gremlin
is a fictional mischievous creature. Gremlins are depicted as highly mechanically oriented and extremely devious. The word "gremlin" comes from Old English ''grėmian'', meaning, "to vex" or, "to anger", from ''grim'', "severe" (look up grim in a good dictionary to find the full etymology), and is related to German ''grämen'', "to grieve". The concept of the Gremlins as responsible for sabotaging aircraft is said to have originated in a tale told among men of the Royal_Air_Force of the United_Kingdom serving in the Middle_East during World_War_II. The story attempted to explain the accidents which often occurred during their flights.The Gremlin in Popular Culture
The lore of the gremlin was reportedly told to Roald_Dahl by colleagues of his in the 80th squadron of the Royal Air Force during his own service in the Middle East. Dahl had his own experience in an accidental crash-landing in the Libyan Desert. He was believed to have recovered and briefly resumed serving in Greece and Syria but his frequent headaches soon caused him to be relieved of active duty. In January, 1942 he was transferred to Washington,_DC as Assistant Air Attache. There he eventually authored his novel "The_Gremlins". He showed the finished manuscript to Sidney_Bernstein, the head of the British Information Service. Sidney reportedly came up with the idea to send it to Walt_Disney. The manuscript arrived in Disney's hands in July, 1942 and he considered using it as material for a film. The film project never materialised but Disney managed to have the story published in the December, 1942 issue of Cosmopolitan_Magazine. About half a year later a revised version of the story was published in a picture book published by Random_House. Thanks mainly to Disney, the story had its share of publicity which helped in introducing the concept to a wider audience. Issues #33-#41 of Walt_Disney's_Comics_and_Stories published between June, 1943 and February, 1944 contained a nine-episode series of short silent stories featuring a Gremlin Gus as their star. The first was drawn by Vivie_Risto and the rest of them by Walt_Kelly. This served as their introduction to the comic_book audience. It was at this point Robert_Clampett created his 1943 Bugs_Bunny film, "Falling_Hare". With Disney's film never materialising, this short had the significance of being the first to introduce the concept of the Gremlin to cinema audiences. Bugs is featured as relaxing at an air field, reading the book "Victory Through Hare Power," while no one else seems to be there. Bugs is amused when his book mentions a creature of World War II folklore, the Gremlin as responsible for "diabolical sabotage" in aircrafts, spreading havoc. But then Bugs hears noises indicating activity at a near-by bomber plane. When he investigates, he discovers a Gremlin working at sabotaging the airplane. Before he knows it Bugs ends up piloting the plane while the Gremlin continues his work at destroying it. A 1959 episode of "The_Twilight_Zone" featured gremlins in this "aviation monster" sense, as William_Shatner was a passenger watching helplessly as the creature attacked the plane. This episode was remade as a segment of 1983's "The Twilight Zone Movie", in which John Lithgow played the passenger watching in terror as the gremlin ripped apart one of the passenger jet's engines in mid-flight. In 1984 a movie called ''Gremlins'' directed by Joe Dante was produced, followed by the sequel ''Gremlins 2 - The New Batch'' in 1990. The gremlins in these movies had nothing obvious to do with aircraft, although a reference to the earlier mythologies was mentioned in the first film. In the early 1970s, the American Motor Company (AMC, which was purchased by Dodge/Chrysler in the 1980s) produced a compact hatchback called Gremlin. It also had nothing to do with airplanes, though it is said that the cars weren't very reliable.External links
Original, History and Authors:
en-wikipedia-org/wiki/Gremlin | History and Authors | Edit Content
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled
"GNU Free Documentation License".
