Albert Robida's War Machine Dominates Battle Scene, c.1887
Startlingly prescient for 1887, this illustration depicts a massive land-and-air war machine — part tank, part aircraft, bristling with spiral propellers and wing-like structures — surveying a battlefield strewn with explosions while cigar-shaped airships patrol the skies above. Uniformed officers stand on an observation deck as infantry masses below. The composition anticipates 20th-century mechanized warfare by decades, blending Victorian naval aesthetics with wildly speculative military technology in a single breathtaking panorama.
A Victorian gentleman has invented a vehicle that is simultaneously a tank, a biplane, and a maritime vessel, and is using it to lecture Russia. Points awarded for ambition and audacity.
“"Do you understand now why you could not make terms for Russia?" To face p. 351. F.T.J.”
