Pigeon guided missiles : and 49 other ideas that never took off
"During World War II, behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner discovered that pigeons could be trained to recognize an object and to peck at an image of it; when loaded into the nose-cone of a missile, these pecks could be translated into adjustments to the guidance fins, steering the projectile to its target{u2014}a plan that was abandoned by the US Navy for more conventional solutions. This guide reveals this and other fascinating tales of daring plans from history designed to change the world, yet which ended in failure, or even disaster. Some became the victims of the eccentric figures behind them, others succumbed to financial and political misfortune, and a few were just too far ahead of their time. Discover why the great groundnut scheme cost British taxpayers ℗Đ49 million; why the bid to build Minerva, a whole new country in the Pacific Ocean, sank; and why the first Channel Tunnel (started in 1881, more than a century before the one we know today) hit a dead end."--Publisher description
eBook, English, 2011
History Press, Brimscombe Port, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK, 2011
History
1 online resource (254 pages : illustrations)
1150951933
Pigeon-guided missiles
The international 'hot air' airline
The 'Spruce Goose'
A sound plan for defence
The diabolical death ray
Tesla's earthquake machine
Edison's concrete furniture
The misplaced Maginot Line
The graet 'Panjandrum'
The first Channel Tunnel
London's Eiffel Tower
Nelson's pyramid
Wren's missing marvels
The tumbling abbey habit
Why Lutyen's cathedral vanished
New York's doomed dome
Exploding traffic lights
The steam-powered passenger carriage
Flying cars
The atomic automobile
The X-ray shoe-fitting machine
The cure that killed
The 'cloudbuster'
The brand new continent of Atlantropa
A nation build on sand
The Darien debacle
The lost US state of Transylvania
The French republican calendar
Latin Monetary Union
A tax on light and air
Paxton's orbital shopping mall
Cincinnati's subway to nowhere
Is it a train or a plane?
How the Cape to Cairo railway hit the buffers
From Russia to America by train
British rail's flying saucer& the 'great space elevator'
Why the bathyscaphe was the depth of ambition
The perpetual motion machine
Brunel's not so Great Eastern
Bessemer's anti-seasickness ship
Escape coffins for the mistakenly interred
Chadwick's miasma-terminating towers
Bentham's all-seeing panopticon
The self-cleaing house
The jaw-dropping diet
A nutty plan to feed the masses
Ravenscar: the holiday resort that never was
Why Smell-O-Vision stank
The metal cricket bat
Bicycle polo & other lost Olympics sports
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