This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

You're listening to Part-Time Genius,

a production of kaleidoscope and I-heart radio.

Guess what, Mango?

What's that, Dave?

So you probably had this marked in your calendar already, but last week was actually

the 1002nd birthday of commercial skywriting in America.

I did not have that on my calendar for some odd reason.

But I really am surprised we can pin down an exact start date for such an old medium.

Like,

I know there are so many candidates for like the first newspaper ad or the first billboard, and there's a lot of confusion there. That's true, but it's a little different.

When the ad appears out of thin air, 10,000 feet above Times Square, somebody's going to keep

track of that. And that's exactly what happened on November

28, 1922, when British pilot Captain Cyril Turner took to the skies above New York City.

Using a specially designed exhaust system, he spelled out, Hello USA, Call Vanderbilt, 7200.

It was the first time skywriting had been used to promote something in the

U.S., and even though it wasn't clear what was being promoted, the ad still worked like a charm.

Within a couple hours, roughly 47,000 people had called that north.

The mystery behind the message had piqued people's interest, proving the effectiveness of skywriting, and securing its place as a new eye-catching way to promote a product.

That is such a bizarre slogan, like, Hello USA Call Vanderbiltz sending 200.

Like, what is that even advertising? Yeah, well, that's the thing.

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