I shed a single brown-inked Minitel-shaped tear.
All the features of the Internet were there. Including the porn. Especially the porn.
LMAO. 3615 Ulla was so popular, and then there was this crass and gross and lame joke "Il manque Ulla dans la forêt"
A new design of steam locomotive produced today is far superior to, say, Evening Star, the final locomotive built by BR in 1960
there was a bright French engineer with the name of André Chapelon that had outstanding steam locomotive concepts... in 1946. Too late, alas.
Ed Costello said:
One field related to the airship discussion is that of ocean liners. There undoubtedly continue to be colossal improvements in shipbuilding technology, but there has been no Blue Riband holder since 1952. Imagine how Queen Mary 2 might look if she were expected not only to be the height of opulence, but also to maintain an average speed of 35 knots or more?
What is extremely remarquable is that not only airships did tried to mimick ocean liners. Extremely large flying boats - like the SARO Princess or Latécoère 631 - did the same, before and after world war II. And then giant aircrafts tried that, too - Bristol Brabazon, Lockheed Constitution.
In the end...
- very large boat (Queen Mary)
- very large airship (Hindenburg)
- very large flying boat (Princess)
- very large propeller plane (Brabazon)
... all headed the way of dinosaurs...
And I could even add "piston powered airliners" (Constellation, DC-7) and "turboprop powered airliners" (Bristol Britannia !) which were also wiped out by the Boeing 707.
So the 707 (and DC-8) kind of serial-killed no less than
- very large boat (Queen Mary)
- very large airship (Hindenburg)
- very large floatplane (Princess)
- very large propeller plane (Brabazon)
- piston-powered transatlantic airliner (Constellation)
- turboprop-powered transatlantic airliner (Britannia)
Just think about it. Eight different systems to try and cross the Atlantic, all of them in service within the span of three decades (let's say, 1932 - 1962). And only one of them, the last in the series, buried all seven before it !
And it could have been
worse. Concorde was to bury the 707 (and 747, subsonic planes), BUT the Boeing SST was to bury Concorde - Mach 0.9, mach 1.8 and mach 2.7 cruise speeds, respectively !
In the end the Boeing 2707-300 (to be in service by 1980) could have crossed the Atlantic in two hours, an hour less than Concorde itself.
and if Philip Bono (and Elon Musk nowadays) had / have their way, transatlantic rocket ships would take only some minutes...