14. During the 19th century, it was believed that someday mankind would possess the technological power to replicate one of the most famous biblical miracles and to walk on water
The notion of humans someday possessing the power, aided by technology, to walk across bodies of water is nothing new. Inspired by the biblical story of Jesus walking on the Sea of Galilee, Leonardo da Vinci invented a pontoon shoe using similar mechanics to cross-country skiing in the 15th century. Whilst in the late-19th-century an overly imaginative designer envisioned a future embracing these and other methods of amphibious travel. Among the incredibly ingenious, if immensely bizarre modes of achieving this egress, the unknown inventor asserted that in the future people would use such pontoon shoes, aided by inflatable balloons, to casually walk on water, in addition to the riding of a bicycle akin to a penny farthing but employing a water wheel. Even more fantastical, the designer clearly also believed that the same techniques could be applied to non-humans, with horses and carriages similarly illustrated as traveling atop the still waters by these means.
Biologically speaking, this feat is impossible for humans, for to replicate the water-running of a basilisk lizard it has been estimated that a human would have to run at a speed of approximately 67 mph – almost three times the average speed of Usain Bolt’s 100 meter world record and expending 15 times the energy limitations of our species. Consequently, since 1858, beginning with H.R. Rowlands, more than 100 water-walking inventions have been patented in the United States alone, many of which were subtle deviations and iterations of the same core design stemming back to da Vinci. Unfortunately for these inventors, as remarked, indeed ironically by one of the more recent inventors, “none of them actually work”.