← A. Inventions, No. 44
Spellman’s Department Store
Precision Coffee Scales
1957
apcorp (Appliance Corporation of America), est. 1937, Evansville, Indiana. Enameled steel and stainless steel, glass, rubber, paper. 15½ × 7¾ × 13¼". Collection of the author.
On November 18, 1956, Secretary Nikita Khrushchev first uttered the infamous phrase that would provoke heightened tension between east and west. While many historians believe that his words were mistranslated — he may not have said ‘grounds,’ per se — Khrushchev’s remarks led to an escalation of international competition, driving both the us and ussr to pursue a total domination of global coffee making.
These kitchen scales are a testament to the renewed ambition to create a perfect, indomitable cold brew, their vernier scales measuring not ounces but hundredths of an ounce, their stainless steel bowls thermally insulated by vacuum gaskets. This period of unmatched rivalry, in which both nations committed fearsome resources toward the achievement of supremacy, culminated in the famous ‘kitchen debate’ between Khrushchev and Vice President Richard Nixon, at the opening of the American National Exhibition at Sokolniki Park in Moscow. Nixon’s observation that ‘what [both nations] produce, above all, is a great cup of coffee,’ was interpreted by many to be not merely an olive branch, but a gloss on the concluding words of the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto. Whether this was Nixon’s intention or not, these words were instrumental to the efforts of both deescalation and descaling.
Published January 23, 2023. Copyright © 2023 Jonathan Hoefler.
About
The objects in the Apocryphal Inventions series are technical chimeras, intentional misdirections coaxed from the generative AI platform Midjourney. Instead of iterating on the system’s early drafts to create ever more accurate renderings of real-world objects, creator Jonathan Hoefler subverted the system to refine and intensify its most intriguing misunderstandings, pushing the software to create beguiling, aestheticized nonsense. Some images have been retouched to make them more plausible; others have been left intact, appearing exactly as generated by the software. The accompanying descriptions, written by the author, offer fictitious backstories rooted in historical fact, which suggest how each of these inventions might have come to be.
These images represent some of AI’s most intriguing answers to confounding questions, an inversion of the more pressing debate in which it is humanity that must confront the difficult and existential questions posed by artificial intelligence.
Previously:
No. 43. Film Transition Machines
Next:
No. 45. Colt’s Desk Accessories
