The First Driverless Car--In 1925

1925--two decades after Ford rolled out the first assembly lined car--there were problems with car crashes and people dying.  Francis Houdina believed that people were the problem, not the car.  He was an engineer who took it upon himself to look for the newest innovation--get rid of drivers.  Cars should be operated by professional drivers via remote control. He didn't believe the average person should be behind the wheel of a car.

Radio waves are new technology and when he gets enough money for a prototype they will feature prominently in his design.  He places an antenna on top of the 1926 Chandler automobile that connects to a receiver.  The receiver is linked to a special device that can move the steering wheel, press the accelerator, and engage the break.  However, the receiver must remain close to the car at all times in order to retain the link.  A professional driver would operate the car while following in a car of his own.  He called it The American Wonder.

On July, 27 he conducted a public demonstration on the streets of New York City.  Houdina stood on the running board of the controlled car while an assistant operated the car that controlled his.  The driverless car started up on its own and pulled into traffic like it was being driven by a ghost.  The crowd was amazed.  The cars were given a police escort down Broadway.  Members of the press followed behind them in another car.  The car effortlessly turned down Columbus Circle and glides along 55th Street.

When the remote car turns onto 5th Avenue and approaches 47th Street it begins to weave wildly back and forth.   Houdina is grabbing hold of the side of the car while running down two trucks and a milk wagon which took to the side of the edge of the road for protection.  The assistant, John Alexander, tries to wrestle control of the car back but fails and the car crashes into a press car filled with cameramen.  People hurry to see what has happened.  The press has a field day with the car's lack of success.

Houdina investigated the steering wheel which is where the problem seemed to lie since it controlled the car's movements.  It turned out the steering wheel contraption had become detached and that is what caused it to go out of control.  It was such a simple thing that seemed to sink his whole operation in one day.  But Houdina did not give up.  He went around the United States and gave many demonstrations but the car was never seen as anything more than a novelty item.  A little less than a hundred years later and we now have driverless cars only the professional driver is a computer and doesn't have to drive another car a little way down the road to control our cars. It controls our cars from within.  But one visionary had an idea of how to make our roadways safer by taking out the bad drivers and saving lives in the process.

The Tree That Almost Caused World War III in North and South Korea

On a slice of wood reads "It is a piece of the Normandy Poplar Tree which was thee Aug 18, 1976 incident in which two UNC officers were murdered by the NKA at Panmunjom, Korea."  The story behind it is terrifying in that World War III could have broken out at any time during this incident.

It's been more than twenty years since the Korean War that left a line marking the communist North from the democratic South called the Demilitarized Zone or the DMZ, which was a two and a half mile wide strip of land.  These two countries could go to war in an instant.  Just recently an American soldier had been kidnapped and rescued.  50 American soldiers and 1000 Korean soldiers had been killed along the DMZ over the past ten years.  In the South, the border is guarded mostly by South Korean soldiers and American soldiers.

But in 1976 there was an object that stood in the way of the South's view of the North. A Normandy Poplar tree.  There is no telling what nefarious machinations the  North Koreans could be hiding behind that tree which is over 80 feet tall.  On August 18 a group of soldiers goes in to prune the branches.  A group of North Korean soldiers go in and order the team to stop that the tree is sacred to Kim Il Sung, which everyone knows to be false. But the team refuses to back down.  A scuffle breaks out and two American officers, Captain Arthur Bonifas and Lieutenant Mark Barrett are killed, while five South Korean troops are wounded.  This came to be known as the "Axe Murder Incident".

The North Koreans believe that the Americans will leave Korea now like they left Vietnam.  They certainly did not believe that they would be doing any tree trimming after Kim Jong-Il spun a story that the Americans started the whole thing and are at fault. Ford and Kissinger believe differently and demand an apology.

When news of this reaches the ears of the head of United Nations command General Richard Stillwell of the U.S. Army he doesn't overreact.  Many find that the General was a paragon of military officials, highly experienced, and very professional.  Some of his men feel a call of realization is necessary with air strikes and a land invasion.  Stillwell believes this could spiral out of control and lead to World War III.

His solution is to chop down the tree.  On August 21 he sends in a tree felling crew commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Victor Verra along with an escort of 23 armored trucks, 27 helicopters, and dozens of fighter jets.  The missions is named Operation Paul Bunyan.  Stillwell initiated the largest, most expensive tree trimming in history.  The North Koreans sent 150 sharpshooters to the edge of the DMZ.  The military in Korea was put on DEFCON 3, the highest state of military readiness. Only one of three times that has happened with September 11, 2001, being the most recent. 

Despite armed sides, the lumberjacks focused on their mission without anyone firing a single shot.  A few days later Kim Il Sung expresses regret over the loss of the American lives, something he had never done before and no member of the Kim Dynasty has done since.  The military promoted Bonifas posthumously to Major and renamed Camp Kitty Hawk Camp Bonifas at the DMZ after him.  Slices of the tree with the text are handed out to commanders in the mission as thanks for cool heads that World War III was averted.  So because of a simple tree, we came so close to a world war of epic proportions.  It's a good thing we had calm heads like General Stillwell to guide us through such a difficult time.  It also reminds us why we have soldiers along the DMZ at a time when people were wondering why it was necessary.  Today we know why as Kim Jong-Il is a dangerous threat all on his own.  But once we had no idea how dangerous the North Koreans were and how easy war could come to us.       

How the B17 Revolutionized Aircraft Safety

The Boening Flying Fortress was nineteen feet high, seventy-five feet long and had two wings that were one hundred and three feet wingspan.  Containing several machine guns and 4,800 pounds of a payload of bombs the B17 was the most important bomber plane in World War II and was born of a fiery catastrophe that revolutionized aviation.

In 1935 aircraft engineers were busy building the next generation of war airplanes. After months of testing the greatest one is set to make its debut on October 30.  The U.S. Army Air Corp rolls out Boening's Flying Fortress, the most technically advanced aircraft ever built. A four-engine plane that can travel farther distances and carry much larger payloads.  This plane will be a gamechanger. 

Army test pilots Major Ployar Hill and Lieutenant Donald Putt and three other crew members aboard the plane for the test flight.  It takes off but something goes wrong and it crashes to the ground killing Hill and crew member Les Howard and leaving Putt badly burned with a head injury.  This was the finest plane ever built and was flown by the best pilots available. So what went wrong?

When Putt was able to talk he explained that Hill forgot to unlock the plane's "gust locks" which locked control surfaces in place and by the time they took off it was too late to fix it which messed up the altitude on the plane causing it to stall and crash.  Normally there are only three or four items to check off before take off, but the B17 was a much more complicated plane and it required thirty-eight items to check off in a particular order which was too much for one man to remember. 

The Army Air Corp solved this by coming up with a pre-flight checklist that the pilot goes over with the co-pilot.  This now standard safety item is all due to the B17 Flying Fortress which incidentally we wouldn't have won World War II without.  Now even aircraft as small as two-seaters use them all the way up to big airliners.  They are an integral part of flying and we can't do without them.