History's Worst Inventions

Product Description

The people in this book set out to change the world with their brilliant new discovery or design. At best, they failed monumentally; at worse, they changed the world in ways for which no one will thank them. History's Worst Inventions is an entertaining look at the failures of celebrated inventors & less well-known (for good reason) pioneers. The book

Includes:: the parachute-overcoat (its inventor leapt from the Eiffel Tower to demonstrate it & plunged to his death), Trevethick's locomotive (too heavy for its rails & broke them), Soviet anti-tank dogs (with mines strapped to their backs, they turned on their owners & blew up an entire Red Army division) & TGN1412 (the drug which, in its 2006 clinical trial, nearly killed its test subjects). A compendium of cock-ups, History's Worst Inventions provides a clear warning andndash; it's all too easy to go down in history as an idiot!