More Heroic Failures



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Stephen Pile - The Book of Heroic Failures

The Worst Computer 
We often say that computers do things better than 
people. But we have forgotten the computer that the 
Avon local 
government 
bought to help them to pay their 
workers. 
The computer’s little adventure started in a small way, 
paying a school cleaner £75 an hour instead of 75 pence. 
Then it decided not to pay a kitchen worker anything for 
seven weeks. 
Soon it started to do bigger things and paid a door-
keeper £2,600 for a week’s work. He sent the money 
back and immediately got the same again. 
By this time the computer was so sure of itself that 
nobody could stop it. A school teacher got a year’s pay 
every month; workers got more money than the boss; and 
the computer ordered some people to send more than a 
year’s pay to the government. 
In February 1975, 280 local government workers met 
to talk about the problem. Only eight of them had the 
right pay. They all decided to stop work until the local 
government threw away the stupid computer. 



The Doctor Who Surprised a Cow 
In 1977, a Dutch doctor had to go to see a sick cow. He 
needed to study the gases in the cow’s stomach. He had 
to put a 
tube 
into the back end of the animal and light a 
match. But as soon as he did this, fire shot out of the tube 
and hit some dry grass, which started to burn. Soon all of 
the farm was one great fire. It cost ,£45,000 to build it 
again. The cow was all right but she was a little shaky. 
The Most Useless Post Box 
In
 
1979, workmen at Ballymacra, County Atrim in 
Ireland were taking down old 
telegraph poles 
and 
putting up new ones. One of the old poles had a post box 
on it. The workers did not have the key to unlock the 
metal ring that tied the post box to the pole. So they 
lifted the box and the metal ring over the top of the old 
pole and dropped it down the new one. But the new pole 
was thicker than the old one and so the post box did not 
fall all the way down. Instead, it stopped nine feet above 
the ground. 
It stayed there for three weeks. During that time some 
people were able to post letters. ‘I have heard,’ said Mr 
Ernie McDermott, the postman, ‘that someone left a 
ladder there,’ 



The Most Useless Post Box 



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