Phoney Patents: Humor`s Role in Wartime

Submarine Killer

Imagine yourself in U.S. opening a technical science magazine in 1917 and randomly finding a page with a cartoon-like sketch of a shark equipped with an explosive mechanism and pointed toward a submarine. At first you marvel at this kind of absurdity in a scientific journal and begin to examine the image. It turns out that the sketch is a mock patent invented by John Butley of Washington, D.C., specifically for the column “Phoney Patents”. Judging by the description of the section, such patents were intended to be a “relief for all suffering inventors in this country as well as for the entire universe”. 

Skunk Gasser

Sometime later, in another issue of the same magazine, you find an equally fictional sketch created by inventor Rex Purcell from Iowa. A skunk, harnessed to an electric cart, rushes toward the German trenches, where soldiers are already panicking and trying to escape the animal's foul stench. The cart, powered by electricity, in turn forces the animal to run toward the enemy, dispersing their ranks. “I`m skunked”, as demonstrated by the inscription above the heads of the enemy soldiers. 

These inventions were meant to amaze readers with their insanity and simultaneous technical cleverness. What makes this example even more striking is that this section in the “Electrical Experimenter” was first introduced during World War I. The first patents dealt with all sorts of military-related inventions: submarines, trenches, explosives etc. The war in new technological context, new means of communication and global scale diffused traditional perception of warfare and stimulated the imagination, the way men and women perceived it [Mosse, 1991]. Consequently, the experience of war was lived not only on the battlefields, but also by civilians who received news through various media - newspapers, postcards, photographs, etc. These sources open the complex world of imaginaries about war. 

Hun U-Boat Utilizer

Such images of war, as in “Electrical Exeprimenter”, completely transformed the public's view of war as a terrible phenomenon that claimed human lives and focused specifically on the technical component of battlefield. In February 1919, the magazine published a patent by the inventor Jose Matz for technology that would allow to move unhindered across desert terrain and destroy enemy troops. It was a huge reservoir in the form of a wheel, with water placed inside and a submarine that would rotate the wheel and move it across the desert due to the transfer of mass. The prickly liner of the wheel was supposed to destroy the machinery and troops of enemy soldiers. Imagine seeing this in real life... Such trivialization of war offered people a new narrative, linked primarily to the technical achievements of mankind. Popularization of science and technology at the expense of military subject took place.

The flight of inventors` fantasy completely supplanted the narrative of suffering and offered an engineering point of view instead, along with an entertaining meaning. The focus was on the technical workings of the invention, no matter how crazy it was. The fictionalism and cartoon design intended to make the audience smile and laugh. Referring to G. Mosse, “humor contributed something to making the war a manageable enterprise” . Such stylization shifted the war from reality to the world of the imaginary, where anything is possible. Images and the symbols of war have been reformatted for the purpose of its consumption as entertainment [Mazzini, 2021]. Thus, such trivialization contributed to the psychological overcoming of the horrors of wartime. 

P.S. The database of the website posesses more examples of such "imagined technologies". You are welcome to browse through them at the end of this page. 

"Dachshund 500 Mile Shell"

Self-propelled Boat

Skunk Gasser

Submarine Killer

Bibliographic notes

• Mazzini, Federico. Popularization of Science and the Trivialization of War in the US (1915–1918). In The Mediatization of War and Peace, eds. Christoph Cornelissen and Marco Mondini (Berlin ; Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2021).
• Mosse, G.L. Fallen Soldiers. Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York, 1991).