Book description
During the Second World War, an American behavioural psychologist
working with pigeons discovered that the birds could be trained to
recognise an object and to peck at an image of it; when loaded into
the nose-cone of a missile, these pecks could be translated into
adjustments to the guidance fins, steering the projectile to its
target. Pigeon-Guided Missiles reveals this and other fascinating
tales of daring plans from history destined to change the world we
live in, yet which ended in failure, or even disaster. Some became the
victims of the eccentric figures behind them, others succumbed to
financial and political misfortune, and a few were just too far ahead
of their time. Discover why the great groundnut scheme cost British
taxpayers £49 million, why the bid to build Minerva, a whole new
country in the Pacific Ocean, sank, and why the first Channel Tunnel
(started in 1881, over a century before the one we know today) hit a
dead end.
