We can roll our eyes at wormhole-cruising spaceships and the intergalactic shenanigans of science fiction novels, but in reality, many of the inventions we enjoy today have only been made possible due to the creativity of sci-fi writers.
Click start to play today’s Crossword, where one such innovation – the invisibility cloak from the Harry Potter series – may soon become a reality.
A number of things we now take for granted, from underwater travel to multi-player online games to even paying for items through credit cards, were once the seed of an idea planted by an imaginative writer.
The latest innovation traces its roots to a beloved British children’s book series, Harry Potter. According to an April 2022 report in the US-based website Big Think, two types of nanotechnology, metalenses and metamaterials could soon make Harry’s invisibility cloak a reality. The revolutionary technology aims to bend light of all wavelengths around an object, regardless of its shape, essentially cloaking it, like the robe British author J. K. Rowling dreamed up for the series.
Here are a few other inventions that may surprise you with their origin stories:
1. Submarines
In his classic adventure novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, French novelist Jules Verne introduced the Nautilus, a futuristic submarine that roamed the seas beyond the reach of land-based governments. The idea was so interesting to American inventor Simon Lake, he became enamoured by the idea of undersea travel. In 1898, he successfully completed building the Argonaut – the world’s first open-water submarine. Verne even wrote him a congratulatory note, upon hearing the news.
2. Rockets
English writer H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds may have been one of the first novels to detail a conflict between humanity and extraterrestrial life. But war aside, American scientist Robert H. Goddard paid close attention to the Martians’ interplanetary ships described in the books. He eventually went on to become build the world’s first liquid-fuelled rocket, launching it in March 1926 and ushering in an incredible era of space flight and exploration.
3. Credit cards
When American writer Edward Bellamy wrote his utopian novel, Looking Backward, in 1888, he couldn’t have guessed his ideas would transform the world. The writer made impressive predictions about how society would use cards to pay for everything – right down to individuals swiping it in a machine, and being given a receipt in exchange. He even envisioned department stores to exist like they do today – as large warehouses, stocked with an abundance of goods that you could pay for with a card. He was eerily accurate.
What do you think of science fiction’s impact on real-life inventions? Play today’s Crossword and tell us at games@gulfnews.com.
