Journal tags: invention

I watched a good film last night. Tornado from the same writer and director of the also-excellent Slow West.

Tornado is a Scottish Samurai Western set in the 1790s. Although it’s not likely that many Samurai would’ve been in Scotland during the sakoku period, I was willingly able to suspend my disbelief …until something quite minor happened on screen.

One of the characters is seen playing a concertina. “Hang on”, I thought, “1790s? That’s not right!”

And indeed, once the film was over I reached for my laptop and confirmed that the concertina is very much a 19th century invention.

Look, it’s not that I know when most musical instruments were invented, but I happened to know about the concertina’s origin because of a different technology.

See, the concertina was invented by one Charles Wheatsone. He invented quite a few things. He, along with William Cooke, more or less created the electric telegraph, around the same time as Samuel Morse.

I only know this because of the excellent book by Tom Standage called The Victorian Internet:

The remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth century’s online pioneers.

Prompted by that book, I found out more about Wheatstone, including the fact that he invented the concertina. So that’s why I found myself slightly taken out of the action when watching that film last night. In the 1790s, nobody was playing the concertina in Scotland or anywhere else.

Today, though, the concertina is thriving, especially in Ireland. It’s particularly popular in County Clare. Though, as I’m writing this, I’m listening to the playing of a Kerryman, Cormac Begley.

I’ll be seeing him play tonight in the Brighton Dome where he’ll be providing the music for the superb Teaċ Damhsa production, MÁM. This’ll be my second time experiencing it. Táim ar bís!

This list has been making the rounds lately. It’s the list of (probably apocryphal) rules underlying the world of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. Design principles if you will. Like “The Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going ‘meep, meep’” and “All tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the Acme Corporation.”

These are patterns that we are all subconsciously aware of anyway, but there’s something about seeing them enumerated that makes us go “oh, yeah” in recognition.

This reminds me of a silly idea I had when I was younger. It’s about Star Wars (of course). Specifically it’s about a possible rule—or design principle—underlying the kitbashed used-universe design of that galaxy far, far away.

Now I know this is going to sound crazy, but hear me out…

What if the wheel has never been invented in the world of Star Wars?

It’s probably not a deliberate omission, but we never actually see a single wheel in the original trilogy (the prequels, as always, are another matter entirely). Sure, there are wheels implied under the imperial mouse droid or under R2-D2’s legs but you never actually see them. Even the sandcrawler, which uses tracks, hides its internal workings.

Instead, this is a universe where everything travels via some kind of maglev antigravity even when it seems completely unnecessary—couldn’t you just slap a carbonite Han Solo on a gurney? Whenever a spaceship extends its landing gear we see …skids. Always skids. Never wheels. And what kind of mechanical engineer would actually design something like an AT-AT if it weren’t for a prohibition on wheels?

I know you’re probably thinking “this is so stupid”, but I bet you’re also trying to think of an explicit instance of a wheel in the original trilogy. You may also be feeling a growing urge to watch the films again. And whenever you do end up watching the trilogy again, and you find yourself looking at the undercarriage of every vehicle, you’ll realise that I’ve planted this idea Inception-like in your head.

Anyway, like I said, the prequels put paid to my little theory. I was genuinely disappointed when those droidekas rolled down that corridor. Remember that feeling of “oh, please!” when R2-D2 used his thrusters to fly in Attack Of The Clones? You felt cheated, right? The film was breaking the rules of its own universe. Well, a little part of me felt that way when my silly theory was squashed.

But just go with it here for a minute. Suppose the wheel had never been invented. Would it be possible for a space-faring civilisation to evolve? It’s generally assumed that you’d need to at least invent fire to achieve any kind of mechanical advances, but what about the wheel?

Imagine if George Lucas had actually been playing a design fiction long con. My younger self liked to imagine that lists of instructions were passed around ILM, along the same lines as those Road Runner rules. And one of those instructions would’ve been the cryptic injunction against showing wheels in any vehicle designs. Then imagine what it would have been like if, decades later, Lucas casually dropped the bombshell that the wheel was never invented in this galaxy far, far away. It would’ve blown. Our. Minds.

Ah, but it was just a dream. A crazy, apopheniac dream.