Imagine taking one groundbreaking invention after another to the patent office and the clerk uncompromisingly telling you now, now, he was already here. You must have met him — a certain Alexander Graham Bell." This is just one of the wacky incidents shown in the 1983 Czechoslovak mockumentary "Jara Cimrman Lying, Sleeping" (Czech: Jára Cimrman ležící, spící"). It also shows, for example, that Cimrman bent the original model of the Eiffel Tower, which is why it looks the way it does today. And when Guglielmo Marconi complained that Cimrman, flying in a hot air balloon, had broken his telegraph wires, he replied that he should make it work wirelessly.
In short, Jára Cimrman was a versatile genius to whom we owe almost every notable invention. But he never existed — he was created for a radio program in 1966. He is said to have created a philosophical movement called externalism, the opposite of solipsism, and Cimrman claimed that everything existed except himself. He compared himself to a hole in a piece of paper that can be seen even though it is not a physical entity.
His nonexistence did not prevent him from winning the national Greatest Czech poll in 2005, but Czech Television did not want to recognize the victory of someone who never existed. Cimrman was disqualified, and the official winner was Charles IV (1316–1378), Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia. However, many Czechs haven't given up the fight for Cimrman's recognition and continue to strive to spread awareness about his achievements. To this end, they have placed dozens of celebratory signs across Bohemia sporting slogans like "Jára Cimrman probably never lived in this place."
One of his most important contributions, however, is the Jára Cimrman Lighthouse, located in a place where the sea cannot be seen. Given the mountainous nature of the area, it may be the highest lighthouse on Earth. It also serves as a lookout tower, and in the building below lies the Jára Cimrman Museum, full of his inventions and personal belongings. Its exhibits include a broom for sweeping corners, a portable tourist signpost, curved scissors for cutting all nails at the same time, a double-sided rake, a hand saw with animal teeth, a two-piece swimsuit, a stuffed flying rabbit-grouse hybrid, a soup bowl with a sink stopper, a portable prison cell, bicycle handlebars made of ram horns, and many more inventions. It also contains Cimrman's shapeless self-bust, damaged during the steaming of hats, so no one knows his true appearance.
Other curious Cimrman factoids include that when he was escaping from enemies near the North Pole, he missed it by seven meters and therefore is not considered to have discovered it. He also invented the CD, which originally stood for "Cimrman's disk", but after its re-invention in 1979 it was renamed the "compact disk". Cimrman's disk was different in that it was not made of artificial polycarbonate, but of beeswax, so it was more environmentally friendly.
Cimrman also left behind a number of plays which are continuously found and interpreted by the Jára Cimrman Theater. All of his plays are preceded by short pseudoscientific lectures, where "cimrmanologists" provide the audience with the necessary knowledge to better understand the following jokes. And since the actors style themselves as scientists, they eschew artistic demands, allowing themselves to be awkward and comically stiff. However, the Jára Cimrman Theater is located in a different location.
0 comments:
Post a Comment