Snail Mail
James Wilson Marshall was born on October 8, 1810. The family homestead was known as Round Mountain Farm, and still to this day is known as Marshalls Corner, New Jersey. At the age of 24, James, like many young men of his age, headed west to seek his fortune. After spending time in Indiana and Illinois, he settled in Missouri and began farming along the banks of the Missouri River.
The swampy shorelines of the slow-moving river provide excellent soil for growing crops. They also provide a perfect habitat for mosquitos. After just one year of farming the land, Marshall contracted malaria. Treatment options for the disease were slim in the 1800’s, but Marshall heeded the advice of his doctor, and headed west, seeking out a drier climate. He latched on to an immigrant wagon train making its way to Oregon, and eventually found himself settling down in the agricultural area of Sutter’s Fort, California.
Soon after arriving in the valley, Marshall entered into a partnership with John Sutter to construct a sawmill along the banks of the South Fork of the American River. Marshall would oversee the construction of the mill, and in return would receive a portion of the lumber.
Halfway through construction, on the morning of January 24, 1848, James Marshall was examining the results of the previous night’s excavation when he noticed several flecks of a bright yellow, malleable mineral – Gold.
Over the next seven years, over 300,000 people flooded California in search of gold. Those people needed food, clothes, horses, and supplies. Many of the miners arriving in California left wives and families at home, so in addition to supplies, they needed a way to communicate with them.
In the height of the gold rush, a letter from California would take a minimum of 2 months by steamship to reach the east coast of the United States. When a ship arrived in San Francisco it was not uncommon for them to carry as many as 100 bags of mail. Enough that it would cause the post office to shut down for several days while the mail was sorted. Lines to pick up mail would stretch to as many as 600 miners, with the wealthier ones, paying others to stand in line for them. In 2022 dollars, each of those letters cost around $50 to send. For lonely miners, mail was big business. And it didn’t take long for someone to notice.
In order to drastically reduce the time it took for mail to traverse the United States, a team of three men came up with a bold new idea. A network of horses and riders stationed strategically throughout the west, that would gallop day and night delivering mail in a relay chain. The Pony Express instantly became part of the lore of the American West and is still romanticized to this day. The Pony Express was also a colossal failure. It operated for just 18 months but was never able to be financially viable. It struggled to break even for just 18 months before the telegraph made its services all but obsolete.
The Pony Express was a grand vision. It was groundbreaking. But the novel idea of using a network of horses to deliver mail falls far short of another enterprising idea to speed up mail delivery.
Frederich Schmiedl was an Austrian businessman. He was also a rocket enthusiast. This is about to go exactly where you might be thinking it is. Rocket mail.
In 1931 Schmiedl started a mail service in Austria after his successful launch of 100 pieces of mail from one Austrian village to another. Enthused by this exciting new method of delivery, and not wanting to be outdone, other countries soon followed suit.
In 1934 officials from the British Royal Mail invited German entrepreneur Gerhard Zucker to demonstrate his mail rockets. They funded his development of a specially designed rocket that Zucker claimed could cruise up to 250 miles, at over 2000 miles per hour, all while carrying 1200 letters. So confident was Zucker that he sold tickets to the demonstration.
British officials were equally hopeful. They had grand visions of using a network of rockets to speed delivery times throughout their island nation. They brought their friends and family to the demonstration expecting to witness something truly spectacular.
Thus, it was before a rather distinguished crowd on a beach in Scotland that Zucker lit the fuse. The 1200 letter on board the rocket that day did indeed travel at a very high rate of speed, but they did so for a very short distance, in all in different directions. Zucker’s rocket failed to even lift off the ground before it exploded sending a confetti of mail hundreds of feet into the sky.
After realizing their mistake, the British Royal Mail service quickly had Zucker deported for mail fraud. They had fallen for the scam of a huckster. And they really should have seen it coming. To give perspective at the height of World War 2, ten years after Zucker’s failure, the German Society for Space Travel (the best rocket scientists in the world) developed the V2 rocket. The brightest minds in the world produced what to the point was far and away the most advanced rocket ever produced. The cruising speed, and range of the V2 were both lower than what was claimed by Zucker. Zucker’s rocket was clearly too good to be true, and the British Royal Mail should have seen that.
We humans have many weaknesses. One of those, is we tend to like things that may sound too good to be true. For almost ten years investors all over Utah sent money to Gaylen Rust, wanting to participate in his proprietary silver trading algorithm that offered returns of at least 10% per month. It was also completely safe, he had over $200 million in silver in a bank vault in Salt Lake City to back up his offering.
If something sounds too good to be true, it almost always is. Let me demonstrate. At 2018 prices $200 million of silver is about one million pounds of silver. One pound of silver is about 3 cubic inches. If you crunch those numbers further, Rust was alleging that he had over 1,800 cubic feet of silver stored in a bank. What that looks like in real life is a 220 square foot room stuffed to the brim with silver.
In March of 2022 Gaylen Rust was sentenced to 19 years in prison for running a Ponzi Scheme. Real people lost over $200 million dollars. They lost life savings. They lost college funds. They lost everything. When something sounds too good to be true, especially when it comes to your money, it almost always is.