by Red Green
It requires a special kind of person to take on the natural forces of the universe. Not that Wilbur thought he could completely overpower the forces of gravity, but he sure believed he could knock them down a peg or two. He obviously had a pretty healthy ego.
Mother Nature can be a difficult date. We get a few minor victories like sunblock to prevent burning or spillways to prevent flooding, but so far nobody has come up with a way to move precipitation or reduce wind or unscrew a tornado. Maybe one day—who knows?
Maybe one of you kids out there will come up with a way of reducing the intensity of lightning by channelling it through a dimmer. But before you touch that lightning knob, I suggest you slip on about seven pairs of rubber boots.
—
Twenty years before Mr. Franks’s invention, local flyer Gwen Morrisburg had been working on the same problem. She would often do tricks at county fairs, most of which were in an airplane, and she noticed that when she was pulling out of steep dives, or crawling out of local dives, she would often feel light-headed to the point of almost losing consciousness. However, if it was during a time when she was retaining water, she was fine, although usually everybody else wasn’t.
Just like Wilbur, she figured that surrounding the body with fluid would stop the forces of gravity. Unlike Mr. Franks, she didn’t think of having pockets of water in her outfit, but women don’t like pockets anyway.
Instead she purchased two rubber diving suits. One was exactly fitted to her figure; the other was seven sizes too large. She put the big one on over the small one, sealed the wrist, ankle and neck holes with plumber’s putty and then filled the space between the suits with raspberry gelatin. Overtop she wore a loose-fitting cotton dress (as pictured above) for modesty. She insisted on wearing a matching hat. She thought it made her look slimmer, but maybe not the best choice for a stunt flyer. She went through a lot of hats.
Gwen Morrisburg, Possum Lake Fly Girl Credit 3
The first time she tried the anti-gravity outfit was at the Possum Lake County Fair of 1923. As soon as she was suited up and got the dress on, she sat in the plane in a cool, dark place, waiting for the jelly to firm up. After it did, she yelled over to the tower that she was “all set.” That may have been the first time a person’s butt firmed up by just sitting on it.
She took off and started through her routine. She did steep dives and barrel rolls without the slightest twinge of light-headedness. However, when she did the upside-down flypass, her dress flipped up over her head and the entire crowd fainted.
BASKETBALL
Dr. James Naismith
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Dr. James Naismith, born in 1861 in Almonte, Ontario, is recognized as the guy who invented the game of basketball. He came up with it in 1891 when he was teaching at a YMCA. Naismith lived to see basketball dribble and bounce and eventually break away into a college, professional and even Olympic sport. Although he never once dunked.
Red and Jimmy shooting hoops in Mono Mills, Ontario
Inventing a game is really easy to do. My uncle used to invent games every few days. They were dumb games and had stupid rules that didn’t make any sense and he could never get anybody to play them, and he was eventually put on medication and taken to a special place—but the point is that inventing a game is the easy part. Making it a good enough game that catches on and flourishes is the tough part.
People have been inventing games for five thousand years and although the world now has a population of more than seven billion, there are fewer than fifty games that could be called popular. You do the math. I certainly can’t. But I know that the game-invention business must have a really high failure rate. So congrats, Jimmy, you beat the odds with a small ball, a medium-sized basket and a big dream.
—
By pure coincidence, at about the same time Naismith was creating basketball, local sports enthusiast and part-time Possum High phys. ed. teacher Butch Dempster was developing something very similar.
As with so many great inventions, it started with a problem. Each year when the fall school term began, all of the stronger, more athletic boys went into hockey. They practised day and night because for many of them it was their best and only career choice. For Butch, this meant that the only boys left to attend his gym classes were unathletic, wimpy and pretty much useless at sports.
Rather than bullying and ridiculing them, which had never worked for him in the past, he decided to let three of the suckiest boys create their own game and try to come as close to hockey as possible. They sat in a circle in the middle of the gym and discussed how the game would go. Butch threw out the challenge to the boys and then just sat back and wrote down their suggestions.
Bernard “Butch” Dempster, Undershirt ModelCredit 5
BOY #1: No puck. It can’t use a puck. Pucks are hard and small and are the main reason hockey players don’t have teeth.
BOY #2: Okay, so how about a ball? A big ball.
BOY #1: Not a bowling ball.
BOY #3: An inflatable ball. About the size of a soccer ball, but more rubbery, so if it hits you on the head it will bounce off instead of it fracturing your skull and your brains all seep out through your ear.
BOY #2: And it needs to be orange…For luck.
(Uncomfortable pause)
BUTCH: This doesn’t sound much like hockey.
BOY #1: We’ll make it five boys on each team. That will make it exactly like hockey.
BUTCH: Hockey has six on a team.
BOY #1: Yes, but we’re not going to have a goalie. Makes it too hard to score.
BUTCH: I don’t think that’s the reason why you find it hard to score.
BOY #3: And we’ll have a goal, just like hockey—but not a square goal because it has corners and you can hurt yourself badly on a corner. We’ll use a clothes hamper, and you throw the ball into it. It’ll be like laundry day in the boys’ residence.
BOY #2: And we’ll have penalties, just like hockey.
BOY #3: Lots of penalties.
BOY #1: Way more penalties than hockey.
BUTCH: What kind of penalties? Boarding? Cross-checking? Fighting?
BOY #1: No. None of that.
BOY #2: Are you crazy? Are you trying to get us killed?
BOY #3: No checking of any kind. Ever.
BOY #1: No touching.
BOY #3: Even better. No touching.
BUTCH: What about eye contact?
BOY #1: We’ll let it slide for a while and see how it goes.
BUTCH: Walk me through how the game would work.
BOY #1: Well, the two teams would line up at centre court, like they do in hockey. But no faceoffs. You know it’s a violent sport when the first thing you do is try to rip somebody’s face off.
BOY #3: We’ll have a jump ball. The referee will throw the ball up in the air.
BOY #1: It’s inflated.
BOY #2: And orange.
(Uncomfortable pause)
BOY #3: One of the teams catches the ball and runs down the floor and throws it into the laundry hamper.
BUTCH: Any passing?
BOY #2: Only if absolutely necessary.
BOY #1: If anybody touches you, that’s a foul.
BUTCH: You mean touches the ball carrier?
BOY #2: No. We mean touches anybody. At any time—before the game, in the schoolyard…anywhere. No touching.
BUTCH: And what happens when you toss the ball into the laundry hamper?
BOY #1: Game’s over. We’ll be exhausted and ready to get back to our homework.
And so the game of wussball was invented. It never really caught on. Even the boys who invented it wouldn’t play. But if you watch a professional basketball game today, the similarities are startling.
To watch our Adventure Film on basketball, go to the Book of Inventions page at redgreen.com and click on “Basketball.”
THE BLACKBERRY
Mike Lazaridis
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Mike Lazaridis was born in Istanbul,
Turkey, in 1961. At the age of five he moved with his family to Canada, where they put down roots in Windsor, Ontario. At age twelve, he read every science book at the public library in Windsor, and received a prize for the effort. And yes, it was more than three books. Not sure what the prize was, but I’m hoping it included an agreement not to tell any of Mike’s twelve-year-old buddies.
In 1979, he began an electrical engineering degree, with an option for computer science, at the University of Waterloo. In 1984, Lazaridis heard about a request for proposals from General Motors concerning a network computer control display. Mike submitted a proposal and GM awarded him a contract. They were doing better in those days.
With just two months left till graduation, he made the tough decision to drop out of school to start work on the contract. The GM contract, a small government grant and a loan from Mike’s parents enabled Lazaridis, Mike Barnstijn, and Douglas Fregin to launch Research In Motion. (They were going to name it Research Standing Still if the government got more involved.) One of the company’s first major achievements was the development of barcode technology. Apparently it caught on. RIM used the profits to research wireless data transmission. Result: the BlackBerry mobile device in 1999, and its better-known version in 2002.
I like hearing about inventions and the reason they came into being and all the hurdles the inventor had to get over, but the thing that fascinates me the most is how they come up with a name for the invention. Most of them make sense, like paint roller and snowblower and hearing aid, but they’re boring. Then along comes the BlackBerry.
“Okay, let’s see…we’ve got a device that works like a phone but can also send and receive files, pictures and messages. What should we call it? The Communicator? The Internetcom? The Superphone?”
“No, no, I think we should go with the BlackBerry.”
“Really? Why?”
“I like blackberries.”
“Yeah, okay, but a blackberry is like a little fruit that’s pretty ugly and a bit on the sour side.”
“Yeah but I like ’em.”
“Okay, so you wanna give it a fruity name. What about the Nectarine?”
“I like the BlackBerry.”
“Yeah, I get that. I just don’t get the connection to the product.”
“Well, it’s small and black and is always low on juice.”
—
Inspired by the BlackBerry, Alex Rifkin, a local guy with big ideas and time on his hands, decided to create a similar communication device that would not require any cellular or Internet connections.
As a child, Alex had learned how to play a small wind instrument that everybody called a “sweet potato.” At least that’s what they called it to his face. But it’s real name was “ocarina”.
He was fascinated with its design and in later years raised enough money to build a community centre shaped like a giant sweet potato. He called it “The Giant Sweet Potato Community Centre” but the town council demanded a more subtle reference to the design of the building so they changed the name later that afternoon to “The Oak Arena”. At this point Alex felt a need to express his masculinity by abandoning the sweet potato and moving up to the more manly piccolo. After years of practice he became one of the better piccolo players in the Possum Lake area. He auditioned for a couple of heavy metal bands but it was never really a fit. He also tried to use his musical ability to meet women. On two separate occasions he tried the pick-up line “Would you like to see my piccolo?” Neither went well.
Alex Rifkin, Local Developer and Freelance Piccolo PlayerCredit 7
While practising one day, Alex noticed that if he played a very high note at full volume, he would get complaints from neighbours way beyond his own trailer park. That was when he got the idea to use the instrument for communication.
Alex knew that every musical note is identified with a letter. When a musician reading music sees the letter, he converts it to a note. It only makes sense that when a musician hears the note, he’ll be able to convert it back to a letter. That became the founding principle of the WhistleBerry—a device that communicates using high-pitched, high-volume musical notes.
Alex added a small-format cassette recorder that hung down below the piccolo and allowed the user to record messages and play them back later. Despite the brilliance of the plan, there were a couple of drawbacks. First problem was the limited range—many musicians are smokers and don’t have the lung power to send a WhistleBerry message across town. Even with a full set of powerful lungs, long-distance calls were out of the question.
Alex toyed with the idea of adding mechanical amplification, but he found that strapping a gas-powered air compressor to the customer’s back really cut into the portability of the unit. And even for short distances, wind was an issue. At one point Alex was accidentally locked in his bathroom during a tornado and the WhistleBerry wasn’t even loud enough for his wife to hear. Although she said she never listens to anything he does in there.
But the biggest issue was the limited vocabulary. There are only seven notes in a musical scale, so that meant the messages were limited to seven different letters—A, B, C, D, E, F and G. Even an experienced Scrabble player had trouble creating usable communiqués. Initially, Alex tried to communicate with just one note at a time—for instance, a B-sharp was code for “smarten up,” and an F-flat meant that girl wasn’t worth pursuing.
But besides being offensive, this approach was very limiting, so Alex fixed the problem by creating a more elaborate code that would allow for better and more secure messages:
DEAD BEEF meant “We’re having pot roast tonight.”
CABBAGE FACE meant “Your boss is looking for you.”
ADDED BED meant “I have filed for a trial separation.”
Sadly, if the recipient didn’t have perfect pitch, he would misunderstand the message. Alex sent a message to one of his assistants, who turned out to be tone deaf and showed up at Alex’s house an hour later with a forty-five-gallon drum of personal lubricant. Despite his best efforts, Alex’s WhistleBerry was doomed from the beginning, or maybe even slightly before. The entire adventure was reduced to one more whistle-stop on his road to ignominy.
Calendars have been around for a long time. Ever since the first caveman forgot his wedding anniversary, this tool has been keeping human beings organized and efficient and on time.
The first calendars came out in the Bronze Age, which was a while ago. Then Julius Caesar did a 2.0 version in about 45 BCE. These early calendars were based on what was happening in the sky, which in those days wasn’t much. The movements of the sun and the moon and maybe a planet or two was about it. No space shuttles or 747s or drones. But as soon as scientists started figuring out how the earth moves inside the solar system, the calendars got a lot better and more popular. Such developments as bikinis, firemen and airbrush photography haven’t hurt either.
But no matter how good calendars get, they’re still no help to those of us who forget to put the upcoming event onto the calendar in the first place. This is really the Achilles heel of the calendar system: you still have to do something. Men hate that.
RATING: Nice try, but not the greatest invention in the world of all time ever. Watch for Candidate #2, coming up later in this book.
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BLOODY CAESAR
Walter Chell
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This alcoholic drink was invented by a guy in Calgary named Walter Chell. At the time, he was the restaurant manager of the Calgary Inn, which later became the Westin Hotel. In 1969 the hotel was opening a new Italian restaurant, and Walter was told to come up with a signature drink for it. He eventually decided to put vodka, Clamato juice, Worcestershire sauce, celery salt, celery, Tabasco sauce, ice cubes and a lime wedge together in a tall glass, and the Bloody Caesar was born. It caught on right away and has become Canada’s national cocktail. I’m guessing Molson Canadian is the national chaser.
As this book demonstrates on almost half of the pages, there
are some amazingly creative people in this world. And none more so than in the field of naming alcoholic mixed drinks. Moscow Mule, Golden Cadillac, Dark and Stormy Night, Tequila Sunrise, Screwdriver, Sex on the Beach. Really makes you wonder what they were doing when they named the drink. And how was the drink involved with the activity? Was it consumed during or maybe after, as a celebration? Or maybe the drinks came first and were the cause of the activity. But when you look at all these drink names, the “Bloody Caesar” has to be a standout. My guess is that this cocktail is the only one named after a political assassination. There’s no “Night Out with Lincoln” or the “Grassy Knoll” or the “Jell-O Shot Heard Round the World.”
Isn’t calling a drink a Bloody Caesar a little insensitive? And coming from Canada too. Canada is the last place you’d expect to find a violent, revolutionary drink name. We’re peaceful here. We’ve never had a prime minister spoken rudely to, much less assassinated. We didn’t even really rebel against Great Britain, we just moved out.
Generally speaking, Canadians aren’t vicious killers or mercenary opportunists, so I think this is one of those cases where people just look at it as a catchy name without considering what it really means.
So I’ve done the thinking for you. It’s called “bloody” because of the colour of the Clamato juice and also to make you think of a Bloody Mary, which was already a popular drink—always smart to latch on to somebody else’s fame. Like Elvis impersonators do. And I guess the “Caesar” part is because it was an Italian restaurant with a Canadian spin. Sort of an Eh-tu, Brute.