Slashdot Mirror

The Dymaxion was a 20 foot long tricycle, steered by its single rear wheel.

The second and third Dymaxion car had a rear view periscope. No rear window.

Fuller tested 22 different kinds of steering posts. The car always had a problem with shuddering from side to side, especially in wind, and he had been working on different ways to fix the problem.
When Fuller had the car, he rolled it with his family in it. They were injured but recovered--the car had seatbelts. Because of this accident, it was modified, and there are pictures of it with different detailing. 3d model of the dymaxion car

It has always been easy to build a lightweight aerodynamic car that delivers extraordinary speed or mileage - at least on the test track. The practical, all-weather, road-worthy, family car is much tougher problem.
 

And please make the URL clickable too! :)

http://www.washedashore.com/projects/dymax/pictures.html

Of course, people will think your comment is funny, but back in 1933, Buckminster Fuller invented a very light three-wheeled three-engine car that got 30-50 mpg. His design was innovative in amazing ways compared to the cars of that period. (Who knows if it might have helped in the war effort by saving loads of fuel?) The first version was hard to steer, but I believe the second one fixed that problem.

Someone obviously didn't like the idea - the car companies turned him down and the car was never produced before Fuller ran out of money.

I guess the big question for conspiracy theorists now is, was the car's famous crash at the World's Fair really an accident or did it get a little push in that direction?

The following site has some info about the car itself:

http://www.washedashore.com/projects/dymax/

R.Buckminster Fuller developed an interesting teardrop-shaped car back in the square-fender days -- think it used a Ford Model A engine -- that had wheels that could pivot 90 deg. or better to allow parallel parking with a couple inches clearance. Got up to speeds of 100mph fairly easily. It was called the "Dymaxion Car" and a good place to start is here http://www.washedashore.com/projects/dymax/

I suspect it might be fairly common for seat-back computers to crash?
I don't know enough about Linux to understand what it said on my screen when it was trying (and failing) to boot back up again:
http://washedashore.com/misc/inflight_error.jpg
(This was April 23, 2005, on a flight from Bucuresti Romania to NYC.)
-Ben

I think you are thinking of Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Car. There are some videos of it here at the American Master's site, but not of it parking. Though there is one of it pulling a tight U-turn around a police officer. I do think this is the same car I saw a video of where the car came in at an angle and then turned it's rear wheel and eased it's back in to parallel park. There is a bit more info on wikipedia too. (also here and here)

You want ugly? I'll give you ugly.

That backwards tricycle sounds like the Buckminster Fuler's Dymaxian Car. That beast was designed for minimum air resistance. Also having the two wheels in front provides better stability when cornering during hard braking. Still, tricycles do have some roll-over stability problems because the CG is closer to the sides of the wheelbase.

Kite Aerial Photography
Mosaics of kite aerial photographs
Aerial photography using a balloon at Burning Man
Other types of aerial photography (balloon, helicopter, kite, even periscope!)

Hopefully some of the aerodynamic technology can be applied to commercially available vehicles (cars, maybe?).