Warehouse 13: Full Inventory—"Claudia"

[tablesaw]

I'm going to go into a bit more detail about the appropriation and misrepresentation of culture and history by looking at the artifacts mentioned in episodes of Warehouse 13. For a brief overview of what I'm talking about in this series, read "An Extraordinary Rendition of History; Items in Warehouse 13 that Don't Belong in "America's Attic". I won't be going into too great detail of research; if I prove something horribly inaccurate, I do so using only minimal Googling. Corrections and clarifications are thus welcome.

This is a short inventory, but it's remarkable for being the first episode where the show got more right historically than it got wrong, including striking a researched blow against heteronormativity in the popular concept of history.

Artifact: Durational Spectrometer
What does it do? "It shows the afterimages of anyone who's been in the room in the last five hours."
Does it belong in America's Attic? This is totally new technology, apparently unconnected to history, so there's no reason it can't be there.

Artifact: Benjamin Franklin's Lightning Rod
What does it do? Conducts large amounts of electricity.
Is it in any way accurate? The actual lightning rod is owned by the Franklin Institute. You can see that Franklin's original design was oddly shaped at the tip, but I actually wasn't able to find a got shot that indicated whether the Warehouse 13 rod mimicked it.

Also, some fun is made about the fact that "everybody fixates on the key" from the kite experiment. There are many people who believe that Franklin never actually ran the kite experiment himself after proposing it as a thought experiment in a paper. It's no wonder that the rod is "much, much better."
Does it belong in America's Attic? Certainly, although I don't know whether Artie really out to be driving around with it in the trunk of his car.

Artifact: Georg Joachim Rheticus's Compass (and other belongings)
What does it do? Allows teleportation (or traps you in limbo; same thing really).
Is it in any way accurate? It looks right to me. However, they mention that it was made of "Feldkirch minerals," an aspect critical to its teleportationing. But it's not entirely clear why his compass would be made from minerals from his birthplace of Feldkirch, rather than in one of the many cities where he did his scientific work (such a Frombork, where he studied with Copernicus). One extra note about historical accuracy: a key element of the story revolves around a love poem written by Rheticus to his lost love Thomas. The poem itself seems to be an invention, but Rheticus's sexual orientation is not:

Of pre-modern mathematical scientists I only know of two who were definitely gay. . . . The second was another Austrian astronomer and mathematician Georg Joachim de Porris (1514-1574), better known as Rheticus, the man who brought the manuscript of Copernicus' De revolutionibus to print. Unfortunately Rheticus’ sexual preferences are known because he was accused and charged with homosexual rape of one of his students. Having fled he was never tried but found guilty of contempt of court for not appearing at his trial and the whole episode was swept under the carpet.

So Warehouse 13 has finally taken some time to do a little research and use it well. Maybe there's hope.
Does it belong in America's Attic? Rheticus worked in many different countries, but none of them were the United States, as it hadn't really started existing yet.