THE SANDMAN
Then in the early 1800s, Baron George von Reisswitz, a Prussian civil servant and military-history buff, decided to create a war game entirely from scratch:
• Why limit yourself to a chessboard? Von Reisswitz thought it made more sense to play on a surface with real topographical features. He built a box several feet square and filled it with sand that could be used to model the hills, valleys, rivers, roads, and bridges that a Prussian soldier might encounter on a real battlefield.
• He made the playing surface large enough, and the square blocks that represented soldiers small enough, so that the blocks approximated the size of actual soldiers on a battlefield landscape. This allowed von Reisswitz to incorporate the concepts of time and distance into the game, something that had not been a part of card- and chess-based games.
• Troops on the march can only travel a certain number of paces per minute. By setting the scale of the game at 3 centimeters = 100 paces, it was possible to measure the distance between opposing groups of soldiers to calculate where and when they would meet on the battlefield. And since the range of rifles, cannons, and other weapons was also known, it was possible to tell when a group of soldiers would come within range of enemy fire.
Corn flakes, moxie, and gunk were all originally brand names.
Although von Reisswitz discarded playing cards and chess, he retained a third popular game of the era—dice—which he used to incorporate the important and often decisive role that random chance—or “friction,” as it’s sometimes called—can play in warfare. Is the weather too hot? Too cold? Too wet? Do rain or ice or snow make the roads impassable? Is troop morale unusually high? Abysmally low? Were they sleeping when the enemy attacked? Did their drinking water give them dysentery? Von Reisswitz understood that having more soldiers and a superior position on the battlefield can only go so far in determining the outcome of a battle. He incorporated rolls of the dice to account for anything and everything else.
THE MIDDLEMAN
But von Reisswitz’s most interesting and valuable innovation was his decision to deny his players knowledge of everything that was happening on the battlefield.
• In chess, both players see the entire board at all times and know where all the pieces are at any point in the game. In warfare things are very different, of course. The commanders’ knowledge is limited to what they and their troops can see with their own eyes. The location and deployment of the enemy, the size of its forces, and the direction in which they are moving are anyone’s guess.
• Von Reisswitz wanted to replicate this important concept of limited knowledge, so he created the position of a game master or “umpire,” who would host the game and be the only person with full knowledge of everything that was happening.
• At the start of the game, the umpire would explain the battlefield scenario to the commanders of opposing armies, and then these commanders would go off into separate corners or even separate rooms to prepare written orders. Each commander would give their plan to the umpire; neither commander would know what the other’s troops were doing.
• Then, as the game progressed, the umpire would reveal this information to the commanders only as quickly as they would have learned it on an actual battlefield. If one side’s troops were hiding in a forest, for example, the umpire wouldn’t reveal their position on the sand table until the other side’s troops got close enough to spot the hidden soldiers themselves.
• As the umpire revealed information to the players, they would use it to issue new written orders. This in turn caused the umpire to reveal still more information, which would prompt yet another set of orders. The process continued this way until one side won the battle.
• Having the umpire implement the orders of both sides at the same time allowed both armies to act simultaneously, just as they would in a real war, instead of having one side sit still while the other side made its move, as was the case in cards or chess.
The Erie Canal was built between 1817 and 1825 for a price of $7 million equal in cost today to a few miles of interstate highway.
FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES
Kriegsspiel, or “Wargame,” as the game came to be known, might have remained an obscure hobby had the captain of cadets at the Berlin Military Academy not learned of the game and mentioned it during a lecture in 1811. Two of his students—Prince Friedrich and Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, the teenage sons of King Friedrich Wilhelm III—wanted to play. They arranged for von Reisswitz to umpire a game at Berlin Castle, with the princes commanding their own armies. They enjoyed the experience and told the King about it. He, too, was soon hooked on the game.
Another early player of Kriegsspiel was Baron von Reisswitz’s own son, George von Reisswitz the Younger. By the early 1820s, he was an officer stationed in Berlin, and while there he and several friends played regularly. When they didn’t like something about the game, they changed it. For example, they abandoned sand tables in favor of maps, which were much more portable, and they changed the scale of the game to allow for larger battles fought with entire brigades (3,000 to 4,000 men) of soldiers.
George’s improvements must have been impressive, because when Prince Wilhelm played the new version, he saw to it that it was demonstrated to the entire Prussian general staff. “Gentlemen,” the chief of the general staff exclaimed to the group, “this is not a game; this is a war exercise! I must recommend it to the whole army!”
TODAY, PRUSSIA—TOMORROW, THE WORLD
Soon the entire Prussian officer corps was playing Kriegsspiel. Then, after Prussia won wars against Austria in 1866 and France in 1871, other countries began to take an interest in the training methods of the Prussian officer corps, including Kriegsspiel. Interest in the game spread throughout Europe and the United States. By the turn of the century, even civilians were playing, too, with clubs springing up in England and elsewhere. Just as George von Reisswitz the Younger had set to work changing parts of the game he didn’t like, the new hobbyists made their own changes.
Many were inspired to create entirely new games of their own:
• In 1913 H. G. Wells, author of The War of the Worlds, got in on the act: He wrote Little Wars, a set of rules for combat with toy soldiers and spring-loaded cannons.
• In the 1950s, an American war game enthusiast named Charles S. Roberts founded a game company called Avalon Hill, which remained the dominant war game publisher into the 1970s.
• Then in 1971, two war gamers named Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson came up with a game of their own that, if anything, was even more revolutionary than Kriegsspiel.
Even if you’ve never heard of Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, you’ve almost certainly heard of the game they invented. Who knows—maybe you even played it. That story begins on page 318.
LE JUGHEAD
Remember Jughead, the character from Archie comics who wears a cardboard crown and loves to eat cheeseburgers? In the French version of the comic he’s called Doudingue, in Spanish he’s Torombolo and in German he’s Knallkopf (literally “bang head”).
Most expensive video game ever: Grand Theft Auto IV, which cost $100 million to develop.
THE FUNNY PAGES
Great bathroom reading from real newspaper ads.
WANT ADS
Painting Job This Summer?
Call for Free Estimates.
If I’m not at home, arrange a date with my wife.
Wanted: Widower with school-age children requires person to assume general housekeeping duties. Must be capable of contributing to growth of family.
Cleaner Required, must be contentious.
Wanted: Free Furniture. Full bed, end table, working lamp, and a working floor model TV. You’ve got to haul it.
FOR SALE
One pair hardly used dentures, only two teeth missing.
American flag, 60 stars. Pole included, $100.
For sale. Three canaries of undermined sex.
Toaster: Great fun for the whole family. Automatic
ally burns toast.
Wedding Dress. Worn once by mistake. Call Stephanie.
15"-diameter, 3-speed fan. It will oscillate if you walk in a circle around it.
Complete set of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Excellent condition. No longer needed. Got married last month. Wife knows everything.
Solid oak funeral handmade casket in good condition. Only used once.
Tombstone: Standard gray. A good buy for someone named Grady.
FROM THE AD PAGE
Open house. Body Shapers toning salon. Free coffee and donuts.
Sheer stockings. Designed for fancy dress, but so serviceable that lots of women wear nothing else.
The hotel has bowling alleys, tennis courts, comfortable beds, and other athletic facilities.
Auto Repair Service. Free pick-up and delivery. Try us once, and you’ll never go anywhere again.
In 1961 A&W’s Teen Burger became the first fast-food burger to be topped with bacon.
GREAT FOOD DEALS
BLT—$1.85 (lettuce and tomato $.10 extra)
Sliced bologna, regular or tasty, save 30 cents on 2
I Can Believe It’s Not Butter! 8 oz. $1.38
Super G String Cheese, $1.49
THE PERSONALS
SWM into chainsaws and hockey masks seeks likeminded SWF. No weirdos, please.
Don’t call me if you are uneducated; unemployed; unhealthy smoker; felon; under 30 years old, 5'10"; over 40 years old, 6'8", 230 pounds; like cats, channel surfing; make less than $30,000 annually; or have body parts pierced. Others feel free.
Me—trying to sleep on the bus station bench, pleading with you to give me a cigarette; you—choking on my odor, tripping over your purse trying to get away; at the last moment, our eyes meeting. Yours were blue. Can I have a dollar?
Good-looking, athletic, Notting Hill-based movie star, millionaire, seeks gullible stunner.
Hideous-looking, obese, smelly, ill-tempered, lazy, cowardly, chronic, and a complete liar seeks total opposite.
Minimalist seeks woman.
I am spitting kitty. Ftt Fttttttt.
I am angry bear. Grrrrr. I am large watermelon seed stuck in your nose. Zermmmmmmmm.
I am small biting spider in your underwear. Yub yub yub.
No mimes.
RESTAURANT ADS
Mattie’s Restaurant and Yogurt Palace: An Alternative to Good Eating
Bring in this coupon and receive a FREE medium coffee for the price of a small.
Bogie’s Child’s Menu Children 12 & under driver’s license required
It takes many ingredients to make Burger King great…but the secret ingredient is our people!
“If you consider the contribution of plumbing to human life, the other sciences fade into insignificance.”
—James Gorman
New Hampshire is the only state with no seat-belt laws for adults.
THE INTERNUTS
A small sampling of some of the many odd things you can find on the Internet.
I Hate Cilantro. If you really dislike the herb cilantro and you feel the need to share with others, go to ihatecilantro.com. This anti-cilantro community of more than 1,700 members write about how much they hate “the most offensive food known to man.” (“It tastes like dish soap.”)
Ice Chewers Bulletin Board. There are a lot of people out there who like to chew ice, apparently. If you’re one of them, icechewing. iswhaticrave.com is where you can share your ice-chewing stories, your favorite ice-chewing recipes, or anything at all related to ice chewing, and join the community of more than 3,400 members.
Lasagna Cat. You’re familiar with the Garfield comic strip. Well, lasagnacat.com has a few dozen videos of three people—one playing John, one in a dog costume playing Odie, and one in a cat costume playing Garfield—acting out actual Garfield comics as they appeared in newspapers. They even give the dates on which the comics originally appeared.
Nothing. Blanksite.com has absolutely nothing on it. It’s just a blank white screen. (Its companion site, Something.com, does have something on it—the word “something.” That’s all.)
Men’s Long Hair Hyperboard. This site (mlhh.org) is a forum for long-haired men about long hair on men. Does your long hair cause friction at work? How do you handle your long hair while riding a motorcycle? How many inches has your hair grown since your last post? If you feel like chatting about it, this is the place for you.
Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle.com. This works just like google. Really. (But it has to have exactly 59 o’s in it.)
The Big Button That Doesn’t Do Anything. It’s a Web site with a really big button on it. It doesn’t do anything. It hasn’t done anything for the millions of people that have pushed it since 1994. Go ahead: Go to pixelscapes.com/spatulacity/button.htm…and push the button. We did. (It didn’t do anything.)
Average annual salary of a Major League Baseball mascot: $40,000.
SEVEN (UNDERWATER)PLACES TO SEE BEFORE YOU DIE
Grab your snorkel and flippers and get yourself to these amazing subaquatic locations before you slip and slide off this mortal coil.
1. THE GREAT BLUE HOLE. It’s off the coast of Belize in the Caribbean Sea. If you fly over it what you’ll see is the Caribbean’s emerald-green water interrupted by a narrow, ring-shaped blue “island.” Inside the ring is an almost perfectly circular, darker blue spot, more than 1,000 feet in diameter. It’s a sinkhole, and it’s about 400 feet deep. During the last ice age, when sea levels were much lower than they are today, it was a dry, limestone cave system. When the water level rose, the cave filled and its roof collapsed, creating the hole. Put on your flippers and you can explore the tunnels below the surface. Jacques Cousteau studied the site in the 1970s, and called it one of the 10 best places on the planet to go scuba diving.
2. THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS. These islands in the Pacific Ocean, 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador in South America, are remarkable for many reasons, high among them the fact that for millions of years they were isolated from other areas on the planet. Result: The Galapagos Islands are home to some of the most diverse and unique animal life in the world. Aside from the more than 450 species of fish, about 20% of which are found nowhere else, it’s the only place in the world where you can see the marine iguana (the world’s only oceangoing lizard), Pacific green sea turtles, Galapagos sharks, and Galapagos penguins, the northernmost of the penguin species. You might even see whale sharks, the largest fish in the ocean, which grow up to 40 feet long and can weigh more than 40,000 pounds. (Don’t be afraid: They eat plankton.) You may also find yourself in the middle of a school of hundreds of hammerhead sharks. (Go ahead, be afraid now.) Hammerheads can be dangerous to humans, but attacks are rare and no human deaths from hammerheads have occurred in recorded history. The best time to go is from December to June, when warm ocean currents keep the water between 75° and 80°F.
3. THE YONGALA. On March 23, 1911, a 350-foot passenger ship sailing from Melbourne to Cairns, Australia, ran into a cyclone off the coast of Queensland. It sank, and all 122 people aboard perished. The ship was the SS Yongala, and its wreckage was discovered in 1958 about 13 miles off the coast, resting about 100 feet below the surface. It’s now officially part of the largest coral reef system in the world, the Great Barrier Reef. The ship is remarkably intact—and is considered by many expert divers to be the best place to go diving in the world today. It is described as “like swimming in a huge aquarium,” with the ship itself being encrusted in many kinds of very colorful soft and hard coral species. On any given dive you may encounter bull sharks, tiger sharks, dolphins, giant groupers (weighing hundreds of pounds), sea turtles, octopi, manta rays, sea snakes, and much, much more. And the water’s warm, from 70° to 80°F.
Warning: Do not go inside the ship! It’s a protected heritage site, and you can be arrested and heavily fined for disturbing it.
4. THE BIMINI ROAD. It’s Atlantis! Well, that’s what some people say, anyway. It’s actually
a half-mile-long succession of large, rectangular limestone rocks configured in an almost rectangular shape about 20 feet beneath the ocean’s surface near North Bimini Island in the Bahamas. The shape and layout of the rocks lead many people to believe they’re the remains of a manmade structure, possibly a wall, a foundation, or a road. It was discovered only recently, in 1968, by pilots flying over the area, and has since been studied intensely. Most geologists and archaeologists believe it’s a naturally occurring, if unique, phenomenon, but others disagree. In any case, you can snorkel or scuba dive in the clear, blue-green waters and check out the sight for yourself.
Bonus trivia: The final scene of The Silence of the Lambs, in which Hannibal Lecter says to Agent Starling over the phone, “I’m having a friend for dinner,” was filmed at an airstrip on tiny North Bimini Island.
5. BARRACUDA POINT. Located off Sipadan Island in Malaysia, Barracuda Point has many colorful coral and fish species and other amazing flora and fauna, and the water’s warm and clear, so you can see it all. But the most amazing thing about this dive locale is that at any moment you may find yourself in the middle of what is called a “barracuda tornado”: thousands of the slender, frightening-looking fish, some up to six feet long, forming huge hollow cylindrical towers, swimming in a seemingly choreographed procession. It is considered one of the most exhilarating events in diving. (Luckily, barracudas rarely attack humans.)
6. THE HISPANIA. The SS Hispania was a 236-foot Swedish steamship that attempted to pass through the treacherous Sound of Mull between the Isle of Mull and the west Scottish coast during a brutal storm in 1954. She ran aground on a reef known as Sgeir More, or Big Rock, and sank to the bottom about 85 feet down. (The crew survived; the skipper refused to leave the ship and was last seen standing in the bridge, his hand raised in a salute, as it went down.) The spookily intact ship still stands where it landed, almost upright, covered in orange and white sea anemones. Experienced divers can swim into it and below decks to encounter fish and other marine life that have made the ship their home.
Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader Page 29