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

A remarkable compendium of wild schemes, mad plans, crazy inventions, and truly glorious disasters Every phenomenally bad idea seemed like a good idea to someone. How else can you explain the Ford Edsel or the sword pistol—absolutely absurd creations that should have never made it off the drawing board? It Looked Good on Paper gathers together the most flawed plans, half-baked ideas, and downright ridiculous machines throughout history that some second-rate Einstein decided to foist on an unsuspecting populace with the best and most optimistic intentions. Some failed spectacularly. Others fizzled after great expense. One even crashed on Mars. But every one of them at one time must have looked good on paper, including: The lead water pipes of Rome The Tacoma Narrows Bridge—built to collapse The Hubble telescope—the $2 billion scientific marvel that couldn't see The Spruce Goose—Howard Hughes's airborne atrocity: big, expensive, slow, unstable, and made of wood With more than thirty-five chapters full of incredibly insipid inventions, both infamous and obscure, It Looked Good on Paper is a mind-boggling, endlessly entertaining collection of fascinating failures. Introduction: Welcome to the wonderful world of failure Past imperfect Great Stele of Aksum Pipes of Rome Great Wall of China Tower of Pisa Overwhelming success Sword pistol True saga of the pony express Thomas Edison's insistence on the use of DC power Modern Mistakes Bridge too thin Goldie and the goldfish's really, really big cousins Overcooking with Atoms Contamination in the hills: the Santa Susana Field laboratory Under pressure: the first space walk Biospherians in the bubble Mars or bust Myopia in space Starr report When good ideas are ignored just long enough to turn very, very bad Y2K Auto Absurdities Starter problems Well, it worked for trains Here they go again ... the people's car Built Ford Tinderbox tough Quirky little amphicar Plane thinking Spectacular failure of hte Langley Aerodrome First US Navy catapult launch Where the buffalo drones: the Brewster F2A Nazi Kamikaze?: the Selbstopfer Little hard to swallow Less bang for more bucks: the expensive saga of the F-111 Bone of contention: the B-1 bomber Faster than a speeding bullet When the chopper gets chopped: the RAH-66 comanche Double jeopardy Plane was invisible until it was killed Exit stage left Smell-o-vision: mixing odors with cinema Nick & Nora: the musical By Jeeves Big flop in the big top End of RSO RPG envy XFL Malpractice assurance High-voltage medicine Radioactivity is good for your health X-ray the feet; it sounds really neat! Thalidomide Mainstream wonder drug That sinking feeling Courageous saga of the first submarines Sinking of the VASA Don't blame it on steam Sinking of the Titanic Sinkin of HMS Hood We shall never again surrender! No plan ever survives contact with the enemy Whole new battlefield Battle strategy that will take your breath away Tanks a lot Line must be drawn here End of the line Sword for the masses Too good for its own good Sneaking in the front door Very low-tech firebomb campaign Nuclear nonsense Holy Grail of firearms Heavyweight too heavy to fight Double agent Sergeant York misses the target Expensive pipe dream of missle defense. From the Publisher: A remarkable compendium of wild schemes, mad plans, crazy inventions, and truly glorious disasters. Every phenomenally bad idea seemed like a good idea to someone. How else can you explain the Ford Edsel or the sword pistol-absolutely absurd creations that should have never made it off the drawing board? It Looked Good on Paper gathers together the most flawed plans, half-baked ideas, and downright ridiculous machines throughout history that some second-rate Einstein decided to foist on an unsuspecting populace with the best and most optimistic intentions. Some failed spectacularly. Others fizzled after great expense. One even crashed on Mars. But every one of them at one time must have looked good on paper, including: The lead water pipes of Rome. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge-built to collapse. The Hubble telescope-the $2 billion scientific marvel that couldn't see. The Spruce Goose-Howard Hughes's airborne atrocity: big, expensive, slow, unstable, and made of wood. With more than thirty-five chapters full of incredibly insipid inventions, both infamous and obscure, It Looked Good on Paper is a mind-boggling, endlessly entertaining collection of fascinating failures. Includes military, scientific, commercial, and infrastructure disasters such as: The Lead water pipes of Rome; Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse; Edison's electrical folly; Betamax; Concorde crash; Hubble - A $2 billion telescope that didn't work; the Mars probe failures due to simple math mistakes; Cold Fusion; and, Ford Pinto.