Can You Hear Me Now? The History of Sonar

The next time you're out fly-fishing on the open sea, and out of nowhere a deep rumbling beneath you swells into the thunderous surfacing of a mighty beast, a whale of elephantine proportions that promptly explodes in a cacophony of catastrophic gore, remember that you have Lewis Captain to thank. If it weren't for one of the greatest and most unlikely American inventors of all time, you wouldn't be frantically bailing dog-sized hunks of hot whale meat out of your boat as it rapidly capsized into the ocean. And as you're clinging to a Styrofoam cooler while what's left of your boat slowly descends down towards Davey Jones' locker, you'll know that you have just experienced the magic of Sonar.

Sonar was invented in 1918 by Captain Lewis Captain, a man who spent his entire life nurturing a powerful hatred of whales. This hatred would eventually lead him to develop the world's most powerful whale-killing technology, which had the unintended side-effect of helping sailors navigate underwater environs.

Captain's last name was actually pronounced CAP-tayne, like it rhymed with plantain. But back then people didn't know what plantains were either, so they just pronounced it "captain" and made fun of the fact that he couldn't even swim. Throughout history, people have had a hard time accepting anyone named Captain who didn't pilot a boat or at least wear one of those white hats around the office.

Growing up, Captain had no interest in the sea beyond his virulent hatred of whales, an animal which he had never seen. His reasons for hating whales so violently are a matter of folk legend, with popular explanations ranging from a whale eating his prized marble collection when he was a boy to Captain being agonized by a persistent stench in his college dormitory, which some passing neer-do-well described as "smelling like a whale's bung." Captain only learned to sail because people were tired of hearing him complain about whales when he had never been out to sea.

After earning a Bachelor of Sailing degree from the Maritime Institute in Massachusetts, Captain set out on several unsuccessful whale-hunting expeditions from 1915 to 1918. Some blamed his lack of success on his aversion to harpoons and his preference for putting various foods that whales might find delicious on a gigantic hook, which he attached to an oversized fishing pole. Captain never did catch a whale this way, though he did land several passing fishing vessels using these innovative methods.

Eventually Captain tired of his inefficient whale-eradication techniques. In 1918 he was inspired by the incessant screech a neighbor's highly-annoying big band record to develop a special underwater speaker, which could be used to taunt whales with big band music, possibly driving them to suicide. He also developed an underwater microphone with which he could gleefully monitor the whales' tortured Chewbacca cries of "Turn down that racket!" and "For the love of God, we're trying to sleep here!"

The system was largely ineffective until turned up to near-deafening levels, at which point it began working like gangbusters. The noises freaked out whales and various other undersea creatures, causing them to surface in a panic and explode when gasses in their bloodstreams, trapped by deep-sea pressures, sought egress like a shook-up Diet Shasta. Captain loved that shit, and soon orchestrated the exploding marine creature displays as if they were Fourth of July fireworks.

During one of these expeditions, or "Safaris" as Captain liked to call them, crewman Paul Langévin noticed that the microphone was picking up reflected echos of the big band music in such a way to allow the virtual mapping of the ocean's floor by timing the reflections received from various directions. Captain greeted this news by giving less than two thirds of a shit, but Langévin filed away the knowledge and used it to develop the world's first functioning "Sonar" system. The system was named for the first narwhal Captain exploded in 1918, and went on to be used extensively in the naval operations of WWII.

Over the next fifty years, Captain did his best at adjusting to a world that grew gradually less open to the wholesale slaughter of marine creatures. Toward the end of his life he was arrested while trying to blow up the trick-performing show whales at Sea World, who were beloved by children and weird maritime perverts the world over. Though he only succeeded in giving Shamu mild vertigo and a touch of performance anxiety with his hand-held Sonar device, Captain was ordered by the courts to attend several weeks of marine abuse-prevention counseling. He stubbornly died shortly thereafter, leaving behind a legacy of innovation and insane nautical enmity that will marvel and bemuse the world for generations.

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