How ever was the "sport" of doing the shotput--putting the shot--you can't call it "throwing the shot," because you can't--ever invented?
In my mind's eye, I see a bored--a really bored--British naval garrison sometime in the eighteenth century, with no sporting equipment at all, nothing save for some cannonballs. In my mind's eye, they are also very very drunk.
Thus--I imagine--was invented the shotput.
Posted by DeLong at May 2, 2004 09:07 AM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postI think one should remember that there are standards for these things. Every tale of invention is measured against David Niven's account of the invention of curry in, I think it was, "Send In The Empty Horses."
Meself Ida thort putting the shot was a degenerate form of the Pictish art of throwing stuff over Hadrian's Wall.
aw, c'mon, first Google hit:
http://www.rctsd.ca/~cranevalley/shotput/history.html
But it's not called "casting the stone," is it? It's called the shotput.
Posted by: Brad DeLong on May 2, 2004 10:43 AMBrad - There was already an ancient precedent. From time immemorial, the Scots have tossed tree trunks, more usually called "tossing the caber", but then the Scots claim to have invented or discovered most things and, quite often, they are right - as with logs, Maxwell's theory unifying the forces of electricity and magnetism, television and much else without even mentioning Adam Smith and David Hume.
Posted by: Bob on May 2, 2004 11:06 AMI can't vouch for its accuracy, but the page does seem to make a historical claim about the use of "shot" in the name of the event.
>> The term shot,' of course, derives from the occasional substitution of a cannon ball for a stone from the middle ages onward. <<
Re: games invented by Scots -
I've always assumed that the Scots invented curling so there would always be a passtime even more stupid than golf.
Posted by: TomF on May 2, 2004 01:30 PMScots bashing is apt to become an adictive pastime for the English but for a small nation they do have a formidable collection of seminal discoveries and inventions to their immortal credit, besides logarithms (Napier), television (John Logie Baird) and Maxwell's unified theory of electricity and magnetism, including: the steam engine (Watt); absolute zero (Kelvin); radar (Watson-Watt); antibiotics (Alexander Fleming). Charles Rennie Mackintosh is widely credited with being one of the originators of what came to be regarded as modern architecture in the 20th century. Vernon Smith, in one of his books, cites a very neat piece of early engineering economics by Kelvin on the cost efficient way of transmitting electricity over distances, which depends on the resistance and cost of the conductor and the rate of interest.
Posted by: Bob on May 2, 2004 05:20 PMThe shotput cannot have been invented any earlier than when Americans invented it by compounding the earlier shot put. To put (ha!) it another way, there is no shotput in real English.
Posted by: P.M.Lawrence on May 2, 2004 05:40 PM"I've always assumed that the Scots invented curling so there would always be a passtime even more stupid than golf."
But they already had haggis cuisine. Did they need a backup?
Posted by: Jon H on May 2, 2004 07:17 PMVarious projectiles used in track and field (javelin, discus, hammer, shot, etc) have their origins in military contests (as do other track and field events). Throwing objects onto an enemy to "soften them up" is a longstanding tradition: the neolithic equivalent of an artillery barrage.
Standardizing on metal shot was merely a convenience, recently introduced.
I believe that pole vaulting was once a horizontal event, derived from a technique to clear ditches, streams and other earthen defenses.
Posted by: Rory Bowman on May 2, 2004 07:19 PMAbout 20 years ago, a newspaper in Chico -- already famous, thanks to Herb Caen, as the city whose supermarkets put Velveeta in their gourmet section -- described one athlete as having "shot the put 20 meters". Whether this is the same thing as putting the shot, I don't know. (However, Caen originally came from Sacramento, which was in no position to talk -- at about that same time, I noticed that the city's Yellow Pages were listing Round Table Pizza among "English Restaurants".)
Posted by: Bruce Moomaw on May 2, 2004 09:32 PMTests of strength were common in all primitive cultures. The Scots have made themselves famous for it by keeping their antique sports alive. If Basques were better at PR, they'd have a sport in the Olympics that involves pushing very large rocks through the air. None of this fits-in-the-palm-of-your-hand stuff. Surely, the shotput (45'3" personal best as a highschooler) was invented nearly simultaneously with the invention of cannon balls. Soldiers who had cast the stone simply did what came naturally. Whoever invented cannon balls invented the putting of the shot.
Posted by: K Harris on May 3, 2004 04:41 AMI don't know how it was invented, but you can bet it wasn't just drunken sailors, but drunken sailors wagering who could get it the farthest.
Speaking of early track and field, there is an extraordinary article in yesterday's London Observor about 18th and 19th century athletic contests over wagers.
http://tinyurl.com/3ahl2
Apparently, there were runners back then doing sub four minute miles, or sub 2:11 marathons, but they did it as part of a wager, so the stuffy gentlement twits who took over athletics in the late 19th century never counted these records. The inability to break 4 minutes in a mile from 1890-1954 has more to do with eliminating everyone but the incredibily rich who don't have to work for a living than with skills. It was done 200 years earlier.
I found it fascinating.
Posted by: pj on May 3, 2004 07:49 AMK(tiny)Harris writes "personal best 45'3" as a high schooler"
Wow
Somehow I had this image of you as a rather slight person (like the rest of us) who might not be able to even lift a shotput.
But here you are --too big to play football!! ( So do you have trouble just hitting 1 key or do you have one of those XL heavy duty keyboards? Just a thought.)
Brad reminds us "But it's not 'casting a stone' ". Which gets me to thinking that it must have German origins, but then 'Shotcast' it isn't either.
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