Advances in bio-engineering have made it theoretically possible to do just about anything to plants. In fact, many of the plants we have today have already been modified beyond all recognition from what they used to be. Carrots were originally white, scrawny roots; peaches were salty and cherry-sized; watermelons were small and bitter; and eggplants looked like eggs.

Our world — or at least our supermarkets and gardens — would look different without genetic modification. However, GM crops also carry significant drawbacks, and for all their promise to help us out of our messes, it’s clear how they land us in more.

Still, here are some of the most inventive and audacious ways humans won’t leave well enough alone.

10. Super air-purifying pothos

Typical of humans, our fuel-guzzling approach to purifying air with electrical air purifiers only compounds the problem. To provide an alternative, French company Neoplants has genetically modified a pothos (Devil’s ivy) plant right down to its roots to recycle airborne pollutants. They call it Neo P1 and, apparently, it is “capable of doing the air-purifying work of up to 30 plants.”

Plants are naturally better at absorbing and metabolizing volatile organic compounds (VOCs), but Neo P1 has been tweaked to excel — specifically targeting indoor VOCs like benzene, ethylene glycol, formaldehyde, and toluene. Nothing is wasted; the compounds are broken down and recycled into the water, sugars, and amino acids Neo P1 needs to grow, along with oxygen to release into the air. To boost its efficacy, the roots of the plant also have genes from extremophile bacteria (bacteria that have evolved to survive inhospitable environments by feeding on toxins). 

As the name of their first plant implies, Neoplants hope to create more air-purifying plants in the future. They also see their work as helpful in the “fight” against climate change.

9. Nitrogen-fixing crops

Rightly or wrongly, we’re obsessed with dietary protein. And legumes (beans, pulses, peanuts) are among the best plant sources of all — owing not only to how much protein they have but also to how they produce it.

Protein requires nitrogen, the bioavailability of which (i.e. the supply for use by organisms) is limited — hence its addition to fertilizer. Unlike most plants, however, legumes pluck it straight from the air. This is called ‘nitrogen-fixing’. Genetically modifying other staple crops to do the same would revolutionize agriculture around the world, especially in poor countries, by eliminating the need for expensive, climate-worsening fertilizers.

Critics say it’ll take a long time, though, and point out the existing problems of GM crops — such as herbicide-tolerant weeds. And obviously there are other, more direct ways to alleviate global poverty.

8. Cocaine tobacco

This one’s a game-changer in an indirect way. Don’t expect to see your local dealer offering a special new type of shiny white tobacco. Researchers were interested in genetically modifying plants to produce cocaine to study its evolution as a pesticide and its potential applications in medicine. 

Cocaine production in coca plants has long been veiled in mystery, in part because of how labor-intensive it is to grow coca in a lab. The answer scientists in China came up with was to genetically reconstruct, in a tobacco plant’s genome, the biochemical pathway by which cocaine is produced. Some parts of the chain they left the tobacco plant to come up with itself, and the result was tobacco leaves containing cocaine. The implications for finding new medicines are significant.

According to the researchers, the amount of cocaine produced wasn’t enough to make it a viable black market enterprise and, in any case, the process is too technical for the average clandestine drugs lab. However, the researchers themselves are working on it, hoping to ramp up the tobacco plant’s output.

7. Scorpion venom cabbage

Genetic modification and pesticides are two of our most toxic contributions as a species. So why not combine them into one? In a bid to consolidate the damage we’ve done, scientists took the venom gene from deadly scorpion tails, engineered it to only kill insects, and put it in a cabbage. What could go wrong? 

Although early tests confirmed no toxicity to humans, the concept is riddled with problems. For one thing, the study tested human breast cancer cells in vitro, not healthy human cells in vivo. Furthermore, the cabbage itself could be harmed. The genetic modification could escape and infect non-GM specimens. And, as with existing pesticides, it could destabilize whole ecosystems. 

The FDA has a long track record of ignoring such issues when approving GMOs, though — even when they contribute nothing. In this case, since the pesticide effect of venomous cabbage depends on insects actually eating it, it’s likely that farmers would also use pesticide sprays just to keep insects at bay. In other words, consumers would get double the toxins.

6. Endospore oak

Oak trees are, to the scientific mind, intolerably inefficient. Not only do they produce far more acorns than ever take root, but they waste millions of cells by shedding their leaves every autumn. What if, instead of rotting away on the ground, those cells transformed into millions of spores, spread by the wind, each capable of cloning their source. This would be a superior evolutionary strategy, and there is, apparently, “no biological principle … forbidding … [reproduction] by both spores and seeds.” And, unlike acorns, endospores can remain viable for millions of years.

Again, though, there are serious problems. Endospore oak trees are one thing, but what about endospore knotweed? Unless this particular genetic modification is strictly limited to “beneficial plants” (and even then), “superweeds may overrun the Earth.”

As usual, just because we see a gap in the market, so to speak, doesn’t mean we ought to exploit it. After all, trees would also be more efficient if they evolved to “walk” faster than they already do, and if they learned to hunt with poison gasses or spikes. It’s just not the kind of world most of us want.

5. Supernutritious fruit and veg

Genetically modifying plants to provide more nutritional value is nothing new. We already have protein-boosted potatoes, corn, and rice; linseed with higher levels of omega-3 and -6; tomatoes with snapdragon antioxidants; and lettuce with more digestible iron. There are also carrots that increase our calcium absorption, and the so-called “golden banana,” an Australian frankenfruit splicing the common banana with an orange Papua New Guinean variety high in provitamin A. Typically, however, human interference is the reason for low nutrition in the first place. So we’re skeptical.

Scientists hoping to revolutionize our crops by 2028 put their faith in super-accurate CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing. The possibilities are many (and stupid): beans that taste like chicken nuggets; carrots that taste like potato chips; potatoes with hamburgers in the middle; and sunflower seeds the size of small eggs to be eaten like apples. 

Some of the less childish ideas include hypoallergenic peanuts and lentils with as much protein as meat. But they all raise questions of how much control humans should have over nature, especially considering the mess we’ve made as it is.

4. Pollution-eating poplars

Phytoremediation is the process by which some plants clean up pollution — drawing contaminants up through their roots, breaking them down into harmless byproducts, and either using them or releasing them in the air. It’s another way plants have been pressed into service undoing the damage we’ve done. But, scientists say, they don’t do it well enough. They’re too slow.

The solution has been to genetically modify poplars to break down trichloroethylene (TCE) more efficiently. TCE is the most common groundwater contaminant found at the most polluted sites in America. Once promoted by the pharmaceutical industry as an anesthetic, it’s now a known carcinogen that lingers for a long time in the air, water, and soil wherever it’s used. And, given its continuing use in many household cleaning products, it’s a problem that’s only getting worse. 

The research into genetically modified phytoremediation is promising, though. Whereas unmodified poplars removed just three percent of TCE from a solution, poplars boosted with additional enzymes from rabbit livers removed as much as 91 percent. They also fared better, not withering as usual but actually growing more robustly. And it’s not just TCE they can deal with but a suite of other chemicals, including vinyl chloride (used to make plastics) and benzene (an airborne pollutant from petroleum).

3. Vaccine banana

The (artificially inflated) cost of vaccines means the Third World often doesn’t get them, and kids keep dying from easily preventable diseases — like diarrhoea. One solution scientists have come up with is to genetically modify crops to include the vaccines in their genome. 

An early proof of concept successfully delivered hepatitis B antigens to rats from specially engineered potatoes. However, since potatoes aren’t eaten raw, the research switched to bananas. Not only are they cheap, they’re also a well established crop in “developing” countries. And just 10 hectares of vaccine banana plantation would, they say, be enough to vaccinate all children in Mexico under the age of five.

Properly administering a vaccine banana isn’t as simple as peeling the skin and eating it, though. The plan is to purée the fruit and bottle it up (10 doses per bottle) to ensure each patient gets the right dose. Other crops scientists have experimented with include lettuce, carrots, and tobacco.

 2. DARPA’s intelligent trees

In 2017, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) put out a call for proposals to its Advanced Plant Technologies (APT) program. They’re specifically interested in genetically modifying plants to “gather intelligence” about, for example, environmental pathogens and radiation. Detecting the presence of whatever they’re designed to, the “sentinel plants” would “report” via “discreet response mechanisms” such as subtle changes in leaf color. 

Unlike sophisticated hardware, plants offer stealth, easy distribution, and energy independence. And the concept has already been proven. In 2011, researchers successfully engineered a TNT-detecting plant, the leaves of which would de-green in the presence (in soil or air) of TNT molecules. And all plants naturally respond to their environment through an input/output dynamic comparable to that of computers. Like bomb-sniffing dogs, it’s really just a case of training natural mechanisms to better serve the military.

However, DARPA wants to take things further, beyond simple on/off bio-computing to more nuanced detection and reliable, detailed reporting. They even expressed an interest in engineering plants to pick up on electromagnetic signals.

1. Dyson tree

You’ve probably heard of the Dyson sphere. Proposed by physicist Freeman Dyson, it’s a hypothetical structure built to enclose a star and capture its energy. Less well known is the Dyson tree. Genetically engineered for space, with thick glass bark to allow sunlight in and stop heat escaping, this hypothetical plant would be seeded on a comet and create its own atmosphere. In theory, it could support a whole ecosystem — at least for a time — with the inside of the comet hollowed out for inhabitants and the comet’s ice and carbon providing everything the “leafy spaceship” needs.

If it seems like science fiction, that’s because it is. But it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. Plants like the voodoo lily and carrion flower do generate their own heat; in fact, the skunk cabbage generates up to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, which is enough to melt frozen ground around it. 

There’s also no shortage of comets. The Kuiper belt past Neptune, which has trillions of comets, could potentially be seeded with enough Dyson trees to become a cosmic “archipelago of city states”. A Dyson tree comet the size of Manhattan could support millions of humans alone. And, with little gravity, not only would it be easy to hop between comets, but structures on each could be taller than on Earth.

“We’re living in the future” seems truer today than in eras past. The jump from telegram to the telephone was big. The jump from sitting in a dark room alone to the damned internet is huge…despite a lot of internet use involving sitting in a dark room, alone. The pace of technological development has slowed in recent decades, but the rate is insignificant when compared to the new inventions that are coming to the fore.

Here are 10 examples of soon-to-be-developed or bet-you-didn’t-know-this-was-a-thing innovations that’ll make you look at your surroundings and say: “James Cameron? Are you making all this happen?… Are you watching me right now?”

Related: Top 10 Short-Lived Inventions That Changed The World

10 No More “Pew Pew”

For all the uber high-tech teleportation-y, voice command-y, thought reading-y machines we’ve become accustomed to in science fiction movies, the weapons are probably the coolest aspect in these films and TV shows. How easy would deer hunting be with a phaser? What about protecting your home with a lightsaber? Doing a quick bit of target practice with a Warhammer 40k bolter gun. Well, the last one may become a reality soon.

U.S. company Arcflash Labs has developed the first commercially available hand-held Gauss rifle. The gun/cannon/tool to save the world from aliens is essentially an electromagnetic catapult, the projectile hurried along the barrel by coiled magnets that are turned on and off at very precise intervals. This process allows the shot to speed up at an incredible rate before leaving your gun and exploding some Xenomorph carapace.

Or at least that’s where the tech will get to someday—for now, Arcflash Labs’ GR-1 Anvil will propel the projectile (which is a steel rod) at around 200 feet per second, delivering around 75 ft-pounds of energy. Not too shabby for a first go. But if any wrong-doer came face to face with you holding one of these bad boys, it’s all but certain they won’t mess with you—nobody messes with “Doom Guy.”^[1]

9 #Ultracapacitorevolution

Doesn’t it feel like we’re a hair’s breadth from an energy tech breakthrough that’ll change everything forever? Well, either that or total societal collapse…

The development of ultracapacitors could be enough of a change to stave off our implosion for a few years. These neat little energy storage thingamabobs may well replace batteries someday. Currently, Skeleton Tech is ramping up production of their curved graphene units. These little beauties aren’t quite as good at storing energy as traditional lithium-ion batteries (yet), but boy, do they pack a punch in output. A huge punch.

Skeleton provides the batteries as a supplement for traditional cell batteries in transport systems (from electric cars to public transit vehicles), allowing all the supplemental electric processes to be powered by the ultracapacitors. This frees up energy output for propelling the vehicle as well as saving space and weight, further boosting overall performance. The further and faster we can go, the quicker we can focus on bigger problems—what drama will Joe Rogan be embroiled in next? Y’know, real existential questions like that.^[2]

8 Triffids Are Tasty

When The Simpsons released the classic episode “E-I-E-I-D’oh” in 1999, nobody expected that any old dufus sans a lab and a fancy Ph.D. from MIT could just splice two species of plant together like Homer did with tomatoes and tobacco.

Wrong. Dead wrong.

Sorry, that was needlessly morbid. Back in 2013, a gardening company in England released a commercially available TomTato plant, a hybrid between cherry tomatoes and white potatoes. Since then, green-thumbed mad-scientist-emulating amateurs have gotten busy grafting. Now, with the help of a YouTube tutorial or two, you can create the next wonder crop that’ll solve world hunger. It’s all about careful grafting, the amazing combination of surgical skills and gardening.^[3]

Or doom us all to overlordship by genetically mutated SproutKumquats. All hail the bitter tangers!

7 Art Meets Fashion Meets Future Tech

Many people find high fashion, for want of a better term, utter sh*t and pointlessly decadent. Clothes nobody wears shown off by people who often don’t look human with less artistic merit than a Bob Ross painting of a tree, a lake, and a bush. But fear not, millennial cynics/realists, futuristic tech will come to the rescue!

Cutting-edge fashion designer Iris Van Herpen is artfully crafting her catwalk pieces using 3-D printing technology and sophisticated AI-analyzing tech. The results, especially compared with the usual stupid-looking nonsense seen at Paris, London, Milan, and New York, are quite beguiling. Plus, the sheer amount of technical wizardry employed proves that fashion can adapt, not just degrade.^[4]

6 Meating Expectations

It seems that, whether we like it or not, meat is slowly leaving the world’s menu. Sure, it’ll never completely leave—we have canine teeth in our gobs, and nobody likes it when their 30/30 ammo goes bad. But expect to see most mass-produced, supermarket-sold meat products soon replaced by meat alternatives. Many people will celebrate, many will be up in arms, most of us only care about one thing: Does the facon really taste like bacon?

Pioneering Israeli company RedefineMeat seems to have gotten pretty damned close. Legendary chef Marco Pierre White (the bloke who taught Gordon Ramsey that the essence of great cuisine is swearing at everyone) described the products he was tasked to cook with as “the most clever thing I’ve ever seen in my 45 years of being in a kitchen.” High praise from a guy that doesn’t do high praise. Made from plant-based ingredients like pea protein and beetroot, their product range boasts no GMOs, antibiotics, and all the other nasties associated with factory-farmed meat. From sausages and burgers to flank steak, experts suggest that alternative meat products like these may reach 10% of the global “meat” market by 2029.^[5]

5 The (Augmented) Realities of War

Military advancements are more than just how big a bang a new bomb can make—wartime innovation drove the technological advancements of the 20th century. From radio technology to nuclear energy, no WWII means no internet, slower automotive advances, and a very different (probably still sepia-toned) world. The latest area of tech we can expect a massive leap in is augmented reality. Why? The U.S. military just sunk billions of dollars into developing it. That’ll do it.

Augmented reality is like the more sci-fi version of VR; elements of virtual reality are melded with our real-world surroundings. Think of those cool visors on the helmets of futuristic soldiers or what Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator saw from his POV—real-time analysis of the surroundings appearing in your eyeline. It means Yelp reviews popping in your eyeline as you pass a café, the latest football scores as you see a billboard for the Dallas Cowboys…you get the idea. More than just a few lines of text will start to be incorporated—maps, diagrams, and even media clips, all playing as you walk around…in 3-D.

The U.S. Armed Forces are developing this tech for their fighting men. But optimized for the battlefield, obviously.^[6]

4 Lifting Made Easy

Not every advancement needs to be super high-tech. Look at the grafted and hybridized plants—that’s just gardening. Digitized exoskeletons sound super high-tech. What about a basic harness that aids in lifting, saving you from a bad back? A nifty little product but hardly Battleship Galactica stuff. But sometimes, the simplest-seeming innovations can be game changers. Game changers that allow us to traverse the stars.

Okay, maybe that’s a bit hyperbolic.

This harness, the result of years of research from salubrious institutions like Harvard, hopes to make back strains a thing of the past. Heavy loads become much easier to lift, up to 50 extra pounds without a problem, all without causing harm if you don this figure-boosting harness. It doesn’t look like something Neo would wear, but any augmentation that boosts human ability is super futuristic.

No? Well, imagine this device helping an astrophysicist with a perpetually bad back get over his or her pain and finally discover warp travel. See, it is futuristic.^[7]

3 Fusion. Finally. Maybe.

It seems like fusion tech may be just around the corner. A long, long, long corner. It’s been decades since waggish science reporters started chirping about mankind’s next onward leap in energy—fusion power. Just a few more years, they said…in the ’70s.

Recent developments in the field do now seem to herald the dawn of the fusion age, however. Fusion’s potential is ridiculous—safer, cleaner, cheaper, and incredible in terms of energy output. The fusion of 0.1g of deuterium and 0.3g of lithium could power the average American household for a year. These elements occur naturally. And abundantly. In late 2021, MIT and a fusion start-up called Commonwealth Fusion systems seemed to have leaped over the last great hurdle in the race for fusion power—the insanely powerful magnets required.

Using a high-temperature superconductor tape, they managed to create one of the most powerful magnets ever made. With lower-than-expected power input and the type of magnetic field needed to allow safe fusion power generation. The test they ran proved that the math behind their concept was sound, paving the way for fusion generators to become a reality. Finally.

By 2025, the team hopes to debut SPARC, the first fusion device that’ll attain net energy output. The hope then is that the investment that this will attract could allow for fusion to be the go-to energy source soon.^[8]

Oh, and the “power?” It could very well be unlimited.

2 From the Depths to the Heights?

A whole ton of these technological advances, many listed here, could go one of two ways—save mankind or doom mankind. It’s tough to imagine a positive use for the burgeoning field of “deepfake” synthetic media. Anyone with the technical know-how can clip your face from a photo, run it through an AI-driven program and superimpose your mug onto any other piece of media they want: “Are you sure it wasn’t you throwing that Molotov cocktail into the orphanage, Ms. Jones? What about this video we found?” Chilling.

But it isn’t all bad. In 2019, David Beckham was used as a spokesman for malaria awareness via the organization Malaria Must Die. Instead of forcing the tinny-voiced retiree to learn eight different languages, deepfake tech was employed, allowing various actors to voice the message in their native tongues while seemingly to come out of Becks’ mouth. Pretty cool. Another cool use of the tech is Samsung’s AI lab manipulating an image of the Mona Lisa, allowing her to move around and talk (real Harry Potter vibes on this one, but don’t hold that against them).

Beyond these cool but arguably frivolous examples, hospitals are now employing deepfake tech to create fake patients, keeping real patients’ data safe. Still, is it all worth it when some nefarious people could stick your face on a murderer’s torso or make it seem like you’ve said something cancellable? It may even be the case that this tech pushes mankind into new levels of paranoia; ultimate paranoia—what even is reality anymore if you can’t trust anything you see?^[9]

Time will tell, but all this seems (warning: word of the last two years coming up) rather dystopian.

1 The Future Is Ours to Fix. Literally.

Let’s step away from inventions and scientific advancements for a moment and focus on the really juicy stuff—customer service policies.

Okay, so maybe not the most inspiring or adrenaline-pushing subject, but a new policy that looks to become the norm in the tech world may very well be a real game changer. In late 2021, Apple made an announcement that shocked techno anarchists and “right to repair” advocates everywhere. They basically said, “Yup, you’re right. We’ll make it happen,” allowing customers to have access to previously unavailable parts and tools needed to fix their own broken devices.

This sounds like a simple act of PR, but if you consider the greater consolidation of the market we’ve seen, a not-insignificant portion of the “power” has been ceded back to the consumer. Maybe the scary Big Tech oligarchs have realized that a miserable populace with no choice doesn’t make for good drones, or maybe they aren’t the evil overlords we thought they were. Whatever the rationale, this news should be bigger, given the ramifications. A Star Trek future looks slightly more attainable in the wake of this.^[10]

You know you’re in for a treat when you hear a much older person start a sentence with “back in my day.” The world used to be different and we all know it. But what gets lost sometimes is just how different things used to be in the day-to-day world. We don’t need to look at what the world was like before major, life-changing inventions like cars or antibiotics to appreciate how odd things used to be, either. 

10. Before Insulin, Diabetics Had to Live on Dangerous Low Carb Diets

Frederick Banting discovered insulin at the University of Toronto in 1921, changing the world for millions of diabetics. Before insulin, a diabetic had a life expectancy of maybe 3 or 4 years, and they weren’t pleasant years, either. 

The only treatment for diabetes prior to insulin was diet changes. If you’re a type II diabetic, that can actually work in some cases. For type II’s, their ability to make or use insulin is impaired and often weight loss and dietary changes can help reduce glucose in the bloodstream and ensure better health. Type 1 diabetics, on the other hand, do not produce insulin. Diet really can’t help them at all because they don’t have a functional pancreas, so the stereotype about eating less or trying to be healthier doesn’t help at all. 

In order to squeeze out a few extra years of life, doctors would put diabetics on diets so strict that they’d be considered criminal today. Carbohydrates, which turn into sugar in your blood, had to be eliminated completely. Some diabetics were being sustained on just 450 calories per day, at least until the diet literally starved them to death. 

9. Inducing Rat Ovulation Was a Way To Test for Pregnancy Before Home Tests

In 1977 you could finally head to a drugstore and, for the first time ever, buy a home pregnancy test. But what was a woman to do before then? There was a method that was devised 50 years prior to that convenient at home test that could also let you know if you were pregnant but instead of peeing on a stick that could gauge your hormone levels, you needed access to a female rat and someone capable of later dissecting it. You can see why the home test proved to be more popular.

In 1927, something called the A-Z Test was created by doctors Selmar Aschheim and Bernhard Zondek. Urine from a woman who suspected she might be pregnant was injected into an immature female rat or mouse. If the woman was pregnant, her hormones would trigger an estrus reaction and cause the rodent to go into heat. The animal had to be dissected to determine this. 

There were other methods over the years as well, including mixing urine with wine which may have actually yielded accurate results sometimes, as well as urinating on barley or wheat seeds to see if they would grow. Modern tests showed, 70% of the time, this testing method was actually accurate.

8. Before Baby Carrots Most Carrots Were Tossed in the Trash

In the world of carrots there are regular carrots, and there are baby carrots. Yes, there are colored carrots, but they’re still full-sized, regular ones for the most part. And at some point you may have heard the devastating news that there’s really no such thing as baby carrots, they’re just regular carrots that were shaved down. Media sources will often rehash this story every few years and present it as scandalous in a facetious way. 

What most sources don’t get into is why baby carrots exist and what the world was like prior to their existence. Turns out that baby carrots aren’t just a wasteful way to make the root vegetables seem more palatable. If anything, the opposite is true. 

In the early 1980s, the carrot industry was incredibly wasteful. More carrots were trashed than sold. This is because people like pretty food and carrots are often ugly. That, and the fact carrots can be 80% good with a rotten end, and so the whole carrot is now useless. 

Carrot farmer Mike Yurosek got sick of losing money and started peeling his ugly carrots by hand. That was labor intensive, so he bought a green bean cutting machine that sliced the carrots down to little 2-inch nuggets. The baby carrot was born.

Within one year of Yurosek’s innovation, US carrot consumption rose by 30%. In 10 years it was up another 117%. The scraps are used as animal feed and now consumers are enjoying a better diet overall. 

7. Before Elevators The Rich Lived on the Ground and The Poor Lived On Upper Floors

When you look at a high rise apartment building today, you’ll notice that the upper floors often look a little different thanks to the large, opulent penthouse apartments. The top floors of buildings are reserved for the wealthiest residents who can afford the best views. In midtown Manhattan there’s a penthouse that goes for $90 million. In Monaco, there’s a penthouse worth $335 million.  

Do you know what makes a penthouse so expensive? It’s one thing and one thing only – the elevator. Prior to the invention of the elevators, the richest residents of a building lived closer to the ground. The less well off you were, the higher you went. The top floor of many buildings was considered servant’s quarters. And that makes sense when you consider that people on the top floor were going to be carrying all of their furniture up the stairs to move in. The ground floor afforded you the luxury of going in and out as you pleased and ensured you rarely had to run into the people on the upper floors.

6. Before Barbed Wire The Beef Industry Was Much Smaller and Costlier

Before barbed wire the world had a lot fewer cliche tattoos, but that is not the only contribution this method of secure fencing is responsible for. In the world before barbed wire, beef was a much rarer commodity and, in many ways, we owe the modern beef industry to barbed wire. There arguably would be no burger-based fast food industry without it. 

Cattle ranching in the 1870s had ground to a halt because it couldn’t be contained. Cattle would destroy other crops and couldn’t be contained with meant herds could only be so large. All existing fencing methods were proving ineffective but with the invention of barbed wire in 1874, things changed.

Cattle could be contained to pastures and that allowed them to grow bigger, stronger, and healthier. Cattle drives were no longer necessary so the animals could grow much bigger and produce more meat. New breeds, such as Angus, could also be bred since they no longer had to endure those long cattle drives, and that in turn improved the beef industry as a whole. 

5. Before the Heart Lung Machine, Cross Circulation Connected Two Living Patients Together

Cardiopulmonary bypass is the process you’ll undergo if a surgeon ever needs to open you up to operate on your heart. A machine, often called a heart-lung machine, will take over the functions of your heart and lungs since they’re going to be otherwise occupied but your blood and oxygen still need to flow. These machines were developed through the 1950s and the process of testing them ended with a number of deaths. Between 1951 and 1955 there were 18 surgeries. Only one patient survived. 

Before machines, there were still successful methods, however. An 11-year-old boy underwent heart surgery in 1954 and survived thanks to a method called controlled cross-circulation. For that, his father was put under anesthetic and the boy’s veins and lungs were connected to his father’s. His father became a secondary, living circulatory system for his own son, allowing blood and oxygen to flow between the two of them while doctors repaired the boy’s heart. 

4. Before Crash Test Dummies, Living Volunteers Were Used

Some time after the invention of the automobile people began to realize that crashing an automobile was a seriously dangerous thing. But how could you figure out what the most dangerous parts of a crash were without actually crashing people? Enter the crash test dummy. They were developed throughout the 1950s and 1960s as a means of testing not just cars but planes and rally anything that could move at a dangerously fast pace. 

Adoption of the crash test dummy wasn’t instantaneous, however. There were a lot of automobile manufacturers and a lot of safety tests being done for decades before they became industry standard. That’s why, from 1960 until 1975, people like Lawrence Patrick were volunteer crash test dummies. 

Patrick’s contribution to impact testing was invaluable. Because while a crash test dummy could show how bad a crash could be, it couldn’t tell you how much a human could take. That was Patrick’s job. 

Living subjects like Patrick weren’t the only ones, either. Some studies strapped corpses into cars to test them. They even used pregnant baboons for a time. 

3. Back in the Day, Marathon Runners Drank Booze During Races

The first marathon dates back to 490 BC, so this is an ancient custom. The modern marathon can involve a lot of planning and fanfare and you’ll often see people on the sidelines providing water and sports drinks to the runners in an effort to keep them hydrated. But there was a time when we weren’t entirely sure what a person should be drinking when they were running and that led to a lot of boozy marathons.

On the one hand, if you run and get tired you feel thirsty, so drinking anything seems like a good idea. On the other hand, the fact that runners were once advised to drink champagne of all things seems confusing at best since being both drunk and gassy can’t help your running game. 

A century ago, runners in the Boston Marathon would have helpers keeping pace on bikes or in cars, handing out whisky or brandy when the runner needed a boost. Cognac and wine were options at various races as well. 

The reason for this seemed to be that, while everyone acknowledged thirst was a think, water was generally considered weak and not very manly. 

2. Before Radar, War Tubas Helped Detect Enemy Aircraft

Radar has been an invaluable tool over the years and it’s hard to overstate its value in war. If you have enemy aircraft coming in to destroy you, then knowing where they are is extremely important. But radar was only invented in 1935 and there were dangers from above well before then.

Prior to the advent of radar, the Japanese in particular had devised a method of tracking enemy aircraft that involved the use of what is known as a war tuba. And the name is oddly accurate. War tubas were giant horns pointed at the sky. A person would stand at the narrow end of those huge horns while the wide-opened mouth end was pointed at the sky. The intention was that the open end would catch the sound of approaching aircraft before anyone could see them coming.

There’s no evidence this method was successful in locating and aiding in the destruction of any aircraft, but the UK and the US both attributed their successes with radar to acoustic location techniques like war tubas before anyone knew radar was a thing, as a method of keeping it secret. 

1. Before Modern Erasers People Used Bread Crumbs

Everyone makes mistakes, that’s why pencils have erasers, so the saying goes. But what about when pencils didn’t have erasers? It wasn’t a mistake-free world back then; it was just one that relied on bread crumbs.

Since a pencil eraser works by sticking to the graphite marks on paper and then being ground away as you rub against it, the same principle works with a lot of other substances. Notably, prior to “real” erasers, people just used bread crumbs. 

Rubber erasers were innovated in 1858. From about 1612 to 1770, breadcrumbs were the go to fixer, simply because it worked, was cheap, and was really easy to get ahold of.