Pigeon Guided Missiles: And 49 Other Ideas that Never Took Off

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 fail...