Upe Upe and Awaye in My Incredible Flying Machiene!

There’s something to be said for someone with the gumption, know-how and spare-time to become an inventor. Now we’re not talking about a pooper-scooper, or being the guy who invented the iPhone or aromatherapy. I’m talking about the real inventors, people who adventure into the depths of imagination and drag from it great clanking things of purest fantasy. Sure the people who thought up the iPhone are great but can they compare to some of these folks?

François Delarozière – Leonardo daVinci on a Merry-Go-Round

When I wrote the line “great clanking things of purest fantasy” in the above paragraph I was thinking of François Delarozière. This Frenchman has spent his life designing bringing huge robotic animals to life. As creepy as that sounds, it isn’t. With shells of gorgeously carved wood François’ creations have an asthetic out of Jules Verne or even Pinnochio (fitting cause he also works with marionettes) that are absolutely amazing to watch in action:

The fun doesn’t stop there:

Yes. That’s right, a collosal spider and a four story tall elephant. Sure they’re not really inventions in the typical sense. But are you going to argue with a guy who can operate a gigantic robot spider? Probably not.

Not that he would do anything to you, I mean look at the guy:

See that smile? The man is made of pure whimsy.

In collaboration with La Machine a French collective of artists and engineers based out of Nantes he’s made a pretty good name for himself and his installations. Nante’s has taken his team into their hearts and they now have a huge workshop space with a gigantic tree-garden, a wind tunnel where you can fly a person-sized flea, and a massive undersea themed merry-go-round. It’s all right here on their website. I’m already making travel plans.

But there are plenty of other cool folks to talk about, next up we’re going to go deep in the archives to bring you a major blast from the past. Do you like flying? Or landmines? You have this guy to thank:

Zhuge Liang – Chinese Master of the Thousand Wisdoms

So maybe that’s not his formal title but it could have been, plus it sounds cool.

Like the Stephen Hawking of kicking your ass.

If Wikipedia serves us correctly (and God help us if it doesn’t) Zhuge Liang is pretty much the name you drop in China if you’re talking about wisdom. He’s supposedly responsible for the first flying machine (a giant Kongming Lantern), the first landmine, a delicious steamed bun, and the repeating crossbow. Yeah, that repeating crossbow. The weapon your twink friend always wanted his half-orc paladin to have but the DM wouldn’t let him have because he had already made so many consessions for that character. Only the one in Dungeons & Dragons was based off a later model. Z.L.’s was built earlier and fired faster and further. Yeah. Pownage.

You cannot defeat me, for I have already won.

This guy was also a master strategist. Running out of arrows while on campaign reuniting the entire Han Empire he had his soldiers construct a bunch of straw men, put them on boats and then, in the early morning mist make sounds of preparing for attack. The enemy on the opposite side of the river from them promptly filled the straw men with arrows, the boats were retrieved and the arrows collected. Zhuge had stolen about a thousand arrows from his enemy and not lost a single man.

He also carried around a fan made of crane feathers, possibly to tempt enemies into insulting him so he could declare war upon them. This is the equivalent of Chuck Norris taping a “KICK ME” sign to his back.

Carlos Owens – Mecha-Man

Yeah, Troy Hurtubise was cool with his bear suit, but his vision was limited. Want to really ‘rassle with a grizzly? Well, what about doing it in a mech suit? Impossible, you say? Apparently no-one ever told Carlos Owens that:

You can now clean up your pants.

What you see there is an 18-foot-tall, working, mecha. Built by an Army engineer in Alaska (where the “lots of spare time” portion of the Inventor equation is in abundance) who decided to take this up as a pet-project while he was in the service. The robot has a little trouble with walking on complex terrain but Carlos is optimistic that his psuedo move-by-wire system can be fine tuned with the hydraulics in the mecha’s legs. That’s all Carlos has done really, no other inventions to date but well, no one else really has a corner on the DIY Decepticon market. Popular Science went nuts with it. And Carlos isn’t actually interested in fighting bears, his real purpose for building it is well… in hopes of engaging in some mecha vs. mecha fights with other folks.

Which is why he’s on the list.

Our last stop on this little tour however, is a man who needs no introduction:

Nikola Tesla – Lightning on the Brain

See? You totally knew I was going to mention him.

Now, researching articles for Potential! isn’t usually that difficult. You comb Google Images and reword a Wikipedia article for about a half hour and try to come up with some funny quips. On occasion though, you run into something like Nikola Tesla’s Wikipedia article.

Science cannot contain me.

The article is massive and littered with phrases like “thermoionic emissions,” “condenser discharge transformations” and “force-free magnetic fields”  which are probably all code words for “death-ray lightning gun.” All kidding aside, Nikola Tesla probably knew more about science than anyone in his day. The guy rarely drew blueprints, instead picturing every aspect of an invention with his reported photographic memory before setting to work. As someone who has difficulty picturing what lunch looked like two days ago I can only hope that there is a place for someone mildly funny in his futuristic empire.

Anyway, the inventions:

Tesla’s Egg of Columbus: An Egg of Columbus is a problem that seems extremely difficult or insolvable but can actually be sloved by a simple action. The story goes that Columbus (when he wasn’t spreading disease or completely misjugding the distance to China) once dared a bunch of Spanish nobles to stand a hard-boiled egg on it’s pointy end without propping it up. They couldn’t and asked Columbus to try it. He tapped the egg on the table, flattening the top and stood the egg up on it’s own.  Everyone thought he was real clever.

Now Tesla decided to do this the other way. The hard way. For the World’s Columbia Exposition he opted to construct a massive magnetic current alternator to spin a copper egg to the point where the gyroscopic action of the egg would balance it perfectly on it’s tip. Yeah, you heard me. This was a science project he thought up to solve a problem that no one was really that worried about, in an incredibly elaborate and backwards way, just to show he could. Tesla’s earlier plans for the Expo were rumored to be a gigantic middle finger made of lightning that flashed the words “FUCK YOU, COLUMBUS.”

Everything Else: I’ll save the other inventions for a later, more in-depth Tesla investigation. However it is safe to say that Tesla was one of the most underappreciated figures in modern electrical science and engineering and that the world has benefited greatly from his research. From x-rays to Atomic Robo, Tesla has helped push the world forward in incredible ways.

Plus there were those rumors of a death-ray…

World News Update

1. After revealing unknown nuclear enrichment facility near Qum, Iran and US meet in Geneva for nuclear talks.
2. Harry Potter has something in common with a story about gay penguins, censorship.
3. Cluster of hundreds of dinosaur eggs from Cretaceous accidentally called “Jurassic treasure trove”.
4. Happy 60th Birthday, Red China.
5. Turns out, sustaining multiple concussions a year is a bad thing, NFL studies show.
6. Death count for US-Mexico border crossings increases to it’s highest in three years.
7. Move over Lucy, “Ardi” takes place as oldest human-anscestor skeleton.
8. Green Day, yes, that Green Day opens a musical on Broadway.
9. Good Theater’s “The Little Dog Laughed” gets a good Portland Phoenix review.

World News Update

1. The Portland, Maine chapter of the 48 Hour Film Project is finished!  MINT Films submits their short: ”The Burden” on time. Screeming on Tuesday at 9:30pm at the Westbrook Cinemagic with the rest of the festival’s films.
2. New Zealand man robs record store after giving owner his contact information.
3. Jones vs. Harris Associates may be first Supreme Court case to address the issues of ”excessive” bonuses paid out to executives of failing publicly traded firms.
4. Obama may opt for non-profit insurace co-operatives in health care reform plan following pressure from opponents.
5. Japan leaves recession but experts not sure for how long.
6. 600 Chinese villagers storm lead plant after children poisoned.
7. Egyptian President agrees to recognize Israel if comprehensive peace plan is achieved and building on the West Bank is stopped.
8. 20 dead in Russian suicide bombing.
9. Stanford engineer decodes his genome for just five easy installments of $10,000.

World News Update

1. Christian Anti-War activists play hide and go seek and halt a training exercise featuring 24,000 Australian and American troops.
2. Two Uighur “lawbreakers” are shot by Chinese military in aftermath of rioting that claimed 180 lives in rural China.
3. Tennessee forces it’s residents to reexamine that old chestnut, the 2nd Amendment, as it relaxes gun laws.
4. This is just a really cool article about whales.
5. Obama starts to investigate claims that hundreds/thousands of US captured Taliban fighters were executed or left to suffocate in shipping containers.
6. Drunk badger disrupts traffic in Germany.
7. Man turns Rome’s Spanish Steps into one of those ball pits at Chuck-E-Cheeze’s.