WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 1 00:00:00.139 --> 00:00:02.789 In 1881 an architect called William Brown 2 00:00:02.789 --> 00:00:05.219 and an iron foundry owner called Benjamin Haugh 3 00:00:05.219 --> 00:00:07.576 patented an idea for a new type of jail. 4 00:00:07.576 --> 00:00:09.360 The Rotary Jail. 5 00:00:09.360 --> 00:00:11.491 In hindsight, it was not a good idea 6 00:00:11.491 --> 00:00:14.029 It's impractical, unsafe, and massively overcomplicated. 7 00:00:14.029 --> 00:00:15.849 But that didn't stop them selling the idea 8 00:00:15.849 --> 00:00:18.699 to a few towns across the United States. 9 00:00:18.699 --> 00:00:21.969 And the first one was built here, in Crawfordsville, Indiana. 10 00:00:21.969 --> 00:00:23.840 And while it hasn't held prisoners for decades, 11 00:00:23.840 --> 00:00:27.171 it is the only one where the mechanism still works. 12 00:00:27.171 --> 00:00:29.019 We have a two story rotary jail, 13 00:00:29.019 --> 00:00:31.499 and there are eight cells on each floor. 14 00:00:31.499 --> 00:00:34.379 It weighs approximately 30 tonnes, it's made of steel. 15 00:00:34.379 --> 00:00:37.190 It's operated by a hand crank, the hand crank moves both 16 00:00:37.190 --> 00:00:39.137 floors of the jail at exactly the same time. 17 00:00:39.137 --> 00:00:42.486 It doesn't touch any of the walls, it doesn't touch the bars 18 00:00:42.486 --> 00:00:46.116 the whole machine sits around a central cylinder 19 00:00:46.116 --> 00:00:49.206 that runs from the roof to the sewer system. 20 00:00:49.206 --> 00:00:52.476 And it works like a pin, all of the weight of it rests 21 00:00:52.476 --> 00:00:54.857 on the lip on top of that pin. 22 00:00:54.857 --> 00:00:57.926 It's just a marvel of engineering for its time. 23 00:00:57.926 --> 00:01:01.206 The advantage of having a rotational cell block 24 00:01:01.206 --> 00:01:03.348 was that you could have just the one opening, 25 00:01:03.348 --> 00:01:05.546 the inmates could enter/exit their cells from 26 00:01:05.546 --> 00:01:08.546 in front of a pie shaped cell block. 27 00:01:09.467 --> 00:01:12.337 So if you only had one door to watch, then you didn't have 28 00:01:12.337 --> 00:01:16.126 to pay as many guards to be here to watch the inmates. 29 00:01:16.126 --> 00:01:17.580 There's just one way out. 30 00:01:17.580 --> 00:01:21.980 The half-moon seat shapes are toilets, they've been welded shut. 31 00:01:21.980 --> 00:01:26.380 So when our jail was built in the 1880s our inmates had 32 00:01:26.380 --> 00:01:29.700 indoor plumbing and toilets inside their cells when 33 00:01:29.708 --> 00:01:32.186 most of the country didn't have it in their homes. 34 00:01:32.186 --> 00:01:36.106 But some of the issues with the jail are that from 1882 35 00:01:36.106 --> 00:01:40.340 until 1938 there was just one opening on each floor. 36 00:01:40.340 --> 00:01:42.920 And there's an independently operating sliding door 37 00:01:42.926 --> 00:01:45.436 that locks closed on each floor to keep inmates just from 38 00:01:45.436 --> 00:01:47.076 jumping out whenever they want to. 39 00:01:47.076 --> 00:01:50.474 If there was a fire, you risked having to have a guard 40 00:01:50.474 --> 00:01:53.097 stand there and crank out each cell one by one 41 00:01:53.097 --> 00:01:54.777 to get the inmates to safety. 42 00:01:54.777 --> 00:01:58.156 The other issue is that almost 50% of our inmates were 43 00:01:58.156 --> 00:02:00.897 arrested for being drunk, some of them would over spill 44 00:02:00.897 --> 00:02:03.546 from the drunk tank and need to be in the cells 45 00:02:03.546 --> 00:02:06.266 to make room for other inmates as they came in. 46 00:02:06.266 --> 00:02:08.874 So they would fall asleep on the ground, hugging the bars 47 00:02:08.874 --> 00:02:10.787 and the machine would begin to move, 48 00:02:10.787 --> 00:02:13.446 and essentially the wall would come into contact 49 00:02:13.446 --> 00:02:16.206 with their limbs and break them or amputate them. 50 00:02:16.206 --> 00:02:20.300 They quit rotating the jail in 1938, 51 00:02:20.300 --> 00:02:22.900 they cut an individual door out of every cell 52 00:02:22.900 --> 00:02:24.900 and they installed the catwalk. 53 00:02:24.900 --> 00:02:27.276 So they quit rotating it because the problems that they had 54 00:02:27.276 --> 00:02:29.584 with fire concerns and with inmates 55 00:02:29.584 --> 00:02:31.513 getting limbs chopped off. 56 00:02:31.513 --> 00:02:34.676 As far as we've been told, as long as we keep maintenancing 57 00:02:34.676 --> 00:02:36.507 the machine the way that we do and treating it 58 00:02:36.507 --> 00:02:38.907 the way that we do, there's no end in sight. 59 00:02:38.907 --> 00:02:40.800 We'll be able to turn it forever. 60 00:02:40.800 --> 00:02:42.446 There are any number of ways that this could have been improved. 61 00:02:42.446 --> 00:02:45.020 The bars could have spun, not the cells. 62 00:02:45.020 --> 00:02:47.580 or you could remove the complicated, expensive rotation 63 00:02:47.586 --> 00:02:50.627 part entirely, and just, you know, open one cell at a time. 64 00:02:50.627 --> 00:02:52.876 Which is basically a regular jail. 65 00:02:52.876 --> 00:02:54.515 The moral of the story? 66 00:02:54.515 --> 00:02:56.606 Just because an idea has been patented 67 00:02:56.606 --> 00:02:59.346 doesn't mean that it's actually any good. 68 00:02:59.346 --> 00:03:00.953 Just means no one's thought of it before 69 00:03:00.953 --> 00:03:04.286 and sometimes there's a reason for that.