by Bill Fawcett
It Looked Good on Paper
Bizarre Inventions, Design Disasters, and Engineering Follies
Edited by Bill Fawcett
Contents
Introduction: Welcome to the Wonderful World of Failure
Past Imperfect
The Great Stele of Aksum
The Pipes of Rome
The Great Wall of China
The Tower of Pisa
Overwhelming Success
The Sword Pistol
The True Saga of the Pony Express
Thomas Edison’s Insistence on the Use of DC Power
Modern Mistakes
A Bridge Too Thin
Goldie 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
The Biospherians in the Bubble
Mars or Bust
Myopia in Space
The 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
The Quirky Little Amphicar
Plane Thinking
The Spectacular Failure of the Langley Aerodrome
The First U.S. Navy Catapult Launch
Where the Buffalo Drones: The Brewster F2A
Nazi Kamikaze?: The Selbstopfer
A Little Hard to Swallow
Less Bang for More Bucks: The Expensive Saga of the F-111
A Bone of Contention: The B-1 Bomber
Faster Than a Speeding Bullet
When the Chopper Gets Chopped: The RAH-66 Comanche
Double Jeopardy
The Plane Was Invisible Until It Was Killed
Exit Stage Left
Smell-O-Vision: Mixing Odors with Cinema
Nick & Nora: The Musical
By Jeeves
The Big Flop in the Big Top
The End of RSO
RPG Envy
The XFL
Malpractice Assurance
High-voltage Medicine
Radioactivity Is Good for Your Health
“X-ray the Feet; It Sounds Really Neat!”
Thalidomide
A Mainstream Wonder Drug
That Sinking Feeling
The Courageous Saga of the First Submarines
The Sinking of the Vasa
Don’t Blame it on Steam
The Sinking of the Titanic
The Sinking of HMS Hood
We Shall Never Again Surrender!
No Plan Ever Survives Contact with the Enemy
A Whole New Battlefield
A Battle Strategy That Will Take Your Breath Away
Tanks a Lot
The Line Must Be Drawn Here
The End of the Line
A Sword for the Masses
Too Good for Its Own Good
Sneaking in the Front Door
A Very Low-tech Firebomb Campaign
Nuclear Nonsense
The Holy Grail of Firearms
A Heavyweight Too Heavy to Fight
The Double Agent
Sergeant York Misses the Target
The Expensive Pipe Dream of Missile Defense
About the Editor
Other Books by Bill Fawcett
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction
Welcome to the Wonderful World of Failure
Winston Churchill once said that “success was going from failure 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 optimistic 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 designer, 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. 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 thinkers. And you will be able to picture them, like any lesser inventors 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.
“Pride and conceit were the original sins of man.”
—Alain Rene Lesage
The Great Stele of Aksum
E. J. Neiburger
The rise and fall of many civilizations can often be traced to well-planned projects that looked pretty good in theory, but failed miserably upon execution. The story of the Great Stele of Aksum is a wonderful example.
The biblical Queen of Sheba (of Solomon and Sheba fame) built her fifty-two-room palace and ruled her great empire from the city of Aksum, in what is now northern Ethiopia. Two millennia after her death, another great civilization and world power arose from the skills and savvy of the Aksumites who created the ancient Kingdom of Aksum. This world empire extended from Ethiopia and Sudan over the Red Sea and into southern Arabia. It matched, and in some cases exceeded, the size and accomplishments of ancient Egypt, Rome, Greece, and Persia.
The kingdom began in the highlands of northern Ethiopia, the commercial crossroads for trade from Europe and Egypt into Africa. It was also the main trading terminal (seaport) for commerce from Asia, Arabia, and India into east and central Africa. The Sudanese desert and Rift Valley funneled most of Africa’s trade through the rich merchants and rulers of Aksum. The land was very productive, well watered with carefully tended dams, wells, and reservoirs.
The kings of Aksum grew rich on the grain, skins, animals, frankincense, spices, iron, gold, and especially ivory supplied by Ethiopia’s forty thousand elephants, and all this merchandise headed north, out of Africa, into Egypt and on to Arabia, India, Syria, and Europe. They grew filthy rich on metals (gold, silver, and iron), wine, olive oil, and other riches from the northern and eastern lands, which passed through their territory on the way to Africa. The heyday of Aksum was from AD 300 to AD 600. With all this wealth, Aksumite society became well educated, organized, and technically and artistically advanced. They were “hot stuff” and wanted to flaunt it.
In Africa, there is a five-thousand-year-old tradition that rich pe
ople build big monuments, among the biggest, most ostentatious of all monuments, were obelisks. In Ethiopia, these are termed steles. Now these steles were not the usual obelisk structures made in Egypt, or later such as in the U.S. (Washington Monument). They were not made out of bricks and mortar. No, these were super steles made out of the hardest black granite, each made in one gigantic piece—no cheap bricks. It was all or nothing. Not only were the steles made out of hard rock that was difficult to work, and of a single piece (most difficult and expensive to fabricate), but they also had to be expertly carved and designed. To top off the display of wealth, an enormous stele would require thousands of men to build, move, and erect it, thus attesting to the wealth and power of the kings who created the project—or at least, paid the bills for it.
The ancient Egyptians erected twenty-two known obelisks (steles) of which thirteen now stand in Italy. The greatest standing Egyptian obelisk was the 32.16-meter (98 feet) stele erected by Pharaoh Tuthmosis III in Karnak, Egypt. The 1200-ton, 41.7-meter-long Aswan obelisk did not count because it cracked when it was only three quarters completed (during manufacture), was abandoned, and never got out of the quarry. The Aksumite kings planned to outdo the Egyptians with a bigger and greater stele. Better than the 1500 BC Tuthmosis obelisk.
Not only was this a point of flaunting one’s wealth and hailing the greatness of the Aksumite kings, but the stele took on a religious role as well. The Aksumites believed the stele would actively protect the kingdom by piercing the sky and dispersing the negative forces that create storms and empower evil gods to harm the people. In a pagan society, like early Aksum, such concerns were real magic and had to be dealt with. Also, around AD 300 a new religion, Christianity, was staking a foothold in the kingdom and threatening to destabilize the historic order. A firm statement that the pagan gods and kings were in power had to be made. The largest, highest, and most expensive stele in the world seemed to offer a logical and magnificent solution.
So, around AD 330, the Great Stele of Aksum was carved out of granite to join the other smaller seventy-four Aksum steles already erected. This great stele was a billboard designed to announce the power and authority of the ruling dynasty, blessed by the gods and heaven. It was intricately carved, possessing twelve faux doors and windows and polished to a velvetlike smoothness. It weighed 517 tons and stood 33.3 meters (100 feet) high—technically, taller than the largest Egyptian obelisk. In those days, bragging rights were everything. It is said that the gods (or God) carried it from the quarry to the steles field four kilometers away. As it was erected, it stood straight and tall. It was magnificent. The king, the people, and even the pagan gods applauded—for a short while.
There is no record of how long it stood, but the modern estimate, made by scholars and engineers, is a few hours to even a few days. Not long. The Great Stele, inadequately supported by a foundation much too small for its weight, began to list—and then fell flat on its face. The great monument to the kings and their religion fell on the rocky ground and broke into six massive pieces. It must have been devastating beyond measure, because even the kings could not muster enough support and manpower to cart away the rubble that still lies in the middle of the Stele Field in central Aksum.
Talk about a big flop? This was the most abrupt in the ancient world. The message was clear. The kings were weak. The gods were weaker. People were reminded of this whenever they passed the fallen monument. No more steles were built after that time. Paganism quickly declined. And Christianity (with a little Judaism) flourished unrestricted until the coming of Islam in AD 700. The Great Stele looked magnificent on the drawing board, but there were a few problems in its execution. The result sent a completely opposite message to the world from the one intended—at prodigious cost.
“Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.”
—Walter Bagehot
The Pipes of Rome
Chris Powers
Ancient Rome. Two simple words, and they evoke images of implacable legions marching over hairy half-naked barbarians, an empire that spanned the Mediterranean world, crazy emperors, straight roads, bathhouses, central heating, plumbing. Hold that thought.
The Romans were the master engineers of the ancient world. They planned their cities, built huge public works with the aid of concrete, an invention that is still shaping the modern world, and constructed temples and aqueducts that are still standing today.
Eleven aqueducts brought water to Rome through a gravity-driven system of waterways and filtration sumps that fed the public fountains and baths as well as private houses. A network of pipes lay under the city, supplying the private houses of the rich and middle class with all the water they needed for drinking, washing, and flushing—yes, flushing—toilets. Pipes and sewers took it all away again, mostly into the nearest river. That pattern, to a lesser degree, was repeated throughout the empire from Syria to Britain.
At first these pipes were lengths of hollow tree trunks, their tapered shape ideal to slot narrow into wide to form continuous watertight lengths. Then the potters saw a niche market they could exploit, and produced lengths of earthenware pipes that were linked the same way as the tree-pipes. The advantages of these were obvious. They did not rot, and could be made comparatively quickly and easily in different lengths and conformation to cope with corners. The disadvantage was that heavy traffic and very cold weather caused breakages—but the damaged sections could be swiftly repaired. In theory. So the water companies that are today digging up roads of London and other cities to repair broken pipes have a long and noble history.
The next breakthrough solved all problems. In theory. Lead. In conjunction with silver, zinc, and copper, it was mined all over the empire. There were slaves aplenty to do the very dangerous mining, and with a melting temperature of 327.46ºC (621.43ºF) it was easily extracted from the ore and refined. It was shipped from the mines already formed into large ingots, called pigs for their distinctive shape.
Pouring lead into molds for all kinds of household and winemaking utensils was commonplace, and the plumbing industry simply added another way of exploiting its versatility. So before long, crack-proof lead pipes delivered rain water to cisterns, which were frequently lead lined. Lead pipes took water into the baths, houses, and tavernas.
The use of lead, therefore, was uniform and widespread. As lead acetate it was even used as a sweetener in food recipes and wines. All of this in spite of the fact that even back then it was recognized that lead was a toxic metal.
Lead poisoning was recognized by civilizations in the fertile crescent way back in 2000 BC. It was certainly well known in Rome. Julius Caesar’s engineer, Vitruvius, reported on it, and Aulus Cornelius Celsus included it in his list of poisons along with hemlock. In large doses, it is lethal and they knew it. On a lesser scale the damage it can cause is pretty extensive—aggressive and irrational behavior, gout, kidney damage, anemia, seizures, severe and permanent learning disabilities, and male sterility to name a few.
Which brings us right back to the crazy emperors. It has to be said that Rome seemed to have had more than its fair share of lunatics in charge of the asylum, but the symptoms went right through Roman society from top to bottom. But the population grew and there were sesterces to be made which resulted in new construction projects that inevitably meant new plumbing, which meant more lead pipes and cisterns.
Given that the toxic nature of lead was known, yet its usage was not banned or curtailed—an insanity in its own right—it is highly likely that it wasn’t the descendants of the hordes of hairy and half-naked barbarians who brought down the empire. It was the Romans’ own inability to turn away from expediency and the easy option that damaged them from within. Then all it needed was a shove in the right place, and Rome fell, pipes and all.
“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang oft agley.”
—Robert Burns, 1759–1796
The Great Wall of China
Bill
Fawcett
It seems a little strange to include something as enduring as the Great Wall of China in this book. Yet in a very real way the Great Wall was an abysmal failure. In ways other than its primary purpose the wall was a success, not to mention an amazing tourist attraction. But the Great Wall of China never was able to accomplish what it was designed to do, keep the steppe barbarians out of China.
The wall was begun in 214 BC by the first emperor of a united China, Qin Shi Huangdi. It was the most ambitious and costly construction ever attempted up to that time. The sheer scope of the job meant that long sections of the original wall were created by basically connecting the earthen defense walls that already existed into a continuous line. To do this the emperor created a forced labor pool of about three hundred thousand workers. So initially, and for a very long time, the Great Wall was constructed of very long and carefully maintained piles of dirt with the occasional stone fortification scattered along it. It was not until the days of the Ming Dynasty, two millennia later, that the imposing stone structure virtually everyone has seen pictures of was built.