Category:
Cars
Cars
Whistling Accelerators
Accelerators have inspired a number of weird inventions. For example, a few years ago we posted about the "Deaccelerator" which was a device that aimed to prevent speeding by making it harder to depress the pedal in your car once you reached a pre-set speed (usually 50 mph).We've also posted about an effort to replace the accelerator with a pedal. The faster the driver pedaled, the faster the car would go. This was designed to give drivers some exercise as they commuted to work.
And yet another odd accelerator invention is the whistling accelerator. The idea is that if the accelerator is depressed too rapidly it will produce an annoying whistle. This will remind the driver not to accelerate too quickly, thereby saving gas.
The idea for a noise-making accelerator goes back to a 1958 patent granted to Philip Kershman of Los Angeles. He had rigged up an accelerator so that it would ring a bell if depressed too quickly.
Eighteen years later, in 1976, Henry Merriman of Michigan simplified this idea by replacing the bell with a whistle. He basically took a squeeze toy and attached it to the underside of the accelerator.
Merriman's squawking accelerator
St. Joseph News-Press/Gazette - Apr 30, 1975
Another whistling accelerator was patented in 2012. Its design was more sophisticated, but it was overall the same idea — accelerate too quickly and the thing starts whistling. The patentees described it as a "vehicle fuel efficiency monitor and signalling device".
Personally, I'm content to drive without any bells or whistles attached to the accelerator.
Posted By: Alex - Wed Jan 20, 2021 -
Comments (0)
Category: Inventions, Patents, Cars, Cacophony, Dissonance, White Noise and Other Sonic Assaults
Radioactive Spark Plugs
Firestone came out with radioactive spark plugs in 1940. The idea was that radioactive material (polonium) would improve the electrical conductivity of the spark plugs, resulting in better fuel combustion. More details from the Health Physics Historical Instrumentation Museum:Other than the slightly improved performance when the plugs were first installed, their benefits were questionable. The short half-life of polonium-210 (138 days) meant that the enhanced performance was only temporary. It also put dealers in the uncomfortable position of having to decide what to do after unsold plugs sat on the shelf for extended periods. Furthermore, the inevitable accumulation of deposits on the surface of the plugs’ electrodes as the vehicle burned fuel would attenuate the alpha particles and prevent them from ionizing the gas.
Monrovia News-Post - Mar 27, 1941
Posted By: Alex - Wed Jan 13, 2021 -
Comments (2)
Category: Atomic Power and Other Nuclear Matters, 1940s, Cars
The Aeolus Wind Car Competition
The event got cancelled in 2020, but plans to resume this year.Forty seconds of narration in French preface this second video.
Posted By: Paul - Sun Jan 10, 2021 -
Comments (2)
Category: Contests, Races and Other Competitions, Technology, Environmentalism and Ecology, Cars
The Spare Tire Cover as Advertising Medium
The earliest surviving instances of this mode of advertising seem to be really rare. If any WU-vie can find more examples, that would be great!Of course, nowadays you can have custom-designed spare tire covers at the drop of a hat!
Source.
Second Honeymoon (20th Century Fox, 1937). Spare Tire Cover. Throughout the thirties the studios would offer in their pressbooks what were spare tire covers that would advertise their upcoming feature. This silkscreen cover for the Tyrone Power and Loretta Young romance has elastic bands in back which allow it slip right over the tire that was always visible on the back of the automobiles of that time. Probably the theater owner, ushers, or cab companies would be paid to use these. Very interesting novelty that are often seen in pressbooks but few have survived.
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Posted By: Paul - Thu Nov 05, 2020 -
Comments (3)
Category: Advertising, 1930s, Cars
Carl Bohland’s Auto Wash Bowl
Carl Bohland patented the auto wash bowl in 1921. His idea was that cars would drive into a large, concrete bowl filled with water. After a couple of times around the bowl, the cars would be clean. Or, at least, cleaner.
Bohland managed to open a few auto wash bowls. The problem, however, was that his technique only really cleaned the underside of the cars. This was useful back in the days when many roads were still unpaved and their undersides constantly got filthy. But as road conditions improved, the auto wash bowl became less useful. By the 1930s, the last one had closed.
More info: vintag.es
Posted By: Alex - Sun Oct 11, 2020 -
Comments (5)
Category: Inventions, Patents, 1920s, Cars
The 1932 Helicron
Propellor-driven car.Read about it here.
Posted By: Paul - Mon Oct 05, 2020 -
Comments (3)
Category: Inventions, Air Travel and Airlines, 1930s, Cars
Dickens 44 Bascom, Glue Artist
Dickens 44 Bascom is a "glue artist" or "gluer" who rose to prominence in the 1960s. One of his most famous pieces was a 1961 Ford Falcon to which he glued just about everything you could imagine: a typewriter, toilet seat, toys, Donald Duck, and other "relics of our civilization". It was one of the first cars ever decorated in this fashion (perhaps the first). He used to earn money by parking it on a busy street and collecting donations from passersby.Later he hatched a dream of building an entire castle from glued-together stuff. But, as far as I know, his castle project never came to fruition.
Pittsburgh Press - Mar 3, 1974
According to the Marin Independent Journal, Bascomb left the US in 1981 and lived abroad for almost four decades, in a kind of self-imposed exile, before returning a few years ago. As of 2018, he was living in a motel in San Rafael.
His middle name, "44", was given to him by his father because he was born 44 minutes after 4 am on the 44th day of 1944. (I'm sensing a recurring theme of artists with numbers for middle names, since we recently posted about Nancy 3. Hoffman who operates the Umbrella Cover Museum in Maine).
More info: Dickens44.com
Posted By: Alex - Sat Oct 03, 2020 -
Comments (2)
Category: Art, Outsider Art, Cars
Drive-Thru Art Exhibition
Life in the age of Covid: the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in the Netherlands has opened up a drive-thru art exhibition. Visitors can view the artworks from the comfort and safety of their car.However, only electric vehicles are allowed in the exhibition hall. For those who don't have an electric car, there are a few available to borrow on site.
More info: Deutsche Welle
Drive-thru @boijmans @rotterdamahoy is een unieke gebeurtenis! Trots op #rotterdam pic.twitter.com/8CFPELKtlU
— Marjolijn vd Assem (@Omasaurus) August 5, 2020
Posted By: Alex - Wed Aug 19, 2020 -
Comments (5)
Category: Art, Cars
The science of removing bugs from windshields
When you clean bugs off your car's windshield, think of Detroit researcher Clark Wells who spent his career figuring out how best to do this.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Mar 22, 1953
WINDSHIELD-SPATTERING WITH A PURPOSE
The curious actions of Frederick Brownell (left) and Clark Wells at Detroit are in the interests of science. They are using pea-shooter and slingshot to shoot bugs against a windshield at squashing velocity so that Wells, a chemist, can then test fluids to be used in wiper spray to remove them. For his experiments, Wells buys such insects as bumble bees, June bugs, fish flies, deer flies and other of the more succulent species from collectors for amounts up to a dime each.
The curious actions of Frederick Brownell (left) and Clark Wells at Detroit are in the interests of science. They are using pea-shooter and slingshot to shoot bugs against a windshield at squashing velocity so that Wells, a chemist, can then test fluids to be used in wiper spray to remove them. For his experiments, Wells buys such insects as bumble bees, June bugs, fish flies, deer flies and other of the more succulent species from collectors for amounts up to a dime each.
Huntsville Times - June 20, 1954
Inventor Clark Wells, of Fraser, Mich., lacked the bugs he needed to test out a windshield wiper fluid he was perfecting, so he placed a Classified Ad in a Detroit paper, soon had an adequate supply of bumblebees, June bugs and other insects.
Posted By: Alex - Sat Aug 08, 2020 -
Comments (2)
Category: Insects and Spiders, Science, 1950s, Cars
Nuclear Car Battery
Note: no actual nuclear power involved.
Source.
Posted By: Paul - Fri Jul 03, 2020 -
Comments (3)
Category: Excess, Overkill, Hyperbole and Too Much Is Not Enough, Scams, Cons, Rip-offs, and General Larceny, Atomic Power and Other Nuclear Matters, 1950s, Cars
| Who We Are |
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Contact Us |