Though the wizarding world in Harry Potter never got with the times regarding modern technology, there are some Muggle inventions that they frequently use. Overall, magic has made it unnecessary for witches and wizards to use Muggle technology. With access to instant transportation, the ability to summon objects at will, and countless spells that help with domestic tasks, wizards simply don’t need all the inventions that non-magical people have used for decades to make life easier. Still, a few Muggle ideas have seeped into wizarding culture, despite the ever-present prejudice of the magical community in Harry Potter.
There are no electric lights or television sets in Hogwarts Castle of Witchcraft and Wizardry since magic makes them redundant. However, it still seems like a fountain pen might come in handy or that internet access might have cut down the hours Hermione spent searching the library in Harry Potter. Still, the British wizarding world has been extremely selective of the Muggle technology that it adopted, with pure-blood families claiming, according to Wizarding World, that their use was an “admission of magical inadequacy.” Still, this didn’t stop a few conveniences from becoming popular even among the prejudiced elite.
5 Steam Trains Were Adopted By The Ministry Of Magic
Before the 19th century, Hogwarts students would travel to school by any means possible. There was no Hogwarts Express to bring them all at once as in Harry Potter, so Apparition (to Hogsmeade), brooms, or flying magical creatures were a popular choice. However, after the establishment of the International Statute of Secrecy, it became clear to the Ministry of Magic that the risk of Muggle discovery was just too high to continue such unstructured travel year after year. So, Minister Ottaline Gambol came up with a solution.
Having long admired the Muggles’ inventive nature, Gambol suggested that the Ministry use a steam engine to transport Hogwarts students every term. This was met with significant pushback from the pure-blood community, who assumed that such a crude and loud invention would be dirty and demeaning to use. This didn’t stop Gambol, and the Minister for Magic pulled off a massive operation that involved hundreds of memory charms. Over the subsequent decades, even the pure-bloods forgot to be disgusted with the train, and the Hogwarts Express (as seen in Harry Potter) became a normal part of wizarding culture.
4 Magical Cars & Motor Vehicles Became Popular Because Of Their Comfort
The invention of the wheel was significant in both the Muggle and wizarding worlds, so prior to the invention of automobiles, horse-drawn carriages were the norm for the magical and non-magical alike. Even back in the day, it wasn’t uncommon to see an enchanted carriage in a wizarding village, and many magical folks never even considered this an adaptation of Muggle technology. Cars and other motor vehicles, however, would have been a very different story, and upon their invention, many wizards laughed them off.
This all changed once cars began to evolve stylistically and become more luxurious. Over the years, even pure-blood wizards, though they wouldn’t easily admit it, developed a fascination with motor vehicles, and they became popular collector’s items within the wizarding world. Even the Ministry of Magic purchased a fleet of cars and decked them out with a number of enchantments to make them even more comfortable for travel. Mr. Weasley’s flying car in Harry Potter still took this a little further than most, but overall, he wasn’t the only wizard with a passion for classic cars.
3 Indoor Plumbing (With A Magical Twist) Became The Norm In The Wizarding World
Hogwarts Castle has plenty of bathrooms, with one of them even being the secret cover of Slytherin’s Chamber of Secrets seen in Harry Potter. Of course, when the four founders created the school, Muggles had not yet invented indoor plumbing (so the chamber that would later become Moaning Myrtle’s haunt was likely something else). In those days, witches and wizards, like Muggles, would have used chamber pots. Unlike Muggles, they could vanish their ‘business’ with the wave of a wand (along with any lingering smell). Or, as stated on Wizarding World, “[relieve] themselves wherever they stood, and [vanish] the evidence.”
Though these methods were technically sanitary (far more so than the outhouses of the Muggle world), it’s hard to deny that it lacks a certain elegance. What’s more, it likely would have been excruciatingly uncomfortable for Muggle-born witches and wizards to adapt. Ultimately, this might have been why indoor plumbing became a norm for the wizarding world. Bathrooms were added to places like Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic, though they were managed with magic rather than the mechanical intricacies of traditional plumbing.
2 Radios & Record Players Can Be Legally Modified In Harry Potter
Throughout the Harry Potter books, characters are seen using a wizarding radio. Mrs. Weasley demanded one Christmas that her family sit around their radio together and listen to singer Celestina Warbeck, a half-blood witch, belt out a couple of wizarding classics on the Wizarding Wireless Network. Later, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Ron returned to his friends with a small radio, which reacted to various wand taps to tune into different wizarding stations (such as Potterwatch).
It’s unclear precisely how this Muggle technology became so popular in the wizarding world. Based on the frequent presence of record players in Harry Potter, the interest in such things likely started centuries before, and the magical technology organically evolved from there. According to Wizarding World, the 1980s saw a boom in the popularity of televisions among the magical community, but the Ministry of Magic put its foot down against the British Wizarding Broadcasting Corporation—stating that Muggles were more likely to ignore overhearing wizarding radio broadcasts than a slipup on TV.
1 Cameras Can Be Used To Create Harry Potter’s Moving Pictures
The Harry Potter series is never entirely clear about how portraits and images are made to move. It started with paintings, but at some point, the wizarding world adopted the cameras invented by Muggles and made these images move as well. Colin Creevy brought a Muggle camera to Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and was delighted to learn that if he developed his film the right way, his own pictures would also move. As a Muggle-born, it’s assumed his camera was nothing special, yet the magic still did its job.
This implies that wizards needed to do very little to this Muggle technology to adapt it to their own culture and needs. Perhaps, since the days of Harry Potter, the wizarding world has even upgraded to digital cameras, which would mean a whole new world of magical opportunities. In fact, since it has been revealed that Hermione Granger is the British Minister for Magic in the 2020s, even more Muggle technology (with magical alterations) may have made its way into popular wizarding culture—perhaps Hogwarts students are finally permitted to use pen and paper.
Source: Wizarding World
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
