This is the memory palace. I'm Nate Dimaio.

Having made his fortune in Chicago, Sylvester Marsh retired to New Hampshire to spend his

golden years among the green and granite of the White Mountains.

In one day in 1852, he set out to scale Mount Washington, the tallest in the east, but

at 6,000 feet still imminently scalable for the sturdy, enabled-bodied.

But somewhere on the slope, the weather turned.

Peltting hail and whipping wind, and he couldn't see a thing, and he just kept climbing

and climbing, desperate and afraid until he found himself above the cloud line.

Staring down at the squall as the weather turned back, and the clouds billowed and broke

among the hills, collected in the valleys like seafoam.

In the sight of it all, the whole of New Hampshire, much of New England, spread out before

him, the sun on his face, the air cool in his nose, his body beaten but lifted now by

relief.

And in that moment, something like transcendence.

He thought, people have to see this.

And so Sylvester Marsh, who had made his fortune as an inventor making a machine that tried

wheat for shipping, invented a way to go up the mountain.

The cog railroad, the basic idea is this, and the center of the tracks who have a third

track, it looks like a ladder or a bicycle chain, and then the center of the engine car

that will push the passenger car up the mountain, is a third wheel, with teeth that grab each

rung, which pulls the train up while helping make sure it doesn't slide backwards.

It was ingenious, and he pitched the idea to the New Hampshire State Legislature.

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