The Professor's 5 Most Realistic Inventions On Gilligan's Island

The Professor (Russell Johnson) was one of the most memorable characters on "Gilligan's Island." While Johnson was not enthusiastic about his fame from the show, that didn't stop him from becoming a fan-favorite among audiences. The logical and resourceful scientist was often a voice of reason to his fellow castaways, as well as a skilled inventor. From a hot air balloon made from raincoats to a ship horn lie detector, he created some wild concoctions on "Gilligan's Island." 

During the show's three-season run, some of the best storylines and subplots involved his intricate inventions. But not every creation that came from the Professor's head was as ridiculous as the series' premise. With a shipwreck full of scraps and an island littered with bamboo, wood, and vines, the Professor managed to pull off some realistic inventions every now and again.

First appearing in Season 1, Episode 19, "Gilligan Meets Jungle Boy," this human-powered device kept the castaways' clothing clean. With a little elbow grease, the Professor's pedal-based washing machine just might work when stranded on an island. In the show, it is composed of items found on the island and the ship. The container for the laundry is a metal drum once used to store marine lubricant, and the window to see inside is made from a porthole. The seat and pedals were built out of bamboo.

To operate the device, the castaways would have to sit on a stationary structure and pedal a bike crank that spun the clothes through soapy water. Since this machine uses mechanical motion generated by human energy, it does not require electricity. It can also be operated in shifts by others on the island. 

In Season 2, Episode 25, "Operation: Steam Heat," Gilligan (Bob Denver) discovers a hot spring, leading the Professor to believe there may be a volcano on the island. After feeling an increase in the heat and experiencing tremors, he constructs a crude but effective seismometer to measure the tremors' magnitude. 

The device was mostly made from the ever-popular island ingredient bamboo, and the Professor operated it by pulling a roll of paper with a weighted bag attached to the end of the strip. As the paper pulled, a fixed pen pressed against it would graph the size of the tremors.

While not only practical in design, the materials used aren't too hard to track down (so long as you also had a wrecked ship with a paper roll in it). Like ancient pre-electric seismometers, it relies on inertia and requires virtually no human energy. It's also useful, providing warnings of forthcoming eruptions and their sizes.

It goes without saying that pedals were quite popular on "Gilligan's Island." While the group did have hacksaws, Season 2, Episode 17, "You've Been Disconnected" required something with more power. The morning after a violent storm, the castaways find a phone cable washed up on the shore. Hoping to break into the line and call for rescue, they try sawing it with the regular hacksaws to no avail.

The Professor builds a pedal-powered saw that uses one of Eunice's (Natalie Schafer) diamond necklaces as the blade. On a seat made of bamboo, Gilligan pedaled a wooden bike crank attached to a belt made of vine. The rotational energy moved the bamboo structure holding the diamond necklace tight back and forth. However, this failed to penetrate the wire.

What might be the most realistic part of this invention is that it didn't work. Although the design and objective of the machine were plausible, Gilligan was unable to generate enough friction to cut the line.

Admittedly, a French execution device does not sound practical when stranded on an island, but the Professor made it work.

In Season 2, Episode 16, "Not Guilty," the Professor builds the guillotine to split coconuts in half. The simple device was built with only a few components — a blade made from a metal sheet mounted between two bamboo sticks. The sticks stood on a wooden base that the blade dropped on. The wood and bamboo were plentiful on the island, and the metal could be salvaged from the S.S. Minnow or found washed up on the shore.

While there might be easier, simpler ways to halve coconuts, they wouldn't be as fun as the guillotine. Or as funny. In the episode, Gilligan finds newspapers washed ashore reporting the murder of somebody whom every castaway was connected to. After seeing the papers, the Howells find the Professor happily using the guillotine and quickly flee in fright.  

In one of the best episodes of "Gilligan's Island," "The Producer," the Professor shows off his own hand-cranked record player. This device worked because it uses the same mechanisms as old phonographs.

To play the record, all you have to do is turn a crank that spins the turntable (the S.S. Minnow's steering wheel in this case), while a makeshift needle tracks the grooves of the spinning record (which likely belong to the Howells). The music is amplified through a sound horn made from a megaphone.

As intricate as the hand-cranked record player is, its design is relatively practical. The steering wheel and megaphone likely came from the shipwreck, and the opportunity to jam out with fellow castaways and forget troubles would obviously be welcomed. Although there was a record player that the castaways would sometimes use, it was never explicitly shown where it came from or how it was powered.