Gadgets from the Fairy Tales

Flying carpets, speed boots, invisibility caps and flying sandals – these magical means of mobility surpass even the wildest dreams of Elon Musk. But don’t think that these items come to life only in fairy tales and are used only by fairy-tale characters. Perhaps you have never thought of how natural it was for people in the distant past to comment on the means of mobility they called “flying carpets”. The almost mythological vehicle has enjoyed great popularity not only in the Arabic but also in the French and the Slavic folklore. In the more modern versions, the magic items used by the fairy-tale heroes are objects of wide use in the everyday life of fantasy movie characters. And not only by them.

King Solomon from Israel is the first known historical figure associated with magical flying carpets. The legend was first recorded in the 13^th century by the Jewish writer Isaac Ben Sherira. It is said that this story is made up of two ancient works that have since been lost. The versions of how the magic item had fallen into the king’s hands are two. In the first, the giver was a woman, the Queen of Sheba, who was in love with the king and who gathered in Baghdad all the wise men in the world to invent an unheard of gift for her beloved king Solomon. For his part, the king was too busy building the Solomon Temple in Jerusalem, and forgot to pay attention to the extravagant gift, leaving it to the goodwill of his valets. After learning this, Queen Sheba was so upset that she banned the high-tech invention and forced it into oblivion. In the second version, the wisest of kings in fairy tales received the innovative vehicle as a gift personally from God.

The second historical personality who came into contact with the magic object was Genghis Khan, who in 1226 destroyed many cities in Central Asia. Among the loot, the Mongols found flying carpets, and when a prisoner told them that they were more mobile than the steppe pony (a blasphemy for the ears of Mongolians), the great Khan beheaded him and made a mug out of his skull. With this hasty action of Genghis Khan, the traces of the magical item were lost for the next generations and centuries. But history knows other “key riders of carpets”, including Baba Yaga and Ivan the Fool. In the more up-to-date folklore of Harry Potter and the characters in two of the films “Back to the Future,” the flying platform is among the symbolic objects. An interesting fact is that this magical (high-tech) vehicle, whose construction has remained in the fog of time, has gained momentum and became the possession of many of our contemporaries. The hoverboard (or gyroscooter) has entered the modern pop culture and can be bought at a price of around BGN 200. Of course, the first mass producer of the vehicle is located in the eastern part of the planet – China. The invention of the New Mexico-based ARCA Space Corporation is not that popular. The flying platform invented by them has 272-horsepower and 203,000-watt battery, which reaches a speed of up to 20 km/h. The retail price of the modern flying carpet is USD 19,900.

And as the magic of fairy tales tells of the next magical object – an element of European folklore – speed boots, thus, the world press takes the information about modern “flying shoes” to all corners of the planet. In Russian folk tales, the characters put on speed boots, with the help of which, with one step, they can travel a distance of 7 leagues. The character of the fairy tale by Wilhelm Hauff, Little Muck, also uses magical slippers. In the Greek mythology is mentioned that God Hermes moved quickly among the mortals with the help of flying sandals. Winter, summer or home, the purpose of magic shoes is to move their owner quickly and at a great distance. The British company Genie launched the magical product Hoverboots at a price of GBP 9,995. These shoes have two jet engines that allow their owner to feel like a superhero, reaching a speed of 178.8 meters per second.

Modern “flying sandals” come in our everyday life in the form of hover shoes. They reach 12 km/h. The self-balancing shoes weigh only 3.3 kg, and they are offered for BGN 399 on the Bulgarian market.

Has the creation of these modern high-tech inventions been provoked by magic-filled fairy tales, or the secrets of their invention have remained deeply encoded in our DNA strands? The answer is not that simple. An expected obvious fact is the consequence, the development of new technologies and the boom in the production of smart gadgets for everyday life that can turn every one of us into a fairy-tale superhero.