thoughts of a gardener: technology

[rja.carnegie at excite.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 19050

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Rita Winston" <catlady at w...> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at y..., rja.carnegie at e... wrote:
> > --- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Stephanie Roark Keener" <sdrk1 at y...> 
> 
> > It's interesting that wizards' spell technology (what I've seen)
> > seems to have developed, historically, approximately in parallel
> > with Muggle industrial and scientific progress. 
> 
> My theory (posted in more detail a few millennia ago) is that at 
> first Muggles used technology to try to achieve the things they had 
> seen when visiting wizarding places. (That is what Hermione was 
> taught in Muggle Studies.)   
> 
> Indoor plumbing with flush toilets and hot and cold running water is 
> something the wizarding folk have had, in this theory, since 
> Atlantis, and all Muggle inventions of plumbing were attempts to 
> imitate wizarding plumbing. Gaslight was an attempt to imitate those 
> self-lighting candles that illuminate Hogwarts and presumably many 
> other places. Steam engines in mine pumps, steam ships, railway 
> engines, and very early automobiles were attempts to imitate magic 
> self-working devices such as the ships and carriages that move of 
> themselves.
> 
> But then Muggles got into inventing original things, from telegraph 
> to Internet, and it was the wizarding folk's turn to use magic to try 
> to imitate Muggle technology (which they don't admit in Muggle 
> Studies class). However, there would no reason for the Wizarding 
> Wireless Network to be called "wireless" if it weren't an imitation 
> of Muggle wireless, which got that name to contrast it with telegraph 
> *wire*. Btw, the wizarding folk should previously have invented a 
> magic imitation of telegraph, which I named Spellegraph.

Interesting theory - and a quick search at Google confirms that
Plato credited Atlantis with hot and cold running water, although
he doesn't describe exactly how one made offerings at the temple of
Poseidon, so to speak. ;-)  Is the hot water bit in GOF?
Muggle plumbing still has the relative disadvantage that for us,
water only runs downhill.  I noticed that Steve Vander Ark was
worried about the age of the plumbing, on his "Mysteries and puzzles"
page - and about where it goes, too.

And _Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them_ indicates that wizards
hid themselves as well as magical beasts from Muggles during the late
17th or the 18th century - presumably it took some time to Charm the
entire population into not believing in them - so, yes, there were
steam engines and locomotives by then.  The electric broomstick,
even the innovative design by that clever Mr. Dyson, seems to have
missed the point...

We should give Muggle inventors credit, I think, for surely realising
that simply imitating magical devices without any magic to make them
go wasn't going to work - but things that wizards do by magic might
indeed inspire inventors to look for mechanical ways of doing the
same thing.  Muggle mines had pumps before they had engines, I suppose -
now that I think, Roman Britain had mines, too, and I remember someone
on T.V. recently explaining how they (maybe) pumped or otherwise removed
the water when they dug down below the water table - and post-Romans,
they had little horse-drawn railways down there, I think.  That might
be inspired not by wizards but by goblins (Gringotts).  Incidentally,
is there one kind of wizard money worldwide, and does Gringotts issue
it?  And does Gringotts have mines down there too?  And do they use
deposits to lend elsewhere, just as Muggle banks do, and teleport
your money back into your vault when you come to open it?

If wizards generally avoid the Muggle world - although Voldemort
somehow has one wizard and one Muggle parent (GOF may clarify) -
then most of the commerce is one way, wizard children of Muggle
parents bringing Muggle ideas into the wizard world.

But don't you think that wizard Spellegraph might have used wires?
One would write a letter, clip it onto the wire, and enchant it to
be carried away to its destination.  Wireless Spellegraph used some
other sort of Apparatus, and now there's wizard's wireless sound
radio.  I presume that it comes in Auditory Magic and Fidelity Magic
versions, while wizard engineers have high hopes for a new
prestidigital system?

Robert Carnegie
Glasgow, Scotland

- trying to forget about Percy shut in his bedroom all summer,
polishing his prefect's badge (CS)