It is a little known fact that Nicolaus Copernicus invented the tap dancing shoe.  The reason he is not often credited with its invention is that Copernicus’ initial intention for the shoe was not as entertainment or even for dancing at all, instead, he intended the footwear to be employed as a means of communication.  Only later did ‘tap dancing’ develop into an art form of its own and it is primarily due to this lag between the original creation of the shoe and the eventual evolution of the dance that Nicolaus Copernicus’ name is not generally associated with these events.

Copernicus, one of history’s greatest thinkers, had a mind of singular focus while also, paradoxically, his thoughts could fly in many directions at once – a veritable whirlwind of activity in one cranium.  His over-arching intellect would concentrate on some specific proposition while lesser tendrils of nearly subconscious thought would weave this way and that, touching on any number of other avenues of approach and analysis across a broad array of interests.  It was his need to delegate some of these secondary inquiries that led Copernicus to seek out some new method for informing his subordinates as to what his particular wants and needs were at the moment without having to interrupt the critical processes and flow of his mind.

And so he set about creating the metal soled footwear that would be his deliverance¹.

He soon found that, using his newly constructed shoes, he could tap out instructions in Morse Code² to his numerous attendants, interns and scribes, laying out the various tasks he wished them to work on while he continued concentrating on the items more important to his primary investigations.  He could do so while sitting at his massive mahogany desk, or while he stood and paced about his work space in thought, or as he moved from one end of his study to the other while in search of some obscure reference volume or scrap of paper showing the results of some previous experiment or other.  All the while his feet would be tapping out important details to his underlings.

Tippity-tappity-tappity-tippity 

His legs and feet would be moving in a blur of activity, flying and flailing all over the place in increasingly intricate patterns of movement and sound while, conversely, his upper body and arms and head would remain stock still, almost rigid – ever committed to the primary task.

Tippity-tippity-tippity 

Copernicus’ feet would go aflutter and aflicflac and sound out yet another set of instructions and one or two of those in attendance would scurry off to carry out some new assignment.  And so it went for the remainder of his career and lifetime.

On his deathbed, it is said, he went out with a flourish.  Despite suffering debilitating paralysis from the waist up, and having been struck quite dumb, a torrent of ideas and observations nevertheless flowed from his prodigious lower extremities in a frenetic final outpouring of brilliance-in-tap across the burnished cherry footboard that would witness his final breaths.

It is no accident of history that he was referred to posthumously by the Inquisition as ‘Crazy Legs Copernicus’  [Crura Rabiosus Copernicusis].