Harry Eng, the Master of the “Impossible Bottle”

https://www.puzzlemuseum.com/puzzles/amb/eng_botts/harry-eng.htm

by fortran77 • 6 years ago

218 86 6 years ago

noman-land11• 6 years ago

I love impossible objects. I've been obsessed with them since discovering them in the late 90s. Eng is a legend in the field.

My favorite part of this hobby is that no one will tell you how they made their bottles unless you're a fellow bottle maker. The whole point is to encourage people to try their own ideas.

I was inspired to make a number of these myself out of curiosity. I used to email these guys as a teenager and exchange techniques.

Deck of cards in a bottle is really fun and impressive. Total mind f. The ones with the cellophane wrapper still in are just great.

http://bottlemagic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Cards-in-B...

Rubik's cube in a jar is a great one.

http://images.penguinmagic.com/images/products/original/1258...

And I think my favorite of all, the baseball in the salsa jar. Maybe my favorite art object in the world.

http://bottlemagic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/MLB-in-Sal...

Also a really fun conversation piece to have on a desk or at home. You have no idea how angry people get when you won't confirm or deny their theories and tell them to try it themselves. No you can't just push the baseball in by force.

Just to give you an idea of how insane these people are in their quest. It is said that Eng invented a tiny vice that could be disassembled, fed piece by piece into a bottle and reassembled inside. A bent coin would be fed through the neck of the bottle and the vice would be used to unbend the coin inside the bottle. The vice is then disassembled and removed.

6nf3• 6 years ago

Hmmmm you could maybe force the baseball through a metal tube that's just barely small enough to pop out in the bottle without breaking the bottle? Otherwise you'd have to do some weight reduction surgery around the equator of the baseball which gets inflated again using a one-way valve hidden between the seams?

noman-land11• 6 years ago

One unwritten rule with these things is that you can't "cheat". For example put an empty box of cards in the bottle and then fill it with sand. If it's a baseball, it's a baseball, not a balloon wrapped in leather.

aj74• 6 years ago

You have never held a baseball, or seen its ~30% deformation when it is hit by a bat that reverses its momentum. It is hard. One fellow just does card decks. Perhaps he has a set of special tools. But a baseball?

mrandish• 6 years ago

I don't actually know how it was done but based on the apparent 'ethos' of makers of impossible bottles, I would guess it's probably a legit baseball and still contains original baseball contents. It seems that these puzzle-makers are creating for the appreciation of their fellow constructors as much as they are for us newbs. I expect the 'good ones' don't rely on easy cheats as much as extreme cleverness, bespoke tools and jigs and painstaking specialized labor.

My guess as to the method is the maker partially unstitched the baseball at the seam and then cut the insides into slices. Then restitched the baseball with enough pieces absent to fit through the bottle's neck and leaving a large enough opening in the seam to insert the remaining pieces once in the bottle. Insert the partially open, partially full baseball then insert the pieces, perhaps with double-sided tape pre-applied so they remain in proper position. Then stitch the open seam closed.

hinoki• 6 years ago

My first guess was that the centre of the baseball, without the leather, could fit through the mouth. Then the baseball is carefully re-stitched.

If that’s the way it was done, it would need quite a bit of skill and patience!

raldi• 6 years ago

It's apparently extremely difficult even to stitch up a baseball without the jar.

ww520• 6 years ago

Most baseball cores are made of wood cork. When socked in hot water, it can be "cooked" until soft. Then it can be squeezed into the bottle. When dried, the cork restores to its original round shape and hardness.

matsemann• 6 years ago

Cool, no idea how they are done. It's always fun discussing how such objects are made.

I've spent some time making impossible objects as well. A different kind of impossible, where the object changes appearance based on where it's viewed from.

https://github.com/Matsemann/impossible-objects

mstade• 6 years ago

This blows my mind – well done and thanks for sharing!

StavrosK• 6 years ago

Oh that looks really fun as well!

noman-land11• 6 years ago

Wow I love these so much.

IAmGraydon• 6 years ago

My first guess on the baseball is soak it in liquid nitrogen to shrink it a bit, put it in the jar and then let it come up to room temp.

dkersten• 6 years ago

I have a “playing cards in a bottle” one on my desk as a reminder that seemingly impossible things often are quite possible, given enough imagination, patience and perseverance.

jandrese2• 6 years ago

The big wooden sign in the jar is jaw dropping. I figure he must have cut it into sticks, fed them in, then glue it together then sand down and finish the outside to hide the lines.

I assume the padlock had to be disassembled and then reassembled inside the jar as well.

WalterBright3• 6 years ago

The deck of cards could be inserted by:

1. removing all the cards from the box

2. unfolding the box

3. rolling the box into a tube so it will fit into the bottle

4. unrolling and refolding the box in the bottle

5. roll each card, insert in bottle, unroll

6. put the cards back in the box

Of course, doing all this would be very tedious, and would be easier if one used some specialized tools, but it's doable.

noman-land11• 6 years ago

If you look at this one. You'll notice there's not enough vertical room in the bottle to for both the box and a card to slide in from the top. The bottle would need to be twice as tall.

http://bottlemagic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Cards-in-B...

WalterBright3• 6 years ago

Basically, all of them look like some form of disassembly, insertion, and reassembly inside the bottle. Much like ship-in-a-bottle. Still impressive, though.

function_seven3• 6 years ago

The wooden sign is even more astonishing. Assuming that your guess is correct (sliced, inserted, glued), then the engraving on the front would need to take the kerf of the saw cut into account, or else it would show.

Wait, now that I think about it, I bet it was split rather than sawed. The photo on the site is fairly lo-res, but it does look like straight-grained wood that would split straight, and would seamlessly glue back up. And it would reduce the amount of surface work needed afterward. Each piece would key into the next.

mattnewton• 6 years ago

How would you split it without leaving tooling marks at the top though?

munificent• 6 years ago

then the engraving on the front would need to take the kerf of the saw cut into account, or else it would show.

Or just engrave the pieces after they're cut while they're clamped together.

rkangel• 6 years ago

I was assuming that the wood was steamed and then compressed. It depends what sort of wood that is.

fortran77• 6 years ago

There are many woods that can be steamed compressed, and then re-expanded with boiling water.

jandrese2• 6 years ago

I have a tough time believing there are any that can be compressed to a tenth of their original size and then rebound back to full size.

IncRnd2• 6 years ago

The note next to the picture with the wooden sign says, "Our venerable curator has gone nearly blind with a magnifying glass but has failed to find any sign of breaks or glue in this plank."

bb883• 6 years ago

That's important because the edge of the board is right next to the glass so any imperfections would be caught instantly.

jayd16• 6 years ago

How reliable is that flavor text? There appears to be a few dark lines running horizontally (could just be more grain though).

rossjudson• 6 years ago

No particular need to sand down the outside. A veneer can be glued on. The veneer could be rolled up, inserted, unrolled, and then applied.

cerebrum• 6 years ago

Possibly softened it through steam, look for "Impossible nail through wooden block" in this thread.

ArchD• 6 years ago

I wonder if these bottles can get past a TSA airport security check without breaking them open.

raxxorrax• 6 years ago

Side note: "eng" means narrow, tight or cramped in German.

...fitting.

JadeNB• 6 years ago

And 'fitting' is, of course, the only adjective that could be used here. :-)

fit2rule• 6 years ago

I kid you not, I thought that pun was pretty knapp.

aj74• 6 years ago

Fraud, involving a means of removing and reattaching the bottle base, is much more likely than any of the methods I see suggested here.

Applejinx3• 6 years ago

Kind of defeats the purpose and is waaaaay more boring than what's really going on.

raverbashing• 6 years ago

Unless you're making a legally binding agreement (or for example, advertising) that the bottle has not been cut, it's not fraud.

ganafagol2• 6 years ago

If that was the case then there would be a larger variety of objects in the bottles. Even taking into account that the creators want to keep their stories "kind of" believable.

plutonorm• 6 years ago

I don't believe it. If there were a mastery to this, it would be shared. All that's happening is they are cutting the bottom off and sealing. If I'm wrong show me a method for one of the simpler designs.

Applejinx3• 6 years ago

I think the simplest design would be the classic, literal, 'ship model built in a bottle'. And with that, it's literally all about manual dexterity in gluing together a model of a boat with all the parts glued on from the end of long tweezers and similar tools. In that case there's nothing 'impossible', it's just an incredibly tedious and painstaking process, and that's the only point of it.

mec31• 6 years ago

It’s like pulling teeth through the anus. Theoretically possible, but very, very difficult.

marcinzm• 6 years ago

The page literally has a step by step guide for one of the simpler designs.

rv-de• 6 years ago

won't most people just outright dismiss the challenge by assuming the bottom was cut off and reattached?

https://www.puzzlemuseum.com/puzzles/amb/eng_botts/images/en...

There must be a general idea how this has been done if not through bottom off and on.

lapinot• 6 years ago

See also the classic spirit bottle with a pear inside: https://www.instructables.com/id/Grow-a-Pear-in-a-Bottle/. My neighbors did a couple some times ago, it's actually quite tricky gardening-wise, you need to trim the pear buds, need to shade it partially during shiny days for it not to rot etc.

noman-land11• 6 years ago

I've always wanted to try this. Such a cool effect.

kanobo2• 6 years ago

The obvious explanation is we're living in a simulation and the modellers are just having some fun. Very interesting article btw!

BottleMagic1• 6 years ago

Wow! Thanks for putting links up to my website. I r've been making Impossible Bottles for over 20 years. Harry Eng is my inspiration and I'm following in his footsteps. I've even duplicated 7 of his bottles so far. They are fun yet do take time to make.

kanobo2• 6 years ago

Thanks for the site! For us upvoting your site it'll only be fair if you share with us how you duplicated those 7 bottles.

Harry Eng, the Master of the “Impossible Bottle”

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