Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Bogle bomb here. World War One wasn't just ground combat. The submarine surreptitiously navigated under water, and the skies buzzed with planes from which soldiers fired guns and dropped bombs. Another airborne war machine was developed at this time too, but has since vanished from contemporary combat.
Zeppelin Zeppelin's were intimidating to behold. These massive cylindrical balloons were built with metal skeletons and filled with hydrogen to stay aloft. Their skeletons and rudders allowed them to be steered into and out of enemy territory, and they crept along in night skies, their heavy hum announcing the presence of oncoming bomb raids. Germany was confident that zeppelin lead raids would give them an advantage in the war. This
wasn't exactly the case, though. There wasn't much precision in airstrike efforts this early on in flight history, and Zeppelins were more effective in their fright factor. They were hugely menacing, but where they really helped was in supply and soldier transport. Additionally, their elevated vantage point aided submarine detection and allowed them to act as an overhead bodyguard for troops moving along
the ground. Throughout World War One, Germany's a hundred and forty Zeppelins or responsible for just one thousand, five hundred deaths. You could argue that they wreaked more havoc in the kitchen than in the skies. Early Zeppelins were constructed internally from rubber, but engineers soon discovered that the most effective material for encase in hydrogen was gold beaters skin. That is to say, that's here's some insight into this unique material.
The cows and pestons sourced from butchers in Germany and German occupied territories like Austria, Poland and northern France, were washed and skinned of their external membranes. Then they were bathed in galine mixture and stretched to dry. The resulting product was called gold beaters skin, named so because it was originally used by jewelers in hammering out a piece of gold into super thin gold leaf. They would sandwich a sheet of gold in the pliable but sturdy material
and hammer away. But zeppelin engineers found another use for it. If the skin was moistened again and the pieces were patchworked together into large sheets. They would dry with air tight seals. No other material of the time, including the rubber of the day, could be so tightly sealed, and that tight seal was imperative. Hydrogen is the most lightweight element and can easily escape containment. The gold beater skin was worked into a bag shape and filled with hydrogen.
Those bags allowed zeppelin's to float weightlessly in the sky. If you're thinking that you'd need a ton of guts to make a big enough skin bag to fill a zeppelin's mighty frame, you'd be absolutely right. On average, it took two d and housing cows intestines to create a single zeppelin. That's why kitchens suffered Germany, known as the Land of Beer and Brockworst, banned sausage making during World War One to preserve all of the cow intestines that
would have been used for sausage casings. The Kaiser's agents monitored butchers to ensure that they were handing over all of their cow intestines for zeppelin construction, leaving behind nothing to use a sausage casing. While Germans and those living in German occupied territories brewed their sausage. The opposing forces rapped their brains over how to bring down the airships.
In a documentary titled Attack of the Zeppelin's, University of Cambridge engineer Dr Hugh Hunt explains that there's not much surviving information on how zeppelins were constructed or how they were deconstructed, that is, shot down. It wasn't exactly like popping a balloon. A bullet could produce a hole in
the zeppelin, but that wouldn't sink the ship. Towards the end of the war, the British devised a method of spraying the Zeppelins with bullets and then firing phosphorus containing incendiary bullets that, in contact with the hydrogen within, created an explosion. The hearth always suffers as much as the home front in wartime. But why deprived countrymen of their sausage?
Why single out cow intestines for a zeppelin construction. We spoke with Taylor Hudnall and Alexandria, Virginia based butcher and chef, who explains that cows cuts are bigger than other animals and testines. A standard sausage sold in a Northern Virginia butcher shop measures one point five inches that's about four centimeters in diameter, and is encased by pig intestines, which
are truer to that dimension. Hudnall explains that butchers prepare intestines for use by cleaning them of debris and packing them in salt water or dry salt, then flushing them with cold, clear water before they're stuffed with seasoned ground meat to make sausages. These days, there are artificial casings made of collagen or cellulose so that you can enjoy sausages without employing into Austin's. And of course you can just make the seasoned ground meat without stuffing it into
any casing. And furthermore, modern manufacturing technology allows for the creation of products like some hot dogs that are molded and don't have any casing at all on the final product. But casings, and particularly natural casings made from intestines, provide product stability if you're going to save smoke or age the sausage, plus a pleasurable bite. If you've ever had a sausage with a really good snap when you bite
into it, that's from the casing. None of these types of casings add much, if any, flavor to the sausage. It's more of a texture thing. Hudnall explained that as a butchery practice, quote, casing is a good way to use up a wasted part. Anytime you're using organs, you're doing the animal a good service. There's less waste. So we asked, are there other good uses for intestines. Hudnall said, well, they're hermetically sealed containers and make good water balloons, which
was precisely the logict that influenced Zeppelin construction. Today's episode was written by Candice Gibson and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other buoyant topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio. Or more podcasts my heart Radio visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.