Monkeys on a Typewriter: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* From ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'': After Arthur and Ford are rescued from virtually certain death from asphyxiation in interstellar space, there is a sequence of bizarrely improbable events on board the ship that rescued them—because the ship is powered by the Infinite Improbability Generator. One of these events is Arthur and Ford being approached by "an infinite number of monkeys who want to talk to us about this script for ''Hamlet'' they've worked out."

* ''[[Paper Towns]]''. Q to Ben: "Getting you a date to prom is so hard that a thousand monkeys typing at a thousand typewriters for a thousand years would never once type ''I will go to prom with Ben.''

* Done by the Goliath Corporation in the ''[[Thursday Next]]'' books, but they considerably improve the odds by using (imperfect) clones of Shakespeare instead of monkeys.

* In ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]'', one of the absurd inventions created by the [[Cloudcuckoolander|Laputan]] [[TV Genius|intellectuals]] is a device for randomly combining words so that "the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study".

 

* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S20/E03 Mawdryn Undead|Mawdryn Undead]]", the Doctor and Tegan discuss this trope as it applies to "a treeful of monkeys".

{{quote|'''Doctor''': You and I both know, at the end of a millennium they'd still be tapping out gibberish.

{{quote|"On Time Team tonight, we're in Stratford on Avon, where we've uncovered loads of monkey skeletons and some typewriters."}}

 

* The band Chumbawumba were supposedly named after a word typed by a monkey when somebody actually tried to do this in real life.

 

* Referenced in a ''[[FoxTrot]]'' strip where Peter gets a program to assemble random letters, his logic being that if you put enough monkeys on typewriters to produce ''Hamlet'', then you can surely use a random letter generator to create a ''Hamlet'' book report. Paige then asks about one page which is even more nonsensical that turns out to have been Peter's attempt.

* In ''[[Dilbert]]'':

** Wally [https://dilbert.com/strip/2013-12-12 used it] as a [[Stealth Insult]] to the [[Pointy-Haired Boss]].

 

* ''[[The Ricky Gervais Show]]'' has a segment in which Karl refuses to believe that the monkeys can ever actually write anything, so stubbornly that Ricky ends up storming out on him.

 

* [[Bob Newhart]] had a comedy routine where this experiment was actually being run, and he was one of the monkey handlers. It ended with, "To be, or not to be? That is the gzornnplat."

 

* The entire plot of the one-act play "Words, Words, Words", belonging to the collection ''All in The Timing'', by David Ives, although for practical reasons it only uses three.

 

* The "Infinite Monkeys" arc of ''[[Goats]]''.

* ''[[User Friendly]]'': "[https://web.archive.org/web/20171007031447/http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20051201 These Terrans are sharp.]"

* ''[[Freefall]]'' had an incident with "[http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff3000/fc02935.htm Mr. Kornada's old rival]".

 

 

* In ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'', C. Montgomery Burns has a bunch of monkeys at typewriters.

{{quote|This is a thousand monkeys working at a thousand typewriters. Soon they will have written the greatest novel known to man. ''(takes paper)'' Let's see..." It was the best of times, it was the '''blurst''' of times!?!" You stupid monkey!}}

* In ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'', "Cliptastic Countdown" combines this with [[Who Writes This Crap?]]. Major Monogram demands who wrote the lines, to which Carl the intern replies, "Agent M, sir." We then see a monkey in a fedora at a typewriter, causing Dr. Doofenshmirtz to complain how [[What Are Records?|none of the kids watching will know what a typewriter is]]. Monogram tries to excuse it by say it was cheaper that way, but Doof just continues ranting on the point that they would have to find a typewriter from an antiques dealer.

 

* This was actually tried in the Paignton Zoo in Devon in 2002, where six macaques were given free access to a (protected) computer. Their initial reaction was to pee on it or bash it with a rock; but in time they did start to get the hang of typing. After several months the results were several pages of gibberish, but the letter ''S'' as in ''Shakespeare'' was more prominent than others.

* In a different context: It has frequently been claimed that the value [[π]], being irrational and non-terminating, inevitably contains all possible sequences of numbers at some point in its length. If this is true -- and it has ''not'' yet been confirmed -- then with the correct choice of encoding scheme it should be possible to find the full text of ''Hamlet'' somewhere in it. As well as every possible "almost but not quite" version of ''Hamlet'', including [[In the Original Klingon]]. The kicker, of course, is how long it would take to find the right starting point<ref>It might take geologic time.</ref>.