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Edison's Concrete Piano: Flying Tanks, Six-Nippled Sheep, Walk-on-Water Shoes, and Twelve Other Flops from Great Inventors
Judy Wearing
#UD0062
Paperback, 270 pages; 2009
$14.95
 Members' Price: $12.71
In Edison's Concrete Piano, Judy Wearing underscores the eccentricity and intrepidness of some of the world's great inventors by highlighting their ideas and projects that didn't pan out. Leonardo da Vinci's physically implausible inflatable shoes, for example, failed to revolutionize military strategy as he'd hoped. Thomas Edison's dreams of affordable furniture, homes, and, yes, even pianos fashioned from concrete incurred public ridicule. Henry Ford's Fordson Model F tractor would become known for its tendency to flip over—sometimes resulting in the death of its driver. These compelling mini-biographies of sixteen remarkable minds emphasize the subjectivity of notions of success and failure. Perhaps we should not be surprised at the spectacular blunders of such great inventors: It is they, after all, who have the gumption to attempt what seems—and may often be—impossible.
(AG)
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