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> The wildest of these ideas was a 1963 patent that, Monmonier writes, “might have made made cartoonist [Rube] Goldberg scratch his head.” The patent, by brothe
by gorkish 6y ago
> The wildest of these ideas was a 1963 patent that, Monmonier writes, “might have made made cartoonist [Rube] Goldberg scratch his head.” The patent, by brothers Thomas and Frank Novak of Brownsville, Pennsylvania, described a stationary globe with a rotating air duct that would use an “upward air blast” to hold a sphere aloft as it orbited the Earth (above). You don’t need to be an engineer to know this would have never worked.
I am not sure how the author came to such a ridiculous conclusion. The machine would work just fine. I guess you don't need to be an engineer to be a journalist either.
- sidpatil 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coand%C4%83_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coand%C4%83_effect
- bigiain 6y agoFor example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXxCwqaXsrA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXxCwqaXsrA
- mojomark 6y agoWhen I was a kid (early 80's) we used to go to the "Science Center" in Baltimore, Maryland (US). There were a lot of cool interactive displays/experiments. One was a fan blowing under an orange street cone, and a levitating beach ball would hover in mid air - caught in what appeared to be an invisible tractor beam. You could walk up, pull the beach ball off, then place it (or throw it) back into the vortex. It was quite stable. I used to play with that for about 20 minutes straight I'd say each time I went there, which was often.