You want to do what?

Imagine if development of the motor car had been delayed 100 years - it could easily have happened. Most technological developments of the last 200 years or so have only come about because of mans intense desire to kill himself, or more accurately other men. The greatest acceleration in invention comes at times of war. And with 2 world wars and numerous squabbles in between we've had plenty to keep th eboffins busy.

But imagine if we had lived in peaceful coexistence for the last 200 years and were still going around on horses and carts. Imagine the difficulties facing the inventor of the modern automobile in these days of health and safety, trying to get it past the patent office and then all the Government Health and Safety types.

"We've reviewed your application and to be honest it's a bit far fetched isn't it? I mean you want to drill holes in the ground to extract oil for a start - that's going to be dangerous and expensive. But the you want to put it in a magic engine, which doesn't have a nice sensible firebox and generates steam, but somehow harnesses the power from an internal combustion process to drive the wheels around? What's that you say? Not a fire as such, nore a series of controlled explosions. How controlled exactly. I'm not sure I like the sound of that. What? Oh, so people will be licenced to use these things. So they will be qualified engineers...? No. What, oh no, we couldn't accept just anyone driving one of these things. They'll have to pass a test? What like a fire fighting certificate or something? No? What just to say they can operate it safely? You call that safe, with all these explosions going on in the engine? And what about the fuel that concerns me. Do I understand you rightly it will have a tankful of this new fangled petroleum which explodes? No that won't do at all. How fast will these things go? Seriously? My that is fast. Doesn't sound at all safe to me. No. no. I'm afraid we can't have you drilling holes in the earth and putting these oil rigs you mentioned out at sea - what if they leak? No I'm afraid we'll have top reject the whole idea. Why don't you do something more sensible like this other applicant. He wants to build a horseless carriage that uses a nice simple electrical motor to drive the wheels. And he says he can build windmills to harness power from the wind, and magical sun collectors to make more electricity. And nobody has to drill holes in anything."

In other words, had it not been for the uprise of the Nazi movement we would now be looking at a brave new world of electrically propelled mass produced green efficient cars. And that would be a good thing. Except that it means we would never have heard the Cherry Bomb exhausts on a '57 Chevy, or the roar of the Veyron, nor the whine of a Morris Minor, or the chug of a Fairway Taxi. Gone in 60 seconds and Bullit would not have been quite the same had the cars involved moved silently. The filling station exploding in Christine would have been a deleted scene, perhaps replaced by a Plymouth Fury crashing into a recharging bollard instead - not the same though is it?

I'm not at all sure what the point of this blog is now, but I seem to have turned it into a motion of thanks to Adolf Hitler for invading Poland, for without that we would all be driving those awful G-Whiz electric golf buggies.