Have you ever asked yourself who really invented the Internet or came up with www? If you ask a Czech, they will tell you “Jára Cimrman, of course!” This nationally recognized hero is, in fact, not real. However, while anything and everything that ever was invented seems to be credited to Cimrman, it was Jiří Šebánek, Ladislav Smoljak, and Zdeněk Svěrák who actually created Cimrman around 1966 on a radio show as sort of a caricature of Czech culture.

By 2005, Cimrman was voted to be The Greatest Czech (against kings and leaders) on a Czech television show, although he was disqualified for not being real. Perhaps, this is one of the many reasons I adore these Czech people – the love of the absurd and the amount of detail they will put into making this fictional character come alive.

     

If you google Jára Cimrman you will find a huge list of achievements, including:

  • Greatest Czech playwright, poet, composer, teacher, traveller, philosopher, inventor, detective, mathematician, and sportsman
  • Proposed the Panama Canal to the US government, while composing a libretto for an opera of the same name
  • Deported from Germany as an anarchist, his personal documents carrying a note that he was “a source of unrest.” This led the Swiss company Omega to offer him a job to improve the unrest – balance wheel – for their Piccolo line of ladies watches
  • Introduced (and practiced for some time) the profession of obstetrician
  • Conducted investigations into the life of Arctic cannibalistic tribes; once, while running away from the furious tribe, he missed the North Pole by a mere seven meters, thus almost becoming the first human to reach the North Pole
  • Created the first puppet show in Paraguay
    Established the school of criminology, music, and ballet in Vienna
  • Invented yogurt
  • Assisted great scientists such as Mr. and Mrs. Curie
  • Assisted Prof. Burian with his first plastic surgery
  • Reworked the electrical contact on Edison’s first light bulb
  • Found a sublet for Mr. Eiffel
  • Creator of philosophy of Externism
  • Advised Mendeleev on the Periodic Table

It is also said that when Alexander Graham Bell invented his telephone, he found three missed calls from Jára Cimrman upon making his first connection. Another one of his great inventions was also the Internet itself, although without the widespread use of computers. His “internet” basically consisted of an old circus tent where he had a bunch of retired teachers answering all kinds of questions. He came up with www because he had a teacher named Weber who stuttered “w-w-w Weber.” The Jára Cimrman Wikipedia page states that his physical appearance is a mystery, allowing him to be vaguely represented, as there are no photos of him.

Today, there are people from the Jára Cimrman Theatre located in Žižkov that call themselves Cimrmanologists and pretend to be enthusiastic scholars who explore and analyze Cimrman’s life and work. The theater company has performed four plays in English. For decades they believed the plays would not be translatable due to the play on Czech language. The weekend english performances have large attendance due to the well done story translations. For more information on the english performances, please see the theater website.