QUAINTNESS OF THE RECENT PAST No. 8

This is the “flying pulpit", which the pilot/driver controls much like an aerial version of a Segway machine. It seems a great pity they haven't become a readily-available and cheap form of personal transport. For me, that is. Obviously it wouldn't be so great if all you other people had one too. They'd be noisy and intrusive and a worse threat to privacy than Google Street-View. But aren't they great?!:

(The photographs come from the excellent website Retronaut. You can see a video of these magnificent flying machines here, and read the Wikipedia entry here.)