Meet the Oud, the “King of All Instruments” Whose Origins Stretch Back 3500 Years Ago to Ancient Persia

in Music | November 17th, 2021

The word oud might make some peo­ple think of fra­grances. Tom Ford’s Oud Wood cur­rent­ly sets fash­ion­istas back between $263 and $360 a bot­tle: oud can refer to “agar­wood,” a very rare ingre­di­ent in per­fumes. But reg­u­lar Open Cul­ture read­ers may be more famil­iar with the bowl-shaped instru­ment that made its way to Europe from North Africa dur­ing the Mid­dle Ages, giv­ing rise to the lute (al-oud… The word oud, or ud, in Ara­bic sim­ply means “wood.”) The oud is, after all, a direct, if dis­tant, ances­tor of the mod­ern gui­tar, a sub­ject we like to cov­er here quite a bit.

Some of the videos we’ve fea­tured on the his­to­ry of the gui­tar have starred clas­si­cal gui­tarist and stringed instru­ment spe­cial­ist Bran­don Ack­er. Just above, he intro­duces view­ers to the tun­ing, tim­bre, and play­ing tech­niques of the oud, “one of the most pop­u­lar instru­ments in Ara­bic music,” writes the site Maqam World. It is also one of the old­est. Ack­er leaves his “com­fort zone of West­ern Clas­si­cal music” in this video because of his fas­ci­na­tion with the oud as an ances­tor of the lute, “one of the most impor­tant instru­ments of the musi­cal peri­od we call the Renais­sance.”

The oud, whose own ances­tor dates back some 3500 years to ancient Per­sia, first arrived with the Moors dur­ing their 711 AD inva­sion of Spain. Although new to Europe, it was known in the Ara­bic world as “the king or sul­tan of all instru­ments” and had evolved from a four string instru­ment to one with (typ­i­cal­ly) eleven strings: “that’s five dou­bled strings tuned in unisons and then one low string, which is sin­gle.” Ack­er goes on to demon­strate the tun­ing of the sin­gle string and dou­bled “cours­es,” as they’re called. The strings are plucked and strummed with a long pick called a “risha” (or “feath­er”), also called a “mizrap” when play­ing a Turk­ish oud, or a “zakhme” in Per­sian.…

Wher­ev­er it comes from, each oud fea­tures the famil­iar bowed back, made of strips of wood (hence, “oud”), the flat­top sound­board with one to three sound­holes,  and the fret­less neck. “The oud has a warm tim­bre and a wide tonal range (about 3 octaves),” notes Maqam World. The instru­ment is tuned to play music writ­ten in the Ara­bic maqam, “a sys­tem of scales, habit­u­al melod­ic phras­es, mod­u­la­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties, etc.,” but it has tak­en root in many musi­cal cul­tures in North Africa, the Mid­dle East, and Europe. Ack­er may come to the oud as a fan of the Euro­pean lute, but the old­er instru­ment is much more than an evo­lu­tion­ary ances­tor of the Euro­pean Renais­sance; it is the “sul­tan” of a rich musi­cal tra­di­tion that con­tin­ues to thrive around the Mediter­ranean world and beyond.

Famous mod­ern oud play­ers come from Egypt, Syr­ia, Pales­tine, and Iraq, where Rahim AlHaj was born. The musi­cian “learned to play the oud at age 9,” NPR writes, “and lat­er grad­u­at­ed with hon­ors and a degree in music com­po­si­tion from the Insti­tute of Bagh­dad,” while also earn­ing a degree in Ara­bic lit­er­a­ture. AlHaj used his tal­ents in the under­ground move­ment against Sad­dam Hus­sain’s rule, and after impris­on­ments and beat­ings, was exiled in 1991. Now based in New Mex­i­co, “he per­forms around the world, and has even col­lab­o­rat­ed with Kro­nos Quar­tet and R.E.M.” See him per­form for Tiny Desk Con­cert above and hear more oud in con­tem­po­rary con­cert set­tings here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The His­to­ry of the Gui­tar: See the Evo­lu­tion of the Gui­tar in 7 Instru­ments

What Gui­tars Were Like 400 Years Ago: An Intro­duc­tion to the 9 String Baroque Gui­tar

Hear Clas­sic Rock Songs Played on a Baroque Lute: “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps,” “White Room” & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

How Stanley Kubrick Made 2001: A Space Odyssey: A Seven-Part Video Essay

in Film | November 17th, 2021

Andrei Tarkovsky had a rather low opin­ion of Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. “Pho­ny on many points,” he once called it, built on “a life­less schema with only pre­ten­sions to truth.” His pro­fes­sion­al response was 1972’s Solaris, by most esti­mates anoth­er high point in the sci­ence-fic­tion cin­e­ma of that peri­od. Yet today it isn’t wide­ly regard­ed as Tarkovsky’s best work; cer­tain­ly it has­n’t become as much of an object of wor­ship as, say, Stalk­er. That pic­ture — arguably anoth­er work of sci-fi, though one sui gener­is in prac­ti­cal­ly its every facet — con­tin­ues to inspire such trib­utes and exege­ses as the video essay on its mak­ing we fea­tured ear­li­er this year here on Open Cul­ture.

That video essay came from the chan­nel of Youtu­ber Cin­e­maTyler, who like many auteur-ori­ent­ed cinephiles exhibits appre­ci­a­tion for Tarkovsky and Kubrick alike. He’s cre­at­ed numer­ous exam­i­na­tions on the work that went into Kubrick­’s pic­tures, includ­ing A Clock­work Orange, Bar­ry Lyn­don, and Full Met­al Jack­et.

The ambi­tion of 2001, out­sized even by Kubrick­’s stan­dard, is reflect­ed in what it spurred Cin­e­maTyler on to cre­ate: a sev­en-part series of video essays on its pro­duc­tion, with three-hour total run­time that far exceeds that of the film itself. It takes at least that long to explain the achieve­ments Kubrick pulled off, espe­cial­ly with mid-1960s film­mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy, which gave us the rare vision of the future that has held up for more than half a cen­tu­ry.

Some of the qual­i­ties that have made 2001 endure came into being almost by acci­dent. Take the use of Strauss’ “The Blue Danube” to intro­duce the space sta­tion, a stroke of scor­ing genius inspired by the records Kubrick and com­pa­ny hap­pened to be lis­ten­ing to while view­ing their footage. That and oth­er clas­si­cal pieces replaced an orig­i­nal score by the com­pos­er who’d worked on Kubrick­’s Spar­ta­cus, which would have struck a dif­fer­ent mood alto­geth­er. So would the por­ten­tous nar­ra­tion includ­ed in ear­li­er ver­sions of the script, hard­ly imag­in­able in the con­text of such pow­er­ful­ly word­less scenes as the famous four-mil­lion-year cut from tossed bone to space­craft, which turns out to have been orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived an Earth-orbit­ing nuclear-weapon plat­form. That’s one of the many lit­tle-known facts Cin­e­maTyler fits into this series, and a view­ing of which even the biggest Kubrick buffs will have rea­son to admire 2001 more intense­ly than ever.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1966 Film Explores the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (and Our High-Tech Future)

James Cameron Revis­its the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Stan­ley Kubrick Explains the Mys­te­ri­ous End­ing of 2001: A Space Odyssey in a New­ly Unearthed Inter­view

What’s the Dif­fer­ence Between Stan­ley Kubrick’s & Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (A Side-by-Side Com­par­i­son)

The Sto­ry of Stalk­er, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Trou­bled (and Even Dead­ly) Sci-Fi Mas­ter­piece

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Fred Armisen Teaches a Short Seminar on the History of Punk

in Music | November 16th, 2021

Long before Fred Armisen became known as a SNL cast mem­ber or one half of the dynam­ic duo behind Port­landia, he was a drum­mer in a punk band called Trench­mouth. Based out of Chica­go, the band released four albums between 1988 and 1996 before dis­band­ing. In that time, Armisen did a lot of drum­ming and saw a *lot* of bands. Many would go on to grab the fame that seemed to con­stant­ly elude his band. In the above clip from The Tonight Show, Armisen’s expe­ri­ence is put to hilar­i­ous good use with a trip through indie and punk rock his­to­ry based on rhythm gui­tar styles.

He starts with a decent Lou Reed imi­ta­tion to locate the orig­i­nal source at the Vel­vet Under­ground, then up through the Ramones and Sex Pis­tols, even­tu­al­ly wind­ing its way through the ska-influ­enced pop-punk of Blink-182 and end­ing with the Strokes. Host Jim­my Fal­lon, as always, laughs non-stop through­out. And Armisen also name drops Sleater-Kin­ney as a know­ing wink to his Port­landia mate Car­rie Brown­stein.

If this sounds like a well-rehearsed bit, well, it is. But when Armisen does it live, it’s on the drum set. In the below clip, he makes almost the same stops along the way on his jour­ney. And it helped con­firm my sus­pi­cion that his post-punk gui­tar bit (“I am a neon light”) is his par­o­dy of Wire.

Armisen spoke to Sam Jones on his mono­chro­mat­ic Off Cam­era inter­view show about his years of punk strug­gle with Trench­mouth, which will help place his numer­ous band-based com­e­dy skits in the cor­rect con­text.

Don’t miss his clas­sic punk music SNL skits in the Relat­eds below. And if you are jonesing for the punk stylings of the hot, young Armisen, here’s live footage of Trench­mouth from 1992:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Clas­sic Punk Rock Sketch­es from Sat­ur­day Night Live, Cour­tesy of Fred Armisen

Ian Rub­bish (aka Fred Armisen) Inter­views the Clash in Spinal Tap-Inspired Mock­u­men­tary

The Ori­gins of Spinal Tap: Watch the 20 Minute Short Film Cre­at­ed to Pitch the Clas­sic Mock­u­men­tary

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

When John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on SNL, And They Got Banned from the Show: A Short Documentary

in Film, Music, Television | November 16th, 2021

Like many famous episodes in the lives of famous peo­ple, Andy Warhol’s 15 min­utes quote turns out to be a gar­bling of what hap­pened. Warhol sim­ply said that every­body wants to be famous (and by impli­ca­tion, famous for­ev­er). To which the Factory’s “court pho­tog­ra­ph­er” Nat Finkel­stein replied, “yeah, for 15 min­utes.” Giv­en the way the idea has come down to us, we’ve missed the ambi­gu­i­ty in this exchange. Do we all want to be famous for 15 min­utes (and only 15 min­utes), or do we only spend 15 min­utes want­i­ng to be famous before we move on and accept it as a suck­er’s game?

Finkel­stein him­self might have felt the lat­ter as he watched “pop die and punk being born” (he said in a 2001 inter­view). It was the death of Warhol’s fame ide­al, and the birth of some­thing new: music that loud­ly declared open hos­til­i­ties against the gate­keep­ers of pop­u­lar cul­ture. Not every punk band reserved its punch­es for those above them. Cal­i­for­nia hard­core leg­ends Fear — led by con­fronta­tion­al satirist Lee Ving — swing wild­ly in every direc­tion, hit­ting their audi­ence as often as the pow­ers that be.

When their first taste of Warho­lian fame came around — in Pene­lope Spheeris’ 1981 doc­u­men­tary The Decline of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion — Ving used the moment in front of the cam­eras to taunt and abuse audi­ence mem­bers until a few of them rushed the stage to fight him. Had NBC exec­u­tives seen this footage casu­al vio­lence, pro­fan­i­ty, and wor­ri­some ebul­lience, it’s unlike­ly they would have let return­ing guest John Belushi book Fear on Hal­loween night of that same year.

The SNL appear­ance — for which Fear proud­ly earned a per­ma­nent ban — became the stuff of leg­end. Not only did Ving and band get up to their usu­al antics onstage, but the show brought in a crew of about 80 DC punks (includ­ing Dischord Records/Fugazi founder Ian MacK­aye), who smashed up the set and joined the band in sol­i­dar­i­ty against New York and its sax­o­phones. The net­work cut the broad­cast short when one punk (iden­ti­fied as either MacK­aye or John Bran­non of the band Neg­a­tive Approach) yelled “F*ck New York!” into an open mic dur­ing the last song, “Let’s Start a War.” NBC shelved the footage for years.

Although well-known in fan com­mu­ni­ties, the appear­ance might have fad­ed from mem­o­ry were it not for the inter­net, which not only has the Warho­lian pow­er to make any­one famous (or “inter­net famous”) for no rea­son, but also rou­tine­ly res­ur­rects lost moments of fame and makes them last for­ev­er. Just so, the leg­end of Fear on SNL has grown over time on YouTube. It now war­rants a short doc­u­men­tary — one made, no less, by Jeff Kru­lik, a film­mak­er who, five years after the Fear appear­ance, doc­u­ment­ed anoth­er bur­geon­ing Fear-like fan­dom in his cult short, “Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot.”

“Fear on SNL,” above, includes sev­er­al inter­view clips from first­hand wit­ness­es. DC “punk super­fan” Bill MacKen­zie lis­tens to an old inter­view he gave about the show, in which he says the band asked him to come to the tap­ing. As Ian MacK­aye tells it, Lorne Michaels him­self placed the call. (He must mean pro­duc­er Dick Eber­sol, as Michaels left the show in 1980 and wouldn’t return until 1985.) But both MacK­aye and Ving remem­ber that it was Belushi who real­ly round­ed up the audi­ence of authen­tic punks, lever­ag­ing his own hard-won celebri­ty to stick it to the fac­to­ry that made his fame.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Night John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on Sat­ur­day Night Live, And They Got Banned from the Show

Andy Warhol’s 15 Min­utes: Dis­cov­er the Post­mod­ern MTV Vari­ety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Tele­vi­sion Age (1985–87)

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Stephen Fry Takes Us Inside the Story of Johannes Gutenberg & the First Printing Press

in History, Technology | November 15th, 2021

Stephen Fry loves tech­nol­o­gy. Here on Open Cul­ture we’ve fea­tured his inves­ti­ga­tions into every­thing from cloud com­put­ing to nanoscience to arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and sim­u­la­tion the­o­ry. “I have nev­er seen a smart­phone I haven’t bought,” he wrote in 2007, the year Apple’s iPhone came out. But the iPhone would sure­ly nev­er have been if not for the Mac­in­tosh, the third of which ever sold in the Unit­ed King­dom went to Fry. (His fel­low British technophile Dou­glas Adams had already snagged the first two.) And there would­n’t have been a Mac­in­tosh — a stretch though this may seem — if not for the print­ing press, which by some reck­on­ings set off the tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion that car­ries us along to this day.

The his­to­ry of the print­ing press is thus, in a sense, a his­to­ry of tech­nol­o­gy in micro­cosm. In the hour­long doc­u­men­tary The Machine that Made Us, Fry seeks out an under­stand­ing of the inven­tion, the work­ings, and the evo­lu­tion of the device that, as he puts it, “shaped the mod­ern world.”

The use of mov­able type to run off many copies of a text goes back to 11th-cen­tu­ry Chi­na, strict­ly speak­ing, but only in Europe did it first flour­ish to the point of giv­ing rise to mass media. In order to place him­self at the begin­ning of that par­tic­u­lar sto­ry, Fry trav­els to Mainz in mod­ern-day Ger­many, birth­place of a cer­tain Johannes Guten­berg, whose edi­tion of the Bible from the 1450s isn’t just the ear­li­est mass-pro­duced book but the most impor­tant one as well.

Fry may not have a straight­for­ward rela­tion­ship with reli­gion, but he does under­stand well the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of Guten­berg’s Bible-print­ing enter­prise. And he comes to under­stand that enter­prise itself more deeply while fol­low­ing the “Guten­berg trail,” retrac­ing the steps of the man him­self as he assem­bled the resources to put his inven­tion into action. Since none of the press­es Guten­berg built sur­vive today (though at least one func­tion­ing approx­i­mate mod­el does exist), Fry involves him­self in recon­struct­ing an exam­ple. He also vis­its a paper mill and a type foundry whose crafts­men make their mate­ri­als with the same meth­ods used in the 15th cen­tu­ry. The fruit of these com­bined labors is a sin­gle repli­ca page of the Guten­berg Bible: a reminder of what brought about the eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal, and cul­tur­al real­i­ty we still inhab­it these 570 years lat­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See How The Guten­berg Press Worked: Demon­stra­tion Shows the Old­est Func­tion­ing Guten­berg Press in Action

Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Presents the 550-Year-Old Guten­berg Bible in Spec­tac­u­lar, High-Res Detail

The Old­est Book Print­ed with Mov­able Type is Not The Guten­berg Bible: Jikji, a Col­lec­tion of Kore­an Bud­dhist Teach­ings, Pre­dat­ed It By 78 Years and It’s Now Dig­i­tized Online

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

Stephen Fry Pro­files Six Russ­ian Writ­ers in the New Doc­u­men­tary Russia’s Open Book

Stephen Fry Intro­duces the Strange New World of Nanoscience

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Mystery of Who Played Bass on The White Album’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”

in Music | November 15th, 2021

George Har­ri­son, the qui­et Bea­t­le, was the first to break out on his own in 1970 with his glo­ri­ous triple album All Things Must Pass. “Gar­bo talks! — Har­ri­son is free!” wrote Melody Mak­er’s Richard Williams in a review, a ref­er­ence to the reclu­sive silent film star who, like the Bea­t­les’ gui­tarist, kept her mys­tique and star pow­er even after fans first heard her voice. Har­rison’s rev­e­la­tion could­n’t have been as dra­mat­ic as all that.

Sure­ly, no fan of “Tax­man,” “With­in You With­out You,” “Here Comes the Sun,” “Some­thing” — and espe­cial­ly The White Album’s stun­ning “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Sleeps” — doubt­ed that George had it in him all along. But the oth­er Bea­t­les would only humor him dur­ing The White Album ses­sions. That is, until he brought Eric Clap­ton into the stu­dio. “That then made every­one act bet­ter,” Har­ri­son remem­bers in Anthol­o­gy. “Paul got on the piano and played a nice intro and they all took it more seri­ous­ly.”

The ques­tion in the You Can’t Unhear This video above is whether Paul played bass on the final stu­dio record­ing and, if not, who did?  It’s an inte­gral part of the song’s feel — the grit­ty, restrained growl, slow­ly grow­ing in inten­si­ty until it sounds like it might give Har­rison’s gui­tar some­thing else to weep about. The mys­tery of the aggres­sive-yet-mut­ed part “has per­plexed schol­ars and Bea­t­les fans for decades.” If you’ve remained unper­plexed, you might find your­self ques­tion­ing assump­tions about this most beloved of Bea­t­les’ tunes.

Ses­sions for the song began in late July of 1968, then picked up again in August, but Har­ri­son decid­ed to scrap every­thing and start over in Sep­tem­ber once Ringo returned from a “self-imposed exile” in the Mediter­ranean. The band seemed refreshed: “the qual­i­ty of the per­for­mances on the new Sep­tem­ber ver­sion seemed to reflect that renewed spir­it.” Ses­sions for the track wrapped on Sep­tem­ber 24. “For many years it was believed that this was the record­ing ses­sion in which Eric Clap­ton over­dubbed his lead gui­tar solo,” writes the Bea­t­les Bible. Not so — Clap­ton sat in on all of the live takes record­ed with the band. Ah, but who played bass? See the mys­tery take shape above and post your the­o­ries below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les’ 8 Pio­neer­ing Inno­va­tions: A Video Essay Explor­ing How the Fab Four Changed Pop Music

Is “Rain” the Per­fect Bea­t­les Song?: A New Video Explores the Rad­i­cal Inno­va­tions of the 1966 B‑Side

Hear the Beau­ti­ful Iso­lat­ed Vocal Har­monies from the Bea­t­les’ “Some­thing”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Tom Petty, Somewhere You Feel Free — The Making of Wildflowers Is Streaming Free on YouTube

in Film, Music | November 14th, 2021

Orig­i­nal­ly released in cin­e­mas last month, the new doc­u­men­tary Tom Pet­ty: Some­where You Feel Free — The Mak­ing of Wild­flow­ers is now stream­ing free on YouTube. Here’s how Pet­ty’s offi­cial YouTube chan­nel pref­aces the film:

In ear­ly 2020, a col­lec­tion of 16mm film from 1993–95 was dis­cov­ered in the archive of leg­endary artist Tom Pet­ty. The film was shot while Tom was on a pro­lif­ic song­writ­ing streak for years mak­ing what he intend­ed to be a dou­ble album called Wild­flow­ers. Tom Pet­ty was known for being reclu­sive about his per­son­al life and his cre­ative process. “Some­where You Feel Free” allows you to spend 90 min­utes immersed in the can­did and musi­cal­ly rich world of Tom’s cre­ativ­i­ty as he makes his first album with leg­endary pro­duc­er Rick Rubin. With col­lab­o­ra­tors pro­vid­ing unri­valed access and fea­tur­ing nev­er before seen footage cap­tured dur­ing the mak­ing of Wild­flow­ers, Tom’s per­son­al favorite album.

You can stream the film by direc­tor Mary Whar­ton above, or find it cat­a­logued in our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. Enjoy!

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The True His­to­ry Of The Trav­el­ing Wilburys, a Free Film Doc­u­ment­ing the Mak­ing of the 1980s Super Group

Tom Pet­ty Takes You Inside His Song­writ­ing Craft

Watch Tom Pet­ty (RIP) and the Heart­break­ers Per­form Their Last Song Togeth­er, “Amer­i­can Girl”: Record­ed on 9/25/17

Prince Plays a Mind-Blow­ing Gui­tar Solo On “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” While Tom Pet­ty Looks On

Meet the Mysterious Genius Who Patented the UFO

in Design, History | November 12th, 2021

Amer­i­can inven­tors nev­er met a phe­nom­e­non — nat­ur­al, man­made, or oth­er­wise — they couldn’t try to patent. From impos­si­ble tech­nolo­gies to pos­si­ble evi­dence of aliens vis­it­ing plan­et Earth, everything’s fair game if you can sell the idea. After high­ly-pub­li­cized UFO sight­ings in Wash­ing­ton State and Roswell, New Mex­i­co, for exam­ple, patents for fly­ing saucers began pour­ing into gov­ern­ment offices. “As soon as there was a pop­u­lar ‘spark,’” writes Ernie Smith at Atlas Obscu­ra, “the saucer was every­where.” It received its own clas­si­fi­ca­tion in the U.S. Patent Office, with the index­ing code B64C 39/001, for “fly­ing vehi­cles char­ac­ter­ized by sus­tain­ment with­out aero­dy­nam­ic lift, often fly­ing disks hav­ing a UFO-shape.”

Google Patents lists “around 192 items in this spe­cif­ic clas­si­fi­ca­tion,” with surges in appli­ca­tions between 1953–56, 1965–71, and  an “unusu­al­ly dra­mat­ic surge… between 2001 and 2004.” Make of that what you will. The sto­ry of the UFO gets both stranger and more mun­dane when we learn that Alexan­der Weygers, the very first per­son to file a patent for such a fly­ing vehi­cle, invent­ed it decades before UFO-mania and patent­ed it in 1945. He was not an Amer­i­can inven­tor but the Indone­sian-born son of a Dutch sug­ar plan­ta­tion fam­i­ly. He learned black­smithing on the farm, received an edu­ca­tion in Hol­land in mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing and naval archi­tec­ture, and honed his mechan­i­cal skills while tak­ing long sea voy­ages alone.

In 1926, Weygers and his wife Jaco­ba Hut­ter moved to Seat­tle, Ash­lee Vance writes at Bloomberg Busi­ness­week, “where he pur­sued a career as a marine engi­neer and ship archi­tect and began ink­ing draw­ings of the Dis­copter” — the fly­ing-saucer-like vehi­cle he would patent after work­ing for many years as a painter and sculp­tor, mourn­ing the death of his wife, who died in child­birth in 1928. By the time Weygers was ready to revive the Dis­copter, the time was ripe, it seems, for a wave of tech­no­log­i­cal con­ver­gent evo­lu­tion — or a tech­no­log­i­cal theft. Per­haps, as Weygers’ claimed, UFOs real­ly were Army test planes: test pilots fly­ing some­thing based on the inventor’s design — which was not a UFO, but an attempt at a bet­ter heli­copter.

Sight­ings of strange objects in the sky did not begin in 1947. “Tales of mys­te­ri­ous fly­ing objects date to medieval times,” Vance writes, “and oth­er inven­tors and artists had pro­duced images of disk-shaped crafts. Hen­ri Coan­da, a Roman­ian inven­tor, even built a fly­ing saucer in the 1930s that looked sim­i­lar to what we now think of as the clas­sic craft from out­er space. His­to­ri­ans sus­pect that the designs of Coan­da and Weygers, float­ing around in the pub­lic sphere, com­bined with the post­war inter­est in sci-fi tech­nol­o­gy to cre­ate an atmos­phere that gave rise to a sud­den influx of UFO sight­ings.” In the 1950s, NASA and the U.S. Navy even began test­ing ver­ti­cal take­off vehi­cles that looked sus­pi­cious­ly like the patent­ed Dis­copter.

Weygers was livid and “con­vinced his designs had been stolen.” The press even picked up the sto­ry. In 1950 the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle ran an arti­cle head­lined “Carmel Val­ley Artist Patent­ed Fly­ing Saucer Five Years Ago: ‘Dis­copter’ May Be What Peo­ple Have Seen Late­ly.” Although Weygers nev­er built a Dis­copter him­self, the arti­cle goes on to note that “the inven­tion became the pro­to­type for all disk-shaped ver­ti­cal take-off air­craft since built by the U.S. armed forces and pri­vate indus­try, both here and abroad.” Just how many such vehi­cles have been con­struct­ed, and have actu­al­ly been air-wor­thy, is impos­si­ble to say.

Smith sur­veys many of the patents for fly­ing saucers filed over the past 75 years by both indi­vid­u­als and large com­pa­nies. In the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry, we have com­pa­nies like Air­bus and star­tups cre­at­ed by Google co-founder Lar­ry Page cur­rent­ly work­ing on fly­ing saucer-like designs. The his­to­ry of such vehi­cles may not pro­vide suf­fi­cient evi­dence to dis­prove UFO sight­ings, but it may one day lead to the tech­nol­o­gy for fly­ing cars we thought would already have arrived this far into the space age. For that we have to thank, though he may nev­er get the cred­it, the mod­ern Renais­sance artist and inven­tor Alexan­der Weygers.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

What Do Aliens Look Like? Oxford Astro­bi­ol­o­gists Draw a Pic­ture, Based on Dar­win­ian The­o­ries of Evo­lu­tion

The CIA Has Declas­si­fied 2,780 Pages of UFO-Relat­ed Doc­u­ments, and They’re Now Free to Down­load

Carl Jung’s Fas­ci­nat­ing 1957 Let­ter on UFOs

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

What Is Sun Tzu’s The Art of War About?: A Short Introduction

in History, Literature, Philosophy | November 11th, 2021

After wars in Japan and Viet­nam, the U.S. mil­i­tary became quite keen on a slim vol­ume of ancient Chi­nese lit­er­a­ture known as The Art of War by a sup­pos­ed­ly his­tor­i­cal gen­er­al named Sun Tzu. This book became required read­ing at mil­i­tary acad­e­mies and a favorite of law enforce­ment, and has formed a basis for strat­e­gy in mod­ern wartime — as in the so-called “Shock and Awe” cam­paigns in Iraq. But some have argued that the West­ern adop­tion of this text — wide­ly read across East Asia for cen­turies — neglects the cru­cial con­text of the cul­ture that pro­duced it.

Despite his­tor­i­cal claims that Sun Tzu served as a gen­er­al dur­ing the Spring and Autumn peri­od, schol­ars have most­ly doubt­ed this his­to­ry and date the com­po­si­tion of the book to the War­ring States peri­od (cir­ca 475–221 B.C.E.) that pre­ced­ed the first empire, a time in which a few rapa­cious states gob­bled up their small­er neigh­bors and con­stant­ly fought each oth­er.

“Occa­sion­al­ly the rulers man­aged to arrange recess­es from the endem­ic wars,” trans­la­tor Samuel B. Grif­fith notes. Nonethe­less, “it is extreme­ly unlike­ly that many gen­er­als died in bed dur­ing the hun­dred and fifty years between 450 and 300 B.C.”

The author of The Art of War was pos­si­bly a gen­er­al, or one of the many mil­i­tary strate­gists for hire at the time, or as some schol­ars believe, a com­pil­er of an old­er oral tra­di­tion. In any case, con­stant war­fare was the norm at the time of the book’s com­po­si­tion. This tac­ti­cal guide dif­fers from oth­er such guides, and from those that came before it. Rather than coun­sel­ing div­ina­tion or the study of ancient author­i­ties, Sun Tzu’s advice is pure­ly prac­ti­cal and of-the-moment, requir­ing a thor­ough knowl­edge of the sit­u­a­tion, the ene­my, and one­self. Such knowl­edge is not eas­i­ly acquired. With­out it, defeat or dis­as­ter are near­ly cer­tain:

If you know the ene­my and know your­self, you need not fear the result of a hun­dred bat­tles. If you know your­self but not the ene­my, for every vic­to­ry gained you will also suf­fer a defeat. If you know nei­ther the ene­my nor your­self, you will suc­cumb in every bat­tle.

The kind of knowl­edge Sun Tzu rec­om­mends is prac­ti­cal intel­li­gence about troop deploy­ments, food sup­plies, etcetera. It is also knowl­edge of the Tao — in this case, the gen­er­al moral prin­ci­ple and its real­iza­tion through the sov­er­eign. In a time of War­ring States, Sun Tzu rec­og­nized that knowl­edge of war­fare was “a mat­ter of vital impor­tance”; and that states should under­take it as lit­tle as pos­si­ble.

“To sub­due the ene­my with­out fight­ing is the acme of skill,” The Art of War famous­ly advis­es. Diplo­ma­cy, decep­tion, and indi­rec­tion are all prefer­able to the mate­r­i­al waste and loss of life in war, not to men­tion the high odds of defeat if one goes into bat­tle unpre­pared. “The ide­al strat­e­gy of restraint, of win­ning with­out fight­ing… is char­ac­ter­is­tic of Tao­ism,” writes Rochelle Kaplan. “Both The Art of War and the Tao Te Ching were designed to help rulers and their assis­tants achieve vic­to­ry and clar­i­ty,” and “each of them may be viewed as anti-war tracts.”

Read a full trans­la­tion of The Art of War by Lionel Giles, in sev­er­al for­mats online here, and just above, hear the same trans­la­tion read aloud.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Life-Chang­ing Books: Your Picks

“The Phi­los­o­phy of “Flow”: A Brief Intro­duc­tion to Tao­ism

When Sci-Fi Leg­end Ursu­la K. Le Guin Trans­lat­ed the Chi­nese Clas­sic, the Tao Te Ching

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Life Magazine Predicts in 1914 How People Would Dress in the 1950s

in History, Life, Magazines | November 11th, 2021

Though still just with­in liv­ing mem­o­ry, 1950 now seems as if it belongs not just to the past but to a whol­ly bygone real­i­ty. Yet that year once stood for the future: that is to say, a time both dis­tant enough to fire up the imag­i­na­tion and near enough to instill a sense of trep­i­da­tion. It must have felt that way, at least, to the sub­scribers of Life mag­a­zine in Decem­ber of 1914, when they opened an issue of that mag­a­zine ded­i­cat­ed in part to pre­dict­ing the state of human­i­ty 36 years hence. Its bold cov­er depicts a man and woman of the 1950s amus­ed­ly regard­ing pic­tures of a man and woman in 1914: the lat­ter wear but­toned-up Euro­pean street cloth­ing, while the for­mer have on almost noth­ing at all.

As ren­dered by illus­tra­tor Otho Cush­ing, the thor­ough­ly mod­ern 1950s female wears a kind of slip, some­thing like a gar­ment from ancient Greece updat­ed by abbre­vi­a­tion. Her male coun­ter­part takes his inspi­ra­tion from an even ear­li­er stage of civ­i­liza­tion, his loin­cloth cov­er­ing as few as pos­si­ble of the abstract pat­terns paint­ed or tat­tooed all over his body. (About his choice to top it all off with a plumed hel­met, an entire PhD the­sis could sure­ly be writ­ten.)

Any cred­i­ble vision of the future must draw inspi­ra­tion from the past, and Cush­ing’s inter­ests equipped him well for the task: 28 years lat­er, his New York Times obit­u­ary would refer to his ear­ly spe­cial­iza­tion in depict­ing “hand­some young men and women in Greek or mod­ern cos­tumes.”

Even though fash­ions have yet to make a return to antiq­ui­ty, how many out­fits on the street of any major city today would scan­dal­ize the aver­age Life read­er of 1914? Of course, the cov­er is essen­tial­ly a gag, as is much of the osten­si­ble prog­nos­ti­ca­tion inside. As cir­cu­lat­ed again not long ago in a tweet thread by Andy Machals, it fore­sees mon­archs in the unem­ploy­ment line, boys’ jobs tak­en by girls, women acquir­ing harems of men, and the near-extinc­tion of mar­riage. But some pre­dic­tions, like 30 miles per hour becom­ing a slow enough dri­ving speed to be tick­etable, have come true. Anoth­er piece imag­ines peo­ple of the 1950s hir­ing musi­cians to accom­pa­ny them through­out each phase of the day. Few of us do that even in the 2020s, but liv­ing our dig­i­tal­ly sound­tracked lives, we may still won­der how our ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry ances­tors man­aged: “Between meals they lis­tened to almost absolute­ly noth­ing.”

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Author Imag­ines in 1893 the Fash­ions That Would Appear Over the Next 100 Years

Fash­ion Design­ers in 1939 Pre­dict How Peo­ple Would Dress in the Year 2000

In 1900, Ladies’ Home Jour­nal Pub­lish­es 28 Pre­dic­tions for the Year 2000

How French Artists in 1899 Envi­sioned Life in the Year 2000: Draw­ing the Future

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.