Trebuchets seem to be all over the TV nowadays, from Mail Call to Modern Marvels. Interest seems to have sprung (been flung?) from nowhere in the past decade. A trebuchet was used to fling a cow in Monty Python And The Holy Grail in 1975, but I don’t recall them becoming a ‘sensation’ until after ‘Chris’ built one in an episode of Northern Exposure (and was disappointed that someone had already flung a cow). Is Northern Exposure responsible for the recent interest in this ancient weapon?
I would guess that video games have a fair amount to do with it, but it’s a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg deal, as it always is when dealing with cultural phenomena.
Seems to me some of this might be due to good ol’ Dave Barry .
The Wiki article on pumpkin chunkin’ dates it to 1986, although it doesn’t specify when trebuchets and catapults made their first appearance.
**Northern Exposure ** aired from 1990-1995.
I seem to recall an issue of Popular Mechanics from perhaps the late 1970s where the cover featured a trebuchet hurling a Mini across a farmer’s field in Britain.
So how’s this for a theoretical timeline?
[ul][li]Monty Python And The Holy Grail shows a trebuchet (1975);[/li][li]A Brit, perhaps inspired by MP&THG, builds a trebuchet to fling a Mini (late-1970s);[/li][li]Some people are sitting around and decide hurling pumpkins would be fun. They build a device to do so. It catches on and contests ensue. Someone tries a trebuchet (1986);[/li][*]Northern Exposure, a popular television show, features the building and use of a trebuchet in one of its episodes (February 3, 1992). Popularity of the show end the fairly recent fad of ‘punkin chunkin’ catapults the trebuchet into the popular imagination.[/ul]