It Looked Good on Paper: Bizarre Inventions, Design Disasters, and Engineering Follies – A Remarkable Collection of Glorious Failures and Absurd Machines

by Bill Fawcett (Editor/Contributor), E.J. Neiburger (Contributor), Chris Powers (Contributor)

A remarkable compendium of wild schemes, mad plans, crazy inventions, and truly glorious disasters

Every phenomenally bad idea seemed like a good idea to someone. How else can you explain the Ford Edsel or the sword pistol—absolutely absurd creations that should have never made it off the drawing board? It Looked Good on Paper gathers together the most flawed plans, half-baked ideas, and downright ridiculous machines throughout history that some second-rate Einstein decided to foist on an unsuspecting populace with the best and most optimistic intentions. Some failed spectacularly. Others fizzled after great expense. One even crashed on Mars. But every one of them at one time must have looked good on paper,

The lead water pipes of RomeThe Tacoma Narrows Bridge—built to collapseThe Hubble telescope—the $2 billion scientific marvel that couldn't seeThe Spruce Goose—Howard Hughes's airborne big, expensive, slow, unstable, and made of woodWith more than thirty-five chapters full of incredibly insipid inventions, both infamous and obscure, It Looked Good on Paper is a mind-boggling, endlessly entertaining collection of fascinating failures.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Design, Reference

370 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 9, 2009

About the author

Bill Fawcett has been a professor, teacher, corporate executive, and college dean. His entire life has been spent in the creative fields and managing other creative individuals. He is one of the founders of Mayfair Games, a board and role-play gaming company. As an author, Fawcett has written or coauthored over a dozen books and dozens of articles and short stories. As a book packager, a person who prepares series of books from concept to production for major publishers, his company, Bill Fawcett & Associates, has packaged more than 250 titles for virtually every major publisher. He founded, and later sold, what is now the largest hobby shop in Northern Illinois.

Fawcett’s first commercial writing appeared as articles in the Dragon magazine and include some of the earliest appearances of classes and monster types for Dungeons & Dragons. With Mayfair Games he created, wrote, and edited many of the Role Aides role-playing game modules and supplements released in the 1970s and 1980s. During this period, he also designed almost a dozen board games, including several Charles Roberts Award (gaming's Emmy) winners, such as Empire Builder and Sanctuary.

Reviews

[Kym Robinson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Regardless as to whether I find these sort of books informative, I do find them entertaining. I sort of liken the books of this nature as a caption read, even though this book lacks illustrations or images.

This is a book that is slim in detail in some parts and yet it does invite the reader to want to learn more about the subject matter, at points. If one views this book as a glimmer of information inviting them to 'google' or seek larger more in depth books then this is a good book. That however I fear is not the case for this book.

This is most likely meant to be a one stop read for those who like to read short blurbs about a complicated and nuanced subject so that they may scoff or be the dismissive "did you know" guy at parties. That is how this book reads at points. The book attempts to use far to much sardonic and snide humour when it should spend more time explaining or giving wider context. Or good old fashion facts and anecdotes.

Many of the machines, ideas or attempts mentioned in the book failed or did not achieve their goals because of a slew of reasons. Some may be that they were obsolete upon introduction to others being short changed on materials. Not much detail or depth is really given regardless. Instead a punchline is sought, when none is really needed.

I do not dislike this book. I find Fawcett to be an entertaining writer as I have a few of his other books of this nature. I give the book a low rating simply because the book lacks any information, even a smidge more would do the varied subjects greater justice-injustice. Instead the book at times is akin to a Cracked wank piece that scoffs at the fools in the past and their daft ideas. Informative enough for many no doubt. Just not enough for me to really value.

Read it, follow up on what ever is listed and enjoy it for what it is.

48%

[Ari · Rating 1 out of 5]

Picked this up at the MIT Press outlet bookstore because it looked interesting. Unfortunately, the book is painfully shallow. The book is a long series of vignettes, without any real analysis. It sneers, when it should explain.

A lot of their examples are military, but the authors don't know as much as they think they do. Among the vignettes are HMS Hood, and the Brewster Buffalo fighter plane. Both performed badly in World War II, but this wasn't because they were particularly bad designs, or particularly badly executed. Both were simply obsolete. Antony Preston has a much more interesting and illuminating discussion of the loss of the Hood in "world's worst warships", without using many more words. The Maginot line and Great Wall of China are both listed as engineering failures, which is silly. Both were capably engineered fortification systems, imperfectly defended.

[Nick Davies · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just the sort of idea for a book that appeals to me, this was a series of short chapters on a variety of noteworthy failures in design and engineering. Earlier chapters about construction disasters and a selection of modern technologies that flopped were interesting and may stimulate further reading on my part, but the second half of the book got a little bogged down in detailing a variety of flawed ships, aircraft, motor vehicles and weapons with an excess of technical specification. This apparent lack of balance (contrasted with shorter chapters on non-military subjects that felt comparatively rushed and oversimplified) and a lingering sense of US-centrism, meant I felt slightly let down by the book on balance.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the stories didn't strike me as especially funny, either because they were already well enough known to be old hat or because they weren't really that bad. Also, I spotted a couple of factual errors, a significant problem for a book like this. Still, this is entertaining light reading for the most part.

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the stories were fascinating, but after awhile I lost interest. Different authors wrote different pieces and some were just too technical to really peak my interest.

[Solitudes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting book covering a lot of subjects, describing a lot of ideas and inventions that seemed so good on paper, and in fact were just terrible, starting with the Roman empire- drinking water from poisonous cups, yeah, really smart use of lead- and ending up with our modern days when again, radioactive water was the fashion for a lot of time.

Tanks with 3 turrets? Bring it in! Cars with 8 or 6 wheels? Of course, it's just what we need. Why we wouldn't build a totally useless line of defense ( the Great wall of China, Maginot line) together with epic fails like making movies smell, and x-ray of your feet in the shoe shop to see if they fit well along with many other idiotic ideas, you will find them all described in this book so you can wonder about the endless number of ideas who might look good on paper but were nothing but disasters waiting to happen.

[Steven Streeter · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this series of vignettes is typical for this sort of a book, and the cynical natire of the writing is likewise what I've come to expect, sometimes it feels like only the surface was scratched. And some of the stories would not have even looked good on paper. A weird collection. But for all that it was an easy read and a harmless way to kill a few hours at a time.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has some nice bite-sized histories of projects poorly conceived and/or executed. Recommended for fans of "How They Choked."

[A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read.. Albeit outdated

[Deidra Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some were pretty funny!

[Rosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inventions gone wrong. Excellent book.

[Steve Mount · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like books like this - a quick read; small, almost anecdotal episodes; fascinating looks into history. This book sorely could have used illustrations, though in this Internet age, I was able to look up each item it discussed quickly. This editor has several other similar books, and I might check them out. The editor himself wrote several chapters, though they were always the shortest ones. I think the editor could have spent a little more time on his own entries.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a humorous non-fiction book. In it is many great plans of architecture, transportation, weaponary, aviation, marine vessels, medicine that has failed in the real world, like the Great Wall of China (designed to stop the Mongols), the Messerchimits-262, the German Kamikaze, The Concorde, Amphicar, Hubble Space Telescope, Russian Mars Program, Nuclear Cannon, gas Bomb, the Langley Aerodrome, and the tower of Pisa.

[Jeff Swystun · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love the cover and the premise. Too bad it is childishly executed with the organization of the content being disjointed and distracting. Still, there are charming bits like including the Starr Report in a collection of failed inventions. I also love this line, "Somewhere still buried in a cave has to be the prototype of a square wheel." If you want a superficial introduction to Biosphere 2, XFL, Agent Orange, the Pony Express, and Smell-O-Vision then this is the book for you.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

This tells the tale of some fascinating failures: from “Galloping Gertie” to Biosphere II. There are several forgotten flops that are truly awful, but there are also a few entries that I really wouldn't call failures, since they were ultimately fixed-- like the Hubble telescope. Fawcett seems to have a military background, because we get a lot of stories about over-budget, under-performing weapons programs.

[Kristi Thielen · Rating 1 out of 5]

A mildly interesting compilation of inventions that went wrong. Much too much focus on blunders in the military - although that certainly says something about the military - and not enough attention to other failures. The books includes bad cars (the Pinto) but says nothing about the most spectacular automotive blunder: the Edsel.

[Peter · Rating 1 out of 5]

Slapped together bits that read like Wikipedia cliff notes cheaply presented on newsprint quality paper. If it took longer than 4 weeks to conceive, compile and publish this book I'd be surprised. Sub-par bathroom reading...I gave it 1 star because you can't give out zeros.

[Cristhian · Rating 1 out of 5]

A really forguetable book, full of not very interesting stories written in a very superficial manner. Make sure that you like the war stories before read this book.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

short quirky nonfiction anecdotes. Just what I like

[ToTo · Rating 3 out of 5]

As bedtime reading for the would-be Engineer, this book is extremely accessible and highly amusing.

[Clinton · Rating 3 out of 5]

full of factoids and short snippets of information. The book makes you want to research the "rest of the story" when you get time.
Good book when you are hanging out at the airport.