Elf #1 Reporting

Elf #1 Reporting

Everything has changed since the Abacus, the first calculation instrument we used in this workshop. I realized how slow and unreliable it was. It evolved into the hand-held calculator and the modern-day computer. I know many think IBM built the first computer but here is how it happened; please keep this quiet.

We elves invented the device that you all call the BlackBerry in 1790. It made it much easier to record and track inventory, from the looms to a pair of jeans or the tree to the rocking chair. Like you, we also used it as a two-way device. We work twelve-hour shifts 358 days a year. The week following Christmas is the only time no products are being made. The 26^th and 27^th are our holidays for whatever we want to do, as long as it can be done in 48 hours, anything on the planet. It had to be relaxing, fun, or life-enriching. The other factory workers would visit family or sleep.

Not me; I’m a tinkerer, a thinker, a visionary dreamer, and a mechanic by trade. My name is Herbert M. Munchkin, and I am from Emerald City, Minnesota. Like many of my family, I have been groomed to do the same job for life. Living here now is magical; the Aurora Borealis is always above us, and ideas flow freely. Unfortunately, our contract won’t allow us to profit on the stock market, and we can’t market ideas first. Someone else somewhere else needs to have a dream. That is where the second elf in charge comes into play, the sandman. The Sandman employs ten million people:

1)       Muses: to foster creative processes

2)       Leprechauns: to spread luck

3)       Tooth Fairies: to encourage early earnings

4)       Contract Lawyers: to execute written proposals

 The big guy may fire me for revealing the inner workings of One Candy Cane Lane, but I have been in charge since 1791. He almost blew a gasket when I shut down production on January 2, 1792. We love assembling toys, sewing clothes, cobbling shoes, and delighting everyone with their wish at Christmas. I recognized the need for better accounting and storage systems. You see, the naughty and good lists both receive gifts. Every person gets clothes and toys; I can’t see anyone being punished at Christmas. No coal on my watch! We give educational toys to the naughty listed folks. There was a need for another list for trying to improve people, a year’s grace period. Luckily like so many things in the product lines that I was in charge of, the lists are automatically updated daily. However, there was still a need for inventory, distribution, and data updates.

The things that have inspired new products throughout history were most likely invented to improve productivity, or the need to get faster, produce more significant amounts and be more unique. When I think of the next invention, I ask myself three questions:

1) Will it benefit the world?

2) Will it benefit the workshop?

3) Will the Sandman implant this idea faster than the phone?

After four attempts to get someone to dream up the idea of the modern-day version of the phone, it finally found Alexander Graham Bell’s wife in 1874, YES, his wife. She told him, “your driver and I think that Norah lives too far away for us to travel to get a message daily about the renovations needed; the ride is dreadful. I wish I could send a pigeon faster.” It still took another year of complaints from his wife and three muses. Historical versions changed the reason for Bell’s interest in telephony came through his mother, who was deaf, and his father, Alexander Melville Bell, an elocution teacher famous for the phonetic transcription system he had developed to help the deaf learn to speak. Of course, a nagging wife would have been unforgettable for the wrong reason, so please understand.

The other person who received the phone idea sent his invention application by mail, arriving four hours before Bell’s. Unfortunately for Elisha Gray, Bell’s application was hand-delivered by his lawyer, who insisted on paying application fees immediately, assuring Bell’s patent first. Bell’s patent was approved and officially registered on March 7, and three days later, the famous call is said to have been made when Bell’s summons to his assistant (“Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.”) confirmed that the invention worked. On 7 March 1876: Bell's U.S. patent No. 174,465 for the telephone was granted.10 March 1876: Bell transmits the sentence: using a liquid transmitter and an electromagnetic receiver.10 August 1876: Using the telegraph line between Brantford and Paris, Ontario, eight miles (thirteen kilometers) distant, Bell makes a telephone call, said by some as the "world's first long-distance call.”

For a few years, Alexander Graham Bell found himself on the naughty list; claims were lodged that Bell had nefariously acquired and exploited an apparatus, the “teletrophono,” invented by Antonio Meucci long before Bell and Gray. One damaging piece of evidence for Bell was that Meucci’s material had disappeared without a trace from the same laboratory at which Bell was carrying out his experiments. In the 1880s, proceedings initiated by the American government charged Bell with “fraudulent and dishonest conduct” and claimed that his patent should be revoked. These proceedings were discontinued after Meucci’s death in 1889 and the expiry of Bell’s patent in 1893. No more patents, accusations, no naughty list; I transitioned him to the trying list for two years while investigating. Claims that Bell’s attorneys acquired technical details from Gray’s attorneys (both had lawyers acting as their agents) are said to have been added to Bell’s patent after it was submitted. One salient fact was that Bell saw no need to take out patents for the telephone in the Nordic countries. This meant that anyone anywhere was free to manufacture and sell telephones. Result of my inquiry Alexander Graham Bel moved back to the good list, and two Contract Lawyers were fired by the Sandman and evicted from the North Pole.

Since their and others’ contributions over the years, phones have mutated from wall mounted needing operator assistance to untethered flips and more, including that dinosaur, the BlackBerry, to the latest iPhone 15.