In 1925, Ivan Unger and Gladys Roy decided to show off their daredevil skills and played tennis on top of this biplane.
What is the most outrageous, ridiculous scenario you can think of? Would it ever work? Why or why not? Would a part of it work?
In 1925, Ivan Unger and Gladys Roy decided to show off their daredevil skills and played tennis on top of this biplane.
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“If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.”
— Albert Einstein
One night Gary Dahl was at a bar with friends, and their conversation turned to caring for their pets. Dahl told his friends that he had no problems at all, explaining, “I have a pet rock.”
He decided to see what would happen if he marketed the idea, and this flash of silly inspiration became a nationwide craze for pet rocks. In the Christmas season of 1975, he sold millions of “pets” (complete with carrying case and manual) to a war-weary public desperately in need of something fun.
During a visit to New York City on a snowy day in 1902, Mary Anderson noticed that the streetcar driver was having trouble seeing through the windshield. He could open part of the window and wipe the windshield with his hand (many people at the time even used a sliced onion or carrot), but then the snow and wind would fly in, making everyone cold and wet — and he still wasn’t able to see. Mary started to sketch as she rode, ultimately drawing a “swinging arm . . . to remove snow, rain, or sleet from the center vestibule-window” of the streetcar; even better, it could be operated from inside the car. Mary received the patent for her “window-cleaning device” in November 1903 and tried to sell it to Dinning & Eckenstein in Montreal, Canada, in 1905, but they responded that they did “not consider it to be of such commercial value.” Her patent expired, but the idea — and need — lived on. By the 1920s, windshield wipers were being installed on every car.