Pushkin

It's May 25th, 1787, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the normal morning hustle is beginning to take over the streets.

Forstrorn carriages pound over stone cobblestones as vendor carts with their loud iron wheels trickle into the road, merchants chat with potential buyers, and pedestrians who cross the road get their usual taunting by the men incarcerated in the four-story Wall Street prison who are seeking out alms.

It's in the midst of this bustling 18th century urban scene that dozens of powdered wig leaders from across the land begin filing into Pennsylvania State House.

They'd soon be taking part in a series of conversations that would change the fate of the nation.

The stated goal of their historic meeting, which newspapers at the time called the Grand Convention of States, and history books would later call the Constitutional Congress, was to fix the previously ratified articles of the Confederation.

But the real intention of the convention was to do something which at the time had never been done before.

The delegates planned to draft a Constitution that would create a new kind of government.

If you're at all familiar with US history, you probably know what happened in the months that followed. The US Constitution was born.

And from today's vantage point, it might seem inevitable that these leaders would succeed in their grand mission.

But back on that sweltering 1787 morning, it wasn't so obvious how the fateful meeting would go.

Tensions were high at the start of the so-called Great Experiment.

The task of figuring out how to create a union from so many diverse states was a really difficult one.

If these lawmakers were actually going to change the course of history, they needed to concentrate.

In spite of all the bustle and noise on the Philadelphia streets outside.

The delegates started by closing all the windows of their 40 by 40 foot conference room, even though the record breaking heat had them sweating badly through their waist coats and powdered wigs.

But clamping all the windows wasn't enough to quiet the din of galloping horses and wagon wheels streaming by outside.

So the delegates decided to call in a big favor from the local Philadelphia government.

The city leader has got as much dirt and gravel and straw as they could find and threw it on top of the cobblestone roads surrounding the stay house.

It was the sort of 1787 equivalent of noise-canceling headphones.

And the delegates of the Constitution convention actually had this giant earthen noise barrier constructed because they wanted to have pristine quiet.

Because they didn't want any street vendors or the sound of carriages outside or conversations to disturb their intense deliberation, their deep thinking, their deep work.

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