Daedalus

This article deals with the fictional inventor Daedalus. For other uses of the name, see Daedalus (disambiguation).

Daedalus is a fictional inventor created by David E. H. Jones for his Ariadne column in the New Scientist and The Guardian, and which is currently featured in Nature.

Daedalus's imaginary inventions are solidly grounded in science — usually just within the bounds of technical feasibility, and often prophetic.

For example, he once designed a locomotive fueled by fine grass shavings, to be gathered en route by a lawnmower installed in place of the usual cowcatcher. According to Daedalus's computations, the natural growth of grass planted between the rails would produce enough shavings to propel a fully-laden train every hour.^{[citation needed]}

Other proposals included fullerenes and the space elevator.

In the columns, Daedalus' inventions are often developed by the fictional company Daedalus Research Evaluation and Development Corporation (DREADCO).

Books

• The Inventions of Daedalus: A Compendium of Plausible Schemes, by David E. H. Jones. W. H. Freeman (1982); ISBN 0-7167-1412-4
• The Further Inventions of Daedalus, by David E.H. Jones. Oxford University Press (1999); ISBN 0-19-850469-1.

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