In 1932, Dr. J. A. Purves invented the Dynasphere, a ten-foot, thousand-pound wheel of steel that didn't exactly revolutionize personal motoring. The original 2.5 horsepower gas motor could achieve a top speed of about 25 miles per hour, with the driver sitting in the middle, tipping the thing left or right to steer...and clenching his teeth, hoping nothing was in the way. You may ask: why does the name reference a sphere, when this thing looks like a wheel or a hoop? Well, the outer body of the... READ ON

Reading today about the Audi A2 concept car unveiled at the Frankfurt Auto Show provoked an invitingly distracting mid-day thought experiment about cars of the future. (At left, the Audio A2 Concept via Autoviva.com's Flickr) The car comes equipped with a new feature called "Semi-Autonomous Drive," which assumes driving responsibilities when motorists find themselves caught in traffic. No doubt a practical solution designed to tackle an annoyingly commonplace problem—and, in places as calamitously... READ ON

I would imagine that New Yorkers would be a little concerned about any unusual aircraft zipping around their airspace. So it is particularly remarkable that a team managed to assemble a remote-controlled miniature airplane, equip it with a camera, and fly it around various parts of the city, including parts of Manhattan, over the top of the Brooklyn Bridge, over the Statue of Liberty, and so on -- without getting arrested or having their aircraft taken down. Here's the video: According to various... READ ON

I once thought that it should be very hard to lose something as big as an airplane. When planes fly into deep water, high altitudes, ice, snow, jungle, or desert, it happens more often you'd think. Finding those planes many years later is a rare occurrence, but it happens. After the previous article 9 Lost and Found Airplanes, readers suggested other cases to look up, which led me to even more stories of planes recovered many years after they were lost. 1. Juliet Delta... READ ON