing rubber onto fabric with a mechanized roller
Speaker 1: machine that was steam powered. That was eventually replaced by
Speaker 1: a mechanism that rolled the fabric over a canister that
Speaker 1: contained the waterproofing, so that as the fabric passed over it,
Speaker 1: the rubber was applied, and then it passed through another
Speaker 1: machine that smoothed it out. That partnership with Hancock also
Speaker 1: led to a court battle, although it was not between
Speaker 1: the two inventors involved in the business deal. Hancock had
Speaker 1: continued to keep the workings of his mast cat secret
Speaker 1: so that it would retain its market value, but one
Speaker 1: of his employees blabbed about it, and also blabbed the
Speaker 1: process that was being used to make macintoshes. That led
Speaker 1: to other manufacturers using McIntosh's process. Specifically, a company called
Speaker 1: Everington and Son was a silk dealer which was headed
Speaker 1: by a man named Win Ellis. Both McIntosh and Hancock
Speaker 1: were eager to protect their patents and their markets, so
Speaker 1: they sued, and in February six Macintosh versus Everington and
Speaker 1: Ellis was tried in the Court of Commons. As part
Speaker 1: of the defense's case, it was revealed that at least
Speaker 1: two years before McIntosh had gotten the patent for his
Speaker 1: fabric rubber fabric sandwiching technique, balloonist char Alls Green had
Speaker 1: done the same thing with balloon silk. But in Green's case,
Speaker 1: he wasn't publishing that technique. It was kept secret to
Speaker 1: give him an edge in this rapidly expanding field of ballooning.
Speaker 1: That secrecy meant that it had not been something that
Speaker 1: McIntosh would have known, and he did hold a patent,
Speaker 1: so even if Green had shared this with the firm
Speaker 1: of Everington and Son, there was no legal ownership of
Speaker 1: the process on their part. One of the points made
Speaker 1: by Thomas Hancock during the trial was the fact that
Speaker 1: his employee sharing what he knew was a secret, meant
Speaker 1: that the work he and Charles McIntosh did together was
Speaker 1: original in nature. Yeah, like, if everybody knew about this already,
Speaker 1: why did my employee have to secretly blabb it? During
Speaker 1: the lawsuit, the Attorney General pointed out how very synonymous
Speaker 1: McIntosh had become at that point with the manufacturer of
Speaker 1: raincoats and made the comment quote, this patent has become
Speaker 1: almost as well known as Watt and Bolton's patent for
Speaker 1: making steam engines or arc rights for making spinning machines.
Speaker 1: Many witnesses were called to testify that yes, while there
Speaker 1: were other people who had worked on waterproofing fabric with rubber,
Speaker 1: McIntosh had been the only one to progress those efforts
Speaker 1: to a point where a manufactured good was put into production,
Speaker 1: and that that was only possible because of the innovation
Speaker 1: he had achieved in sandwiching those layers. According to newspaper accounts,
Speaker 1: as the judge was beginning his summation of the evidence
Speaker 1: to the jury, the jury stopped him and gave the
Speaker 1: verdict for the plaintiff after spending just a few minutes
Speaker 1: conferring there in the courtroom. McIntosh had to go to
Speaker 1: the court of Chancellery next for an injunction against Everington
Speaker 1: and Son, which he did. He also petitioned for an
Speaker 1: extension of his patent, which was set to expire on
Speaker 1: June sev eighteen thirty seven, which was just a year later.
Speaker 1: McIntosh did not get that extension, so all of that
Speaker 1: battle was rely just for the benefit of a year
Speaker 1: of patent protection. There's an interesting note here about Hancock
Speaker 1: and his ongoing secrecy and protection of his patent and
Speaker 1: Macintosh is although the entire trial was reported in a
Speaker 1: periodical called Mechanics Magazine, none of the secret workings of
Speaker 1: the masticator or the production of Macintosh's raincoats were revealed,
Speaker 1: even though they were discussed at length in testimony, And
Speaker 1: that is because Hancock had close contacts at the magazine
Speaker 1: and he had been very clear with them that he
Speaker 1: would really rather not see any of their production specifics
Speaker 1: spilled in print when they were fighting so hard against
Speaker 1: the theft of them to begin with. Just a few
Speaker 1: years after the lawsuit, a new technology emerged that totally
Speaker 1: changed the raincoat industry. Vulcanized rubber was introduced in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine. This was the work of Charles Goodyear. Goodyear
Speaker 1: wanted to improve on the qualities of India rubber, which
Speaker 1: melted in the heat and then would stiffen up to
Speaker 1: the point that it cracked in the cold. According to legend,
Speaker 1: it was an accident that Goodyear added sulfur to rubber
Speaker 1: and a heating vessel, but the result was vulcanized rubber
Speaker 1: that was a lot more resilient temperature changes than its
Speaker 1: predecessor had been. This became the standard for rainwear use.
Speaker 1: You can find lots of old pictures of storefronts of
Speaker 1: good Year raincoat stores. Yes, I will tell a slight
Speaker 1: story about that in our behind the scenes. Charles McIntosh
Speaker 1: did not get a lot of time to marvel at
Speaker 1: the advances of vulcanized rubber. He died on July three
Speaker 1: from influenza. He had made quite a healthy fortune for himself.
Speaker 1: In a sensus taken two years before his death, his
Speaker 1: household showed that, in addition to the family, a butler
Speaker 1: and six other members of how staff were living there.
Speaker 1: McIntosh was buried in the churchyard at Glasgow Cathedral. Fourteen
Speaker 1: ushers were on hand for the burial, and forty carriages
Speaker 1: carried the grieving parties to the service. Although Macintosh was
Speaker 1: the brand name of the coat made by Charles McIntosh's company,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned at the top of the episode, you
Speaker 1: might have seen a coat or a jacket just referred
Speaker 1: to generically as a macintosh or a mac even if
Speaker 1: it wasn't one that was made by the Macintosh company.
Speaker 1: Much the same way that trademarked words like Kleenex and
Speaker 1: coke have become more generically used for things like tissue
Speaker 1: and soda, the macintosh has come to mean almost any
Speaker 1: kind of raincoat, and it's sometimes even applied to garments
Speaker 1: that aren't waterproof, and that's not something that happened just conversationally.
Speaker 1: There are print catalogs from as early as the nineteen
Speaker 1: twenties with British retailer herods calling all of their raincoats
Speaker 1: macintosh is uh with that K in the spelling. Yes,
Speaker 1: there are lots of weird arguments. You can also find
Speaker 1: and online about people debating over whether it should always
Speaker 1: be capitalized or not, or if it has just become
Speaker 1: a noun on its own. There have, of course, been
Speaker 1: many many advancements in rainwear since Charles Macintosh's death, and
Speaker 1: textile technology continues to evolve, but the first mass produced
Speaker 1: rainwear was manufactured because of his work, and you can
Speaker 1: incidentally still buy a Macintosh branded raincoat today. Although the
Speaker 1: company has also evolved over the years, the raincoats are
Speaker 1: still made by hand with old school methods in a
Speaker 1: factory that's now in cumber Old Scotland. To work at
Speaker 1: Macintosh as a coatmaker, you have to apprentice for three years,
Speaker 1: learning their specific techniques for production. They regularly partner with
Speaker 1: high end designers now to produce their rainwear lines because
Speaker 1: the name is so synonymous with quality, and those early
Speaker 1: issues with being so affordable that they were considered perhaps
Speaker 1: cheap is no longer in play. A wool Macintosh raincoat
Speaker 1: today will set you back close to a thousand euros.
Speaker 1: They're beautiful, I see why. They're beautifully tailored. Um, but
Speaker 1: definitely not something for uh the everyman anymore. Uh. That
Speaker 1: is the story of the Macintosh. Anyone who knows me
Speaker 1: might be able to guess where I got the idea
Speaker 1: for this episode, which I will reveal on Friday. Do
Speaker 1: you have some listener mail before we get to that.
Speaker 1: I do. I have a listener mail from our listener,
Speaker 1: Meredith where we talked about another invention, and that was
Speaker 1: from our last eponymous food episodes. Um and I want
Speaker 1: to make sure I let Meredith know her mom was
Speaker 1: not incorrect, So Meredith rights, just listen to the latest
Speaker 1: Eponymous foods episode. I love those, and I have to
Speaker 1: share my own misapprehension of the name of Salisbury steak.
Speaker 1: I heard when I was a kid in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: probably from my mom, that it was a World War
Speaker 1: Two era freedom fries sort of situation that Hamburger fell
Speaker 1: out of fashion as a name for ground beef patties
Speaker 1: because of its association with Hamburg Germany. I have believed
Speaker 1: that until you Twoe blew my mind this morning. Thanks
Speaker 1: for the great work you do. You're always super informative
Speaker 1: and fun to listen to you. Wishing you both happy
Speaker 1: Holidays with a picture of my toothless geriatric rescue poodle
Speaker 1: who has the name that I'm scared to try to pronounce.
Speaker 1: One of them is very long and I would mess
Speaker 1: it up in the other is Chumley adorable? Adorable. I
Speaker 1: have a soft spot for poodles. So here's the thing.
Speaker 1: You're not your mom if she was the one who
Speaker 1: told you that was not entirely wrong. It was invented
Speaker 1: well before World War Two, but there was a surge
Speaker 1: in popularity of Salisbury steak over hamburgers during that time
Speaker 1: because of sort of that very reason. Uh so, not
Speaker 1: entirely incorrect, although that is not where the name came from.
Speaker 1: I just want to make sure, make sure. Uh yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: can't I tell you how many times I have made
Speaker 1: Salisbury steaks since we did that episode. I had to
Speaker 1: make some for the pictures we used for the episode,
Speaker 1: and it turns out I make really good Salsbury stays delicious. Um.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us, you could
Speaker 1: do so at History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find us as Missed in History on
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Speaker 1: you can do that on the I heart Radio app
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class is a production of I Heart Radio.
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