Wednesday, June 6, 2018

MR. WIZARD - Don Herbert (1951 - 1972)

 Not to be confused with "The Wizard of Mars," or "The Wizard of Oz," "Mr. Wizard" was real, and he was also legit! So come on in, cause it's a Wizard Wednesday down in The Dungeon!

It's quite possible that "Mr. Wizard" was a witch or brujo. The first show aired in 1951, and was on the air in some shape or form until 1972. Stare at the words long enough, and it looks like Mr. Witchard, and he does things that are beyond human comprehension, kind of like David Blaine does today!

This episode was titled "Six Kinds Of Electricity," and aired in 1964. Mr. Wizard has got some electronic beats circa "Forbidden Planet" going on when his little pal Alan drops by!

That's right, a speaker, a measuring spoon, and a funnel is what's driving this crazy sound!

Mr. Wizard could take a dog turd, a paper clip saturated in sodium silicate, and some tin foil, and make a mini-nuclear power plant out of it, and every Saturday morning right around seven or eight, before or after "Sky King," or "Fury," I was glued to the TV watching this stuff!

This is a perfect example of the same stupid curiosity that keeps me going today! "Mr. Wizard" has built a Rube Goldberg device comprised of six electric sources all just to automatically adjust the volume control on this record player! If you don't know what a record is, then skip to part 13!

The thingamajig makes the whatchamacallit create static electricity which makes the balloon move, and allows the projector to cast light on the sensor on the right!

Which in turn fires up the bike tire generator.......

.......And you know, there absolutely had to be a mousetrap involved in this Gyro Gearloose contraption somewhere!

Oh, an ionic flambastic bionic transformameter, I get it!

 All I could think of was a twenty-two year old Lou Reed watching this show and getting inspired one Saturday morning!

As it turns out, there are many ways to create electricity, like chemicals.

Heat also works to make current!

Crystals can be manipulated to create a minor amount of electricity via the Piezoelectric method of power generation! (That's really krazy!)

So they literally fire up this automatic volume control adjuster to see if it works!

Those chemicals catching fire was part of the plan! Don't try this at home kids!

And after it goes through all the various sources of electricity, the volume on the record player does go down! For most people, a hand-worked volume control knob is good enough, but not for "Mr. Wizard!"

Here's a fact about Don Herbert that thousands of people wish they had in their biographies, he, along with Bill Murray was one of the guests on the first "Late Night With David Letterman" in 1982!

Alan didn't do much after this, but if you watch the movie "Little Big Man," he's playing the character of the adolescent Jack Crabb!

When you're full of despair, and you've got nobody else to turn to, you can always call out for help from Mr. Wizard, as Tooter Turtle used to do back in 1960!!
"The bottom just fell out of everything, Help Mr. Wizard!!"

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