It looked good on paper
Subtitle: bizarre inventions, design disasters, and engineering follies
By: edited by Bill Fawcett
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2009
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 350
ISBN-13: 9780061358432
Other titles: Bizarre inventions, design disasters, and engineering follies
Description: 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.
Table of contents: title: Introduction:  Welcome to the wonderful world of failure; title: Past imperfect; title: Great Stele of Aksum; title: Pipes of Rome; title: Great Wall of China; title: Tower of Pisa; title: Overwhelming success; title: Sword pistol; title: True saga of the pony express; title: Thomas Edison's insistence on the use of DC power; title: Modern Mistakes; title: Bridge too thin; title: Goldie and the goldfish's really, really big cousins; title: Overcooking with Atoms; title: Contamination in the hills: the Santa Susana Field laboratory; title: Under pressure: the first space walk; title: Biospherians in the bubble; title: Mars or bust; title: Myopia in space; title: Starr report; title: When good ideas are ignored just long enough to turn very, very bad; title: Y2K; title: Auto Absurdities; title: Starter problems; title: Well, it worked for trains; title: Here they go again ... the people's car; title: Built Ford Tinderbox tough; title: Quirky little amphicar; title: Plane thinking; title: Spectacular failure of hte Langley Aerodrome; title: First US Navy catapult launch; title: Where the buffalo drones: the Brewster F2A; title: Nazi Kamikaze?: the Selbstopfer; title: Little hard to swallow; title: Less bang for more bucks: the expensive saga of the F-111; title: Bone of contention: the B-1 bomber; title: Faster than a speeding bullet; title: When the chopper gets chopped: the RAH-66 comanche; title: Double jeopardy; title: Plane was invisible until it was killed; title: Exit stage left; title: Smell-o-vision: mixing odors with cinema; title: Nick & Nora: the musical; title: By Jeeves; title: Big flop in the big top; title: End of RSO; title: RPG envy; title: XFL; title: Malpractice assurance; title: High-voltage medicine; title: Radioactivity is good for your health; title: X-ray the feet; it sounds really neat!; title: Thalidomide; title: Mainstream wonder drug; title: That sinking feeling; title: Courageous saga of the first submarines; title: Sinking of the VASA; title: Don't blame it on steam; title: Sinking of the Titanic; title: Sinkin of HMS Hood; title: We shall never again surrender!; title: No plan ever survives contact with the enemy; title: Whole new battlefield; title: Battle strategy that will take your breath away; title: Tanks a lot; title: Line must be drawn here; title: End of the line; title: Sword for the masses; title: Too good for its own good; title: Sneaking in the front door; title: Very low-tech firebomb campaign; title: Nuclear nonsense; title: Holy Grail of firearms; title: Heavyweight too heavy to fight; title: Double agent; title: Sergeant York misses the target; title: Expensive pipe dream of missle defense.