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

[RamboLiberal]

From Amazon.com

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.

[baldguy]

1. Supply-side economics

Seriously though, Hubble shouldn't be there. It's initial problems weren't due to problems with the concept or any design flaws - the supplier of the mirror deviated from the specs and ground it incorrectly, and their QC process failed to catch it. If anything it was a failure of project management and execution, not the engineering & design.

[pscot]

2. The Tacoma Narrows bridge

AKA the GeorgeWashington bridge, AKA Galloping Gertie became a local legend Youtube has the pictures:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-zczJXSxnw&feature=related