December 21, 2022 • 12 mins
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and Jerry's here sitting in for Dave. So
this is short Stuff, the Happy Holiday's edition. That's right,
Happy Holidays. This is good. This would fit nicely in
our holiday episode. But I like the idea of but
shorty as well. Yeah, and we've got to we can't
just be like, oh, we'll just talk about pickles a
(00:25):
couple of days before Christmas. You don't like pickles of
any sort, do you know? It's the vinegar thing. I
love cucumbers. You can ruin a good cucumber by soaking
it in vinegar. Yeah, I love them. I know I'm
a weirdo. People love pickles. Yeah, I'm crazy for him.
And also everybody you can save your emails were very
well aware of the irony that we I use pickles
(00:48):
as an example of something we're not talking about, and
then we started talking about pickles. Is that a thing
we do? It just happened at the very beast we're
talking about snow gloves though, right, yeah, absolutely, Um, snow
gloves are really really interesting as far as like the
backstory goes, Like I had no idea. I thought it
would probably be kind of cool, but it actually kind
(01:10):
of knocked my socks off, So hopefully it'll knock everybody
else's socks off just in time for them to be
put up alongside the fireplace. Wow, look at you. What
a great rejoinder, thanks to they use that right. Yeah, okay, alright,
so we're gonna go back in time. Let's hop in
the old way back machine. It's been a while. Dust
(01:34):
that thing off, and let's go back to a time
and place where people worked by candle light. And candle
light only gives off so much light. Uh. You can
try different kinds of wax in the candle. Some of
might burn a little bit brighter. I think the bees
wax candle is the brightest. But if you are performing surgery,
let's say, or if you're a cobbler and you're doing
(01:55):
some fine detail work or a tailor or something like that,
then you might need more light. Uh. And I'm looking around,
it's pretty dark around us. And so someone had the
bright idea of putting a glass globe filled with water
in front of a candle, and it created a bit
of a more intense flashlight effect. Yeah, basically it creates
(02:15):
a spotlight and like a good sized one. I saw
it's about hand size, which is that's all you need
when you're sewing shoe soles, you know. So this, uh,
this trick um was what was trying to be recreated
when the guy who is credited with inventing snow globes
um stumbled upon them. He was a man named Erwin Persey.
(02:36):
He was an Austrian and his business was surgical instruments.
He made them, and there was a local surgeon and
I believe Vienna, who said, hey, these new bulbs from
Mr Edison are pretty great, but I need to make
them brighter. Can you do anything about that? And so
first thing you tried was that old shoemaker's trick and
he found it kind of works, but not necessarily. Maybe
(03:00):
if I put something in there with him, uh, it
will it will work. Um. He tried to think some
glitter first and that probably would have worked pretty well,
but it sunk too fast. So then he turned to semolina,
which is um partially milled wheat that that it comes
into form of like kind of tiny white particles. Yeah,
(03:21):
you probably have like semolina bread or something like that. Uh.
They put it in baby formula back then. But when
he put the semolina in the water, it didn't dissolve,
and it stayed intact, and it sort of was suspended
a little better than that glitter and was white and
eventually would trickle down to the bottom, and Petsy went,
(03:42):
my goodness, it looks like a little snow inside this globe.
I think it might be onto something here. Yeah. So
um persy uh is credited pretty much universally as the
inventor of the snow globe. What's interesting about it is
he most certainly wasn't, in fact, just some thing like
twenty year or so years before he Um invented his
(04:04):
snow globe, there was one that had been displayed at
the Paris Exposition of eighteen seventy eight. Yeah, in the
form of a paper weight. Uh, and it had a
dude with an umbrella. When he shook that thing up, Uh,
it would look like he was walking through a snowstorm. Um.
This is not the kind of thing they have in
a museum somewhere, but they do have a description h
(04:26):
and a report on the exposition, So it definitely happened.
First that I don't think anyone ever accused Prettsy of
stealing it. I think it's one of those things that
was discovered just sort of individually by different people. Yeah,
and if he was aware of it, he wasn't inspired
by it. Um. What's interesting is it goes even further
back than that, all the way back to the sixteenth century.
(04:48):
UM there was apparently a German alchemist named Leonard Furnace
thur Nicer. Yeah, I'm going with that who made um
basically snow globe, but rather than um snow, he filled
it with birds, so the birds would just fly around.
This is seventy two before. Right. Again, I don't think
(05:09):
Pertsy was aware of Leonard Thurnasir and his alchemy work.
He just kind of stumbled upon it. But because of that,
because of the Paris Exposition, because in America, a guy
named Joseph Garaga was given a patent for something kind
of like the snow globe. It's a little muddy. The French,
(05:30):
I believe, make a claim certainly for the inventors of
the snow globe, but everybody says it was really Pertsy
who took this idea and ran with it. And he
definitely ran with it. All right, it's a good spot
for a break. We're gonna go back and tell the
rest of his story right after this. Alright, so uh,
(06:14):
Prettsy has invented this snow globe files for a pattern,
A nine for a quote glass globe with snow effect
end quote called the snake Google. Snay is German for
snow and Google is like a globe or a ball
or an orb. I've seen it. It's like a cannon
ball or a sphere, but it's snow globe. Um. It
(06:35):
took about five years only before there was a business
being run in Vienna name firm Pertsy, and then they
later changed the name to the original Vienna schna Google
manufactor the original Vienna snow Globe Factory. And they are
still making those snow globes. And it's still the family
(06:58):
making those snow globes. Yeah. Um Erwin Pertsey, the third
who now runs the show in has since the eighties.
So cool. Yeah, it is really cool and they're really
high end snow globes too. I think several American presidents
of UM commissioned snow globes from They take custom orders.
So if you have a really cool snow globe idea
and a chunk of change, the persis will make you
(07:19):
whatever you want. Um, I this I'm not friends with them.
I just have heard this before, so I wonder if
Erwin the third was in the eighties, was like nine,
I'm going to be a uh like in a band,
like craft work and they said, you realize you live
in a castle. Would you like to see the balance sheet?
(07:41):
And maybe I'll stay in the family business. So the
first forty years Chuck Um, they weren't really associated with
Christmas that came later on. Instead, they were typically religious
theme stuff. One of their blockbusters sellers was the um
Maria Zell Basilica, which is a church in Austria. It's
(08:02):
not in Vienna. I think it's more towards the East
um and it's a pretty big, imposing Baroque cathedral. And
one of the reasons why they focused so much on
this is because it was a um It was sold
as a religious offering to pilgrims who would come to
this church like they yeah, a religious souvenir. They set
(08:24):
up a stall and they would say souvenirs novelties six
and people would buy the snowblop and they would leave
it as an offering. Yeah, they set up thing between
you and the exit, and it thus began the exit
through the gift shop, exit the church through the gift shop.
(08:45):
But yeah, they took off really in a big way.
Um Orson Wells used one very famously in Citizen Kane
at the end when that snow globe breaks. Um, I'm
curious now if they made the St. Eligia's hospital one.
Oh yeah, for the end of saying elsewhere, man, that's
a great question. I got to look that up. But
Irwin two took over after World War Two and said,
(09:09):
you know what, we're doing great with these religious globes,
but uh, snow means Christmas. Christmas means snow. Why don't
we start putting Santa claus Is in there and Christmas
trees and snowmen. And they did, and then it became
really heavily associated with Christmas. And they are pumping out
with about thirty employees, about two d thousands of these
still every year. And they're they're all like made by hand,
(09:32):
their hand painted. Um. Again, they're like really well made. UM.
Early on, though, um, they became like an American phenomenon,
like America said, these are ours, snow gloves are American
from now on. By about the mid twentieth century, I
believe UM and they actually became like a like a
(09:53):
go to souvenir in the post war boom where people
started traveling round UM, where they started making you know,
better highways and all that, and Americans just started driving around.
And one of the reasons why that was UM able
to happen was thanks to innovations in plastic. Yeah, uh,
(10:15):
you know, plastic changed everything for good and bad. And
they found out, you know, they're always looking for the
perfect UM particulate. I guess to act as the snow
because what you don't want is to shake this thing up.
And if you've ever seen it had a cheap snow
globe and had plenty of those growing up, trust me, Uh,
if you shake that thing up and the snows on
(10:36):
the ground in fifteen seconds, you're really not getting that
sense of awe and wonder that you're looking for. You
wanted to stay uh floating around. And over the years,
they experimented with different types of matter to use in there,
and I think there's is a there's is a trade secret, right,
That's the impression I have, Yes, that they're not letting
(10:57):
anyone know, but it's some sort of wax or and
or plastic. Okay, and apparently there's are so well made
that there's snowfalls can last two minutes after you shake
it up two minutes. By halfway through that you'd be like, Okay,
enough already, I don't need to be delighted any longer.
You know, I'm gonna get one of these. This has
(11:18):
inspired me. I'm gonna get a genuine Irwin Austrian snow globe. Well,
Irwin was the first name. I guess we're pretty tight. Yeah,
I guess, so you're on a first name basis. You
call him Pertsy, I'll call him Ernie. The third um
so Chuck. I think we've reached the end of this
holiday centric short stuff Don't you do well? Jingle bells
(11:43):
out of here? Stuff you Should Know is a production
of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and Jerry's here sitting in for Dave. So
this is short Stuff, the Happy Holiday's edition. That's right,
Happy Holidays. This is good. This would fit nicely in
our holiday episode. But I like the idea of but
shorty as well. Yeah, and we've got to we can't
just be like, oh, we'll just talk about pickles a
(00:25):
couple of days before Christmas. You don't like pickles of
any sort, do you know? It's the vinegar thing. I
love cucumbers. You can ruin a good cucumber by soaking
it in vinegar. Yeah, I love them. I know I'm
a weirdo. People love pickles. Yeah, I'm crazy for him.
And also everybody you can save your emails were very
well aware of the irony that we I use pickles
(00:48):
as an example of something we're not talking about, and
then we started talking about pickles. Is that a thing
we do? It just happened at the very beast we're
talking about snow gloves though, right, yeah, absolutely, Um, snow
gloves are really really interesting as far as like the
backstory goes, Like I had no idea. I thought it
would probably be kind of cool, but it actually kind
(01:10):
of knocked my socks off, So hopefully it'll knock everybody
else's socks off just in time for them to be
put up alongside the fireplace. Wow, look at you. What
a great rejoinder, thanks to they use that right. Yeah, okay, alright,
so we're gonna go back in time. Let's hop in
the old way back machine. It's been a while. Dust
(01:34):
that thing off, and let's go back to a time
and place where people worked by candle light. And candle
light only gives off so much light. Uh. You can
try different kinds of wax in the candle. Some of
might burn a little bit brighter. I think the bees
wax candle is the brightest. But if you are performing surgery,
let's say, or if you're a cobbler and you're doing
(01:55):
some fine detail work or a tailor or something like that,
then you might need more light. Uh. And I'm looking around,
it's pretty dark around us. And so someone had the
bright idea of putting a glass globe filled with water
in front of a candle, and it created a bit
of a more intense flashlight effect. Yeah, basically it creates
(02:15):
a spotlight and like a good sized one. I saw
it's about hand size, which is that's all you need
when you're sewing shoe soles, you know. So this, uh,
this trick um was what was trying to be recreated
when the guy who is credited with inventing snow globes
um stumbled upon them. He was a man named Erwin Persey.
(02:36):
He was an Austrian and his business was surgical instruments.
He made them, and there was a local surgeon and
I believe Vienna, who said, hey, these new bulbs from
Mr Edison are pretty great, but I need to make
them brighter. Can you do anything about that? And so
first thing you tried was that old shoemaker's trick and
he found it kind of works, but not necessarily. Maybe
(03:00):
if I put something in there with him, uh, it
will it will work. Um. He tried to think some
glitter first and that probably would have worked pretty well,
but it sunk too fast. So then he turned to semolina,
which is um partially milled wheat that that it comes
into form of like kind of tiny white particles. Yeah,
(03:21):
you probably have like semolina bread or something like that. Uh.
They put it in baby formula back then. But when
he put the semolina in the water, it didn't dissolve,
and it stayed intact, and it sort of was suspended
a little better than that glitter and was white and
eventually would trickle down to the bottom, and Petsy went,
(03:42):
my goodness, it looks like a little snow inside this globe.
I think it might be onto something here. Yeah. So
um persy uh is credited pretty much universally as the
inventor of the snow globe. What's interesting about it is
he most certainly wasn't, in fact, just some thing like
twenty year or so years before he Um invented his
(04:04):
snow globe, there was one that had been displayed at
the Paris Exposition of eighteen seventy eight. Yeah, in the
form of a paper weight. Uh, and it had a
dude with an umbrella. When he shook that thing up, Uh,
it would look like he was walking through a snowstorm. Um.
This is not the kind of thing they have in
a museum somewhere, but they do have a description h
(04:26):
and a report on the exposition, So it definitely happened.
First that I don't think anyone ever accused Prettsy of
stealing it. I think it's one of those things that
was discovered just sort of individually by different people. Yeah,
and if he was aware of it, he wasn't inspired
by it. Um. What's interesting is it goes even further
back than that, all the way back to the sixteenth century.
(04:48):
UM there was apparently a German alchemist named Leonard Furnace
thur Nicer. Yeah, I'm going with that who made um
basically snow globe, but rather than um snow, he filled
it with birds, so the birds would just fly around.
This is seventy two before. Right. Again, I don't think
(05:09):
Pertsy was aware of Leonard Thurnasir and his alchemy work.
He just kind of stumbled upon it. But because of that,
because of the Paris Exposition, because in America, a guy
named Joseph Garaga was given a patent for something kind
of like the snow globe. It's a little muddy. The French,
(05:30):
I believe, make a claim certainly for the inventors of
the snow globe, but everybody says it was really Pertsy
who took this idea and ran with it. And he
definitely ran with it. All right, it's a good spot
for a break. We're gonna go back and tell the
rest of his story right after this. Alright, so uh,
(06:14):
Prettsy has invented this snow globe files for a pattern,
A nine for a quote glass globe with snow effect
end quote called the snake Google. Snay is German for
snow and Google is like a globe or a ball
or an orb. I've seen it. It's like a cannon
ball or a sphere, but it's snow globe. Um. It
(06:35):
took about five years only before there was a business
being run in Vienna name firm Pertsy, and then they
later changed the name to the original Vienna schna Google
manufactor the original Vienna snow Globe Factory. And they are
still making those snow globes. And it's still the family
(06:58):
making those snow globes. Yeah. Um Erwin Pertsey, the third
who now runs the show in has since the eighties.
So cool. Yeah, it is really cool and they're really
high end snow globes too. I think several American presidents
of UM commissioned snow globes from They take custom orders.
So if you have a really cool snow globe idea
and a chunk of change, the persis will make you
(07:19):
whatever you want. Um, I this I'm not friends with them.
I just have heard this before, so I wonder if
Erwin the third was in the eighties, was like nine,
I'm going to be a uh like in a band,
like craft work and they said, you realize you live
in a castle. Would you like to see the balance sheet?
(07:41):
And maybe I'll stay in the family business. So the
first forty years Chuck Um, they weren't really associated with
Christmas that came later on. Instead, they were typically religious
theme stuff. One of their blockbusters sellers was the um
Maria Zell Basilica, which is a church in Austria. It's
(08:02):
not in Vienna. I think it's more towards the East
um and it's a pretty big, imposing Baroque cathedral. And
one of the reasons why they focused so much on
this is because it was a um It was sold
as a religious offering to pilgrims who would come to
this church like they yeah, a religious souvenir. They set
(08:24):
up a stall and they would say souvenirs novelties six
and people would buy the snowblop and they would leave
it as an offering. Yeah, they set up thing between
you and the exit, and it thus began the exit
through the gift shop, exit the church through the gift shop.
(08:45):
But yeah, they took off really in a big way.
Um Orson Wells used one very famously in Citizen Kane
at the end when that snow globe breaks. Um, I'm
curious now if they made the St. Eligia's hospital one.
Oh yeah, for the end of saying elsewhere, man, that's
a great question. I got to look that up. But
Irwin two took over after World War Two and said,
(09:09):
you know what, we're doing great with these religious globes,
but uh, snow means Christmas. Christmas means snow. Why don't
we start putting Santa claus Is in there and Christmas
trees and snowmen. And they did, and then it became
really heavily associated with Christmas. And they are pumping out
with about thirty employees, about two d thousands of these
still every year. And they're they're all like made by hand,
(09:32):
their hand painted. Um. Again, they're like really well made. UM.
Early on, though, um, they became like an American phenomenon,
like America said, these are ours, snow gloves are American
from now on. By about the mid twentieth century, I
believe UM and they actually became like a like a
(09:53):
go to souvenir in the post war boom where people
started traveling round UM, where they started making you know,
better highways and all that, and Americans just started driving around.
And one of the reasons why that was UM able
to happen was thanks to innovations in plastic. Yeah, uh,
(10:15):
you know, plastic changed everything for good and bad. And
they found out, you know, they're always looking for the
perfect UM particulate. I guess to act as the snow
because what you don't want is to shake this thing up.
And if you've ever seen it had a cheap snow
globe and had plenty of those growing up, trust me, Uh,
if you shake that thing up and the snows on
(10:36):
the ground in fifteen seconds, you're really not getting that
sense of awe and wonder that you're looking for. You
wanted to stay uh floating around. And over the years,
they experimented with different types of matter to use in there,
and I think there's is a there's is a trade secret, right,
That's the impression I have, Yes, that they're not letting
(10:57):
anyone know, but it's some sort of wax or and
or plastic. Okay, and apparently there's are so well made
that there's snowfalls can last two minutes after you shake
it up two minutes. By halfway through that you'd be like, Okay,
enough already, I don't need to be delighted any longer.
You know, I'm gonna get one of these. This has
(11:18):
inspired me. I'm gonna get a genuine Irwin Austrian snow globe. Well,
Irwin was the first name. I guess we're pretty tight. Yeah,
I guess, so you're on a first name basis. You
call him Pertsy, I'll call him Ernie. The third um
so Chuck. I think we've reached the end of this
holiday centric short stuff Don't you do well? Jingle bells
(11:43):
out of here? Stuff you Should Know is a production
of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
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