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In a recent issue, we ran an article about the Orukter Amphibolos, a purported land/water vehicle built 200 years ago. While researching that piece in John F. Watson’s Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania , we came upon the following: “About sixty-five years ago [i.e., around 1777, when you’d think Philadelphians would have had other things to worry about], many hundred persons went out to the Schuylkill to see a man cross that river in a boat carried in his pocket! He went over safe, near High street. B.

Charles A. Levine, born in Brooklyn in 1897, went to work in his father’s scrapyard after completing elementary school. Later he was an apprentice aviation mechanic and a used-car dealer. After World War I he formed a company to process war-surplus shell casings for sale in South America. This return to his junkyard roots made him a millionaire.

James Murray Spangler, a department-store janitor in Canton, Ohio, suffered from asthma. Sweeping the rugs every night stirred up dust and dirt, which left him gasping for breath. It was 1907, and agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration did not yet exist, so Spangler was left to his own devices. He fashioned a machine from a tin soapbox, a sateen pillowcase, and a broom handle. Inside the box, an electric motor powered a fan and a rotating brush. The fan blew air out one end of the machine through the pillowcase.

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On July 16, 2005, Philadelphia celebrated the 200th anniversary of Oliver Evans’s Orukter Amphibolos.

Congress’s termination of the SST program did not ensure success for either the Anglo-French Concorde or the Soviet Tu-144. Both came into service in the mid-1970s and were plagued with their own misfortunes. The foreign supersonics required massive government subsidies in a race that ended up producing only 20 Concordes and 17 Tu-144s, and both types ultimately experienced horrific disasters.