I love to tell my kids about how something works, or how something came to be. However, my explanations are often fictitious. I like to make my story as ridiculous as I possibly can…so that there will be no way that they will take me seriously I know I’ve done my job properly when I get a huge eye-roll.
The following is based on one of the tall tales that I told a few years back
If you like rock music, you like the electric guitar. However, we did not always have electric guitars (or, for that matter, electricty). In those pre-electric days, rock musicians would turn to steam powered guitars. They were LOUD (as all steam powered machines are)…and with the steam they generated, fog machines weren’t necessary either!
The biggest drawback of the steam-guitar was their lack of portability as they needed to be connected to a massive boiler and coal burner. Another issue was that nore than a few guitarists suffered severe burns from playing their instruments without wearing asbestos gloves (although these gloves were highly recommended by the guitar manufacturers, this instruction was rarely ever followed – if you’ve ever tried to play a stringed instrument while wearing gloves, you’ll understand why!)
Early environmentalists also raised objections about the excessive amount of fossil fuels being consumed to power the instruments, so when inventors discovered how to harness electricity, it was only natural for steam-guitars to be phased out in favour of the “greener” option of electric guitars. However, without steam-guitars, we would have never had [steam] punk rock!
Quest for Whirled Peas 