Subject: Trebuchet, anyone?

Organization: CTS Network Services (CTSNET/crash), San Diego, CA

Date: Wed, 11 May 1994 07:30:36 GMT

I thought this was pretty amusing, so here it is.  The possible signal 
content here is the probability that this could very well spawn many ULs, 
on the order of, "The army has developed in Texas this tank-thrower that 
can throw an Abrahms two miles."  I can see it now, so here is the 
information for heading off a possible UL (lame reason to back up posting 
this, I know, but still, it's amusing).

 **********************************************************************
                 | A Modern Day Use For Medieval War Weapon |
                                  | 3/27/94 |
 **********************************************************************

      Tody we have a heartwarming human-interest story about some guys
 in Texas who are fullfilling a dream -- a dream that all of us have
 dreamt, but, for one reason or another, have had to abandon.  That's
 right: These guys are building a device that will be capable of hurl-
 ing a Buick 200 yards.

      Needless to say, the origin of this idea involved beer.  A lot of
 great ideas originated in this way.  Take the electric light.  One
 night in 1879 at a bar in a little town called Menlo Park, N.J., some
 men were drinking beer, when suddenly one of them announced that he
 was going to invent an electric light.  The others laughed, but that
 man got up, put on his coat and hat, and accidentally walked into the
 fireplace, thereby setting his coat on fire.  This gave Thomas Edison,
 who was at another table drinking coffee, the idea of using carbonized
 cotton as the filament in his light bulb.

      So we see that beer, if used correctly, can be a tremendous force
 for good, which brings us back to the Buick-hurling device, which I
 found out about thanks to a Fort Worth Star-Telegram article written
 by Paul Bourgeois and sent in by alert reader Robert Grimm.  The beer
 consumers in this case were Richard Clifford, and engineer and artist;
 and John Quincy, a dentist.  One day they were snorking brewskis, and,
 as guys often do when they're getting in touch with their feelings,
 they got to talking about medieval war weapons.

      As you recall from dozing off face-down on your history textbook,
 medieval cities were surrounded by high stone walls with massive iron
 gates that would not open unless you punched in the secret digital
 Roman-numeral passcode.  Thus the only way that an invading army could
 get inside was to knock holes in the wall by hurling large objects at
 it.  Originally catapults were used for this, but they were eventually
 replaced by a more powerful device -- the atomic bomb of the medieval
 era -- called a "trebuchet."  It's basically a long arm with a big
 weight attached to one end; the weight is raised, then dropped, which
 whips up the other end of the arm, causing it to fling the projectile.

      According to an article in the January Issue of Mechanical Engi-
 neering magazine (alertly sent in by reader Bob Goetze), some
 trebuchets could throw 300-pound boulders as far as 300 yards.  They
 also were used to throw DEAD HORSES.  I am not making this up.  The
 idea was to spread disease.  This would be a real morale-breaker:

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 HUSBAND: Hi honey!  I'm home from my medieval job in the field of
 crossbow sales!  What's for dinner?

 WIFE: Your favorite!  A nice big mutton...

      (A DEAD HORSE COMES CRASHING THROUGH THE CEILING, SPEWING MAGGOTS
 EVERYWHERE.)

 HUSBAND: Actually, I'm not hungry.

 WIFE: I cannot WAIT for the Renaissance.
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------

      Yes, the trebuchet was an awesome weapon, and the more Richard
 Clifford and John Quincy thought about it, while drinking beer, the
 more they realized that they had to build one.  And so they did.  They
 used it to try to hurl a brick.  It was not a major success.

      "We never knew which way the brick was gonna go," Quincy told me,
 in a phone interview.

      At this point, more guys would have quit.  But Clifford and
 Quincy are not "most guys"; they are an artist-engineer and a dentist.
 And so they did some serious trebuchet research.  They read books on
 military history.  Then they went to England to consult with the
 world's leading trebuchet expert, a historian named Hew Kennedy.
 Kennedy is generally considered to be "eccentric" in the same sense
 that the sun is generally considered to be "warm."  He has built a
 large working trebuchet at his home in Shropshire, and he regularly
 invites his neighbors over to watch him hurl stuff across the fields.
 According to Mechanical Engineering, he has hurled small cars, dead
 pigs and grand pianos.

      He hurled a piano for Clifford and Quincy.

      "It went almost 200 yards," Quincy told me, with awe in his
 voice.

      Clifford and Quincy returned home inspired.  They printed up some
 official stationary (It says PROJECTILE THROWING ENGINES, Texas Divi-
 sion: "Hurling Into the 21st Century").  They hooked up with a welder,
 Don Capers, and together they developed and built an improved
 trebuchet, for test purposes.

      "We're throwing bowling balls now somewhere between 400 and 500
 feet," he said.

      But that is small potatoes.  What they plan to do is build -- get
 ready -- THE BIGGEST TREBUCHET IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.  The one
 that will hurl the Buick.

      Here is how serious they are: When I spoke with Quincy, he had
 just purchased 80 acres of land adjacent to his property JUST SO THE
 BUICK WILL HAVE SOME PLACE TO LAND.

      "Wherever it lands," said Quincy, "it's going to stay there."

      Quincy said they'll use The Big One to raise money for charity by
 holding several hurlings per year.  And we're not talking just Buicks.
 Quincy sent me a ballistics chart listing detailed technical data on
 the hurling characteristics of -- among other items -- a toilet, a
 case of Spam, a recliner, an Airstream trailer, a cow, and a mime
 ("silent, night hurling," notes the chart).

      I don't know about you, but, as a journalist and an American, I
 am REALLY excited about this.  I'm going to keep you readers informed.
 I'm going to stick to this story the way Connie Chung stuck to Tonya
 Harding.  And yes, I intend to be there when the Buick goes up.  When
 it does, I know that I'm going to have a very special feeling inside
 me.  It will go away when I burp.

**********************************END***********************************

 >> Taken word-for-word from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 3/27/94, in the 
spirit of fair use, or common decency, or Xmas past, or whatever it is 
that people say when they reprint copyrighted material that doesn't 
really affect anyone by having it reprinted in this manner as I'm not 
earning money off of it and no one is losing any sales so I'm saying what 
I need to say so that I don't get sued or yelled at so please I'm just a 
poor artist at a little computer doing no one any harm so please let me be.

Harry "Thought it was amusing" Teasley



--
"When a subject-object metaphysics regards matter and mind as eternally 
separate and eternally unalike, it creates a platypus bigger then the 
solar system."  
				- Robert Pirsig, _Lila_