Flying cars
It's the future, and they still haven't landed.
Alex Q. Arbuckle
1890-1968
Mark my word: a combination airplane and motorcar is coming. You may smile, but it will come. - Henry Ford, 1940
Even before the Wright brothers made their first flight in 1903, people have widely imagined a future where flying cars — or aerocars — are a fact of life, whisking us about without the hassles of roads and traffic.That hasn’t exactly come to pass, though not for lack of trying.The first patent for an aerocar was made by one John Emory Harriman, in 1910, but his vehicle was was never built. A year later, Waldo Waterman designed the oddly named Waterman Whatsit, but it remained unbuilt until 1932. Redesigned and renamed the Arrowplane, and later the Arrowbile, in 1937 it became the first aerocar to actually fly.
By 1953 motor-cars will be obsolete, because aeroplanes will run along the ground as well as fly over it. - Sir Philip Gibbs, "The Day After Tomorrow: What Is Going to Happen to the World," 1928.
Instead of a car in every garage, there will be a "copter". These tiny "copters", when school lets out, will fill the sky as the bicycles of our youth filled the prewar roads. - Harry Bruno, aviation publicist, 1943
If there was a golden age of aerocars, it was the 1940s and 1950s. In 1946, writing about Robert Fulton, Jr.'s Airphibian, LIFE Magazine reported that the Fultons could fly from an airstrip behind their home to LaGuardia airport, remove the wings, tail and propellor and drive to Broadway to see a show — a total distance of 60 miles — all within 25 minutes. Fulton's Airphibian had one big disadvantage: The wings and tail section had to be left at the airport, making a return visit necessary to pick them up and fly back home.This was also the case for Theodore P. Hall's ConVairCar. Prototyped in 1946, its wings and tail section were attached to the roof of the car section. Two Convair Models were made, the 116 and the improved 118, but interest was small and Convair cancelled the program.
Your flying car of the future — it's here today. - Motor Trend magazine, November 1957
More recently, flying car prototypes have been built with ducted fan propulsion and vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) capabilities. Still, they face (seemingly) insurmountable problems: intolerable noise, nonexistent fuel efficiency and outrageous cost, to name a few.Safety has been and probably will remain the greatest stumbling block for flying cars. People have enough trouble avoiding crashes on land, much less a teenage fender-bender from above.
Hobbes: "A new decade is coming up."<br> <br> Calvin: "You call this the future?? HA! Where are the rocket packs? Where are the disintegration rays? Where are the flying cars?" - "Calvin and Hobbes", December 30, 1989
