Inventions
During his imaginative flights of fancy Calvin occasionally creates machines from a cardboard box to facilitate his plans, the use of which almost always backfires. Their reality is similar to that of Hobbes, which is to say that it is never fully confirmed if they somehow actually work or if it's simply Calvin's imagination. These are:
- Transmogrifier: An upturned cardboard box with a dial on one side, which morphs the occupant into whatever the dial is set to, usually some sort of animal. On one occasion, Calvin morphs into an elephant in order to memorize his homework.
- Transmogrifier Gun: a toy gun that transforms the target into whatever the shooter is thinking of, usually an animal of some sort, although the effects are only temporary. Calvin once zapped himself and Hobbes with this invention multiple times, causing them to transform into many different things. This resulted in Calvin turning into an owl, and he couldn't turn back because after that the transmogrifier gun ran out of ammo. It wore off the next day, much to his disappointment, because he then had to go to school. It also saved him from an early death by falling from the clouds (due to clinging to a helium balloon). Calvin transformed himself into a light particle, "zipped back here to his house instantaneously" for dinner, then remarked "If I knew we were having this for dinner, I wouldn't have hurried."
- Duplicator: A cardboard box, laid sideways, which clones the occupant. The sole use of this machine resulted in multiple clones of Calvin, all of whom caused additional trouble and left him to take the blame.
- Ethicator: This is the original duplicator, but with an "ethicator" added (an arrow that points to either "Good" or "Evil") that creates a "good" or "evil" duplicate of the occupant.
- Time Machine: An open-topped cardboard box, which Calvin uses to travel forwards or backwards in time. Calvin's first attempt to travel to the future is foiled when he points the box the wrong way, resulting in a journey into the past.
- Cerebral Enhance-o-Tron: A colander, worn on one's head, attached by three strings (input, output, and ground) to a cardboard box. It makes the wearer temporarily super-intelligent, but also makes his head larger.
Read more about this topic: Calvin (Calvin And Hobbes)
Famous quotes containing the word inventions:
“Young children constantly invent new explanations to account for complex processes. And since their inventions change from week to week, furnishing the “correct” explanation is not quite so important as conveying a willingness to discuss the subject. Become an “askable parent.””
—Ruth Formanek (20th century)
“In America, the geography is sublime, but the men are not: the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)