Translation: “With sails on the steppe. – The German soldiers at the eastern front have found an ingenious system to use the tracks of disused railway lines. Small service-carts are fitted with improvised sails, so with the wind at their backs the supplies reach their destination.” (Drawing by W. Molino, Translation by B. Sterling)

I’ve written about sail cars before — mostly wagons and turbine-bearing taxis, actually — but I haven’t seen anything like this. Using wind captured by sails to drive a land vehicle is a long-time dream with mythical roots in China, but the key bit here is that the vehicle would be on the rails. Rails radically reduce the friction that a vehicle encounters, relative to a regular road car. In the 19th century, the main form of urban transport in America, actually, was a couple of horses pulling a bus-like vehicle along rails.

The problem here would seem to be that the system would only operate well in one way, i.e. with the prevailing winds, although if you’re just trying to get to the front, that’s probably fine.

And one last historical note: the Nazis were desperately short on fuel throughout the 20th century. They don’t have any in Germany and the two biggest suppliers at that point were the Russians and Americans. As a result, the Nazis engaged in the most important program to turn coal into fuel for vehicles that the world has ever known. Given the paucity of oil available to the Nazis, it makes sense that they would have tried to harness other forms of energy.

It’s a pretty simple equation: when oil, the most convenient fossil fuel, gets more expensive or difficult to access, people try harder to figure out alternative energy.

/*This never-before-seen-on-the-Internet Italian magazine curiosity comes to you courtesy of Mr. Bruce Sterling. I think it’s payback for my purchase of his newly Significant Object.*/