Modern Mechanix Round-Up
Today on Modern Mechanix we have a 1952 Popular Mechanics article titled "Science on the March"; an excellent history of the rise of American science and engineering as well as predictions of what the next fifty years (1952-2002) would bring. In 1947 watching a baseball game on TV was apparently exciting enough that people felt the need to dress up for it. We also looked at a machine for vending single cigarettes, an eight-wheeled car that can supposedly drive unimpeded through sand dunes, a bed made entirely of tin cans and a nifty solution for fitting more cars in a small urban parking lot.
This weekend we looked at the not-so-important question of whether Thomas Edison died a poor man. While we're on the topic of Edison, what better way to memorialize him than with a giant light bulb. Here is a rather unstable looking one-passenger taxi cab. In 1934 the Maginot line was being hailed as one of the greatest defensive structures in the world. It's a pity it only held the Germans off for about five minutes. Want to advertise something but don't want people to know it was you? Check out this car with a P.A. system hidden in the extra tire. Also take a look at this guy who makes amazing clockwork figures, a flying bomb/plane that looks like you'd have to be suicidal to fly it and new tools in the war on grasshoppers.
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Contrary to the map in the article, the Maginot Line never actually extended beyond the French-German border. The French fully expected the Germans to attack through Belgium (as they had in WWI) rather than assault the Line, and channeling the Germans in that fashion was one of the intentions of building the forts -- it would keep the war off French soil, and insure Belgian and British participation in the war on France's side. The collapse of France was not so much due to a strategic failure, as to the operational mistake of advancing too rapidly into Belgium after the German attack, while leaving the southern flank (bordering the Maginot line) too weak.
Interestingly, the Germans did assault the Maginot Line proper in a sort of side show after the French had largely collapsed. They did penetrate the line fairly quickly, but without capturing, or even doing much damage to, the forts themselves.
http://www.efour4ever.com/44thdivision/failure.htm