So, I'm tooling around the intra-nets, just to see what I can see, and I stumble across this:
The Electrical Experimenter was kind of the
Popular Mechanics of its day, its day being the teens of the last century. Edited by
Hugo Gernsback (!), the magazine was dedicated to all things about the modern marvel of electricity, both in the present and in the future. Here's a typical table of contents:
Electricity!!
Anyway, the point of this--at least the comic book-related point--is that amongst their other features, Electrical Experimenter often proposed new types of military equipment to help end
The Great War. And in the
February 1918 issue, Hugo Gernsback proposed
this device to break the stalemate of trench warfare:
Holy shit. I mean,
Holy. Shit. Hugo Gernsback invented the
War Wheel back in 1918?!?!?
Of course,
Blackhawk is merely the most famous version of this type of vehicle;
it's a fairly common trope. And Gernsback was hardly the first to propose such a device. But to comics fans of a certain age, man, the
Gyro-Electric Destroyer sure brings the War Wheel to mind!
Gernsback even gives us
schematics and diagrams!!
Hugo was "quite confident" that the Gyro-Electrical Destroyer would put a quick end to the war:
And here's the thing--once you establish the War Wheel as a (
fantastical) possibility in WWI, well, why the hell didn't you have
Wonder Woman fight
that in her movie, instead of boring old poison gas!?!? [Especially when, to preserve your PG-13 rating, you don't show a single person actually killed by the gas.
Just sayin.'] Wonder Woman vs. War Wheel--it just rolls of the tongue, doesn't it? WW v. WW!!
I can even picture the scene:
Scientist: General, I have perfected the Gyro-Electrical Destroyer!!
General Ludendorrf: No, no, that name will never do. I shall call it--my War Wheel!!
That is why I am never allowed to write movies.
Anyway, there's nothing deeper here. I'm just stunned to find that Hugo Gernsback invented the flipping War Wheel in 1918--on page 666 of his magazine!! What a world!!
I'll leave you with the full article:
This is twice they've dropped the ball. First Captain America had to settle for a super-tank instead of a war wheel to trash, and now Diana misses her turn at the wheel.
ReplyDelete(Yeah, yeah - different 'they's)
You don't suppose that Thanos has a liking for war wheels, do you?
I like this WW1 Russian tricycle tank: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3VyAtlSqLEU/Tf8EsU9qchI/AAAAAAAABwc/MUXwW35dDqA/s1600/tsar%2Btank%2Brussia.png
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