In the days before GPS, the maritime industry created nautical charts using bottles. It’s true. Until the 1700s, sailors would record their ship’s location and time on a sheet of paper, secure the paper inside a bottle and toss it overboard. When the bottle was found, it was sent to a mapmaker who logged the time and location of the arrival of the bottle. This was the way currents were placed on a map of the ocean. In 1769, Benjamin Franklin came up with a better way. Studying the logbooks of incoming ships, he noted that on some days the ships made magnificent progress. Other days, not so much. By charting the location where ships made GREAT PROGRESS, he discovered the Jet Stream. The amount of water moving in the Jet Stream below the surface of the ocean is 100 million cubic meters a second; 100 times the combined flow of all rivers on the planet. Above water, the directional winds created by that water flow allowed sailing ships to cut their travel time between New York and London by one-third.