The incredible ramp that never was

Karen Kavett, Francis Heaney and Sam Meeps discuss a question about a twisty-turny trip.

GUESTS:

HOST: Tom Scott.
QUESTION PRODUCER: David Bodycombe.

EDITED BY: Julie Hassett at The Podcast Studios, Dublin.
GRAPHICS: Chris Hanel at Support Class. Assistant: Dillon Pentz.
FORMAT: Pad 26 Limited/Labyrinth Games Ltd.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: David Bodycombe and Tom Scott.

[bungleh]

"very impractical, but clever"

found the title of my autobiography
giggles

[Ciara_Turner]

This sounds like an idea victor lustig would sell

[Charlesb]

The automobile was invented in 1895 with the Benz Patent Automobile. So this proposal from 1937 was 42 yrs after the invention of the automobile. While cars where still a somewhat relatively new thing at the time (by car standards), they weren’t quit a new as Tom suggested.

[regd]

The rotating runway over the river sounds like an in-seine idea!

[Spalfos]

0:24 Oooh, love the fancy new layout to show the question at the bottom of the group shot

[loscheiner]

5:42 “What about an elevator” - actually the elevators in the Eiffel Tower were really challenging engineering problems because of the curve of the structure. My uncle helped design them!

[orange]

if this thing existed, The Tim Traveler would have visited it.

[Zadster]

The old Fiat Lingotto factory in Turin is kinda like this. It is a spiral over several floors, and now there is a restaurant at the top. It was originally built as a long production line and a test track on the roof, but in the form of a spiral. It would be difficult (but not impossible) to drive up as the lower floors are now a museum, hotel, college facilities etc.

[epiendless]

Tom goes almost straight to Captain Scarlet - just like me.

[TarunoNafs]

The person who loved the restaurant is said to be Guy de Maupassant, the author who wrote short stories like "The Necklace" and "Butterball".

[GeorgiaSnowUK]

Anyone else take the quick twenty-seven-minute detour to watch the first episode of Captain Scarlet...?

[_Juke_]

Thought it was about the factory roof test/race tracks

[QemeH]

Comment before watching:
Is this the Eiffeltower thing? That was BONKERS!

[whophd]

My second thought: queueing techniques — we had these fake long queues when we hosted the Olympics, because constant movement gave people patience. If they just stood still, they’d hate it much more. Despite a shorter walk.

[johnnysun]

I was 100% convinced it was the design for tower bridge by Bazalgette based on that jay foreman video on tower bridge

[treksez]

My first thought was it was one of those harebrained blimp ideas they had. Perhaps a helix car ramp to get to a blimp station in a city

[Zy]

@1:40-Yes, people have indeed proposed that very sort of thing more than a few times in the past. Captain Scarlet was depicting something that almost happened more than once.

[Alsadius]

I just saw this on Facebook yesterday, possibly inspired by this episode.

[R-Tex.]

Idk why I was imagining a Rube Goldberg machine thingy 😂

[JdeBP]

01:35 I should point this out in a top-level comment, too. Lee Circle car park in Leicester was built in the 1960s as two coaxial helices, with a supermarket, police station, and a petrol station at its base. They closed the second helix many years ago, but at least a decade ago one could still drive up the other helix (a genuine helix, not level platforms with ramps — there was parking on a slope all of the way to the rail at the top) and look out over Leicester. Not as high as Captain Scarlet and not flat at the top, but I have parked in the topmost parking bay, viewed Leicester, and shuddered at how dangerous it would have been to freewheel all of the way down. Getting the right set of stairs, for the top of the helix that remained open, instead of the stairs that required walking up half a turn, was a trick, too. (-: