Landships II

i figure this would be the best place to have a topic like this. during WWI the development of tanks (as with most motor vehicles) was astoundingly diverse, and it would be interesting to see what the offspring of such vehicles as the tsar tank would have looked like. now i have heard from different sources that the caterpillar came from britain earlier, but from what i understand holt has been making tractors for a very long time, it seems that what happend was that in the late 1800s an inventor (whose name escapes me) came up with a caterpillar type tread in england, but could find no approval until he was approached by holt, who bought the patent, and began building caterpillar tractors which became very popular in the west where conditions were very inhospitable. then another inventor in england came up with a chain tractor, many belive this is the true ancestor of the first tank treads, but i dont buy it, if you look at the way it is designed (its called the hornsby and a picture can be found here: http://www.photoarchives.co.uk/pixv/hornsby%20chain%20tractor.jpg ) its links appear to be mounted in the middle, as opposed to the "watchband" type we are used to. the reasoning behind this is that holt bought the pattent for the chain tractor as well, but i am inclined (partialy because im american :D ) to belive that a good amount of american enginuity is what made the caterpillar what it was, and the original holt drives are still more or less present in modern caterpillar (CAT) construction equipment.

anyway, i suppose the evolution of armor could be likend to the evolution of early life, suddenly there was an explosion in the need to survive, and many unorthodox creatures evolved to fill the gap. and those that couldnt work properly or had weak points, died and well became dead ends. so do you guys know of some very odd tanks that almost made it? im currently writing a article for the landships page on a holt 3 wheel steam tank, (once i get it through a spell checker ill send it to you peter) but there are so many other "what if" tanks, like the skeliton tank or this odd russian tank ( here is an image: http://armor.kiev.ua/Tanks/WWI/Kolesa/Tl1.gif ) i have read about it before, but i cant remember a lot of it, and as soon as i can ill have a russian freind of mine translate the page it was on for me. do you guys have any other great examples of evolutionary dead ends in early tank development?