Gareth Branwyn on Hovercrafts

David Pescovitz 10:06 am Wed Aug 15, 2007

Over at Wired.com, BB pal Gareth Branwyn looks at the history of the hovercraft, from mid-1950s Popular Mechanics covers (image left) to Survival Research Laboratory's Pulse-Jet Hovercraft, the "loudest robot in the world" (image right).

Hovercarpop

Images Slideshow 2007 08 Gallery Hovercraft Srl3Hires

From Gareth's piece, "Fifty Years of Hovercraft: The Tech That Barely Takes Off":

An artist friend of mine once said: "When I think about the future, all I wanna know is: When do we get to wear the tinfoil?" That statement perfectly encodes those kitschy, iconic images we have of the future, a world in which we dress like space people from bad '50s sci-fi, and travel through elevated cities on jetpacks or in flying or hovering cars. We're still waiting for the jetpacks and skycars, but, to paraphrase sci-fi author William Gibson, "the hovercraft is already here, it's just not evenly distributed yet." And it likely never will be.

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