Download It Looked Good on Paper: Bizarre Inventions, Design by Bill Fawcett PDF

By Bill Fawcett

A amazing compendium of untamed schemes, mad plans, loopy innovations, and actually wonderful disasters

Every phenomenally undesirable suggestion appeared like a good suggestion to somebody. How else are you able to clarify the Ford Edsel or the sword pistol—absolutely absurd creations that are supposed to have by no means made it off the strategy planning stage? It regarded strong on Paper gathers jointly the main improper plans, half-baked rules, and downright ridiculous machines all through background that a few second-rate Einstein made up our minds to foist on an unsuspecting population with the simplest and so much confident intentions. a few failed spectacularly. Others fizzled after nice fee. One even crashed on Mars. yet each one of them at one time should have appeared stable on paper, including:
* The lead water pipes of Rome
* The Tacoma Narrows Bridge—built to collapse
* The Hubble telescope—the $2 billion clinical surprise that couldn't see
* The Spruce Goose—Howard Hughes's airborne atrocity: titanic, pricey, gradual, volatile, and made up of wood

With greater than thirty-five chapters jam-packed with quite insipid innovations, either notorious and vague, It regarded strong on Paper is a mind-boggling, forever enjoyable choice of attention-grabbing failures.

Show description

Read Online or Download It Looked Good on Paper: Bizarre Inventions, Design Disasters, and Engineering Follies PDF

Best technical books

Integrierte Produkt- und Prozessgestaltung

In dem Buch werden aktuelle Modelle und Methoden im Bereich ''Integrierte Produkt- und Prozessgestaltung'' dargestellt. Die ''Integrierte Produkt- und Prozessentwicklung'' ist eine interdisziplinäre Aufgabe verschiedener Disziplinen, wie advertising, Produktentwicklung, Produktion und Arbeitswissenschaften.

The Web Content Strategist's Bible: The Complete Guide To A New And Lucrative Career For Writers Of All Kinds

Coping with the construction and upkeep of the massive quantity of web pages calls for an figuring out of not only net writing, yet of specific, well-planned, life like content material improvement tactics. these training the recent self-discipline of web pages method are being known as upon to aid internet improvement groups navigate this new editorial surroundings the place content material not just needs to be written, but in addition damaged up into millions of items that experience to be reviewed, authorized, re-purposed, edited for se's, translated, localized, and generated utilizing a brand new and complicated set of instruments and strategies.

Plain English for doctors and other medical scientists

Simple English for medical professionals indicates the best way to write approximately clinical technology in a transparent and vibrant manner. it may well aid a clinical author at any point, from newbie to veteran, because it offers particular, sensible recommendation. Writing in simple English may also help your writing succeed in a much wider viewers, together with humans in different specialties, degrees of teaching, different fields, and different nations all over the world.

Extra info for It Looked Good on Paper: Bizarre Inventions, Design Disasters, and Engineering Follies

Example text

It requires that some process is already in place so that Kanban can be applied to incrementally change the underlying process. This evolutionary approach, promoting incremental change, has been controversial in the Agile software development community. It is controversial because it suggests that teams should not adopt a defined method or process template. An industry of services and tools has developed around a small set of practices defined in two popular agile development methods. Now with Kanban, individuals and teams might be empowered to evolve their own unique process solutions that obviate the need for such services and require a new set of tools.

The gardens were an oasis at the heart of the concrete jungle. As I crossed the bridge with my family, an elderly Japanese gentleman with a satchel over his shoulder approached us. Reaching into his bag, he produced a handful of plastic cards. He offered one to each of us, pausing briefly to decide whether my three-month-old daughter strapped to my chest required a card. He decided she did and handed me two cards. He said nothing, and, as my Japanese is limited, I offered no conversation. We walked on into the gardens to look for a spot to enjoy our family picnic.

Under such conditions it is correct to use approaches like first-in-first-out (FIFO) prioritization. It is also correct to block the entry of work when the WIP limit is reached. However, these approaches are not optimal when we must deal with non-repetitive, unpredictable jobs; with different delay costs; and different task durations—exactly what we must deal with in product development. We need more advanced systems, and this book is the first to describe these systems in practical detail. I’d like to offer a few brief warnings to readers.

Download PDF sample

Rated 4.78 of 5 – based on 43 votes