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Hockey stick with built-in lifeline for falls through the ice (Popular Mechanics, Feb., 1921).

A number of propeller-powered snow sleds were trialed, particularly after WWI. This is one of the more compact ones, whizzing along at 25-30MPH. The blade is 5 feet in diameter; I’d hate to see a crash between a pair of these in a crowded street!

I’m particularly glad this invention never caught on. Someone attached an electric starting motor to a perambulator. Talk about the “Roaring Twenties”!

Popular Mechanics (March 1921) claims this to be a 150mm artillery piece–I wonder if it’s actually the French Canon de 155mm GPF? The convertible truck/track SP carriage was reported to do 14MPH on wheels and 10MPH on tracks.

A distant ancestor of the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, this looks unlike most pictures of the de Bothezat Flying Octopus of the same period (Popular Mechanics, March 1921). It is described as being tested “in an isolated hangar upon the western outskirts of Chicago.”

This Belgian-made six-barreled .22 rifle (Popular Mechanics, March 1921), one of Henry Pieper’s “goose guns,” is more elegant than the Nock Gun made famous by Daragh O’Malley in Sharpe’s Rifles, but scarcely more practical.

Grab the kids! We’re off with a 100HP engine at speeds of up to 150MPH!!! (Popular Mechanics, April 1921)

Parasol-radio antenna–with 110 feet of wire! (Popular Mechanics, May 1921)

n 1921, Argentinian inventor Raúl Pateras Pescara created this advanced helicopter with counter-rotating props–each made of SIX small biplane wings! The 1931 version looked considerably more modern (Popular Mechanics, April 1921).

The Caproni “Epocha” (Ca.60 Transaereo) boasted 8 400HP Liberty engines and 9 wings! It crashed during testing; designer Gianni Caproni commented, “The path of progress is strewn with suffering.” (Images: Popular Mechanics, May 1921)