Do you suffer from back pain, fallen arches, trick knee, or any of the myriad structural aches and pains to which the human body is subject? Fed up with just such fallibilities, in 1956 Mechanics Illustrated asked a group of scientists, engineers, and designers to redesign the male human body. Click through for a closer look at what they came up with.
An industrial designer suggested enclosing the spinal column “with a tube of semi-flexible cartilage,” greatly increasing its “load-carrying capacity” and protecting it from injury. Moving the brain to the chest cavity put it closer to the “fuel supply . . . a fundamental principle in industry.” Thus the head becomes “a mere conning tower,” the chest gets bigger and, given the knee bone is connected to the shin bone, before you know it, you’ve got what MI’s caption writer described as a:
Cylinder-head digging the conventional-type girls with his back eyes has his brain in his outsize chest, his mouth near entrance to stomach. Other advanced features: moveable trumpet ears with radar antennae behind them; heavy-duty midsection muscles; congestion-proof snout; strong, flat, toeless feet; no nasty hair.
Science Redesigns the Human Body [Modern Mechanix]
