It Looked Good on Paper: Bizarre Inventions, Design Disasters, and Engineering Follies

364 Pages·2009·1 MB·English

by  Bill Fawcett

It L ked
Good on Paper
Bizarre Inventions, Design Disasters,
and Engineering Follies
EDITED BY
BILL FAWCETT

Contents
Introduction: Welcome to the Wonderful World of Failure vii
Past Imperfect 1
The Great Stele of Aksum 3
The Pipes of Rome 7
The Great Wall of China 10
The Tower of Pisa 13
Overwhelming Success 17
The Sword Pistol 20
The True Saga of the Pony Express 22
Thomas Edison’s Insistence on the Use of DC Power 27
Modern Mistakes 33
A Bridge Too Thin 35
Goldie the Goldfish’s Really, Really Big Cousins 40
Overcooking with Atoms 46
Contamination in the Hills: The Santa Susana Field
Laboratory 51
Under Pressure: The First Space Walk 60
The Biospherians in the Bubble 63
Mars or Bust 67
iv Contents
Myopia in Space 80
The Starr Report 83
When Good Ideas Are Ignored Just Long Enough to
Turn Very, Very Bad 89
Y2K 92
Auto Absurdities 95
Starter Problems 97
Well, It Worked for Trains . . . 100
Here They Go Again . . . the People’s Car 103
Built Ford Tinderbox Tough 107
The Quirky Little Amphicar 110
Plane Thinking 115
The Spectacular Failure of the Langley Aerodrome 117
The First U.S. Navy Catapult Launch 122
Where the Buffalo Drones: The Brewster F2A 126
Nazi Kamikaze?: The Selbstopfer 133
A Little Hard to Swallow 137
Less Bang for More Bucks: The Expensive Saga of
the F-111 142
A Bone of Contention: The B-1 Bomber 154
Faster Than a Speeding Bullet 165
When the Chopper Gets Chopped: The RAH-66
Comanche 170
Contents v
Double Jeopardy 181
The Plane Was Invisible Until It Was Killed 185
Exit Stage Left 191
Smell-O-Vision: Mixing Odors with Cinema 193
Nick & Nora: The Musical 196
By Jeeves 202
The Big Flop in the Big Top 206
The End of RSO 210
RPG Envy 215
The XFL 220
Malpractice Assurance 225
High-voltage Medicine 227
Radioactivity Is Good for Your Health 232
“X-ray the Feet; It Sounds Really Neat!” 238
Thalidomide 243
A Mainstream Wonder Drug 247
That Sinking Feeling 253
The Courageous Saga of the First Submarines 255
The Sinking of the Vasa 260
Don’t Blame it on Steam 264
The Sinking of the Titanic 268
The Sinking of HMS Hood 272
vi Contents
We Shall Never Again Surrender! 276
No Plan Ever Survives Contact with the Enemy 281
A Whole New Battlefield 283
A Battle Strategy That Will Take Your Breath Away 288
Tanks a Lot 293
The Line Must Be Drawn Here 299
The End of the Line 305
A Sword for the Masses 307
Too Good for Its Own Good 309
Sneaking in the Front Door 311
A Very Low-tech Firebomb Campaign 317
Nuclear Nonsense 320
The Holy Grail of Firearms 323
A Heavyweight Too Heavy to Fight 328
The Double Agent 334
Sergeant York Misses the Target 338
The Expensive Pipe Dream of Missile Defense 346
About the Editor
Other Books by Bill Fawcett
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction
Welcome to the
Wonderful World of Failure
Winston Churchill once said that “success was going from fail-
ure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” Gathered in
this book is a collection of flawed plans, half-baked ideas, and
downright ridiculous machines that, with the best and most op-
timistic intentions, men have constructed throughout history.
Some failed spectacularly, others fizzled after great expense, one
crashed on Mars and a few of these amazing broken ideas are
still in use today. While this is a book about ideas and things
men make that have failed, it is not a technical manual. Rather
it is a fun collection that shows how an otherwise brilliant de-
signer, scientist, architect, or doctor can often spend years or
millions of dollars creating something that a few small bits of
common sense would have prevented. This book begins looking
at some of history’s mad plans and ends with an area that has
seen more than probably any other really stupid designs, the
military. In between we look at autos, medicine, some really bad
government plans, planes that didn’t fly, and ships that sank.
viii Introduction
Feel free as you read to wonder how anyone as brilliant as many
of the men who created these masterpieces of failure could have
gone so far down the wrong path. These are not the creations
of fools, but of men like Edison, top auto designers, the man
who created the first airplane, rocket and nuclear scientists, and
many others whose names you will recognize as revered think-
ers. And you will be able to picture them, like any lesser inven-
tors throughout history, just shrugging their shoulders with a
wan smile as their bright idea fails and murmuring that final
excuse, “It looked good on paper.” And keep in mind, despite
all of these failed plans progress has continued to march on.
Probably chuckling knowingly as it passes them by.
“Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.”
—Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives
Past Imperfect
We tend to think of crazy designs and badly engineered structures
as modern phenomena, but they have been around as long as man
has strived to create the new and different. Somewhere still buried
in a cave has to be the prototype of a square wheel.