War may be hell, but it often brings about the kind of technological advances that would otherwise take years and years more to come about. Such was the case during the American Civil War, when an architectural engineer named William C. Powers wanted to help his neighbors in the South (he lived in Mobile, Alabama) break through the North’s blockade. Since the blockade was naval-based, Powers did the logical thing: he started planning a helicopter to fly over the ships.

Keep in mind that the civil war was 150 years ago. The first viable, successful helicopter wasn’t actually produced until 1940. Yet Powers envisioned this crazy flying machine that would use Archimedean screws (seen as squiggly lines in his schematic drawings)  to both lift the contraption and give it thrust. And presumably, in his mind, break the blockade and win the war for the South.

The engine, using two smokestacks, would have been located in the center of the machine. A rear rudder would have provided for steering. Although we know now that the contraption would never have gotten off of the ground, the Confederate helicopter plan is a fascinating look back into the mindset of the time period and the intense desire of both sides to outsmart the other.

Powers did manage to make a small model of his device, which can be seen at top. However, he was unable to find the support – both financial and intellectual – to ever create a full-size working version. His family hid the plans for years, fearing that the Union would find them, build his brilliant aircraft, and then use it to defeat the Confederates.

(via: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum)

The post The Marvelously Failed Flying Ship of the Confederate Army first appeared on Gajitz.

In the 1960s, the world was still all about innovative transportation, a carryover from the golden days of the automobile. In the midst of figuring out how humans would get around in the decades to come, some pretty crazy ideas were thrown around. This hover scooter, unsurprisingly, never actually made it into production…but it was one of the coolest concepts to come out of that time period.

It was little more than a seat and handlebars on top of a scarily loud fan. The spinning fan produced a six-inch cushion of air to keep the scooter just barely off of the ground, allowing it to hover over land or water with ease. We can’t figure out why these never caught on, because we’d drive the crap out of a hover scooter.

The post 1960s Hover Scooter Looks Awesome But Sounds Deadly first appeared on Gajitz.

Modern gadgets are remarkably small considering everything that they can do (hello, phone that plays Sudoku, streams radio stations and lets us take crystal-clear videos of our bizarre neighbors), but our generation was far from the first to think of miniaturizing stuff. Back in the age of records, the Sound Burger was amazing music lovers with its shockingly tiny size and portability. It was basically a clamp that could fit onto either 45 or 33 1/3 RPM records so you could keep your tunes rolling even when you were on the go. Of course, because it had to be played on a flat surface you had to be basically sitting or standing still while it played…but at least you could switch rooms between records.

The Sound Burger was sold in the early 1980s in Japan, but after it made the jump to the U.S. it was renamed Mister Disc – probably because Audio Technica, the company responsible for the awesome gadget, knew how we brutish Americans would mercilessly make fun of something called a “Sound Burger.” Unfortunately, even the love of rich vinyl sound couldn’t save this player from a sad fate. It was released right around the time that Sony’s Walkman was becoming popular, and given the choice between a cassette player that you could walk around with and a record player that you couldn’t…well, we all know how the story ended for the ill-fated Sound Burger/Mister Disc. Luckily for modern vinyl lovers, they still pop up every now and then on eBay – but they always seems to pull a hefty price.

The post Granddaddy of the iPod? Retro 80s Portable Record Player first appeared on Gajitz.

Hard-core video game enthusiasts fondly remember the Vectrex as a system that was well before its time. The small tabletop system was advertised as the first video game that needed no TV: it came with its own 9″ monitor. The Vectrex first hit the market in November 1982 with a $199 price tag – about $440 in today’s dollars. The price later dropped to $150, then $100, but was soon pulled from the market in early 1984.

The system itself was pretty amazing for its time. Rather than using raster graphics (which are pixel-based) like every other video game system, the Vectrex used vector graphics with a colorful plastic screen overlay to lend some color to the black-and-white game play.

But what made the Vectrex even more incredible was its peripherals: the Lightpen that allowed for drawing and writing directly on the Vectrex screen, and the 3D Imager Goggles which made the games pop right out at the user. Similar accessories wouldn’t again be used in video game design for many years. Sadly, the awesome Vectrex system fell victim to the video game crash of 1983, when America temporarily lost its love for electronic games. We fortunately came out of that phase, but the Vectrex was never to be resurrected; instead, it lives in as a legend of gaming history.

The post Is Old-School Vectrex System the Nintendo DS’s Granddad? first appeared on Gajitz.

The monowheel is one crazy idea from the past that has always inspired and enthralled us from its first appearance in France in 1869. Arguably the most well-known iteration of the strange type of vehicle is the one above, created in 1932 by Dr. J.H. Purves. The motorized monster was called the Dynasphere, and it is believed to have reached speeds of up to 25 or 30 MPH. The video below was taken in Weston-Super-Mare, UK, in 1932 during a test drive of the Dynasphere.

Dr. Purves believed that the monowheel was the most simplified form of motorized transport possible. Unfortunately for him, his creation was never as successful as he hoped. It was not the most stable vehicle, could not carry more than one passenger in addition to the driver, and suffered from a number of other insurmountable design problems. As a fun piece of transportation history, however, nothing is more entertaining and fun than the motorized monowheel.

Despite the failure of the Dynasphere and other monowheel vehicles, inventors are still coming up with new and strange generations of wheels that the driver sits inside of. The WheelSurf was created by a company in the Netherlands and in 2007 they started taking orders for the strange vehicle. The WheelSurf is not street legal, making it a little difficult for drivers to show off their unique ride.

Kerry McLean is one of the most vocal modern supporters of the monowheel. He has been working on his incredible monocycle inventions for over a decade, refining and developing his ideas for a single-wheel motorcycle called the Rocket Roadster. Following a horrific crash on the maiden voyage of the Rocket Roadster built in 2001, McLean went back to the drawing board and invented a safer, more stable version of the monowheel motorcycle.

Still, monowheels have never caught on with a mass audience as a viable mode of transportation. The fanciful appearance of the monowheel basically guarantees that there will always be new generations of designers willing to try their hand at creating the next notable one, but the world may never see legions of these strange vehicles parading down the highway carrying commuters to work.

The post Wheel of Misfortune: Historic Failure of the Monowheel first appeared on Gajitz.