You never know — it might have been a dark and stormy night on August 14, 1975. A young couple, whose names were not Janet or Brad, might have been driving on King’s Road in London when one of their tires went flat. No mobile phones in those days, so they went in search of a land line.
The Chelsea Classic Cinema was nearby and open. They thought there must be a phone in there, but they couldn’t get in without tickets. So they bought tickets, thinking that they could watch a movie while their tire got fixed.
But things were very strange that night, because there weren’t any movies at that cinema. It had been booked for a stage production instead — a musical comedy just out of rehearsal.
They couldn’t find a phone in the theatre, but sat down to watch the production anyway — with weird and unpredictable results. It was the opening night of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It moved to the Kings Road Theater later that year, where it ran for 6 years. The musical opened in the US in 1975. The following year the film debuted (with the original cast). And it’s been playing in midnight movies nearly ever since.
One August 14 event inexplicably left out of the Rocky Horror Picture Show is the first patent ever issued in Japan, in 1885. It was for rustproof paint. Which, if you’ve ever rustproofed anything with paint, you probably suspect that “rustproof” is not entirely accurate. But you never know, right?
You can get a patent on just about anything, particularly in the US, where evidently there aren’t any patent examiners any more. One of my favorites is US6025810A, issued in 1997 (really issued!), which is a patent on an antenna that sends faster-than-light radio waves. In other words, given relativity and all, the antenna sends the radio waves before they’re created. Or something like that. Anyway, you can read the patent. It’s in the same list as US20040161257, which includes this claim (it’s #9):
“The method of providing user interface displays in an image forming apparatus which is really a bogus claim included amongst real claims, and which should be removed before filing; wherein the claim is included to determine if the inventor actually read the claims and the inventor should instruct the attorneys to remove the claim.”
But, you never know. Maybe that original rustproof paint really does work. Maybe Dr. Frank N. Furter is really from the galaxy Transylvania. If so, maybe we could communicate using that patented antenna. And maybe Gustave Whitehead really did built a machine that flew, under power, two years before the Wright Brothers.
The story of Whitehead’s flying machine — or this particular example of his flying machines; this one was number 21 — starts before dawn on August 14, 1901. He drove it to a big field in Fairfield, Connecticut (you could fold the wings and use it like a car). Before trying it himself, he put bags of sand weighing about the same into it and started the motor, holding on to a tether to control the flyer. It worked, so he replaced the sand with himself and flew the thing himself for about half a mile.
There was a reporter there at the time, and a story about the flight ran in the “Bridgeport Herald” on August 18th. It included a drawing that was supposedly based on a photograph — but no photographs of the flight have ever been found. Whitehead announced he would publish photos of his next flyer (number 22) in the air, but they “did not come out right”. Number 23 was going to be an even better machine, powered by a new 200-horsepower engine (for 1901, a very powerful engine). But when they tested the engine in a boat on Long Island Sound, it capsized and sank, and the engine was lost.
Whitehead’s gliders and engines had plenty of corroborating evidence, so maybe he really did manage the first powered flight. I mean, it’s possible. It wasn’t supposed to be possible for the whole electrical grid from Ontario to Michigan and Ohio to New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania to all fail at once, but on August 14, 2003 it did. It was the Great Northeast Blackout of 2003. It was started by a bug (I mean a flaw, not an insect) in the control room software in Akron, Ohio. After that, one failure led to another until the lights went out for 55 million people.
It was the sort of thing Steve Martin might work up a comedy routine about, or Gary Larson might use in a Far Side cartoon. And since it happened on their birthday, you never know…things you think can’t happen do, all the time.
