Imagine a museum devoted to the history of Los Angeles, told through the lens of local inventions. Julia Tcharfas was commissioned to write this special piece as part of the No Prior Art project.

Julia Tcharfas (born 1982, Donetsk, Ukraine) is an artist based in Los Angeles. Her research draws on materials from modern scientific and technological folklore and takes the form of archives and exhibitions. Tcharfas is the founder of Before Present project space in Pasadena and has exhibited work at Magic Hour, Twentynine Palms; the Swiss Institute, New York; Project 1049, Gstaad; and Transformation Marathon, Serpentine Gallery, London. A profile about her practice has been featured in the Swiss Institute’s SI: Visions video series.

Detours Through the Museum of Invented Los Angeles

By Julia Tcharfas

In 1851, the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents included a section titled “Additional Room Required,” describing the chaos observed at the Patent Office in Washington, D.C.¹ The examiner’s offices, the draftsman’s rooms, the library, and records storage were so clogged with patent applications that mail from the previous year had been stacked up in the hallways. The Commissioner pleaded for more clerical staff and for the removal of patent models from the premises, as thousands of applications continued to arrive from all parts of the country.

It was not only the sheer volume of applications that concerned the Patent Commissioner, but the very future of invention itself. By 1852, the number of rejected patents in the United States was beginning to greatly outnumber the few accepted ones. As the Commissioner explained: “Each year must necessarily increase the ratio of rejections, as the field of invention in many of the arts is, to a degree, limited.”² He went on to suggest that everything had already been invented, and that “little more can be expected in the present stage of the mechanical arts.”³

For the Patent Commissioner, this was an observation of principle. The US Patent and Trademark Office was devoted exclusively to the “the progress of science and art” and “to the useful development of new elements of civilization.”⁴ Useful development was not something one could simply invent out of thin air: practical inventions with real-world applications were “based upon the great physical laws of nature,” against which man’s creativity was finite.⁵ As the American citizen came to adopt the cotton gin, the railroad, the telegraph, the combine harvester, and the dishwasher, there was really not much more that the average entrepreneur could be expected to contribute to American life.

Enter the city of Los Angeles, a place that has upended the very notion of practical, useful, and real-world.⁶ Incorporated into the State of California in 1850 amid a frenzied “march of progress” in business, speculation, and frontier capitalism, Los Angeles became a city built on the invention of new lifestyles, new religions, and grand illusions. Indeed, the entrepreneurs and inventors of Los Angeles seem to have argued—contrary to the assumptions of the Washington patent office—that invention is not merely limited to the useful. In fact, invention is something that can be put to work for the production of new illusions, improved fancies, perfected pleasures, and visions of spectacle and artifice that seek to deliberately defy the “great physical laws of nature.”

Through invention, Los Angeles has been variously reimagined and reshaped as a Garden of Eden, a frictionless grid of urban circulation, a fountain of youth, and an eternal stage. These parallel worlds coexist and intersect even in our everyday experience of the city. But we might also consider them worlds, or scenes unto themselves. We might even imagine, if you will, a museum of inventions—made in Los Angeles—one in which the march of progress takes a detour through the city’s strange and forgotten futures.

Exhibit 1: L.A. Invents Itself (Just Add Water)

In the first gallery of Invented Los Angeles, we encounter what might appear to be a surprising introduction: a room arranged with the implements and patented processes which made possible the myth of Los Angeles as an agricultural Garden of Eden. More so than gold, the wall text explains, it was fruits, vegetables, and grain that captured the imagination of Midwestern and East Coast transplants and their dream of going West. Indeed, as one A. Williams wrote in 1851, “California is a State whose agricultural capabilities—a far richer treasure than her mineral wealth—are unsurpassed in any portion of the earth […] the banana, the orange, the lemon, the olive, the fig, the plantain, the nectarine, the almond, the apricot, and the pomegranate of the South, mingle in the same luxuriant gardens of Los Angeles with thepeach, the pear, the cherry, the plumb [sic], the quince, and the apple of the North.”⁷

The agricultural abundance of this new Arcadia was a deliberate invention, made possible by resourceful water engineers, the city’s most Promethean figures. In the gallery, we are first drawn towards a series of patent models for dry land irrigation and water conservation projects designed by the “Walnut Queen,” Harriet Williams Russell Strong. By 1887 Strong had cultivated her thirsty nut groves into the largest walnut farm in Southern California, with several patents for Dam and Reservoir Construction (1887) and the Method and Means for Impounding Debris and Storing Water (1894). Strong’s inventions grew from prototypes for her modest farm to the blueprints for the construction of federal water projects like the Hoover Dam and the All-American Canal, the world’s largest irrigation canal, carrying water from the Colorado River into California’s Imperial Valley.

Across from this symphony of regional planning, a scale reproduction of Orton Englehart’s Glendora citrus orchard, fitted with a miniature grid of his ingenious, even musical invention: the horizontal action impact sprinkler. The “Rain Bird” as he called it, referenced a Pueblo tribal legend of a bird that brought water amongst a cataclysmic drought. With time, Englehart’s contraption would weave a beguiling tapestry through the 88 cities of Los Angeles County—a mirage of bountiful produce and flawless suburban lawns across this once arid expanse.

Exhibit 2: L.A. Invents a Way to Get Around

Our next exhibit invites us to reflect on the ways in which Los Angeles has both invented and reinvented the question of transportation.

Just past the model of the Erie & Sturgis Gasoline Carriage, we glimpse a 1926 painting of Frank A. Garbutt, a gilt-framed portrait which formerly hung in the grand dining room of his twenty-room mansion overlooking the Silver Lake Reservoir. We are reminded that the transportation question in Los Angeles was always answered with an abundance of oil. The pursuit of oil drilling proved to be the alchemical key that unlocked immense wealth for a handful of early denizens of L.A., including Garbutt, with his patented Well-Casing Swage (1901) drilling tool. In the 1920s, Los Angeles became a city of automobiles and auto-trucks, consuming more oil than any other city, and producing more oil than any other region in the United States. A modern L.A. lifestyle was designed from oil, and at its center was the private automobile. Garbutt, an early investor in both motion pictures (the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation) and automobiles (the Automobile Club of Southern California), was deeply invested in the development, promotion, and glamorization of Los Angeles.⁸

But alongside the burgeoning car culture of Petropolis, alternative transportation inventions also materialized in the first decade of the twentieth century. Vitrines archiving the long-lost elevated bicycle highway in Pasadena (1900), ephemera of the original Bunker Hill funicular in motion (1901), and illustrations of the Trackless Trolley of Laurel Canyon (1910). At the center of the display is the patented monorail car, invented by Joseph Fawkes and his spouse, Emma Fawkes, in 1910. It was a futuristic suspended trolley, called the Aerial Swallow. To model their invention, the Fawkes couple cleared a path through their Burbank orchard and built an 840-foot-long test track for a prototype propeller car. The torpedo-shaped carriage hung from a rail amidst their fragrant apricot and walnut trees, reminiscent of the fanciful contraptions of Jules Verne. The Fawkes’s patent anticipated that the monorail would glide effortlessly over any path, valley, or creek at a speed of 150-miles-per-hour. Their neighbors crowded to test ride the newest beacon of public transportation, but instead found the monorail as a whimsical sideshow attraction. The public and media deemed the makeshift ride the “Fawkes Folly.” Over the next decade, the carriages and tracks succumbed to neglect, leaving behind a dream unrealized.

Within the pantheon of transportation innovation, we might be startled by a loud hiss coming from one of the displays. Here a candy-colored Lowrider car bouncing on its hydraulic suspension has been installed. This uniquely L.A. invention of the 1940s was the result of a true community of ingenious creators, not to be attributed to any one individual in the US patent record. The lowrider’s numerous creators, like the mechanic Ron Aguirre, are being traced through an intricate oral history project of eastside L.A.'s Chicano Lowrider car clubs. Below the freeway overpasses of Boyle Heights, they fashioned cars that cruised against the logic of convenience and efficiency. The Lowriders embraced the ‘low and slow’ mentality, and their automobiles, composed of various customized car parts and brought to life like Frankenstein’s monsters with a lever that set them jumping and bouncing, were created for spectacle and awe.

The Lowrider re-invented the automobile, not as a utilitarian object but as a symbol of self-expression. And next to it, a model of an unrealized car with a promise of upward mobility and freedom of movement for its subjects is mounted on a pedestal. This sports car, named the Corwin Getaway, was invented by photojournalist Clifford Augustus Hall. At his day job, Hall captured the vast dichotomy of a city teeming with both glamour and strife, documenting not only the opulent soirees that unfolded within the gilded walls of the city's affluent neighborhoods, but also the Watts Riots of 1965 and the uprising that ignited the streets in 1992. It was within this crucible of social upheaval that Hall's vision took shape—a luxury vehicle tailored to Black society concurrently empowering Black families with employment and financial prosperity. Hall set forth to patent his sports car as well as a three-wheeled Magic Machine motorcycle. Yet, both vehicles were an inventor’s fantasy that never made it beyond the prototype phase.

Exhibit 3: Eternal Life and Good Vibrations

Just as one’s feet might be getting tired, we reach a gallery with a din of electrical motors imparting a theatrical ambiance to inventions of bodily invigoration.

Dr. Albert Abrams’s wondrous Oscilloclast of 1923 sits atop a pedestal—an electronic box that promised to treat every affliction with the science of vibrations. Nearby, under a soft spotlight, we find L. Ron Hubbard’s E-Meter, a mysterious "auditing" tool for the Scientological diagnosis and healing of ailments ranging from mere stress to cancer. In the gallery of electrical cures, we also find the Ralph Bergstresser Body Energizer and Multi-Wave Oscillator conceived in 1967, promising to recalibrate the vibration frequencies of living cells, forever altering the rate of vitality.

An exhibition of L.A.’s medical history would not be complete without the artifacts of the enigmatic entrepreneur Gaylord Wilshire—a self-proclaimed "socialist millionaire,” publisher, writer, land developer, politician, gold miner, and designer of quack medical devices. Although many of his endeavors have been long forgotten, his name continues to resonate through the urban sprawl of L.A. as one drives down Wilshire Boulevard and past the Gaylord Apartments. In the 1920s, Wilshire applied to patent his I-on-a-co belt consisting of a coil of insulated wire with an electric plug. The invention claimed to have wide application as a panacea for the myriad afflictions that plagued humanity, from diabetes, tuberculosis, arthritis, neuritis, and even the elusive specter of insomnia. In his pursuit of the inventors’ glory, Wilshire sought approval not from the medical community but from authors of fiction. He corresponded with Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, inviting the novelists to dinners, and seeking their endorsement. His aspirations were met with far less enthusiasm in the scientific community, and no amount of science fiction could help prevent his patent applications from being rejected. By the end of his life, Wilshire’s fortunes had turned, and his fervent medical endeavors were largely abandoned.

Exhibit 4: L.A. Invents a New Reality

A short hallway connects us to the ultimate great hall, hidden behind a heavy red velvet curtain. As we enter the room and our eyes adjust to the dim theater lighting, we find a gallery of illusion and special effects.

A bust of Orson Welles made of plastics and supple skin-like putty transforms the countenance of his face by several decades as it did on screen in the film Citizen Kane. Kane’s once chiseled features sag with baggy flesh fashioned from Maurice Seiderman’s invented foam plastics. And as the final touch, Seiderman's patented contact lenses dim the luminescence of Kane's eyes, imparting a dramatic gravitas to the iconic character. Having left a career in medical prosthetics, Seiderman found his calling in beauty and artifice of the Hollywood screen.

Beauty and artifice continue to haunt the displays. A mysterious egg-shaped sponge placed in front of countless headshots of music video stars evokes ageless beauty and flawless faces. Invented by Rea Ann Silva, a Latina makeup artist in the 1990s, the BeautyBlender masked and smoothed all shades of brown and black skin on par with an airbrush or postproduction filter.

Across the room, the inventions of Ira Katz — stage smoke, “slime,” and fake blood — are projected onto the wall in an endless loop. Katz, a little-known special effects wizard, was also the shop owner of Tri-Ess Sciences in Burbank, a company that provided hobbyists, schools, magicians, and the movie industry with special effect supplies for half a century. In the back of his shop was his well-stocked laboratory, where he invented numerous gizmos and effects such as the richly colored Spectrasmoke now commonly used in films and music videos. He patented “slime,” immortalized within the Ghost-Busting mythos. Katz's wizardry spread beyond the film set and the faux bombs that breathe life into the fictional worlds of cinema. He also concocted imitation blood for the faithful followers of fundamental Christianity, and orchestrated explosions to train agents of the FBI.

As we leave the gallery, disembodied laughter echoes in the air. Charles Rolland Douglass, a Mexican-born Navy sonar and radar engineer, introduced an emotion machine used in countless television shows. In the 1950s working on the CBS lot, Douglass unveiled his miraculous contraption, colloquially referred to as the "laugh box." Reminiscent of Philip K. Dick’s Empathy Box which stores a myriad of human motions, the contrivance, which bears resemblance to a typewriter, summons a symphony of chuckles, guffaws, and chortles. A foot pedal controls the length of the laughter track. Within the machine's intricate recesses lay an astonishing assortment of 320 different laughs, encompassing every conceivable iteration, from the softest, barely audible titters to the resounding echoes of boisterous "belly laughs." This invention exists not merely to supplant or deceive, but rather to augment the responses of the authentic studio audience, should their reactions fail to align with the creator's vision.

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Every tour ends in the gift shop. This one will of course be stocked with more of L.A.’s marvelous inventions.

Behold the Extend-A-Sill, an ingenious creation that stretches the very form of the window frame to accommodate an assortment of cooling fans. Take home the Mechanical Hair Braider, a device that weaves intricate braids with enchanting precision. And there, the Bopper Wallet, a stylish accessory that attaches pockets upon pockets to any outfit. Amidst this fantastical menagerie, one discovers the Dip’ll Do’—scissor-shaped sponges that clean on behalf of their human counterparts. Yet, the marvels do not cease there, for the candy core extractor, aptly named Sneak-Peak extracts a sample of a mystery chocolate, a condom plays music, and a portable dome provides shelter for the homeless. Here, an ant farm breathes life into the realm of miniaturized marvels, while the space pen transcends earthly boundaries. In this peculiar parade, a chocolate perfume lures olfactory senses, and waterproof mascara stands as a testament to resilience.

Back on the streets of L.A., we begin to reflect on the weird nature of the invented object. Here, inventions are not confined to improvements on past achievements or future practicality, but rather in the alluring landscape of the hypothetical—a realm where wishes and potential intertwine. Invention’s true essence has unveiled itself as something surreal, almost fantastical, that perpetually poses the question, "What if...?"

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