Warehouse 13: Full Inventory—"Burnout"

[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.

When fans are confronted with the problematic and uncomfortable aspects of their favorite things, they often reflectively say, "Well, you're just looking for things to be offended by." This is not generally the case ("Pilot" and "Elements" were pretty offensive on their face), but with this episode, I have come to realize that I am in the place where I'm looking for things to be offended by, as evidenced by the fifteen minutes I spent freeze-framing my DVR to copy the list of possible artifacts on a blackboard in the background.

Yeah, I'm looking for things. In my defense, the show seems to waver between wanting to reward viewers for knowing history and expecting viewers to know fuck all about history. I never know when I'm going to be pleasantly surprised and when I'm going to be pleasantly disgusted. The board was mostly fun, the MainGuffin made me yell at the screen.

Artifact: Bell & Howell Spectroscope (repurposed)
What does it do? It's unknown what it did before (it may have been a simple projector). Now that Claudia's added some very modern technology (the Intel Haswells she uses aren't actually on the market yet) it projects holograms.
Is it in any way accurate? I can't tell if Bell & Howell (now Böwe Bell & Howell ever produced a "spectroscope." They could have, but I think that's just writer error. It's clear that they're trying to tie into the history of film projectors that Bell & Howell built its company on in the early 20th century. I guess "projector" wasn't science-fancy enough.
Fun Fact: The Zapruder film was filmed with a Bell & Howell camera.
Does it belong in America's Attic? Bell and Howell was an American company, so yes.

Artifact: The Spine of the Saracen
What does it do? An artifact that appears lifelike (perhaps extraterrestrial), it fuses onto the spine of a person, granting them great strength and the ability to command electricity, but it also fosters rage and loss of control.
Is it in any way accurate? Well, let's start with the name.

Pete: What is a Saracen?
Artie: A Saracen's a Turk

Not so much. Of course, the Seljuq Empire was a part of the First Crusade. Another research failure, because "The Spine of the Seljuqs" would be more accurate and just as alliterative.

And this is kind of a side note, but Artie describes it as being used by a "warrior cult." The word "cult" always catches my ear; there's no strong definition of "cult," but it always carries negative connotation. My college sociology prof said that the difference between a sect and a cult is how much everybody else likes them. So it twigs me when things get described as cults offhandedly (and unmetaphorically) in this way. They were a small group, they were mysterious, they were highly effective, but why a cult? We don't call the Navy Seals a warrior cult.
Does it belong in America's Attic? The only crusades the United States took part in were "moral" ones. The Seljuq Spine should probably go back to Anatolia.

The Burning Board

At one point, Artie creates a list of possible artifacts and other explanations that could account for the electrocutions in the episode. Because I now have a bizarre fascination with this show, I freeze-framed the show to write down everything on the list. So we can assume that everything on this list can electrocute someone to death. Also, since we don't have any thing to compare them to, it's hard to judge accuracy for most of them, so here they all are rapid fire:

Artifact: Babylonian Battery
What's the connection? The Baghdad Battery is a set of artifacts that can be combined to create a rudimentary battery. It's a really wild piece of history, and it's spawned a number of wild theories, many of which, though highly unlikely, are essentially plausible. The actually battery was located in the National Museum of Iraq, until it was looted during the American invasion of Iraq. In the Warehouse 13 universe, there may be more than one battery, and it's considerably more powerful.

Artifact: Teller's Microfission Reactor
What's the connection? Edward Teller was part of the Manhattan Project and is known as the father of the hydrogen bomb. This artifact is only a rumor, but would presumably be a very small device that could harness the power of a nuclear weapon.

Artifact: Gilbert's (Lodestone) Amber
What's the connection? William Gilbert did early research on magnetism (using lodestones) and static electricity (using amber).

Artifact: Thunderer of the Nile
What's the connection? Not technically an artifact, but an obscure reference to an electric catfish (Malapterus). The arab name raash (using various transliterations), can be translated as "thunderer."

Thing on List: Redstone Arsenal Breach
What's the connection? Redstone Arsenal is a U.S. Army base that has done military research. I wonder if the Warehouse 13 version works on things that are more dangerous.

Artifact: Marconi's Oscillator
What's the connection? Gugliemo Marconi was a pioneer in radio, and he used an oscialltor in his first wireless. Beyond that, I don't get the connection. Maybe there's some radio aspect that got cut out of the episode, because there's another radio reference in a little bit.

Artifact: Einstein's comb
What's the connection? Hair joke.

Artifact: Torch of Torquemada
What's the connection? Not an electrocutory artifact, but certainly capable of burning. Tomás de Torqemada was the head of the Spanish Inquisition and the practice of auto de fé.

Artifact: Goebbels' Radio
What's the connection? Joseph Goebbels was the head of Propaganda in Nazi Germany. He worked with radio a lot, but I don't know what direct connection there is to electrocution.

Artifact: Egg of Columbus
What's the connection? At first I thought this was a reference to the urban myth, which makes no sense at all. Of course, the fact that Nikolai Tesla built a really cool machine that he called the Egg of Columbus makes more sense.

Thing on List: ELF transmitted through Kennelly-Heaviside layer
What's the connection? That's not really an artifact either, I guess Artie was just trying out some theories here. But this is something that Tesla did in his research in looking for alternate sources of electricity.

Artifact: Magnetohydrodynamic Generator (Faraday)
What's the connection? I'm a little fuzzy on this one, because Google is offering up a lot of practical (for engineers) information, and less historical information. So it's hard for me to tell if I'm missing a connection or if the writers made a minor mistake. Regardless, I think they're referring to the homopolar generator (or Faraday disc) developed by Michael Faraday.

Artifact: Sacred Papyri of Seleucia
What's the connection? This is a twofer with the Baghdad Battery. Containers similar to the ones in the Baghdad Battery were found in Seleucia containing papyrus.

Thing on List: Mandelbrot Set
What's the connection? It's a fractal, but I couldn't come up with a connection.

The other items on the list were blocked by actors and my DVR's pause screen. All I could get was "P_____munde" and "_______clyff Taser."

Which ones belong in America's Attic? Tesla's already been cleared, and Edward Teller's in the same boat. Einstein lived, woked, and taught a bunch of places, including the U.S., so there's probably a colorable claim to the comb. A fish is probably fine, though not if it's being taken as part of an extermination campaign. And Nazi artifacts (as opposed to other artifacts which were undoubtedly used by the Nazis in the Warehouse 13 universe) seem to be in a weird place. That's a pretty high number, but the rest ought to be returned.

Next week: a Samurai sword.