The transport revolution that was always coming but never got there was the Electric flyer, which used magnetic fields to suspend and propel a capsule like a, for want of a better word, bullet.

"Bullet" is an interesting metaphor because it wasn't long before some people reasoned that if magnets can propel a train like a bullet, then they can propel bullets like, well, bullets.

Mr. Virgil Grigsby of San Augustine Texas went for the small-scale version of what today is known as a "railgun" when he patented his electric machinegun, which would have revolutionised warfare if the extension cord had stretched a bit further.. 

Others went for the medium scale with proposals that  what were basically modified  coastal guns with wire coils wrapped around them so they could hurl shells for hundreds of miles while sucking electricity off the national grid like a runner does water at the London Marathon while praying that the barrel doesn't melt or explode.

At the far end of the scale you have the space gun, such as the one Robert Heinlein described in his novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.  Based on the Moon or in orbit, the space gun started out as an idea for a transport to catapult cargo around the Solar System.  But being able to shift tons of iron about at seven miles a second has other possibilities-- most notably laying waste to the surface of the Earth in a manner that makes H-bombs into also-rans.

It's the sort of thing that gives spin-offs a bad name.

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