White Elephant Technology E-Book

John J. Geoghegan

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 200

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

What exactly is White Elephant Technology? White Elephant Technology is any unusual invention past or present that fails in the marketplace despite its innovative nature. From jeeps that fly to tanks that shouldn't; from a wave-powered boat that took over three months to reach its destination to a jet-powered train that shook itself apart, White Elephant Technology showcases each inventor's talent for creating something nobody asked for. Importantly, none of these inventions are speculative. Each one was built, field tested and worked more or less as planned (except when it killed its creator). Although success is highly prized, failure has a lot to teach us, especially when you realise it's the rule and not the exception. Still, no one has undertaken a survey of failed inventions despite history being littered with them … until now. White Elephant Technology corrects this oversight in an entertaining, respectful and occasionally humorous manner, proving that failure is not only as fascinating as success but is also the purest expression of the human condition.

Leseprobe

For anyone who has ever tried doing something different and was told not to.

Cover illustrations: Front: (top) the AVE Mizar flying car; (bottom) the New York Central’s jet-powered M- 497 railcar. Back: the Office Isolator.

First published 2023

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© John J. Geoghegan, 2023

The right of John J. Geoghegan to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 494 9

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed in Turkey by IMAK

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

Mark Twain

Contents

Introduction

1   Hybrids: Making a Boat a Plane

The Swimming Tank;Underwater Aircraft Carriers;Cromwell Dixon’s Sky-Cycle;The Amphicar;Flying Aircraft Carriers

2   Why Some Things Shouldn’t Fly

The Flying Tank;The Aerial Rowboat;The Flying Submarine;The Hafner Rotabuggy;The Perkins Man-Carrying Kite

3   Inventive Deaths

Franz Reichelt and His Wearable Parachute;Henry Smolinski and His Flying Car;Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Dream of Flight;‘Mad’ Mike Hughes and His Flat Earth Rocket;Thomas Midgley and His Ambulatory Device

4   Freezing Your Ass Off: Exploring Harsh Environments

LeTourneau’s Sno-Freighter and Sno-Train;The Rhino;Cosmonaut Recovery Vehicles;Polar Cars and Motorised Sleighs;Admiral Byrd’s Antarctic Snow Cruiser;LeTourneau’s Overland Train Mark II;Desert-Crossing Vehicles

5   All Things Atomic!

Atomic-Powered Aeroplanes;Atomic Lighthouses;The Atomic Tank;The NS Savannah;The Mini Atomic Crawler;The Atomic Cannon;The Davy Crockett Nuclear ‘Mortar’

6   Failures vs Frauds

Dr Moller and the Moller Skycar;The Cooley Air-Ship;Abner Doble’s Model E;The Besler Brothers and Their Steam-Powered Aeroplane

7   Getting There is Half the Fun

Propeller-Driven Cars;Propeller-Driven Snowmobiles;Propeller-Driven Trains;Hover Trains;Jet Trains

8   Things That Don’t Need Improving

Sailboats;Bicycles;Submarines;Cargo Ships;Lawn Mowers;Motorcycles Part I;Motorcycles Part II – Monocycles;Hugo Gernsback: The Office Isolator and Teleyeglasses

9   The Elephants’ Graveyard

The Caspian Sea Monster

10   Just Around the Corner: The Future of WETech

About the Authors

Bibliography

Introduction

We are such stuff as dreams are made on.

  William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1

What exactly is White Elephant Technology?

Simply put, any unusual invention past or present that fails to find a market despite its innovative nature qualifies as White Elephant Technology, or WETech for short.

You’re already familiar with the usual suspects such as flying cars and jet packs, but the majority of inventions covered in this book are ones most people have never heard of. From jeeps that fly to tanks that shouldn’t; from a wave-powered boat that takes forever to reach its destination to a jet-powered train that shook itself apart, White Elephant Technology showcases each inventor’s talent for inventing something nobody asked for. Importantly, none of these inventions are speculative. Each one was built, field tested, and worked more or less as planned except in the case when it inadvertently killed its inventor.

So, why is the study of WETech inventions important?

It’s not always easy to understand why one invention succeeds and another fails. Luck, timing and market conditions have as much to do with it as functionality. Put another way, success for even the cleverest inventor sometimes comes down to a roll of the dice.

When Dean Kamen introduced the Segway in 2001, it was predicted his invention would so revolutionise personal transportation as to become ubiquitous. Kamen even claimed his invention would be the fastest in history to reach $1 billion in sales. And yet, the Razor, a foot-powered scooter introduced the year before for $29.99, sold 50 million units while the Segway sold only 140,000. Despite tremendous hype and financial backing, the Segway was a failure.

Even though we’re told there’s more to be learned from failure than success, there’s no denying our culture prizes success more. Yet this might change if more people realised just how often commercial endeavours fail. For example:

More than 80 per cent of all books, movies, popular music and video games fail to turn a profit

85 per cent of all new grocery products are pulled from supermarket shelves within a year of introduction

And 90 per cent of all patented inventions never earn a dime1

In other words, failure is the rule not the exception.

And high failure rates aren’t confined just to business. Take sport, for example. A baseball batting average of .300 is considered excellent, even though it means a batter fails to hit the ball every seven out of ten times they bat.

Put simply, failure is a significant part of life. That’s why the First Rule of Failure states: the majority of commercial endeavours are unlikely to succeed. This alone makes WETech inventions worthy of study.

High failure rates don’t mean we should stop striving, however. After all, where would we be if Columbus hadn’t failed at finding a better trade route to India, or we’d given up on reaching the Moon after the Apollo 1 fire? The world would be a lesser place. Simply put, we’re better off for trying even when we fail.

Obviously, failure has a lot to teach us. What’s often overlooked, however, is the tremendous amount of talent, perseverance and sheer out-of-the-box thinking that goes into creating something even when it fails. That’s why the ingredients necessary for inventing something new (including grit, ingenuity and optimism) are the same ingredients for success.

Perhaps this is why research into failure is finally catching on. Once confined to academia, medicine and aviation, the study of failure now generates international conferences as well as books, magazine and newspaper articles and research studies. There’s even a Museum of Failure that tours the world. Still, no one has ever undertaken a survey of failed inventions despite history being littered with them. Until now.

White Elephant Technology is written in a light-hearted, easy-to-understand manner. Each entry in the book’s ten, thematically linked chapters explains who the inventor was, how their invention worked, why it failed and what, if anything, we can learn from their mistakes. Numerous photographs, diagrams and illustrations are included depicting what the invention (and in some cases, inventor) looked like. Naturally, humour is inevitable, but the overall take is respectful.

I’ve specialised in reporting on WETech inventions for twenty years. I’ve written about them for the New York Times Science section, Popular Science magazine and Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine among other publications. I’ve even written two non-fiction books and worked on two documentaries with WETech inventions at their core.

Although the technical aspect of many of these inventions is fascinating, what really drew my attention was the heroic investment every inventor makes in their invention, even when it fails. In other words, the story behind the invention is as important as the invention itself. Since many inventions represent years of hard work, financial sacrifice and fierce determination on the part of the inventor, White Elephant Technology is one of the purest expressions of the human condition. No wonder so many inventors refuse to give up.

Hopefully, White Elephant Technology: 50 Crazy Inventions That Should Never Have Been Built, And What We Can Learn From Them captures all the ambition, pitfalls and heartbreak that go into inventing. At the very least, it will cause you to shake your head in wonder while asking the question, ‘What in the world were they thinking?’ Such dedication on the part of an inventor may seem crazy when success remains elusive, but as an Apple computer commercial once noted, ‘It’s the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world that do.’

Where would we be without them?

____________

1 A total of 600,000 patent applications are submitted in the United States each year, of which 326,000 are approved. Source: www.patentrebel.com. Only 2–10 per cent of approved patents earn enough money to maintain their protection. Source: www.inventiontherapy.com.

Chapter 1

Hybrids:Making a Boat a Plane

I have been branded with folly and madness for attempting what the world calls impossibilities … but should this be all, I shall be satisfied.

Richard Trevithick,nineteenth-century British inventor

Some WETech inventions take a mode of transportation and make it do something for which it was never intended. Boats by themselves do a great job of floating while planes comfortably navigate the sky. But combine the two and you compromise their original function, making the boat less seaworthy and the plane more likely to crash. These hybrid combos prove more isn’t necessarily better and it’s often less. Take, for example, the swimming tank.

1 The Swimming Tank

Tanks were known for two things during the Second World War: their mobile fire power and heavy armour, which shielded them against attack. What they weren’t known for was swimming. But the Allies needed to get tanks ashore during D-Day to support the invasion. The goal, then, was to create an amphibious tank that could swim to the beachhead by itself rather than be carried by specialised landing craft. Given the M4A1 Sherman tank weighed 33 tons with armour 3in thick, you’d think making one float was a bad idea. However, such considerations have never stopped a WETech inventor.

Nicholas Straussler, a Hungarian engineer working for the British, was charged with finding the solution. Straussler was a specialist in designing amphibious, off-road vehicles for the military. Still, he faced a considerable problem – overcoming a tank’s weight and lack of buoyancy. His answer was to develop a waterproof flotation device – a canvas skirt surrounding the outside of the tank that displaced enough water to enable it to float. The collapsible skirt, which left the tank’s top and bottom open to the elements, was raised using compressed air. Once inflated, metal scaffolding was snapped into place to provide the skirt with additional support.

The D-Day invasion plan included offloading the swimming tanks 2 miles from shore. Since they sat low in the water, the tank part wasn’t visible to the enemy. In fact, the surrounding skirt made it look like a boat. A periscope extending from the tank’s turret enabled the driver to see where they were going, while they used a compass for navigation. Twin, three-bladed propellers underneath the tank’s rear carriage delivered a maximum speed of 4 knots. They could also be swivelled left and right for steering. An automatic bilge kept the inside of the tank dry. As the tank approached shore, the front of its skirt could be collapsed like an accordion, allowing its 3in gun to fire. Once on land, the rest of the skirt was quickly deflated, enabling it to proceed as a conventional tank.

The DD M4A1 Sherman ‘swimming’ tank. (US Army)

The DD M4A1 Sherman tank (DD stood for Duplex Drive – its two means of propulsion) was a hybrid destined to failure. No one was surprised when military wags began calling it the ‘Donald Duck’ tank.

Straussler’s invention faced several non-trivial problems. First, the tanks were so cumbersome they were difficult to steer in the ocean. Additionally, they sat so low in the water that anything higher than a 2ft wave risked swamping them. Unfortunately, the waves off Omaha Beach the morning of 6 June 1944 were 6ft high.

The moment of truth came when the five-man tank crews had to seal themselves inside their steel-plated coffin before being deployed 3 miles off shore in the middle of a storm. They must have known in the pit of their stomachs that things weren’t going as planned, but they got in anyway – an amazing act of courage. It’s a moment many WETech inventors experience, but in this case the swimming tank’s inventor was safe, warm and dry while someone else paid for his mistakes.

A rear view of the DD M4A1 Sherman tank. (US Army)

Of the twenty-nine swimming tanks launched off Omaha Beach, twenty-seven sank like a stone, some with their tank crews trapped inside. Canadian and British tanks did somewhat better due to calmer seas, but of the 120 tanks launched that day at least forty-two (or more than a third) disappeared beneath the waves.

Straussler worked on a variety of projects after the war, most related to off-road or amphibious vehicles. He fell foul of the British authorities in 1957 when he was charged with violating export controls for selling a truck he’d modified to a Soviet-bloc country. In 1961, he sued the United States for patent infringement, claiming that amphibious military vehicles such as the ‘Otter’ and ‘Duck’ were based on his ideas. He lost the case.

Straussler, who had thirty patents to his name, continued working right up until his death in 1964 at age 75. Although he made other contributions to the war effort, he will always be remembered, not altogether fondly, as the father of the swimming tank.

Two Sherman Duplex Drive tanks recovered from the seabed after D-Day are preserved at the Musée des Epaves Sous-Marine du Débarquement, Port-en-Bessin-Huppain, Normandy, France. A swimming tank can also be seen at the Tank Museum in Dorset, England.

2 Underwater Aircraft Carriers

The idea of an underwater aircraft carrier – a giant submarine that could carry aeroplanes – may seem counter-intuitive but it made sense for certain seafaring countries in the days before radar.

Germany, Great Britain, the United States, Italy, France and Japan all experimented with sub–plane combinations, albeit with mixed results. As crazy as it might sound, there was a strategic reason for a submarine to carry an aeroplane. Subs in the first half of the twentieth century didn’t just sink enemy ships, but were used as scouts to find the enemy fleet. They had a significant drawback, though. They rode so low in the water that their field of vision was limited to 7 miles. But you could dramatically improve a sub’s scouting range if it carried, launched and retrieved its own aircraft. Hence, the underwater aircraft carrier was born.

A captured Japanese I-400 submarine in Sasebo Bay.

Underwater aircraft carriers proved a White Elephant Technology for virtually all the countries that experimented with them. Nevertheless, Japan was determined to make plane-carrying subs a success. The island nation’s experiments began in 1923 when it purchased a floatplane from Germany and began holding sea trials. A crane mounted on a submarine’s deck lowered the seaplane over the side, where it could take off from the water.

As the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) grew in experience, it began adding watertight deck hangars to its subs for storing a collapsible biplane – an important step in integrating the seemingly incompatible. By the autumn of 1928, Japan had progressed far enough that the IJN was satisfied that a sub–plane combination was practical.

When the Second World War broke out, Japan was all in where underwater aircraft carriers were concerned. Eleven plane-carrying subs surrounded the island of Oahu during Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Afterwards, one of the subs stayed behind to launch its plane to survey the damage. Eventually, Japan integrated plane-carrying subs into every combat theatre where its navy fought.

US Navy personnel inspecting the gun of an I-400.

Japan made innovative use of its underwater aircraft carriers. The I-252 twice launched its floatplane in autumn 1942 to drop bombs on Oregon – the first time anyone used a submarine’s aeroplane to attack an enemy’s mainland. By war’s end, Japan had built more than forty-one plane-carrying subs, making it the hands-down expert on this unusual weapon.

The culmination of the underwater aircraft carrier came in the form of Japan’s I-400-class subs. The largest submarines ever built when they began commissioning in 1944, these behemoths were more than a football field long, had a crew of 200 men and could travel one and a half times around the world without refuelling. Additionally, each I-400-class sub carried three attack bombers in a watertight deck hangar, which it launched off its bow using a pneumatic catapult. Originally conceived by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto as a follow-up punch to his attack on Pearl Harbor, a squadron of I-400 subs was on its way to attack US naval forces when the war ended.

The last surviving Aichi M6A1 Seiran was flown by Imperial Japanese Navy Lt Kazuo Akatsuka from Fukuyama to Yokosuka, where he surrendered it to an American occupation contingent. (Transferred from the United States Navy, 1945)

The watertight hanger of an I-400.

Despite Japan’s success, underwater aircraft carriers never caught on as an offensive weapon, in part because technological advancements such as radar and sub-launched missiles made them unnecessary. Still, their legacy endures today in the form of ‘boomers’, ballistic missile subs capable of launching a nuclear attack against an enemy’s mainland. These are the true descendants of the I-400 class of subs, proving that some WETech inventions fail simply because they’re ahead of their time.

The I-400 squadron’s last surviving Aichi M6A1 attack bomber can been seen at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.

3 Cromwell Dixon’s Sky-Cycle

Cromwell Dixon’s Sky-Cycle was unique for its time. Dixon took an everyday bicycle and converted it into a pedal-powered blimp. A true hybrid, Dixon’s Sky-Cycle dispensed with the bicycle’s two tyres while keeping its frame, handlebars, seat and pedals. Dixon even used the bicycle chain to drive a propeller. A silk envelope, 32ft long and 15ft wide, was filled with lighter-than-air hydrogen to keep the whole thing afloat. As Dixon pedalled, the bicycle chain drove a front-mounted propeller while the handlebars, connected by wires to a rear-mounted rudder, were used for steering. But the most novel aspect of Dixon’s Sky-Cycle was the fact it was designed and built by a 14-year-old boy from Columbus, Ohio, in 1907.

The internal combustion engine was relatively new, heavy and unreliable, so not easily adapted to lighter-than-air flight. Besides, Cromwell’s mother thought him too young to fly with something as dangerous as a motor. Dixon’s ingenious solution was to use the proven alternative of pedal power.

To be clear, Dixon had help building his Sky-Cycle. His mother not only used her sewing machine to sew the craft’s gas bag, she helped him raise money for the venture. She even permitted her son to build his Sky-Cycle in their back garden, which, given Dixon manufactured his own highly flammable hydrogen, must have alarmed the neighbours.

Dixon made his first test flight, wearing a cap and plus fours, from Driving Park in Columbus, Ohio, with an American flag trailing behind him.

The New York Times described him as propelling his Sky-Cycle through the air, ‘easily and without trouble … like some great bird’.

Cromwell Dixon steering the Sky-Cycle.

But Dixon’s first flight did not go without a hitch. Although he reached an altitude of 2,500ft, the valve on his yellow-tinted gas bag came loose, allowing precious hydrogen to escape. As his airship began to descend, Dixon coolly slipped off his bike and, reaching up, sealed the valve before returning to his seat. But the Sky-Cycle had lost so much hydrogen it kept falling. Forced to throw whatever he could to lighten the weight, Dixon surrendered his coat and cap to the world below. Disaster was averted when he managed to land safely in a vacant parking lot.

Despite the teething problems, The Times ranked Dixon, ‘as one of the most successful aeronauts in the world’.

‘Why … it’s easy,’ Dixon told the paper of record. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of.’ His mother added, ‘Cromwell is as happy as a King over his successful trip … We are perfectly satisfied with the result.’

Like a lot of WETech inventors, Dixon had shown mechanical aptitude from an early age. Working in a barn behind his house, he built a metal swimming fish out of a wind-up clock. Fascinated by aeronauts of his day, he soon set his sights on becoming one of them.

Cromwell Dixon.

Dixon held an exhibition flight one week after his first test flight, charging 25 cents admission to anyone who wanted to see him take to the sky. Unfortunately (and stories about WETech inventions are always filled with ‘unfortunately’), a fire later destroyed Dixon’s invention. Undeterred, he went to work on an improved Sky-Cycle, which he flew the next month in Worthington, Ohio, reaching an altitude of 3,000ft.

Nicknamed, ‘Bird Boy’, by the press, Dixon and his Sky-Cycle became an overnight sensation. He eventually built seven more dirigibles using money he and his mother raised by issuing $10,000 in stock – a considerable sum at the time. But Dixon’s invention had a drawback: it was seriously underpowered. It worked well enough on a calm day, but it was impossible to generate enough pedal power to combat anything more than a light breeze. As Aerial Navigation noted about one of his flights, ‘Mr Dixon found considerable difficulty in returning to his starting point.’

Dirigibles were eventually superseded by aeroplanes, which caused Dixon to switch his allegiance from lighter-than-air to heavier-than-air flight. In August 1911, he received his pilot’s licence (only the forty-third to be issued), making him the youngest licensed aviator in the world, or so newspapers claimed. That next month, Dixon achieved another first when he flew across the continental divide, surmounting the previously insurmountable Rocky Mountains.

Sadly, one week later Dixon was dead, killed during a demonstration flight at the Spokane Interstate Fair. His last words shortly before take-off were, ‘Here I go!’, after which his plane flipped over. He was only 19 years old at the time.

The truth is, Dixon wasn’t the first to conceive of the Sky-Cycle,3 although his worked best. Nor was he the last. French balloonist Stephane Rousson tried crossing the English Channel in a pedal-powered airship of his own design in 2008. But Rousson ran into the same problem as Dixon – his airship was too underpowered to make the crossing. Proof, if any is needed, that the Sky-Cycle remains White Elephant Technology.

4 The Amphicar

The 1960s were the Age of Aquarius, which is when the Amphicar had its day. A classic hybrid, it was an amphibious car that turned into a boat. It wasn’t the first of its kind, or the last, but it’s probably the most well known.

The brainchild of German industrial designer Hans Trippel, the Amphicar debuted at the New York Auto Show in 1961. With a top speed of 70mph on land and 7mph on water, it was quickly dubbed the ‘Model 770’.

The Amphicar. (Courtesy Lane Motor Museum)

The Amphicar’s rear-mounted, British-built, four-cylinder engine produced an underwhelming 43hp. A four-speed manual transmission drove the wheels on land, while a second gear shift (for forward and reverse) controlled a pair of propellers on the water. Because the Amphicar’s propellers and wheels could be operated simultaneously, it was able to drive itself out of the water once its wheels touched the bottom. Needless to say, operating its propellers when backing up on land could cause a problem.

All Amphicars were convertibles (to assist in rapid sinking) and sold in only four colours: Beach Sand White, Regatta Red, Lagoon Blue and Fjord Green. Since the US Coast Guard considered it a boat, Amphicars had to be outfitted with navigation lights and a flag. Some even sported a boat registration on the side.

President Lyndon Johnson owned an Amphicar. He was said to enjoy driving unsuspecting visitors around his Texas ranch, concluding the tour by sprinting the car into a lake, claiming his brakes had failed.

Manufactured in West Germany and marketed in the United States from 1961 until 1968, Amphicars sold for between $2,800 and $3,300 depending on the model year. Later models actually sold for less – never a good sign. Sales were predicted to reach 25,000 units, but fewer than 4,000 were sold – the vast majority of them in the United States with Britain second.

Time magazine wrote that the Amphicar ‘promised to revolutionise drowning’, but that’s not really fair. In 1965, eight people in two Amphicars successfully crossed the English Channel (with the top up) before driving 372 miles to the Frankfurt Auto Show.