Rocking Horse
An excerpt from a 1933 issue of Popular Science:
I have no idea if the beast actually worked – I suspect it did, but at a very slow pace. Still, you’ve got to admit that it looks neat, and that kid & his hat are the very portrait of gusto.
Roads be damned, I’d love to live in a world filled with nothing but airships and off-road mechanical horses.
“Roads be damned, Iād love to live in a world filled with nothing but airships and off-road mechanical horses”
Me, too!!!! Hurray for steampunk š
Regarding the kid’s hat, it’s unfortunately part of the uniform (which the kid is wearing) of “Balilla”. That’s more or less the Italian equivalent of the Hitler Youth. Children were trained to become the future fascist army of war loving fanatics.
Here’s a picture
http://www.mein-italien.info/bilder/geschichte/balilla3.jpg
and the Wikipedia entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Nazionale_Balilla
How sad and shameful… :-/
Yikes!
An army of young mechanically-mounted hooligans, marauding across the countryside, is quite a bit more terrifying.
(- and such a waste of a fez!)
The ideals behind it were a lot more terrifying than any Italian army ever was… :-/
The army on mechanical horses is something you could use for a story, though š (and also the one about the train and the shoes that I never find the time to tell you but I’m sure you could get an interesting story out of)
Mechanical horses sweeping down from the hills just may make it into a future episode – I’ve got one in mind that would be a great fit.
A train with shoes? Do tell!
it is quite sad