All posts tagged: Century in Motion

In 1934, Chrysler bet big on teardrop-shaped cars

In 1934, Chrysler bet big on teardrop-shaped cars

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletterđź’ˇ Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. From the start, cars were built wrong. At least, that’s what Chrysler’s head of automotive research, Carl Breer, thought in 1930. Automobiles had never been built to be aerodynamic, he posited, and he was right. A few years earlier, he’d consulted aviation pioneer Orville Wright (the younger Wright brother), who suggested he build a wind tunnel. The results were damning: Every car Breer tested was more aerodynamic running backward than forward. That’s because early cars were boxy behemoths, built like motorized carriages. At the time, Buckminster Fuller—American architect, designer, and futurist—was reaching a similar conclusion but from an altogether different angle. While reading Toward an Architecture, the 1923 manifesto of Swiss-French architect and theorist Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, Fuller encountered a table of wind resistance diagrams. The table revealed that an ovoid body—blunt nose, tapering tail—came closer to aerodynamic perfection than anything else a designer could draw. He immediately sketched the blueprint for a car. Breer …

In 1871, cities almost got moving sidewalks. Why are we still waiting?

In 1871, cities almost got moving sidewalks. Why are we still waiting?

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletterđź’ˇ Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. In 1872, New York City’s Broadway was a slow-moving snarl of horses, wagons, and pedestrians, all competing along the same well-worn corridor. Alfred Speer, a merchant known around town as “The Wine Man,” believed the congestion outside his Broadway wine shop, across the street from City Hall, was costing him customers. Speer’s solution was not modest: He proposed an elevated sidewalk, running the length of Broadway, moving constantly at 10 miles per hour, with settees for riders who wanted to sit or chat along the way. He called it the “Endless Traveling Sidewalk.” New York’s state legislature passed the proposal—twice. And the governor, John Dix, vetoed it—twice. More than 150 years later, Broadway is still a gridlocked nightmare, and our sidewalks still don’t move. Despite its early failure, Speer’s vision would prove irresistible to inventors and engineers throughout the 20th century. Generations of urban planners and engineers has dusted off versions of Speer’s design, hoping to solve the transportation …

During WWI, a daredevil pilot helped invent the first ‘drones’

During WWI, a daredevil pilot helped invent the first ‘drones’

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletterđź’ˇ Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. On November 21, 1916, pilot and inventor Lawrence Sperry was flying over Long Island’s Great South Bay with his student Dorothy Rice Pierce when his plane suddenly plunged into the water.  Sperry later admitted that he’d accidentally bumped the autopilot, a technology he’d recently invented, disengaging it and causing the crash. Both survived, although Pierce suffered a fractured pelvis. The crash spawned sensational headlines such as “Aerial Petting—Ends in Wetting,” a phrase that has lingered in aviation lore and later histories of Sperry’s career. But the real story was not an aerial scandal. It was that Sperry’s autopilot invention was the more reliable pilot. Long before GPS, programmed flight, or computer vision, Lawrence Sperry had solved one of aviation’s most pressing problems: aircraft instability. But the thrill-seeking inventor didn’t stop there. If an airplane could be balanced in the sky without a pilot, he reasoned, it could also be controlled from afar and sent on missions without a human …

In 1916, hybrid cars could’ve changed history. But Ford wouldn’t allow it.

In 1916, hybrid cars could’ve changed history. But Ford wouldn’t allow it.

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletterđź’ˇ Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. In October 1914, as gas cars were tightening their grip on America’s roads, Frank W. Smith, president of the Electric Vehicle Association of America, stood before a convention in Philadelphia and declared victory. Electric cars, he said, were “absolutely and unquestionably the automobile of the future, both for business and pleasure.” With mass production and a wider network of charging stations just around the corner, “it is only a matter of time,” he promised, “when the electrically propelled automobile will predominate.” The future Smith imagined would not show signs of life for nearly 100 years, but it might have come far sooner had America’s industrial leaders stopped treating automotive power as a binary choice between gasoline and electricity. A compelling alternative lay in between. Hybrid power was cleaner and capable of guiding transportation through a more climate-friendly century while batteries and charging infrastructure matured. But by the time a suitable hybrid arrived—just two years after Smith’s proclamation—the world had …