A Land Rover hovercraft and a bike with wings among the weird and wacky British inventions that failed to take off

A bicycle with wings and a Land Rover that turns itself into a hovercraft are just a couple of British inventions that - perhaps not surprisingly - failed to take off.

An archive of weird and wacky innovations has been unearthed by an amateur historian as he trawled through a collection of images spanning the last 100 years.

Businessman Chris Hodge, from Chislehurst in south east London, has collected more than 250,000 images and is having them all digitally scanned and archived.

The eccentric inventions of years gone by include what appears to be an early version of a videophone, an amphibious Lambretta scooter, a Land Rover hovercraft and a bicycle with wings.

Other photographs include a portable hairdryer, a mini-submarine, a side-by-side tandem and a back-facing sidecar.

The collection, most of which has not been seen for several decades, also features photos of factories, military history, boats, motorsport, medical history, hobbies, rare trucks and cars.

The photos, taken from various British trade and business-to-business media titles including Motorcycle News, Speed & Power Magazine and Nursing Times, document Britons trying to invent the next big thing.

The 20 tonnes of original, Anglo-centric material is currently in a specially built, air-conditioned and atmospherically controlled containment unit in Greenwich.