Captain Easy - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

There was once a comic strip entitled "Captain Easy", created by Roy Crane in 1929. Please see http://www.toonopedia.com/easy.htm for more information about that.

Two of the recurring characters in that comic were a neer-do-well man named Kallimak (his first name now forgotten by yours truly) and his rather dim witted son, Buster who one day came across a flying saucer that had crash landed on the beach.

Being a sort-of helpful, but quite opportunistically inclined pair, father and son met what turned out to be a little green man (an LGM) and asked him what was going on.

It seemed that there had been an equipment failure aboard the flying saucer and the LGM needed to make some replacement parts with which to effect repairs. The problem was that to make those parts, he needed to find some silicon and he had no idea while sitting there in the middle of the beach, where he was going to be able to get the silicon he needed.

Of course, father and son embarked on a quest to locate some silicon, but how that all eventually turned out, I have long since forgotten.

Still, there is a single strip of that story line at http://lambiek.net/artists/t/turner_l.htm where the LGM reminds the father that he can read the father's thoughts. 

This story dates from around 1954 or so and was drawn by Lesley Turner. This was well before the electronics industry had introduced silicon transistors or silicon integrated circuits.

I like to think maybe that Captain Easy was ahead of its time, a little bit prophetic perhaps, of the semiconductor industry that was yet to come.

It's a fun thought, anyway.

Comments

[Brad Peeters]

Presumably it was a sandy beach and the irony was that the flying saucer crashed in the very thing that was the object of their search! Sand is commonly composed of silicon dioxide...

[John Dunn]

Hi, Brad.

That was precisely the point. The LGM with all of his advanced science didn't do an evaluation of his surroundings and the two men weren't bright enough to know what sand is made of.

[John Dunn]

"Toonopedia" has gone off line. I read that it's owner, Don Markstein, suffered a stroke last winter and is still very ill. Let's everybody pray for his fastest possible recovery.