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Tuesday, 20 December 2011

Je ne regrette rien!

Scientific American, 10 January 1891
The Eiffel Tower is one of the world's architectural wonders, but what would really get people to go see it?  How about a ride where you stick customers into a giant bullet and drop them a thousand feet into a shaft filled with water.



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1 comment:

  1. eonTuesday, 20 December 2011 at 04:15:00 GMT-8

    Wel, people like roller coasters, thrill rides, & etc. today, so I suppose there wouldn't have been any lack of people daring each other to buy a ticket on this thing.

    However, I did notice that while the article mentions a "high-speed carriage" to return the projectile to the top after each descent, it rather fails to explain exactly how it would work. Patent pending, perhaps?

    More likely they didn't think of it, rather like the professor played by Lionel Jeffries in "Those Fantastic Flying Fools" aka "Blast Off" (1968);

    "I was hired to design a ship to put a man on the Moon, nothing was said about bringin''im BACK!"

    (Best line in the whole movie, especially the way Jeffries delivered it.)

    ;-)


    cheers

    eon

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