Paris, October 1951. It is a cold and blustery morning and the wind blows piles of leaves into swirls of golden browns and yellows as the crowd pushes through the doors of the Salon d’Automne. They’ve read about Pierre Noubel’s wonderful invention in the daily papers and want to see it for themselves, so they rush past the Citroens and Renaults to a small display in the Concours Lepin.
“To conquer the world, man has designed railways, the automobile and the aeroplane,” announced Noubel to his rapt audience. “But mankind needs a faster way of travelling, so I have studied the propulsion system used in Germany’s wartime V1 and V2 rockets. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you...” he paused for a
