Explorer

I have a confession to make, my reading friend. I am not a big fan of automobiles. While I readily recognise the cultural, emotional, financial, industrial, mythical, political, practical, religious (?), social, technological, etc., importance of that mode of transport, the fact is that, around 2019, road transport despatched in the atmosphere of our good old Earth about 18% of the world’s anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. That is no small thing. This being said (typed?), yours truly must

Good day, my reading friend. Your presence suggests that the first part of our article on the life and work of French engineer Jean Albert Grégoire pleased you a little bit. So let us start without further delay the second part of said article. You will be delighted to learn that a project launched by Grégoire around 1943, while the Second World War raged on, had a relatively happy ending. In 1941, in parallel with his work on the CGE-Tudor electric city automobile mentioned in the first part of

Hail, my reading friend, and welcome you to the wonderful world of science, technology and innovation. And no, there will be no mention of aeronautics this week. As a former colleague told me over 30 years ago (Hello, CF!), there is more to life than airplanes. Considering the photograph that adorns this article of our blog / bulletin / thingee, you can probably imagine that our subject for this week of August 2021 is an automobile or, more precisely, the designer of that automobile. With your

On this day of August 2021, yours truly would like to invite you to an examination of one of the many all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) which saw the light of day during the 1970s, the Karou Karou, produced by Karou Incorporée of Drummondville, Québec – one of the first series-produced ATVs in Québec. And yes, I realise that the issue of the weekly Photo-Journal which served as a launch deck for this issue of our blog / bulletin / thingee covers the period from 26 July to 1 August 1971. Yours truly

Buongiorno, my reading friend. As part of the efforts initiated by yours truly to diversify the content of our blog / bulletin / thingee, I would like to offer you today a text, a short text, yes, yes, short, of an agricultural nature. Our story began in Italy, in April 1906 and September 1909, with the births of Francesco and Eugenio Gabriele Cassani. Their father, Paolo Cassani, was the owner of Società Anonima Paolo Cassani e figli, a small farm machinery manufacturing and repair firm which

How is life, my reading friend? One hopes you have no need of the device shown in the photograph with which yours truly introduces this week’s brief, yes, yes, brief, edition of our blog / bulletin / thingee. An edition or issue on hovercraft. Yeah! Sorry. As was mentioned in a previous issue of our you know what, in June 1959, a British firm by the name of Saunders-Roe Limited tested one of the first full size / successful air cushion vehicles, or hovercraft, the Saunders Roe SR.N1. Does the

Hello there, my reading friend. Yours truly would like to converse with you on this day about a vehicle which looked somewhat unusual, strange and bizarre. As you might expect from reading some of the many issues of our blog / bulletin / thingee, I have a slight penchant for the unusual, the strange, and the bizarre. I am not denying it. If you do not mind, I will be brief, and… What is it, my reading friend? Is it skepticism that I see on your face? If I may quote, in translation of course

Greetings, my reading friend. May I wish you a happy International Workers’ Day? Yours truly must admit that I rather like union people, the gentlepeople who gave me paid holidays, a retirement pension, a reasonable work week and many other things I often took / take for granted, but I digress. As you may perhaps have noticed, I am also quite fond of the Canada Aviation and Space Museum of Ottawa, Ontario, one of Canada’s national museums. You may have been amused, or irritated, by the many

As you may well imagine, the wonderful world of aeronautics and astronautics is chock full of wonderful flying machines. A surprisingly high number of these wonderful vehicles are, well, not very well known. While it is true that that this unfortunate lack of information plagued, plagues and will plague flying machines devised before 1914 and the start of the First World War, the fact is that some fairly recent aerial vehicles are not well documented. One of these would be a fine topic for our

Yours truly must admit that I racked my brains to find an agricultural topic for this issue of our blog / bulletin / thingee. The grayness which affects our little corner of the Milky Way is getting a bit heavy. This being said (typed?), I think I found a little something in the 3 March 1951 issue of the daily L’Action catholique from Québec, Québec, which might intrigue you a bit. Our story began in February 1872 with the creation, in Brünn, Austro-Hungarian Empire, of Erste Brünner Maschinen