December 9th, 2007
I have so many hours yet to spend on these pages of painstaking research into obscure and outdated technology. These examples are only three of the beautiful/ridiculous/plain bizarre examples undertaken my people around the world throughout the last hundred years or so.
THE GAUMONT CHRONOPHONE SYSTEM: 1910In 1903 French engineer Leon Gaumont was granted patents for loudspeaker systems to go with his sound on disc talking films, whichused one of Berliner’s Gramophones.
This remarkable device was invented by Frenchman Jean Auscher as an acoustic navigation device in case of radar failure on small vessels. Shown at the 1960 Brussels
Inventor’s Fair, and, one suspects, nowhere else ever again.
The schienenzeppelin (ie the rail zeppelin) was a prototype propellor-driven light-weight
railcar that held the world railway speed record for no less than twenty years. It was powered by a BMW aeroengine, driving a four-blade wooden pusher propeller. On June 21, 1931, it kept up 230 km per hour for about 20 km.
